Second paragraph of third story (“Postcard”):
It being Wednesday the wickets in the Post Office were closed, but I had my key. I unlocked our box and took out the Jubilee paper, in Momma’s name, the phone bill, and a postcard I very nearly missed. I looked at the picture on it first and it showed me palm trees, a hot blue sky, the front of a motel with a sign out front in the shape of a big husky blond creature, lit up with neon I suppose at night. She was saying Sleep at my place— that is, a balloon with those words in it came out of her mouth. I turned it over and read, I didn’t sleep at her place though it was too expensive. Weather could not be better. Mid-seventies. How is the winter treating you in Jubilee? Not bad I hope. Be a good girl. Clare. The date was ten days back. Well, sometimes postcards are slow, but I bet what happened was he carried this around in his pocket a few days before he remembered to mail it. It was my only card since he left for Florida three weeks ago, and here I was expecting him back in person Friday or Saturday. He made this trip every winter with his sister Porky and her husband, Harold, who lived in Windsor. I had the feeling they didn’t like me, but Clare said it was my imagination. Whenever I had to talk to Porky I would make some mistake like saying something was irrevelant to me when I know the word irrelevant, and she never let on but I thought about it afterwards and burned. Though I know it serves me right for trying to talk the way I never would normally talk in Jubilee. Trying to impress her because she’s a MacQuarrie, after all my lecturing Momma that we’re as good as them.
You may have noticed that I’ve been on a bit of an Alice Munro binge over the last year, generated in the first place by enthusiasm from my wife. These are selected stories from her output in 1968-1994, and they are all good, some of them brilliant, observation of life in southern Ontario (particularly for women) over the decades. “Postcard”, from which I’ve taken an excerpt above, is a particularly good one told by a woman in a doomed relationship that everyone else, including the reader, can see isn’t happening. “Carried Away” is an intricate tale of a librarian, a soldier, and a decapitation. “Dance of the Happy Shades” features the discomfort afflicting the comfortable resulting from a musical performance by children with special needs. In “Fits”, a woman finds her neighbours’ bodies after a murder/suicide pact, but the real story is how the details become known to her community and her husband. All take you into the moment; all recommended.
This came to the top of my reading list as both the most popular non-sf fiction book and the most popular book by a woman on my unread shelves. Next in both categories is another short story collection, Tales from the Secret Annexe by Anne Frank.
In general I enjoyed the 3d. There are a few points that more experienced directors in 3d would have managed the shot differently but mostly it was thoughtful and good.
The two most notable missteps were the teacup at the end, terrible, stupid, shot, and the long out of focus shot of John Hurt walking through a landscape. This is just about the number one no-no for 3D cinematography (brain can’t cope) and I’m quite surprised nobody ran screaming from the cinema.
The other thing that didn’t work was the shots of the 12 doctors in the end credits; despite knowing who they all were I couldn’t recognise them in the 3d shots and was surprised to see that the same pics were pin-sharp in 2d.
I thought that seeing it in the cinema was well worth it; partly for the atmosphere which was great (we had many cosplayers, someone with jelly babies etc), but also because it worked amazingly well on the giant screen at VUE, much better than you’d think a bit of telly would.
And Adventure is *fantastic* as everyone says; a clear case of Mark Gatiss growing up in public.