itt WOLF HALL the book by hilary mantel and the upcoming hbo/bbc miniseries based on the same

Speaking of menace, Jonathan Pryce seemed entirely too doddering for my conception of Wolsey, who I always imagined looking and behaving like a somewhat more brooding version of Alex Salmond

Sculptors re-use their clay and David Annand used the clay of Wolsey's head to model Alex Salmond's!

http://www.ipswichsociety.org.uk/newsletter/dispart.php?issue=187&art=16

of course he did

I enjoyed this but everyone in it feels slighter and more genteel than they should, except maybe Thomas More. I didn't get much menace out of Rylance at all, he seemed actually incredibly understated. Having said that, we've only seen him in family man/loyal servant mode so that's possibly natural and perhaps both character and actor have a way to go.

It also seemed odd to completely bypass Cromwell's rude upbringing which really flavors the entire tone of the book (and establishes that menace, actually, now that I think about it)

They showed him being beaten by his father which is virtually all you see of his upbringing IIRC. It's been a while since I read it though.

Could have done with more in the way of dry humour early on, perhaps. I laughed out loud at the trial scene, and the Boelyns. Looking forward to the scenes with Mary.

Actually there was just the right level off obnoxious little toad coming off the kid playing Mark.

Yeah but that beating establishes everything - our sympathy for Cromwell, the psychological basis for preferring the rationality of the law to the force of a truncheon, but also the intimate knowledge of raw boozy brawling that no one else he has truck with really has an inkling of

I dunno I think I am also possibly simply allergic to televised Tudor costume dramas no matter what their pedigree

The book is so remarkable because of its tone, the way everything is so poised, all relations feel magnetized and suspended precariously in their current patterns, disaster always feels round the corner. Who can forget, having read it, that description of Wolsey in his chamber, and the shadows surrounding him? He becomes something more than a man, he is a force, a spirit-being. You get none of this in the TV show but there's no reason you couldn't, if given the license to be more creative and impressionistic with the photography and soundtrack

Reading the book again and it's astonishing how much of the story is gone. Even the main event, the divorce, seems barely sketched in, a mere backdrop for Cromwell's slowly shifting relations with the other major players, his inexorable gaining of the upper hand. After the last scene of his meeting with the king I thought that just might be enough to keep me watching, though I agree that Rylance lacks menace.

yeah the major "historical" events are sort of backdrop in the book

Intricately detailed backdrops, though. You could pretty much use it as a history textbook, unlike the show.

The scenes with the family were good, and much as I'd imagined them in the book. I welled up a little at the angel scene.

xpost yea and obv more than backdrop, they drive the A-story, but it's all offstage. there's something almost rozencrantz and guildenstern are dead about it in that respect.

In the episode just gone when Alice says "Gregory's been letting us run his dogs in the hall", it's a pale shadow of one of the sweetest scenes in the book. I wish they'd kept it whole, it would really fit Rylance's way with his character.

(Alice) "Oh we are not going to bed. We are running Gregory's greyhounds up and down the hall and making a noise fit to wake the dead."
"I can see why you don't want to break it off."
"Yes, it is excellent," Alice says. "We have the manners of scullery maids and no one will ever want to marry us. If our aunt Mercy had behaved like us when she was a girl, she would have been knocked round the head till she bled from the ears."
"Then we live in happy times," he says.
When she has gone, and the door is closed behind her, Cranmer says, "The children are not whipped?"
"We try to teach them by example, as Erasmus suggests, though we all like to race the dogs up and down and make a noise, so we are not doing very well in that regard."

i especially loved that scene in the book as well.

so this is a tv show now huh

I'm still finding it v watchable, the hour flies by. But I just read the book, and yeah Rylance is good but wrong & it can't give you any sense of immersion in constant microscopic assessment/judgement/decision-making which I find hypnotic in the book. Looks cool though.

my mum, who loves the books, just said he's not broad and big enough (in a character sense as well) and without the element of coarseness - he's not a blacksmith's son. I found the books difficult to get through - a uniform consistency of detail with rhythmical emphasis, but am liking the tv series. And did want to read Bring Up the Bodies as it felt the time-span might suit my attention span better.

i seem to recall a drinking conversation with Ward Fowler where we somehow came to the conclusion that it wasn't twee enough, but have no memory of how we got there now. Rock solid reasoning tho, of that you can be assured.

I understand from a friend who has seen Rylance onstage that actually he's pretty stacked, but the clothing doesn't really bring that out. He reputedly can do bullying and menace very well as well, so the focus on kindly uncle/loyal servant Cromwell at this stage may be a directorial decision.

Idk about 'stacked', he was muscular in Jerusalem but still not particularly broad, and I reckon that was mostly put on for the role, especially as he was previously best known for playing Ariel.

they could crank it up but i suspect fizzles' mum otm - the whole 'looks like a murderer' thing is there from early on in the book - Rylance is a bit shifty-sinister but doesn't have that now.

i'm interested in 'more twee needed' - was that wanting more lutes, codpieces etc (+ a trad roister-doister H VIII), or just a bit more poppy narrative drive? Book's really good imo but a bit restrained.

not codpieces! think it was along the lines of "not enough cute concision", maybe a mildly saccharine musicality.

book is *impressive* even, from the chunk I've read, but not - to me - enormously appealing to read.

that said, I keep wanting to try again because I feel that the detail is not the overload of research that's tied like weights to the prose of some historical writers, but provides or is evident of an almost mystical quality of imaginative historical insight. it's certainly very skilfully managed.

idk she's probably been one of the best writers around for the past few years?

yeah "poppy narrative drive"

there's a hypnotic/immersive quality to the rendering of Cromwell's consciousness that's amazingly handled. She's v good all-round – sense of detail, prose ear & structure, dialogue, thick/deep history, lotsa ideas etc – but that's next-level. Like i think this - "a uniform consistency of detail with rhythmical emphasis" - is true & was wearing on me 3/4 in but it's also what's so absorbing in big reading bursts. ok, yes, I'm saying it's krautrock.

idk she's probably been one of the best writers around for the past few years?

yeah, agree, definitely for England and double def for 'English writers of her generation'. Any reservations I have are from the 'this is great and worth thinking about and picking at' position.

but i don't know really it's not like i keep up with William Boyd

Haven't seen it but a couple of friends of mine who were discussing it last night were mildly outraged that one of the characters said something in Latin and then translated it.

... that's the sort of people I hang out with though.

there was also a subtitled bit of Latin, so it's willing to do the right thing.

I thought i heard them pronouncing Tyndale 'tine-dale' at More's house & was mildly outraged, but then it was def 'tindle' later on. I then thought More might be mispronouncing it deliberately, out of disrespect. But maybe I misheard.

in the book i always chortled when they're like "you can take the boy out of Putney..." in order to burnish Cromwell's hardman credentials

See also Squeeze's 'Up the Junction'

I never thought that it would happen
Me and a girl from Clapham

I bet even Overlord X's Rough In Hackney sounds a bit obsolescently joke these days.

Felt a little underwhelmed by the Fall of Wolsey Play

just watched ep 2. very enjoyable. 'fraid to say more says tinedale, and cromwell and more's wife both say tindle. disrespect only option, but a weird one.

i think whats bugging me about rylances cromwell is that he seems kind of...doddering? confused?

I thought he came a bit more alive in the scene where he was recounting his memories from italy; and have faith he'll come more into himself, and maybe his thug will surface, as the series progresses.

no I don't get doddering or confused. his delivery is fantastic. reminds me on Ian Bannen as Jim Prideaux in TTSS. steady. ep 2 marvellous.

That's is what I am hoping and thought there was some resounding hints of menace to come in his " no need to trouble god, i have it hand" line at the end.

so this aired on pbs last night? right? i missed it.

It's on pbs.org. When did Masterpiece Theater become just Masterpiece? I am old.

they folded mystery into it (as "masterpiece mystery" for a couple years) then dropped that too

I stopped paying attention because there was no buzz from the ILX UK contingent - did it get better, Britishes?

i liked it a lot

It's very good and honestly my biggest complaint is that it is too short

taping, will check it out and report back

i thought it was cracking.

loved every minute of it.

ah crap i meant to set my dvr
will remedy

At first I thought that Rylance was all wrong for the role, too understated, just not menacing enough, and then I kept watching and you realise that understatedness is what makes his Cromwell believable, in a show when virtually every other dude is growling threats through their teeth, he just does not let the mask slip at all.

that alone sounds v Cromwellian

I'm in

THought the tv series was very well done so want to read the books.
Hoping that both book and tv series will eventually take us up to Cromwell's demise. BUt I think that the background interview show said that Mantel now had other pressures than she did when she was writing the earlier volumes. I think it was also saying that the book had a lot more internal goings on with Cromwell showing what he was thinking etc which it wasn't very easy to show visually.

Yeah really want to read the book but I do have quite a long list of to reads so unless I suddenly turn up a charity shop find I'm unlikely to get to it for a while. & i would expect that charity shop finds are likely to be snapped up.

I did notice that Easons the Irish national chain newsagent was featuring both of the existing volumes on one of its main display tables at the moment. Not sure how long that will last with the tv series having ended about a month ago. But good to see something worthwhile getting featured. I think the other end of the same table had Kim Gordon's book in paperback and several of the current bestsellers in between.

The third in the trilogy will deal w/ Cromwell's demise.