skyping

Of course, the better image ought to be the one after I turned the flash off - but in it, Alice had her eyes closed and looked as though she couldn't possibly be more bored with what I was saying... Ah: the late night rituals of hotels (tonight, after dinner out, and then with the seminar group in the bar): skyping and posting, and without a moment (seminar, film, etc) today to draw breath to think properly about when to take a photograph. Photographs, incidentally, play as good a role in the Winterbottom film of Jude as they do in the book: I particularly like the black and white opening of the movie, and the recording of the Marygreen school class by the itinerant photographer: it hints at the role that the memory of Jude's formative years plays - latently - later on. But it's such a strangely cropped movie in terms of cast and plot - no dead Jude (though he looks very consumptive by the end); no remarriage to Arabella; no Widow Edlin or Vilbert. Much more sex, a New Woman Sue who's rarely seen without a cigarette (though bereavement cures that nasty habit) - and so - why throw a pig's heart rather than a pizzle? Mystery.