Carrie, Carrie, CARRIE!!!

I’m  going to take a brief departure from the Mermaid Series and take a look at Carrie 1976, Carrie 2002, and Carrie 2013 (I won’t be covering The Rage Carrie 2 1999 because 3 Carrie’s are enough)!

I’ll start with my favorite, by a mile, Carrie 1976.  It’s gets 5 stars ***** from me and if you haven’t seen the original, you must!  It’s the best of all 3!  Check out the original trailer below:

Carrie 1976:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSF6WVx_Tdo

In case you haven’t seen any of them, it’s based on Stephen King’s novel.  The original movie starred Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie who were both outstanding! No one holds a candle to them, so to speak (lol), in the other versions.  John Travolta made his debut with a small part in the movie.  It’s one of the greatest horror flicks!  You see, Carrie was a high schooler who was a misfit and had the secret powers of telekinesis.  When her psychotic religious fanatic mother and bullying classmates went too far, Carrie used her powers to get back at everyone and boy did she get revenge.

Care for some trivia?  Sissy prepared for her role by isolating herself from the cast and by decorating her dressing room with religious icons.  The prom scene took 3 days to film and in order to stay true to the movie and continuity, Sissy slept in the fake pig blood (actually Karo syrup with food coloring).  The high school’s name was Bates High which is a reference to Norman Bates from Psycho (did any of you catch my first series called Psycho?).  They also used the same kind of music for the thrilling scenes–the super scary staccato violin music.  In the very last scene, Sissy insisted on using her body part to shoot up from the ground.  She was dedicated to this movie and it showed!

When Carrie 2013 came out recently, I wanted to watch Carrie 1976 but couldn’t obtain a copy.  Later on, I went to my Blockbuster store which was closing down and bought the original but I’m sure you could obtain a copy through Amazon.com.  I was still scared and startled at the last scene even though I knew it was coming.  You’ve got to see it!  I know it’s a movie I will watch again from time to time.

Carrie 2002: 

Carrie 2002’s version strayed far from the original.  Most scenes were too long, there were added scenes that were not needed, the music didn’t even compare to the first, Carrie didn’t nail her mom to the “cross” nor did the house collapse, the mom tried to drown Carrie in the bathtub where her heart stopped, Carrie faked her death and drove to Florida–THE END!  Say what???!!! The end in 1976 was so very good and not even portrayed in this version.  The actresses that played Carrie and her mother didn’t even compare.  Boo, no, nah, no way, nada–this movie gets 1 little star * from me.  Big disappointment!

Carrie 2013 vs Carrie 1976:

Carrie 2013 gets a 3 star *** rating from me.  You can view the comparison above.  In 1976 the movie began with full frontal nudity of the high school girls in the locker room.  I mean full frontal top and bottom.  I don’t think this was necessary and it is probably my only criticism of 1976’s version.  In 2013, there is no nudity which is interesting in this day and age.  The actress that plays fanatical mom isn’t as good as the original and the ending is definitely not as scary.  This version is okay but not great.  They did add some additional cool scenes with today’s up-to-date technology.

But I simply cannot end this review without addressing the issue of bullying with is so prevalent today. What Carrie did to the people who tortured her was extreme, but at least she didn’t take her hurt and sadness out on herself.  It is the saddest thing to hear about kids, teens, and young adults who take their own lives because other “people” have made them so miserable.  No one should bully ANYONE!  People should live their own lives and take out their frustrations on themselves in an appropriate manner.  If you know anyone who is bullied, build them up and take them on so that they can see their way out of their darkness.  If you know a bully, stop them and make them see how damaging they are to others.  It’s NOT ok!

 

The Mermaid Chair~~The Movie (2006)

Check out The Mermaid Chair trailer above~

I read the book first and watched the movie last night.  I rated the book *****5 stars and I am rating the movie with *** stars.  Let me tell you why.

The movie kept pretty true to the book but without the beautiful language of the author is where it was lacking for me.  The book also gave background knowledge that you don’t get with the movie. But I was very excited to see the book come to life in the movie and I did enjoy seeing the characters and of course, the mermaid chair itself!

In the movie Jessie delved into her family’s secretive past and she also became attracted to a monk.  She underwent a struggle with temptation, the unearthing of her own history which took her on an artistic, erotic and spiritual discovery of her true self.

The 2 most favorite parts for me was watching mermaids swim underwater off and on throughout the movie, and Kim Basinger’s hair in the movie.  It was kind of crazy blonde, thick, wild, with small braids here and there, as well as pleated hair and straight sections.  Just right for a mermaid theme.

Jessie’s father’s boat was named the “Jes-sea”.  He loved her so much.  He told her that the mermaids were drawn to a monk.  As it turned out, Jessie was drawn to Brother Thomas.  Jessie also felt detached and disconnected to her mother and her husband in the beginning but is able to reconnect by the end  of the movie.

When it comes to the severing of her mother’s 2 fingers, the first finger was buried in the ground and the second was found in the refrigerator in a bowl.  A little shocking!  But you have to see the movie or read the book to learn why.  Jessie tried to understand this and compared it to Vincent Van Gough severing his ear.

Kim Basinger (as Jessie) narrates throughout the movie and at the end realizes that “the mermaids brought me home”.  They really did and she ended up discovering what she really wanted in her life.

The Mermaid Chair–The End

The Blessing of the Fleet:

The mermaid chair was carried to the dock that was covered in colored lights.  Each boat was blessed, the chair was splashed with seawater, and the people tossed Mermaid Tears (tiny pearly pebbles) into the bay.  This honored the mermaid saint’s sadness at leaving the ocean.  The islanders would then have a feast of fried shrimp.

Back in the church after the procession Jessie found the mermaid chair painted in green, gold and red, slightly faded from the years.  Jessie remembered how, as a child, she would sit on her father’s knee on the chair.  When in the chair you were to pray.  Here was the rhyme each child knew:

“Sit in the chair.

Say a prayer.

An answer tomorrow

From St. Senara.”

While in the chair, Brother Thomas came in.  Although she was married and he was a monk in training, she couldn’t deny that she was drawn to him.  And in that moment, in that chair, she wanted to believe in the prayer power.  What if it could undo you?  What if it fished up forbidden feelings in you?  She came to the truth.  She was falling in love.  She couldn’t deny it anymore.  She knew she didn’t want to be a mythological siren and lure sailors, or in her case priests, to the rocks to take a fall, but she wanted to touch his face.  She just did.

But what about Jessie’s mother Nelle and her finger?  Well, there was a mermaid, Sedna, whose fingers, all ten, were severed.  The story goes that a woman was fleeing from her evil husband so her father took her away on a fast boat.  In fear for his life, he tossed his daughter into the sea.  When she grabbed on to the boat he cut off each finger, one by one.  Sedna sank and became a powerful deity with a head and body of a woman and the tail of a fish.  She was Mother of the Ocean.  Her fingers became sea creatures.  Jessie’s mother was suffering and she realized she wouldn’t stop until she’d cut off all of her fingers.  Her mother wanted her husband back, she wanted her world to return to normal again.  Now Jessie understood.

Do you think Jessie had an affair with Brother Thomas?  And what about her husband Hugh?  She hadn’t talked to him in so long.  She didn’t want to see him but HE came to the island to see HER.  She got into the bathtub and slid all the way down in the water that night.  She didn’t move.  She could hear the beat of her heart and she thought her heart no longer belonged to Hugh.  She wanted to stay under forever.  (When I was a teenager, I would sometimes go into our backyard pool, slip under water and scream.  Teenage years can be dramatic that way right?)

Now let’s connect her dad’s death and her mother’s finger fetish.  Her mother’s friend Kat gave her the clues.  There was a toxic plant called “Dead Finger”.  Her father died from ingesting the plant.  But why would her mother give that to her father? Her father had said he wanted to leave this life sitting on the mermaid chair.  Did he?

Well, I am not going to reveal everything about this book.  There is so much more.  You’ll have to check it out to find the truth about her father’s death.  And did she have an affair with Brother Thomas?  Did she stay on the island or go back to her husband?  The answers might surprise you.

I give this book  ***** 5 stars.  It contains lots of beautiful descriptions (that is the beauty of her writing), and some twists that you won’t suspect.  I highly recommend it!  Climb into the Mermaid Chair and say a little prayer…

Until next time…

The Mermaid Chair Continues–Part 2

We will continue with more about Jessie’s father.  He is an interesting character.  He said his religion was the sea, his family of sorts.  He told her of a sea kingdom ruled by ruthless mud snails  If we dreamed of a huge egret he said we would find feathers under our pillows.  Once I woke up to white feathers on my covers.  And the best of all his stories were those of the mermaids he’d seen one morning; an entire pod of mermaids at dawn that came swimming to his boat.  His stories were the most imaginative.  Jessie’s father was the one who introduced her to the mermaid chair the first time!

~Spoiler Alert~

Her father’s boat blew up one day and he died.  All of her life she had felt guilty and responsible.  She thought she had left her dad’s pipe on the boat and it had caught fire.  But when she did a little looking around after arriving to the island to help her mother Nelle, she found the pipe in the house!  She was enraged at her mother for not telling her.  She’d let her believe it was her fault!  She just wanted to shake her!  But she did nothing about it…for now.

The All-Girls Picnics!  The turtle skull, Bone Yard Beach, food, and presents!  They were something special! Mother’s friend Kat had started them (along with one other friend) when they were young brides. Jessie got to come to the picnics as soon as she could walk, but the picnics stopped immediately after her dad died.  The food:  crab cakes, wine, raisin bread pudding, and sesame crackers.  After eating came the bonfire made from beach wood and you could see the women dancing in the firelight shadows.  The last year of the Picnic, they all waded into the ocean holding a thread yanked out of Nelle’s sweater.  They walked in up to their waists with the three women holding the thread.  Kat threw the tied threads into the water sealing their friendship forever.  They were laughing and tripping as they came out of the water only to discover a turtle skull which they viewed as a gift from the sea.  The women thought it was a sign and through the years that followed, they shared the skull.  How I would love to have such a picnic, such a tradition!

Some possible insight into Nelle’s severed finger:

Jesse recalled her mother ordering bracelet charms from a Catholic catalog when she was a teenager–feet, hearts, ears, heads, hands, etc.  These were to be offerings in the shape of the petitioners’ afflictions.  Did she intend for her severed finger to be the ultimate offering?

Legend of the Mermaid Chair:

In 1450 Asenora, a mermaid, swam to the monastery of Cornwall.  She removed her fish tail and hid it in the rocks as she explored the area on foot and discovered the monks.  She made many secret visits!  One time an abbot took the fish tail and hid it under his chair in church.  Without a tail she had to stay and it drained the wildness out of her.  Asenora was converted and became St. Senara.

Why did her mother slice off her finger?  An offering?  But why?  What about the fire on her father’s boat?  If the pipe wasn’t the cause, what was?  Until next time…

More beautiful descriptions:

• The water looked tawny, the color of mangoes and cantaloupes, and the tide was flooding in.
• A faded red canoe, almost pink now, lay upside down, the bottom crusted with barnacles.
• A spruce green johnboard floated on the water, sunlight running in hypnotic wave patterns along the side.

The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

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Here we go with a book The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd (2005).  There is a movie of the same title that we will follow up with after the book. I actually read this book a few years ago and I really enjoyed my reread! Now that’s a good book!  I love the way the author writes using color words.  I’ll be sharing examples as we go through it so sit back in your imaginary mermaid chair and let the story unravel.

Jessie leaves her comfortable boring life to go to the island where her mother needs her help for she has become strangely violent with herself.  The island is filled with exotic beauty, majestic egrets, tidal creeks, and a monk named Brother Thomas.  And then there is of course, the mermaid chair–a mysterious magical ornately carved chair that was dedicated to a saint who was a mermaid before her conversion, or so they say.  How does this all connect?  Read on…

“They say you can bear anything if you can tell a story about it.  At 42, Jessie had never done anything that took her own breath away.”  But maybe she will once she leaves her life back home and heads to the island to help her mother. But first, we have to know about her father who died when she was young.  When she was a wild young girl with seaweed braided into her hair, her dad told her of the mermaids that floated in the waters around the island.  He said he had seen them from his boat “in the pink hours of the morning…when they swam to his boat, leaping through the waves.”  He said their main job was saving humans in case they fell into the water.  When his time came do you think the mermaids saved him?  We shall see.

And her mother’s violent tendencies?  When Jessie got home, she found her mother out in the garden trying to bury her severed finger.  She told her mother she wasn’t well and that she should come into the house.   She responded that she was certainly fine.  Jessie replied with, “Really? since when is purposely cutting off your finger considered perfect well?” Her mother said that Jessie didn’t know anything and btw, who asked her to come home anyway?  As strange as it was, together, they removed the finger from the mayonnaise jar and put it in the dirt.  But why?  It had something to do with Jessie’s father and Father Dominic but that’s all she could figure.

When Jessie was little she would play in the monastery kitchen while her mother cooked meals for the monks.  She would pull multicolored rose petals and put them into her basket pretending about a story of a secret ceremony, tossing the petals into the marsh and onto the seat of the mermaid chair.

And what is so special about Brother Thomas?  Well he was the youngest monk at 44 and the newest.  He liked to sit in the mermaid chair when he was alone.  He wondered why the carvings in the chair were half-nude; it was a monastery after all.

What’s all this talk of a mermaid chair?  Many tourists came to see it at the monastery in a side chapel.  The arms of the chair had 2 white winged mermaids carved and painted into it with jeweled colors and golden orange hair.  People would sit in the chair and say a prayer to the mermaid saint Senara.

There was a gift shop called The Mermaid’s Tale which sold mermaid booklets as well as yellow signs that said said Mermaid Xing.

In reading her book I was amazed at her descriptions and how she used color words.  Check them out below (I am quoting her) and see if you think they are extraordinary:

• His hair and eyes had that rich autumn coloring that reminds you of cornucopias and Indian corn.
• My hair had been an incredible nutmeg color for as long as I could remember but it was twined now with a few strands of gray.
• I looked up at the sky, at the milky smear of stars…
• Everyone got May Day presents–usually bubble bath and Revlon nail polish–only flaming red allowed.
• …red tile roofs glowing pink in the murky light.
• The porch roof was draped with browned honeysuckle.

I will leave you with those images and the story thus far.  There is so much more to come…