I’m flipping back and forth on TV between a documentary called Planet Twelve: The Secret Life of 12-Year-Olds which isn’t showing me any new secrets but is funny to watch all the same, and the beginning of The Return of the Musketeers, the opening scene of which begins with a closeup of a hand drawing a sword slowly and dramatically, only to pan out to a man straddling the rafters of a 1649 French pub, apparently drunk.
All the while, my cat knocks over boxes in the other room, and I think he’s going to kill himself one of these days.
But back to the drama of being twelve. The documentary is actually a good introduction to the social hierarchies of twelve-year-olds, laying it out in concise vignettes of what it’s like to be popular, a jock, normal, slightly lower than normal, and on through to the bottom rung. For anyone who lived through junior high, you’ll probably cringe to watch it but nod all the same.
I haven’t gotten beyond the first scene of the Musketeers movie, because I had to pause it to rescue the cat (I heart DVR/T
ivo/whatever you call it). But the opening scene hasn’t impressed me so far. I think my radar for openings has really fine-tuned since my first days as a slush reader. If I’m not hooked right away, I’m bored. However, hooks for me in movies are different than I might expect of books–see: my passion for the BBC production of Persuasion, for which I think I’ve only met five people in the world who love it as much as I. Anyone else who has seen it tells me it was too boring to get through. I doubt in a book I’d be as hooked by men rowing an admiral to his ship to say the war is over or a middle-aged baronet being told he must retrench. I think it’s the Chopin soundtrack that does it, really.
That’s what I *should* be watching right now. I’ve just inspired myself.