Grace O'Brien’s Reviews > The Brothers Karamazov > Status Update

are you enjoying it?

Yes, actually. Its a bit repetitive in some parts but I'm finding it enjoyable. It definitely helps to take your time...

You may have succeeded in making me revisit these. WIll just have to pretend I'm back on the trans-siberian in winter and read it at that pace....

Excellent. I would definitely like to hear your opinions on some of the characters!
The TCM channel is currently showing 'The Brothers Karamazov' from 1958. I flicked it on out of curiosity and strangely enough, it was up to the part I'm reading in the book...how uncanny. The film is nothing like how I picture the scenes in my head, though. I read the book as if everyone is shouting and on the verge of tears...in the film they're all calm and British. Needless to say, I turned it off...

It's a very emphatic, hand waving language. Even the dippy sentences i had to listen to and repeat when i was trying to learn it; "My sister is an engineer, she plays the guitar" sounded like a declaration of war.
WIll read the book. Don't hold your breath though, have to find a copy first.
There's a fine ?BBC? version of Crime and Punishment with John hurt in the lead role.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHtzZ1...
Thats the trailer for the 1958 film...I didn't watch the film long enough to see that Alyosha is played by William Shatner! For a Star Trek fan like myself, this discovery is nothing short of hilarious.
Hmm...I might have a go at Crime and Punishment after this. Have you read it before?

Yes. It's excellent but not your light hearted laugh a minute novel. Captain Kirk in a FD novel... I saw the first Star trek TV episode when it first showed on British TV. (Not the pilot in which Kirk wasn't the captain) ..it was awesome.
Now to you tube...

"the seething story of a master story teller..."

Shatner on The Brothers Karamazov in his book "Up Till Now":

"..so, I read The Brothers Karamazov and I couldn't make sense of it. It's very difficult reading. It's the classic story of a nineteenth-century Russian family ripped apart by money, passion, some patricide, love, and snow. A lot of snow."

"I played a minor role in the film; mostly my job was to stand in the background looking saintly." (he then goes on to talk about how Yul Brynner kicks him in the pants..?)

hahaha

Hard to think of him as young and saintly and not the slightly comic figure he later became...at least he had the decency to admit he couldn't make head nor tail of the book.

Would you have believed him if he'd lied?
And does this mean yo won a copy of Shatner's biography?

Do you mean if he'd lied and said he did read the book? No, I don't think I would have believed him...not with that last comment about Alyosha being 'minor' (the first line in the book is "starting out on the biography of my hero, Alexei...") or in light of his recent TV show, for that matter.

And no, I read it on google books this afternoon. Although it wouldn't look so strange next to Miranda Kerr's 'Treasure Yourself' or Kent's 'The Making of Julia Gillard', which are other books I've won (the latter being for English Extension...ermmm)

Hmm...in light of what I just read on tcm.com about the film, Shatner might not have been incorrect in his interpretation of his role...

"Brooks (director) opted to leave his primary focus on the arcs of Dmitri and Grushenka, and the murder mystery that followed in their passion's wake, leaving the moral dilemmas of Ivan and Alexei as peripheral elements. "

I do suppose that a movie about love and violence is a lot more interesting than a movie about the moral dilemmas of a novice and a journalist...