Statehood Day (Hawaii)
2006-08-18 @ 10:47 p.m.

Watched only the first half of Vanity Fair, because I had to go for worship practice at night, which went as well as it could, given my condition. I think Reese Witherspoon is wonderful and so is Jonathan Rhys-Meyers's accent. The problem with the film version is that it excises too much of the novel for the sake of brevity, which results in a very choppy screenplay. It's like watching a serial with every other episode missing. If you haven't already read at least part of Thackeray's novel, you'll find yourself wondering what you're missing. The director's also taken some liberalities with the plot, tweaking events to accomodate the plot excisions. That said, the film is still quite the visual spectacle, though I'm glad now that I didn't pay money to watch it in the cinema, which had been my original intention when the movie came out in 2004. I can still remember how Thong and I tried in vain to convince people to watch it with us, all the while browsing through the shelves of Kinokuniya. Those were the days, when we were younger and happier.