{"id":1054,"date":"2015-06-19T03:01:14","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T03:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=1054"},"modified":"2015-06-30T00:21:29","modified_gmt":"2015-06-30T00:21:29","slug":"fifty-shades-of-blah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/fifty-shades-of-blah\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifty Shades of Wut?!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Now that E. L. James has published\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/entertainment\/books\/grey-fifty-shades-of-grey-as-told-by-christian-by-el-james\/2015\/06\/18\/b1f6f83a-1465-11e5-9518-f9e0a8959f32_story.html?hpid=z8\">Grey<\/a>, <\/em>which tells the events of <em>Fifty Shades of Grey<\/em> from Christian&#8217;s perspective (without <em>any<\/em> shades, it seems), it might be time for you to catch up to the film version in case you missed it.<\/p>\n<p>People often complain that movies don&#8217;t live up to the books they&#8217;re made from.\u00a0 But let me assure you, <em>Fifty Shades of Grey <\/em>is very faithful to the original material. It&#8217;s a stone dud, too.\u00a0 I finally caught up with the movie myself recently and can tell you that the first ten minutes perfectly set the stage.\u00a0 There&#8217;s a piss-poor, logy version of the classic &#8220;You Put a Spell on Me&#8221; on the sound track that sounds as if Annie Lennox were embarrassed to have her name associated with the project.\u00a0 But hey, it must have been a hefty paycheck.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Fifty-Shades-of-Grey-soundtrack.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-medium wp-image-1095 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Fifty-Shades-of-Grey-soundtrack-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"Fifty-Shades-of-Grey-soundtrack\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Fifty-Shades-of-Grey-soundtrack-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Fifty-Shades-of-Grey-soundtrack-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Fifty-Shades-of-Grey-soundtrack-200x200.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Fifty-Shades-of-Grey-soundtrack.jpg 412w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>That stinker sets the mood perfectly for Dakota Johnson, who&#8217;s the embodiment of the novel&#8217;s unreal nebbishy Anastasia.\u00a0 It&#8217;s totally unbelievable that she&#8217;d dress like a schlump for a big-deal interview, that she hasn&#8217;t read through the questions beforehand, and that she stumbles when she opens a door into Grey&#8217;s office.\u00a0 Just as his attraction to her defies belief.\u00a0 All of which makes the book idiotic from the get-go and the movie a good clone.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/dakota_johnson_3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-medium wp-image-1060 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/dakota_johnson_3-300x170.jpg\" alt=\"dakota_johnson_3\" width=\"300\" height=\"170\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/dakota_johnson_3-300x170.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/dakota_johnson_3-500x283.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/dakota_johnson_3-800x453.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/dakota_johnson_3.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Once those ten achingly long minutes of the film are past, a desert of inanity stretches ahead of you. You lose the novel&#8217;s atrocious prose, but in its place there&#8217;s atrocious acting which is a reasonable substitute.\u00a0 And since there&#8217;s no real erotic chemistry in the book, the fact that the leads seem to be sleepwalking through the film even when their clothes are off totally fits. What&#8217;s strangest of all is that Jamie Dornan seemed much sexier playing opposite Gillian Anderson in <em>The Fall<\/em>.\u00a0 He was a psycho in that series.\u00a0 Go figure.\u00a0 Maybe the beard helped.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/tv_gillian1a.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1058 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/tv_gillian1a-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"TV STILL -- DO NOT PURGE -- Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dorman from &quot;The Fall&quot; season 2. Photo courtesy of Netflix\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/tv_gillian1a-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/tv_gillian1a-450x300.jpg 450w, https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/tv_gillian1a.jpg 720w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>In the film<em>,<\/em> he comes across as a pretty accessory like the ties, cufflinks, and watches in his dressing room we see at the beginning of the movie.\u00a0 That was a highlight, cinematically speaking, if you&#8217;re into luxury goods at least.<\/p>\n<p>Best moment of the movie, though: the trashy Victorian porn peacock feather.\u00a0 My spouse hadn&#8217;t read the book and muttered sarcastically when it came out, &#8220;Oh, dear.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That pretty much sums it all up.<\/p>\n<p>What I&#8217;d like to see is RuPaul&#8217;s version: <em>Throwing Fifty Shades of Grey.\u00a0 <\/em>Now that could be fun.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lev Raphael is an avid movie goer, having been raised on classic films of the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties.\u00a0 You can find his 25 books on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/s\/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&amp;field-keywords=lev%20raphael%20kindle\">Amazon<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now that E. L. James has published\u00a0Grey, which tells the events of Fifty Shades of Grey from Christian&#8217;s perspective (without any shades, it seems), it might be time for you to catch up to the film version in case you missed it. People often complain that movies don&#8217;t live up to the books they&#8217;re made &#8230; <a title=\"Fifty Shades of Wut?!\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/fifty-shades-of-blah\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Fifty Shades of Wut?!\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[310,203,200,312,311,146,322],"class_list":["post-1054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-to-film","tag-dakota-johnson","tag-erotica","tag-fifty-shades-of-grey","tag-gillian-anderson","tag-jamie-dornan","tag-movies","tag-movies-to-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1054"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1132,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions\/1132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}