the frequently occurring but rarely asspully HSQ.

I beg your pardon! Asspully HSQ coincidences were the lifeblood of Dickens! Movie versions of his works always do the sudden hand-wavy thing in the middle, because the coincidences are so hard for a modern audience to swallow. (I enjoy them, in a "Oh no you didn't!" way, but they're like #3 on the "What not to do" list for novel-writing.)

I offer you my considered response: Nuh-uh!

I dunno. Dickens's HSQs and resolutions never feel asspully to me because they always feel emotionally true to the world he's created. They're fantastically coincidental, but his world is itself so fantastic that the HSQs don't ever ping me. They may be hard to swallow in a blunt real-world logical way, but seen through the Dickensverse lens they always feel (to me anyway) justified. I can't think of one occasion in which I felt like he'd written his way into a corner and yanked a coincidence ex cloaca to get himself out of it. They're improbable and absurd, but they always feel like something he had in the back of his mind from fairly early on, not something he seized on as a last resort.

I didn't like the prospective-husband-switchy thing at the end of Bleak House, but offhand that's the only HSQ that's felt wrong and unearned to me. (I was hugely relieved by it, but it still felt weirdly cheaty and manipulative.)

Dickens is great characters and a view of their society. As to plot, I once heard a parody of Oliver Twist that relied heavily on the phrase, "just happens to be," and ends with, "which means the whole things was ONE BIG COINCIDENCE!"

Trollope is actually a good storyteller when you realize that his forte is everyday people going through their everyday lives doing everyday things.

I always feel sad that some "Wire" characters don't live in the Dickensverse and get to be...I dunno, President of Liberia? I mean...I hate when Dickens does that, but there are characters that you *really* want it for. But the Simonverse is pretty much Not About That, so...

Trollope is actually a good plotter when you realize that his people are everyday people going through their everyday lives doing everyday things.

Still and all, he never wrote anything that you'd read just for the plot. For the characters, and for what happens next to them, but not so much for what happens next, period. You'd never see a horde of New Yorkers descending on a dock and screaming, "What happens to Lady Glencora?!?"

I love both these writers dearly, but in my brain they live in completely different spaces and hit different pleasure centers. Trollope is for people and lives and choices, good and bad, that are utterly familiar and utterly true; Dickens is all about endless invention, characters almost larger and more real than regular humans, and showoffy grandiose storytelling for storytelling's sake. The wild coincidences aren't asspulls, they're integral to the unlikely glory of the entire improbable enterprise.

Anyhow, in my brain.

Good God, for the first time in forever I want to go back to school. Somebody stop me, for the love of all that's holy.

You don't want to do that. Homework sucks. That is why I don't want to do that. That and not secretly being a lost Kerry girl(but oh, the sense my life would suddenly make)

Catching up on this conversation hours later...

Vonnie, was it you mentioned that the Beeb was doing/has done a Bleak House adaptation?

Yeap. Infinitemonkeys mentioned it on her LJ and I got on the UK.nova and have been downloading the episodes. (I don't think it's available on US torrent sites yet, although I haven't checked.) Four episodes so far, and I like it fine, although it's rather more sluggishly paced than "Out Mutual Friend", which merrily frothed along. Gillian Anderson plays Lady Dedlock with a kind of languid desperation (sounds like a oxymoron, but you'll see what I mean).

Netflix has all 12 discs of the 1974 version of Pallisiers, by the way. I have to confess, the only Trollope I have read is Joanna, and Anthony. I know, I know. Woeful. And Netflix wants me to rent an early 80's adaptation of The Barchester Chronicles, which I am rather tempted to do because it has very young Alan Rickman.

For Nutty, some none-slapstick fun movies:

Hmmm.

Frothy old B&W movies:

Any Preston Sturges: The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, Sullivan's Travels, Unfaithfully Yours

Most Howard Hawks: Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, To Have and Have Not & Big Sleep. You've probably seen these.

Any Ealing Comedies: Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lady Killers, The Lavender Hill Mob, Passport to Pimlico, etc.

Stylish imports: Such a Long Engagement, Babette's Feast (man, I loooove this one), Black Orpheus, Diva, The Horseman on the Roof (very swoony melodrama, love in the time of cholera, yada yada, but very pretty to look at), The Girl on the Bridge, Insomnia

Recent-ish (like, last 20 years) mainstream-ish stuff off the top of my head that you might like: The Big Lebowski, Midnight Run, SHAUN OF THE DEAD!, Cold Comfort Farm, The Tao of Steve, Zero Effect, Stage Beauty, Truly Madly Deeply, The Whold Wide World (as long as you are not totally anti-Renee). Cellular (goofy but fun), The Talented Mr. Ripley (which you've likely seen and my GOD, this is such a Nutty kind of a movie.)

This may be my favorite BBC Dickens adaptation, full-stop.

I'm finding the current adaptation of Bleak House absolutely fan-f*ing-tastic. Really, really, incrediably good. Near-perfect casting. Soap-opera-style setup (half an hour twice a week). Love Lady Scully and don't find it sluggish at all (they're setting up loads and loads of stuff which you know is going to get payoff soon). Wish it were on more often.

I second all of Vonnie's recommendations and add the original version of The Singing Detective, which, if you haven't seen, you must.

Oh, yeah, wrod. The Singing Detective rocked my world.