The Help: A Movie Review

I am well aware that in the grand scheme of things, my opinion means very little. However, there are times that I still feel the need to express it. Last month, my book club read The Help by Kathryn Stockett.. We have found in the past that we usually love one book, and then the next month we can barely get through our current selection.

September was a very good month.

We all simply adored The Help and couldn't wait to get together and discuss it. It was my turn to host, so I even made themed food for the occasion. Southern-inspired Black Eyed Pea Soup,  Muffaletta Pinwheels, Alabama Firecrackers (spiced crackers), and, yes, Chocolate Pie. (Read the book and you'll understand)


When we selected The Help, I didn't realize they were making it into a movie, but how could the timing have been more perfect? I waited and waited, and finally this weekend, it came to our quaint little hometown theatre, The Marvel (yes, because I am too lazy to drive an hour to the nearest theatre where it was playing).


Now, bear in mind that when I go see a movie that was made from a book, I try and go in with an open mind. So often I hear people being very critical of movies made from books because they "weren't enough like the book". Well, my theory is that its awfully hard to squeeze every aspect of a fantastic book into a matter of 120 minutes of darkened theatre mystique. I try and view these films as free-standing stories, and take them for what they are, entertaining (or not) in their own right, and try not to hold them to the standard of the book from whence they came.

This generally works out pretty well for me. Especially considering that I don't think I have ever seen a movie that actually closely resembles the book is was made from.

Until now.

I have to give high praise to the creators of The Help (the motion picture) for their attention to detail, their dedication to the flow of the novel, and their unforeseen ability to make a grown woman cry in public.

I have to say that The Help so closely followed the book that I was amazed. Granted, there were details left out. How do you cram every last speck of information from a 500+ page book into an after dinner treat? But, while I noticed the exclusions, I did not miss them. The film stood on its own, an homage to the book, and while I still highly recommend reading the original from cover to cover, if you can't, the movie version is a darned good substitute.

Read it. See it. Bring tissues. If you don't get choked up during this film, well.... you just ain't right.

Of Wine and Words – June 2010

Some time ago, I promised to keep you all current on the goings-on at my little book club, Of Wine and Words. Well, the spring has been a little busy and we’ve had to cancel twice now because of weddings I was performing. Finally, however, we were able to get together last Friday night at Mendi’s house, and instead of getting further behind, we opted to go ahead and discuss both books we had read at the same time.

Our book pick for April was The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. This book came to me highly recommended by my sister. Unfortunately, I positively hated the book. Sorry, sis. As I have absolutely nothing good to say about the book, except that thanks to www.PaperbackSwap.com I now own a very nice first edition of it, I decided that I would let Whitney share a little review of the book with us, from HER point of view.

Our pick for May was The Last Chinese Chef. This came from my personal wish list since I intended to read it for Cook the Books but didn’t get it done in time, so I have been dying to read it ever since. All three of us were mesmerized by this book. The depictions of the characters and the recurring theme of family in the Chinese culture took us by surprise. The history of food and its evolution in China overwhelmed our senses. It was so well written, we thought we were there.

I should mention that my little group seems to have a curse. Pretty much every other book we read, we love. The others, we hate. For example:

October 2009 - Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn – Loved it!
November 2009 - Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos – eh...not such a good choice.
January 2010 - Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett – Phenomenal book – loved it.
February 2010 - The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty (Nobel Prize Winner)– hated it so much we almost couldn’t finish it
March 2010 - The Red Tent by Anita Diamant – Loved it!
April 2010 - The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver– Yeah, hated it.
May 2010 - The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones– LOVED it!

Coming up:
July 2010 – Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz
August 2010 – Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

Being as we have this curse bestowed upon us somehow, I am hoping that Drowning Ruth can break the curse, otherwise, it could be a very long read. Wish us luck!

In the meantime, here is a quick review from Whitney on The Poisonwood Bible. Although in the end, she recommends the book (and doesn’t hate it quite as vehemently as I did) we all agreed that this was not one that we particularly enjoyed as a group.

When our book club selected The Poisonwood Bible to read, a sense of dread came over me because the book tells the story of a family of missionaries in Uganda during the 1950’s. For those of you who don’t know, I was born and raised in the church. I love the Lord and actually enjoy attending church and reading scripture. However, if there is something that sits wrong with me in overall religious structure, it’s missionaries. I’m close to a few missionaries from my home congregation so it actually pains me to take such a strong stance on this. I understand that Psalm 9:11 says, “Proclaim among the nations what he has done and Mark 13:10 says, “And the gospel must first be preached to all nations.” This scripture is basically telling us to spread the good news , but let me present you with a couple of questions: The Bible is a book written by man, do we really know if we’re correctly interpreting what God wants and who are we to walk into another country and tell a group of people that their beliefs are wrong? Now you all have a good idea why I was not looking forward to reading this book and surprisingly I enjoyed reading this book. Kingsolver breaks down the book into a series of vignettes told from the women characters’ perspective. The book begins with Oleanna, the matriarch, speaking of Africa. I assumed that Kingsolver would depict her as a typical minister’s wife, meaning she would be at her husband’s beck and call and be seen and not heard. Boy was I ever wrong! I’ve read many reviews where critics say the author doesn’t take the time to let their characters evolve, but Kingsolver did just the opposite. Orleanna began as the stereotypical minister’s wife and evolved into a strong woman that wouldn’t take any crap off of Nathan. Rachel is the eldest of the girls and she is the typical teenager of the 1950’s. All she cared about was having a monumental sweet sixteen party and a pink cashmere sweater set. Her vanity was so strong at times that you wanted to smack her and say, “The world doesn’t revolve around you Rachel!” Adah and Leah are the twins in the Price clan, who are different as night and day. One thing I like about the depictions of these characters is that the author made them strong individuals, which was not typical of women and girls in the 1950’s. The twins were prodigies in math and science, while Leah was normal, Adah was hemiplegic. Many people thought that she was unintelligent because she never spoke, but she quickly became my favorite character because of her thoughts and observations. Closing out the Price clan is the baby, Ruth May. The word I’d use to describe her is poignant. I’m going to leave it that because I don’t want to give too much away. The author did a great job of describing the patriarch of the family, Nathan Price. When I pictured him, I thought of John Lithgow in Footloose. He seemed like a man who would ban dancing in town because it was sinful in his eyes. He’s a character that you will love to hate, believe me. Even though my views, on missionaries will not change, I recommend this book.

That’s all for now! We’ll be back for a review of Drowning Ruth in July!

Of Words and Wine - Food and a Book Review

Did you all know I have a book club? Yep, sure do. It’s a lovely little group. Just three of us, actually. We originally intended it to be a bigger group, but we decided that we like it the way it is, so we’re not changing a thing! We have a list of books we are interested in reading and then we draw them from a hat to decide what we will read next. We meet monthly, and take turns meeting at each others’ houses, then on the fourth month, we meet somewhere else, like at a local eatery. We just had our fifth meeting last Friday, and it was my turn to host the club. One of the best parts for me is the fact that I get to cook for people who enjoy food, and we get to drink wine, and gossip, and rant if we need to (all after we get done talking about the book, of course!)

So, for this month’s meeting, I made a selection of little appetizers that were all recipes I got from my blog reader and had never tried, They all had great potential, but for one reason or another, they all ended up being just okay, in my opinion.

For starters, I made the Tandoori Chicken that I spied on The Food of Love. It looked tantalizing and easy to make. I added some additional seasonings of my own as well (a little turmeric, some garam masala) and, while the chicken did have fabulous flavor, it fell short. You want to know why? Two reasons; One, I should have grilled it instead of using my grill pan. It stuck something fierce (I need a new grill pan) and never really got the caramelization that I was hoping for. I will be trying that one again when I have time to fire up the grill.Second, I have had this Caramelized Chili Shrimp saved for eons (but I can't remember where I got it from!), and decided this was the night I would finally try it. Both the girls really liked it, and I agree that the flavors were spot-on, but there were two things I should have done differently. One, I wasn’t about to use precooked shrimp, and the only raw shrimp I could get my hands on were pretty small, so they didn’t get to cook long enough to get that nice crust going that I wanted. Two, I committed one of the all time worst culinary sins....I crowded the pan. Yep, I was too lazy to get a bigger pan out when I realized I was out of room on the pan I was using, so I crammed them all on there and they poached, rather than caramelizing. Again, a recipe worth trying another time, with more patience.Finally, I had been drooling over these Thai Meatballs with Peanut Dipping sauce from Krista's Kitchen. You know, the meatballs were really easy and quite tasty. When I read the ingredients for the sauce, however, I paused. It called for a half a cup of peanut butter (to a mere cup of coconut milk). Having had experience with peanut sauces in the past, I decided to edit this one ingredient. I whittled it down to about a quarter cup or less, but I should have stuck with a bare tablespoon, as we all thought the peanut flavor was just too overwhelming.One last thing. Normally I drink wine when we meet, but I also found a lovely looking cocktail over at The Italian Dish and was dying to try it. The drink calls for Aperol, which is an orange liqueur, not readily found in my area. However, it reminded me that I have an unopened bottle of Orangecello in my cabinet, so I broke that out along with a bottle of Zonin Prosecco, and in place of the club soda, I tossed in a dash of lemon lime soda. It was quite a refreshing choice for a night when we actually had weather lovely enough to open the house up and feel the spring air! Definitely one I'll make again...after all....I still have half a bottle of Orangecello to use!So, all in all, I liked each recipe, but I need to try them again, with a little more effort. Lesson learned? Always have at least one “old standby” on the list when serving friends instead of using all new recipes.

For the last part of this post, I decided to try something different. I’ve been meaning to start reviewing the books I’m reading, but I just never get around to it. That, and I’m not the greatest at putting my thoughts into words when I talk about books I have read. So, I have enlisted the help of my friend Whitney, who is also in the club, and she has written up a little review for you on the book we just read, The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant.

Introducing Whitney!

Hello, I’m Beth’s friend Whitney. Before I go into my review of my Red Tent, I’d like to tell you a little bit about my background. I’m a southern gal through and through, born and raised in Memphis, TN. Most people raise their eyebrows when they hear I’m from Memphis and that’s probably because it’s featured on A &E’s First 48 weekly. However, I didn’t grow up in that part of Memphis; I grew up in Germantown, the city’s utopia. As you know Tennessee is part of our great nation’s Bible belt and I’m a God fearing girl who knows her Bible backwards and forwards, my Bible Bowl trophy from ’96 proves it. So every time I hear about a book that tells a Biblical story from another perspective, I’m really wary. The God fearing part of me feels that I’ll get sent to hell for reading this blasphemy. (Just kidding) The Red Tent really did disprove my feelings on Biblical stories told from a different point of view though. The story of Dinah is found of Genesis 34:1-31, which is roughly 2 paragraphs. The story of Dinah is tragic and I remember thinking that she deserved more than two paragraphs. For those of you who do not know the story of Dinah, I will give you the Cliff Notes version. She is Jacob’s daughter; You know Jacob? He stole Esau’s blessing. Well Jacob’s family was traveling and Shechem, who happened to be a wealthy prince decided to have sex with Dinah. In the process he fell in love with Dinah and decides he wants to marry her. Shechem’s father comes to Jacob and offers him many gifts for Dinah’s hand, including daughters for Jacob’s sons to marry. But Jacob says, “No, you and all the men in your house must get circumcised.” (That’s not a direct quote by the way) Shechem “loved” Dinah so much he granted Jacob’s wish. Jacob’s sons Simeon and Levi go to the palace later that night and kill Shechem and all the men in the palace because they claimed that no man could treat their sister that way! As an adolescent I thought, “Wow, that is so cool, they’re defending their sister’s honor.” After reading the Red Tent my perspective of this Biblical story changed. I began to see the Biblical heroes such as Joseph and Jacob, dare I say it, as evil men who were only looking out for themselves. This book celebrates women unlike the stories of the Bible you’re used to and at the end you’ll find yourself wondering what really happened to Dinah.

As a side note, all three of us loved this book. We were all raised in the church, and have a background in the history of the bible. After reading this book, we now all have a different view of the women of the bible and the lived they lead. I think I can safely speak for all of us when I say we give this book a strong thumbs up!

I hope you enjoyed the recipes and the review....stay tuned for April's club meeting. We'll be reading The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver!