The Young Victoria

There are two kinds of girly movies.  You’ve got awful American rom-coms and you’ve got wonderful British period dramas.  (Can you guess which kind I like?)  Then you’ve got The Young Victoria, (about the early reign of Queen Victoria), which seems to be a different beast entirely.  It’s a British period drama, certainly, but it’s also a Hollywood romance.  Directed by a French Canadian.  Is it just me, or is it getting a little weird in here.  It’s written by a Brit (and to be honest, I think he just adapted the first part of the stunning 2001 BBC mini-series about Victoria and Albert) so there’s plenty of costumes and corsets and matters of monarchy and state to keep me interested and the stellar cast keeps the story rocking along nicely.  But The Young Victoria falls short of being really great.  The first few years of Victoria’s reign were famously tumultuous (she took the throne at 18 with lots of naivety and made some fairly drastic mistakes) but the film skates over the politics of the time and in doing so misses much of the engaging complexity.   There is no street-eye view here, just the view from the palace, and emotional depth is sacrificed for it.  LOTS of pretty dresses, though.

Trev says: Hey folks, this weeks comic left me with a bit of a conundrum. at 10 panels with was pretty dense, but cutting it in half would mean you’d have to wait a full week for one page’s worth of payoff.

With that in mind, I split the page in two at the last minute* and this week there’ll be two updates. Check back Wednesday the 8th for part two of this page or follow us on twitter and i’ll remind you all!

*so last minute i haven’t told Jen yet, sorry for breaking your page Jen.

Trev says:

It’s mid August which means Jen is halfway through her epic challenge to read a graphic novel a day and review it on the wonderful Inside A Dog website, run by the The Centre for Youth Literature, State Library Victoria.

It’s a website that promotes reading and this month Jen’s resident reviewer. She started out the month reading Bone so she already had me and then has followed it up with books like The Middle Man, the Arrival and even the ever so popular Scott Pilgrim (lord I found that film an hour too long but that’s another story).

I’m hoping you head over there and give Jen lots of love. Comment, agree OR disagree or just find something you’ve never heard of before.

Comics rule and I just want you to get involved.

Jen says:

For August I’m the resident blogger at the State Library of Victoria’s Young Adult Lit site, Inside a Dog, to read and review YA-appropriate comics and graphic novels. I’m hoping to reach well beyond my own meager understanding of this field by taking advice from folks who know better than me.  So, tell me what I don’t know – what great graphic novels either for or about young adults (13-18 year olds) should I be writing about?  Leave a comment here, or email me on jenbreach (at) gmail (dot) com.  The longer your list of recommendations, the happier you’ll make me!     Thanks!