Inkling Explorations Link-Up // May 2016

(Note: if you're interested in participating and new to the blog, you can find our link-up explanation/guidelines + more buttons here. :))

Hello everyone!! Wow. Getting engaged to be married at the end of April definitely made for some most wonderful, exciting and blessed adjustments in my schedule this month! ;D 

I know we're almost into June here, but (as we're still in the merry month of May) I wanted to do our Inklings post anyway. I was thrilled by all your wonderful entries last month (they were absolutely fantastic :)) and if you'd like to join in for this month during this last week I'd be equally delighted! 

This month's selection is: A scene making beautiful use of special effects/CGI in film

With all sorts of wedding plans blossoming, I've certainly been thinking (a lot) of a Certain Film, definitely including this particular scene. The blue, the swirl, the butterflies, the breath catching music... it's all pure and utter gorgeousness.

Tell me! Do you love this scene?

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Just leave your own link here in a comment and I'll add it to the post. As always, entries are open through the end of the month and I can't wait to see your selections!

Entrants:

Blessing ~ The coronation scene in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

Cordy ~ Fawkes's rebirth in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

(Note from Heidi: I haven't personally read or seen the above, but the entry is definitely perfect!)

Kathy ~ The lamp post in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

*How to do it*

1. Post the Inklings button on your sidebar.

2. Do a post on your own blog relating to the month's selection/subject (a literary excerpt as short or as long as you like AND/OR—if specified that month—a screencap from a film with an explanation of how the scene builds/develops the story). Link back here somewhere in your post.

3. Come back here and paste your link in the comments box and I'll add it to the post. Then enjoy visiting and reading everyone else's contributions!

That's all there is to it!

Up next month: Roses in book or film

Inkling Explorations Link-Up // April 2016

(Note: if you're interested in participating and new to the blog, you can find our link-up explanation/guidelines + more buttons here. :))

This month's selection is: A description of a lady in literature

My choice comes from G.K. Chesterton's The Ball and the Cross (which, by the way, I still haven't completely made sense of), but -- all that notwithstanding -- the words are enough to take your breath at times and the following description's fascinating.

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"Madeleine Durand was physically a sleepy young woman, and might easily have been supposed to be morally a lazy one. It is, however, certain that the work of her house was done somehow, and it is even more rapidly ascertainable that nobody else did it. The logician is, therefore, driven back upon the assumption that she did it; and that lends a sort of mysterious interest to her personality at the beginning. She had very broad, low, and level brows, which seemed even lower because her warm yellow hair clustered down to her eyebrows; and she had a face just plump enough not to look as powerful as it was. Anything that was heavy in all this was abruptly lightened by two large, light china-blue eyes, lightened all of a sudden as if it had been lifted into the air by two big blue butterflies. The rest of her was less than middle-sized, and was of a casual and comfortable sort...

"Both the father and the daughter (i.e. Madeleine) were of the sort that would normally have avoided all observation; that is, all observation in that extraordinary modern world which calls out everything except strength. Both of them had strength below the surface; they were like quiet peasants owning enormous and unquarried mines. The father with his square face and grey side whiskers, the daughter with her square face and golden fringe of hair, were both stronger than they knew; stronger than anyone knew. The father... believed in Man. The daughter believed in God; and was even stronger. They neither of them believed in themselves; for that is a decadent weakness.

"The daughter was called a devotee. She left upon ordinary people the impression -- the somewhat irritating impression -- produced by such a person; it can only be described as the sense of strong water being perpetually poured into some abyss. She did her housework easily; she achieved her social relations sweetly; she was never neglectful and never unkind. This accounted for all that was soft in her, but not for all that was hard. She trod firmly as if going somewhere; she flung her face back as if defying something; she hardly spoke a cross word, yet there was often battle in her eyes. The modern man asked doubtfully where all this silent energy went to. He would have stared still more doubtfully if he had been told that it all went into her prayers."  

Tell me! Have you read and enjoyed any Chesterton?

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Just leave your own link here in a comment and I'll add it to the post. As always, entries are open through the end of the month and I can't wait to see your selections!

Entrants:

Blessing Counter ~ Miss Lavender in Anne of Avonlea

Brona ~ May Welland & Ellen Olenska in The Age of Innocence

Chere Mama ~ Misunderstood Hepzibah in The House of Seven Gables

Cordy ~ Jo March in Little Women

Emma ~ Marguerite Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel
Éowyn ~ Majesty in The Light of Western Stars

Erudessa Aranduriel ~ Marguerite Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel

Hamlette ~ Five descriptions from Raymond Chandler

Jillian ~ Melanie in Gone with the Wind

Kathy ~ Lady Éowyn in The Lord of the Rings

Meredith ~ Lady Éowyn in Tolkien's The Two Towers

Miss March ~ The Fisherman's Lady

Olivia ~ Rebecca of York in Ivanhoe

Rachel ~ Kilmeny in Kilmeny of the Orchard

Rose ~ Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice

*How to do it*

1. Post the Inklings button on your sidebar.

2. Do a post on your own blog relating to the month's selection/subject (a literary excerpt as short or as long as you like AND/OR—if specified that month—a screencap from a film with an explanation of how the scene builds/develops the story). Link back here somewhere in your post.

3. Come back here and paste your link in the comments box and I'll add it to the post. Then enjoy visiting and reading everyone else's contributions!

That's all there is to it!

Up next month: A scene making beautiful use of special effects/CGI in film

Inkling Explorations Link-Up // February 2016

(Note: if you're interested in participating and new to the blog, you can find our link-up explanation/guidelines + more buttons here. :))

This month's selection is: A scene involving a disguise in book or film

My selection for this month comes from the episode My Brother's Keeper in the third season of the classic Adventures of Robin Hood tv series starring Richard Greene. Giving context for our disguise scene, I'll back up to give a quick screencap overview.

First, My Brother's Keeper is a Cain and Abel story, with an older brother disinherited for his sins and then vengefully killing his younger brother.

You know the Cain and Abel story...

And in this case there are two witnesses (though they were too far away when it suddenly happened to prevent the murder). Robin Hood (above) and Little John -- who then have a debate over what to do.

Robin argues for their moral obligation to see the murderer brought to justice, while Little John maintains that as outlaws they stand to be hung -- regardless of their witness -- while the murderer will still go free.

In the end, they decide to go to Friar Tuck --who happens to be superintending the production of the annual Shrovetide play recounting the opening scenes in Genesis (to be attended by all the county gentry, including the Sheriff). Long story short (and much to Little John's consternation) Robin decides they'll go on as the mummers reenacting Cain and Abel, thus trying to bring the murderer (also present) to a full confession. So come the disguises -- including dyeing Little John's hair and beard and adding a stage beard for Robin.

(Robin trying to coach Little John via the prompt book.) 

"Satan" bringing them their stage cue. 

Now they're on.

The father, Marian, and the Sheriff.

And it works -- bringing the murderer to his knees and a full confession.

 (There's actually a quick fight scene in here between this shot and the one above, with the murderer coming up onstage after Robin...)

This is probably the most somber and intense RH episode, yet throughout there are flitting moments of poignant hilarity -- thrown into even more vivid relief against the shadows. I'm always reminded of Lewis's quote: "It is apparently when terrors are over that they become too terrible to laugh at; while they are regnant they are too terrible to be taken with unrelieved gravity." 

(Incidentally, it's also unusual in being an episode where the Sheriff is doing his job and fully bent on justice.)

So there you have it! A rather serious entry (though again, with flashes of intense humor) and also, I think, unusual in how it involves donning disguises to explicitly surprise forth the truth. Altogether deeply thought-provoking and memorable...

Tell me! Have you seen this episode?

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Just leave your own link here in a comment and I'll add it to the post. :) As always, entries are open through the end of the month and I can't wait to see your selections!

Entrants:

Hamlette ~ The Count of Monte Cristo

Jenelle ~ The Scarlet Pimpernel

Kathy ~ A Scandal in Bohemia by Arthur Conan Doyle

Meredith ~ The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Naomi ~ Jubilee Trail by Gwen Bristow 

*How to do it*

1. Post the Inklings button on your sidebar.

2. Do a post on your own blog relating to the month's selection/subject (a literary excerpt as short or as long as you like AND/OR—if specified that month—a screencap from a film with an explanation of how the scene builds/develops the story). Link back here somewhere in your post.

3. Come back here and paste your link in the comments box and I'll add it to the post. Then enjoy visiting and reading everyone else's contributions!

That's all there is to it!

Up next month: A scene involving a letter, package, or post office in film

Inkling Explorations Link-Up // January 2016

(Note: if you're interested in participating and new to the blog, you can find our link-up explanation/guidelines + more buttons here. :))

This month's selection is: A New Year or 'new beginning' passage in literature

I've highlighted this passage before on my personal blog, but it's such a favorite it immediately won hands down for this month's entry. ;)

“Outside darkness stayed, darkness and snow and ice, as if it would stay forever.

"So no one in Greenwillow was prepared for the morning when it came, not in a slow snowy dawn, but with the sun shouting up over the hills and catching a million mirrors of ice storm, as if the music from a harp had been frozen and splintered and flung from the west and the east and the north and the south. The great trees were sheathed in ice, and so were the tiniest meadow grasses. Branches glittered and cracked under their frozen weight, and small autumn seed-coats turned to diamond stuff.

"The sky was as blue as the first dawn itself, the one that woke Adam, and there was a fresh powdering of snow that had fallen before the ice began to creep. It was next to impossible to look abroad for the dazzle, and the Reverend Birdsong stood on his doorstep and shielded his eyes and felt very near to bursting with God’s wasteful glory and this new Creation. Charity the cat came out beside him, walking very daintily in the cold, looked at the snow, sneezed in protest and withdrew to the warm hearth. Birdsong rubbed his hands together and crowed.” Greenwillow by B.J. Chute

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Just leave your own link here in a comment and I'll add it to the post. :) As always, entries are open through the end of the month and I can't wait to see your selections!

Meredith ~ Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol

Hamlette ~ L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables

Olivia ~ C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces

Natalie ~ K.M. Weiland's Behold the Dawn

*How to do it*

1. Post the Inklings button on your sidebar.

2. Do a post on your own blog relating to the month's selection/subject (a literary excerpt as short or as long as you like AND/OR—if specified that month—a screencap from a film with an explanation of how the scene builds/develops the story). Link back here somewhere in your post.

3. Come back here and paste your link in the comments box and I'll add it to the post. Then enjoy visiting and reading everyone else's contributions!

That's all there is to it!

Up next month: A scene involving a disguise in book or film

Inkling Explorations Link-Up // December 2015

Here's for our December Inklings! (Note: if you're interested in participating and new to the blog, you can find our link-up explanation/guidelines + more buttons here. :))

This month's selection is: A Christmastide movie scene

My decision making process this month has been complicated (read 'undecided'), but I finally opted to go with this gorgeous, wintery scene from the classic Lady on a Train with our heroine, Nicki Collins (Deanna Durbin), singing 'Silent Night' long distance to her father in San Francisco.

A murder mystery set in New York at Christmastime, Lady on a Train is quite scary in places and -- with the positively perfect balance of frightfully funny moments and adorable romance -- it's one of my favorite Deanna Durbin films.

Not to elaborate on the costumes and hairstyles...

And I already mentioned the humor, right? I thought I did... :)

And the humor plus the drama.

What think you all? Have you seen Lady on a Train?

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Just leave your own link here in a comment and I'll add it to the post. :) As always, entries are open through the end of the month and I can't wait to see your selections!

Jillian @ a room of one's own
Naomi ~ The Christmas Proposal in Downton Abbey
Hamlette ~ Two (Merry?) Little Christmases
Eva ~ christmas at stalag 17
Natalie ~ A Christmas Eve Wedding
Faith P. ~ "It's a Wonderful Life"
Olivia ~ The Nativity Story

*How to do it*

1. Post the Inklings button on your sidebar.

2. Do a post on your own blog relating to the month's selection/subject (a literary excerpt as short or as long as you like AND/OR—if specified that month—a screencap from a film with an explanation of how the scene builds/develops the story). Link back here somewhere in your post.

3. Come back here and paste your link in the comments box and I'll add it to the post. Then enjoy visiting and reading everyone else's contributions!

That's all there is to it!

(And note: you can visit here for blog buttons and links for previous months. :))

Up next month: A New Year or 'new beginning' passage in literature

Inkling Explorations Link-Up ~ November 2015

It's time for our November Inklings! :) And I have a note for all of you... I'm opening up the drawing board for topic suggestions we can use in the coming year -- so let me know all your wonderful ideas in the comment box!

And this month's selection is: A Giving of Thanks in Poetry or Prose

My choice (Hopkins's Hurrahing in Harvest) has been described as a Eucharistic poem and -- while not a "thanksgiving" poem per se -- it often springs to my mind at this time of year. It's actually one of my favorites in all seasons... exuberant joy welling up and soaring to the sky. Hopkins himself noted: ‘The Hurrahing sonnet was the outcome of half an hour of extreme enthusiasm as I walked home alone one day from fishing in the Elwy.’ So yes, it's the heart of thanksgiving and harvest rolled into one.

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"SUMMER ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise 

Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour 

Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier 

Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies? 

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,

Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour; 

And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a 

Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies? 

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder 

Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—

These things, these things were here and but the beholder 

Wanting; which two when they once meet, 

The heart rears wings bold and bolder 

And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet."

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hurrahing in Harvest

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Just leave your link here in a comment and I'll add it to the post. :) Entries are open through the end of the month and I can't wait to see your selections!

Olivia @ Meanwhile in Rivendell
A Song of Thanksgiving ~ Hamlette @ The Edge of the Precipice

A Giving of Thanks ~ Jillian @ a room of one's own
Faith @ Stories by Firefly

*Rules*

1. Post the Inklings button on your sidebar.
2. Do a post on your own blog relating to the month's selection/subject (a literary excerpt as short or as long as you like AND/OR—if specified that month—a screencap from a film with an explanation of how the scene builds/develops the story). Link back here somewhere in your post.

3. Come back here and paste your link in the comments box and I'll add it to the post. Then enjoy visiting and reading everyone else's contributions!

That's all there is to it!

(And note: you can visit here for blog buttons and links for previous months. :))

Up next month: A Christmastide movie scene

Inkling Explorations Link-Up // October 2015

So… I’m traveling this month, but we can’t skip our Inklings, now can we?? Especially with such a splendid topic! ;)

Which is: A gypsy scene in either literature or film

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And you can probably all guess my choice... Ever After.

Specifically when the prince and Danielle go adventuring and end up joyously hobnobbing with men of the forest—men with stained leather trousers and flying fists and spinning swords and a high sense of humor. 

Men of the forest living under their own code, but recognizing and honoring true fortitude and arch ingenuity and downright courage. 

I won’t tell what they’re arguing about… or what she does… or describe what happens afterwards… but it’s momentous. ;) 

Because it gets better. Much better. 

There’s this entire following scene… which, yes, is a kissy part and soooo sweet! I don’t want to give spoilers—and I shall stick to my resolve—but if you want a little more you’re most warmly welcome to hop over and read my review here. 

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Finally, since this is such an exciting topic (and there’s such a rich wealth of possibilities in both literature and film) I can’t help myself—I simply have to drop a few tantalizing ideas. First off, there’s always that Certain Famous Scene in a book (and movie) we all know and love: JE by CB. Then there’s Austen’s Emma. I think Scott has some excellent scenes in Guy Mannering (at least, if I’m remembering correctly—it’s been years since I read it, which needs to be remedied). And, of course, there’s always the riveting hold-up of Prince John’s caravan in the Disney animated Robin Hood. :) 

As always, entries are open through the end of the month and remember, you can write as little or as much as you like. Have fun and I can’t wait to see what you all come up with!!

(EDIT: I apologize, but I was recently getting spam entries using my previous link system, so I've switched to a different method. Just leave your link in the comments section here and I'll happily update this post with a direct link to your entry!)

Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves @ Hamlette's Soliloquy
"I shouldn't speak to you..." @ Raindrops on Roses & Whiskers on Kittens

*Rules*

1. Post the Inklings button on your sidebar.
2. Do a post on your own blog relating to the month's selection/subject (a literary excerpt as short or as long as you like AND/OR—if specified that month—a screencap from a film with an explanation of how the scene builds/develops the story). Link back here somewhere in your post.

3. Come back here and paste your link in the comments box and I'll add it to the post. Then enjoy visiting and reading everyone else's contributions!

That's all there is to it!

(And note: you can visit here for blog buttons and links for previous months. :))

Up next month: A giving of thanks in poetry or prose