The Deuce Club, 7.31

By Heidi Kim, TW Contributing Writer

Hey Tribe!  Since we had a couple of nice headshots sent in, I thought I'd make them into a guessing game.  Which regular posters are these?  You may recognize one from the picture fun that was had on one of the Your Call threads a week or two ago.  Both beautiful photos; thanks for sending them in!

The new film version of Brideshead Revisited opens wide tomorrow, starring Emma Thompson.  You might be more familiar with the miniseries version starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews, which was justly famous to the point where people were saying 'what's the point?' of making a new film.  But it should be a good one, and it's getting decent reviews.

Brideshead was published in 1945 by Evelyn Waugh, the famous British novelist and keen observer of the decaying world of the English nobility.  The hero, Charles Ryder, gets swept up at pre-WWII Oxford by the charm of Sebastian Flyte, heir to the Marchmain title, whose Anglo-Catholic family takes over Charles' life, first through Sebastian and then Julia, his sister.

Tennis, of course, features as one of the normal activities of the Marchmain family.  I love this particularly leisurely quote when Charles meets Lord Marchmain for the first time in Italy: "I was at the Lido.  I have taken to playing tennis there with the professional in the early evening.  It is the only time of day when it is not too hot."

These are not the kind of people who sweat, even for tennis' sake.

As a tennis fan, I always chafe a little under its country-club designation, especially since public courts are widely available and a lot of USTA-associated city programs are doing great work.  But, after all, lawn tennis has a long history, and when it's immortalized in novels like this one, there's no escaping it entirely.

I haven't seen the movie yet, so I don't know if any tennis scenes are featured.

As always, feel free to go OT below and discuss movies or anything else to your hearts' content.  See you next week!