Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning

Hey all! I was reading an article on Shirley McClaine today and it mentioned that she was starring in a new "Anne" tv movie. So I looked it up on IMDB and this is what I found:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1063034/

If you click on this link, you will be able to see the cast list. I am thrilled to see that once again, Patricia Hamilton reprises her role as "Rachel Lynde."

As for the storyline, I hate the fact that Gilbert Blythe is dead; totally unacceptable! I'd probably watch it but it would be strange to see a different person playing "Anne." I wish that unless they could get Megan & Jonathon, they should leave it ALONE!

And, I see, they are re-writing things. In the very first movie, Anne told the social worker that her parents were dead...and now her dad is alive?

Anne, now a middle-aged woman, is troubled by recent events in her life. Her husband, Gilbert, has been killed overseas as a medical doctor during World War II. Her two daughters are pre-occupied with their own young families and her adopted son Dominic has yet to return from the war. When a long-hidden secret is discovered under the floorboards at Green Gables, Anne retreats into her memories to relive her troubled early years prior to arriving as an orphan at Green Gables and being adopted by the Cuthberts. Still haunted by her early childhood, the impact of this difficult period has a far-reaching effect on this older woman, once she discovers the truth about her real parents. She begins a delicate search for her birth father. It is a journey through a past fraught with danger, uncertainty, heartache and joy. In the parade of humanity Anne encounters she also faces the root of her desire to find true "kindred spirits", an inspired imagination and the impetus to use her talents as a writer to inspire others.

No way! They killed off Gilbert? Forget it. I sure won't waste my time watching it. I can't even imagine Barbara Hershey as Anne. And come to think of it, if Gil served in WWI in the Anne 3 movie, he would be too old to serve in WWII anyway.

WOW it will be so Diffrent and Disapointing But i will still watch of Course see how it will be but i will Probally not like it

Savannah wrote:

I can't watch it, because I'm fed up with Kevin Sullivan. I'll watch his older work, but his newer work is far too many steps away from what LMM wrote.

Exactly! No...no...no...no!

First of all... Megan Follow is uncomperable as Anne.

Second... Kevin should not do such a different movie and have the name of 'Anne of Green Gables' in it!

Carol wrote:

Savannah wrote:

I can't watch it, because I'm fed up with Kevin Sullivan. I'll watch his older work, but his newer work is far too many steps away from what LMM wrote.

Exactly! No...no...no...no!

First of all... Megan Follow is uncomperable as Anne.

Second... Kevin should not do such a different movie and have the name of 'Anne of Green Gables' in it!

:yeahthat:

bethandmanly wrote:

Carol wrote:

Savannah wrote:

I can't watch it, because I'm fed up with Kevin Sullivan. I'll watch his older work, but his newer work is far too many steps away from what LMM wrote.

Exactly! No...no...no...no!

First of all... Megan Follow is uncomperable as Anne.

Second... Kevin should not do such a different movie and have the name of 'Anne of Green Gables' in it!

:yeahthat:

:DittoS:

I can't even believe this. Why not just leave a good thing alone?! I can't imagine very many people will be watching this...I mean, Barbara Hershey?! Ugh. I think at the very least it should have been a fairly 'unknown' actress. But I can't fathom enjoying anything without Megan, and certainly not without Gilbert. DEAD?! Please. I will remain content with my annual viewing of the first AOGG (I haven't liked any of them since)...every fall it's my tradition to watch Anne all the way through. I will never get tired of it!

i can't watch it. he changed the 3rd movie sooo much from the book anyway. Gilbert was never in the war. only her sons were. she never adopted any children. i think that i might hate Kevin Sullivan now. i will NOT ever watch it. Anne of Green Gables has a place in my heart. Nobody will ever be Anne except for Megan Follows. NO BODY will ever replace Gilbert Blythe. this really got me in a bad mean mood. sorry for my rampage. he is a loser.

Amy wrote:

bethandmanly wrote:

Carol wrote:

Savannah wrote:

I can't watch it, because I'm fed up with Kevin Sullivan. I'll watch his older work, but his newer work is far too many steps away from what LMM wrote.

Exactly! No...no...no...no!

First of all... Megan Follow is uncomperable as Anne.

Second... Kevin should not do such a different movie and have the name of 'Anne of Green Gables' in it!

:yeahthat:

:DittoS:

I can't even believe this. Why not just leave a good thing alone?! I can't imagine very many people will be watching this...I mean, Barbara Hershey?! Ugh. I think at the very least it should have been a fairly 'unknown' actress. But I can't fathom enjoying anything without Megan, and certainly not without Gilbert. DEAD?! Please. I will remain content with my annual viewing of the first AOGG (I haven't liked any of them since)...every fall it's my tradition to watch Anne all the way through. I will never get tired of it!

Yeah, and what is funny is if you get someone to portray Anne, at least get someone that is the "type." Anne was red haired & freckled in the movies & in the books. Not what Barbara Hershey looks like at all!

Right Misti---I was thinking that earlier, but didn't have time to look up pics of Barbara Hershey. Isn't she a brunette?! :think: I defnitely don't remember being her an 'Anne' look-alike!

You know, I was watching an X-Files one day and Megan Follows was in the opening scene! She was delivering an alien baby! At first they didn't show her face, you only heard her voice, but I recongnized it right away!! She has a very unique voice I guess, that I caught it right off the bat! She was only in that opening scene. She'll always be Anne to me!

Amy wrote:

You know, I was watching an X-Files one day and Megan Follows was in the opening scene! She was delivering an alien baby! At first they didn't show her face, you only heard her voice, but I recongnized it right away!! She has a very unique voice I guess, that I caught it right off the bat! She was only in that opening scene. She'll always be Anne to me!

Yeah, I've seen that scene before. Pretty wild! lol

It was strange seeing her on Law & Order too. It's like, "What is Anne doing there?" You know what I really liked her in was Max Lucado's "The Christmas Child". She didn't have a huge role, but I thought she was great in it.

Amy wrote:

Right Misti---I was thinking that earlier, but didn't have time to look up pics of Barbara Hershey. Isn't she a brunette?! :think: I defnitely don't remember being her an 'Anne' look-alike!

You know, I was watching an X-Files one day and Megan Follows was in the opening scene! She was delivering an alien baby! At first they didn't show her face, you only heard her voice, but I recongnized it right away!! She has a very unique voice I guess, that I caught it right off the bat! She was only in that opening scene. She'll always be Anne to me!

I think the only thing I've seen her in is "Beaches." Here are a few pics of her. Not the "Anne Shirley" type at all!





With Bette Midler in "Beaches."

Misti wrote:

Amy wrote:

Right Misti---I was thinking that earlier, but didn't have time to look up pics of Barbara Hershey. Isn't she a brunette?! :think: I defnitely don't remember being her an 'Anne' look-alike!

You know, I was watching an X-Files one day and Megan Follows was in the opening scene! She was delivering an alien baby! At first they didn't show her face, you only heard her voice, but I recongnized it right away!! She has a very unique voice I guess, that I caught it right off the bat! She was only in that opening scene. She'll always be Anne to me!

I think the only thing I've seen her in is "Beaches." Here are a few pics of her. Not the "Anne Shirley" type at all!





With Bette Midler in "Beaches."

ohh not at all. wow they made a HUGE mistake

Well, the first mistake they made was in writing that horrible storyline!

Okay so I went to the Anne forum and found more info on this.
So it looks like this is the story of Anne before her life at Green Gables. According the book, both her parents died when Anne was a baby... but now... it looks like Anne discovers that the father she knew was not her birth father... so she goes in search of her real birth father....

Here are pictures of Anne as a little girl and Anne older.





I had misunderstood and thought that in the movie Anne was never an orphan... the sypnopsis of the story is a little crazy though in regards to Gil being dead and the adopted son, etc...
If I ever watch it, maybe I'll fast foward those parts...

bethandmanly wrote:

Well, the first mistake they made was in writing that horrible storyline!

Exactly. I don't believe for one minute that LMM would have approved this storyline, had she been alive to have that choice. They're milking the "Anne" name for all it's worth, unfortunately. And this storyline is just one more proof of that.

I do gotta say that one of my favorite parts of the books is when Anne receives the letters that her birth parents wrote to each other. I loved reading all about that because this was something so important for Anne to have. She grew up an orphan because her parents died when she was little... so.. those letters in a way I think bring her peace knowing that she was very well loved. That is what my keeper is about in the AOGG forum.



There is no rush to see this movie, but if I ever do see it, I would just be interested in the parts of Anne as a little girl... since not much is said about Anne during that phase in the books... I wouldn't mind seeing those parts of the movie...

But as far as her searching for her real birth father.... :fullmoon: lol

Okay, I found the chapter I was talking about.
It's Chapter 21 (Roses of Yesterday) from Anne of the Island. Part it reads:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Anne went downstairs the lady of the house met her in the hall. She held out a dusty little packet tied with faded blue ribbon.

"Here's a bundle of old letters I found in that closet upstairs when I came here," she said. "I dunno what they are -- I never bothered to look in 'em, but the address on the top one is `Miss Bertha Willis,' and that was your ma's maiden name. You can take 'em if you'd keer to have 'em."

"Oh, thank you -- thank you," cried Anne, clasping the packet rapturously.

"That was all that was in the house," said her hostess. "The furniture was all sold to pay the doctor bills, and Mrs. Thomas got your ma's clothes and little things. I reckon they didn't last long among that drove of Thomas youngsters. They was destructive young animals, as I mind 'em."

"I haven't one thing that belonged to my mother," said Anne, chokily. "I -- I can never thank you enough for these letters."

"You're quite welcome. Laws, but your eyes is like your ma's. She could just about talk with hers. Your father was sorter homely but awful nice. I mind hearing folks say when they was married that there never was two people more in love with each other -- Pore creatures, they didn't live much longer; but they was awful happy while they was alive, and I s'pose that counts for a good deal."

Anne longed to get home to read her precious letters; but she made one little pilgrimage first. She went alone to the green corner of the "old" Bolingbroke cemetery where her father and mother were buried, and left on their grave the white flowers she carried. Then she hastened back to Mount Holly, shut herself up in her room, and read the letters. Some were written by her father, some by her mother. There were not many -- only a dozen in all -- for Walter and Bertha Shirley had not been often separated during their courtship. The letters were yellow and faded and dim, blurred with the touch of passing years. No profound words of wisdom were traced on the stained and wrinkled pages, but only lines of love and trust. The sweetness of forgotten things clung to them -- the far-off, fond imaginings of those long-dead lovers. Bertha Shirley had possessed the gift of writing letters which embodied the charming personality of the writer in words and thoughts that retained their beauty and fragrance after the lapse of time. The letters were tender, intimate, sacred. To Anne, the sweetest of all was the one written after her birth to the father on a brief absence. It was full of a proud young mother's accounts of "baby" -- her cleverness, her brightness, her thousand sweetnesses.

"I love her best when she is asleep and better still when she is awake," Bertha Shirley had written in the postscript. Probably it was the last sentence she had ever penned. The end was very near for her.

"This has been the most beautiful day of my life," Anne said to Phil that night. "I've FOUND my father and mother. Those letters have made them REAL to me. I'm not an orphan any longer. I feel as if I had opened a book and found roses of yesterday, sweet and beloved, between its leaves."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Savannah wrote:

bethandmanly wrote:

Well, the first mistake they made was in writing that horrible storyline!

Exactly. I don't believe for one minute that LMM would have approved this storyline, had she been alive to have that choice. They're milking the "Anne" name for all it's worth, unfortunately. And this storyline is just one more proof of that.

I'm all for some creative license, but heck they aren't even close with this one. I couldn't support Sullivan Entertainment by watching it. They're making money off of something that is so wrong.

Oh man, why would they kill of Gilbert? No thanks...I'll always love my Anne movies and whoever said he would be too old to be in World War II is probably right. Let's see World War I ended around 1918, so if he was in his early 20's, no then again, he would be in his late 40's, so they could probably build a story line around him dying in World War II. NO, NO, NO...this is so wrong!!

The glitch we had on Saturday/Sunday ate the post I'd made here.

If you go by Lucy Maud Montgomery's writings, Anne and Gilbert were around 49 or 50 at the beginning of World War I. So, by the time World War II rolled around, Gil would have been in his mid seventies. It's a pretty ridiculous storyline, and I'm certain that LMM would break a slate over Kevin Sullivan's head if she were able to do so. Not only for the timeline stupidity, but also for suddenly making Anne's birth father some stranger that LMM never intended to be Anne's father. It's shameful.

Just another way to squeeze out every ounce of money he can out of the franchise.

Ok, I know this is going to sound bad, but is it possible that the young girl playing Anne is a tad too 'cute' to be her? Megan was more on the 'average' side (still cute in my eyes), but this girl is adorable, IMO, and the books don't describe Anne as being such. At least Anne didn't view herself that way. What do you think? Am I way off base here? Also, her hair is a BEAUTIFUL shade of red---it's very similar to my friend's red hair. Certainly not the 'carrots' of Megan's/Anne's hair! At least at that younger age...when they shortened the hair after she dyed it green, then it took on more of the strawberry color.

Actually, now that I see Barbara with her hair done and dressed for the role, she kind of passes. But like the rest of you, I don't feel right about supporting this even if I did want to see it. My heart really isn't in it anyway. I still have a lot of the Anne series to see anyway!