strange and random happenstance

Every once in awhile you stumble on a miniseries that gives you a new perspective on an actor you love, like Hugh Bonneville's villainous turn in Daniel Deronda which I talked about last week. And every once in awhile you stumble on a miniseries where you fall in love with an actor previously unknown to you. But the rarest of the rare is when both these events happen within the same miniseries, and that's what happened when I first watched The Way We Live Now. Let's tackle a returning favorite first, David Suchet. David Suchet plays the indomitable Augustus Melmotte, a wealthy foreigner taking in interest in British Rail. Everybody knows Suchet as Poirot. I mean it's not just a role, he IS Poirot and I will fight anyone who disagrees. If you've watched any of the interviews or documentaries with him that often air on PBS it's amazing how unlike Poirot he is. He becomes the character created by Agatha Christie. Which is why his completely submerging himself into the roll of Melmotte shouldn't be a surprise, but it is. I mean I even saw him in The Importance of Being Earnest as Lady Bracknell and he was her! But I'd never searched out films or shows with him starring other than Poirot so The Way We Live Now opened my eyes to his range, his professionalism, and how I definitely need more of him in my life, hence my going to see The Importance of Being Earnest. And speaking of someone welcome in my life at ANY time, let's talk Matthew Macfadyen. Matthew Macfadyen plays Sir Felix Carbury, who is wooing Augustus Melmotte's daughter in a vain attempt to right his family's financial problems. Nowadays everyone knows Matthew as Mr. Darcy opposite Keira Knightly. Keep in mind that film was four years away from happening when I first watched The Way We Live Now. So I hunted up everything I could that Matthew starred in, which wasn't much at the time! Even Spooks was a year away! But thankfully there was Enigma, Murder Rooms, Wuthering Heights, the one with him having no lines, and maybe it's best to skip Maybe Baby. I was enamored of this English John Cusack as my friend Jess dubbed him. To this day I will watch him in anything! Though there are a few that I wish I could forget. Looking at you Any Human Heart!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Daniel Deronda, David Suchet, Fifty Years a Masterpiece, Hugh Bonneville, Matthew MacFadyen, Murder Rooms, Poirot, Pride and Prejudice, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Way We Live Now, Wuthering Heights

The thing about Wuthering Heights is I always really want to like it but never do. I've seen more adaptations than I can count all hoping that one would strike a cord in me. I chased down old productions for actors I liked just in the vain hope that maybe, just maybe, having say, Matthew Macfadyen in it would improve it. He did not. Hell, he didn't even speak as far as I can remember. In fact the introduction on that old VHS tape from the library was more interesting than the production itself. Thank you Russell Baker for explaining exactly why I hated the Laurence Olivier one so much! Most of the novel was cast aside in favor of a "happy" ending for the 1939 film. Yes. They tried to make Wuthering Heights have a happy ending! The mind boggles. Therefore I didn't have much hope for this new version staring that guy who was good in The Virgin Queen, that guy from The Walking Dead and Love Actually (a film I detest), and Owen from Torchwood. And yes, this is exactly how I categorized it in my head. Well, my lack of expectations led me, late one Sunday night, to find the first version of Wuthering Heights I enjoyed. No, enjoyed is too milquetoast, I was enraptured by it. Yes, it has a grim beginning with Tom Hardy as Heathcliff disinterring Catherine's skeleton while wearing a really bad wig, Tom, not the skeleton. But as I'm sure everyone else who's seen Tom Hardy act will agree, there's just something so magnetic about him, you can't look away. He became Heathcliff. What's more, Charlotte Riley was so perfectly cast as Catherine that she and Tom fell in love. You can feel their attraction through the screen. This is real. This is emotional. This is what Catherine and Heathcliff should always be. That heat, that passion, that tragedy. Thankfully in real life they are living a happily ever after and Tom isn't out back digging a grave where he will later cradle her corpse. But this didn't just become my all time favorite Wuthering Heights adaptation, if forever made me fans of Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley, who while perfection in this, are even better in Taboo and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell respectively.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Catherine Earnshaw, Charlotte Riley, Fifty Years a Masterpiece, Heathcliff, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Laurence Olivier, Matthew MacFadyen, Russell Baker, Taboo, Tom Hardy, Torchwood, Wuthering Heights

If one were to walk in the footsteps of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice I think we can all agree that when one thinks of Pride and Prejudice there is only one destination possible, and that's Pemberley. This is especially beguiling to American readers where we seriously don't have grand manor houses or even castles strewn about the countryside protected by a National Trust. But as Lizzy and her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner clearly show, these great houses were just as beguiling to Brits over two hundred years ago. Because who doesn't like to wander around big beautiful houses seeing famous works of art in a setting that isn't strictly speaking a museum? But the question becomes, where is Pemberley? You could go to Lyme Park, which was the house used in the BBC miniseries, but to me, more known for being used in a season three episode of Red Dwarf, and yes, I know I have weird priorities. Or you could have even bought Wentworth Park fairly recently, where they were claiming that the house's notoriety came from the fact it was the basis for Pemberley. A "fact" that no one has really ever agreed on. But to me I think Pemberley as Austen saw it is most likely Chatsworth. 

It's not just that Austen knew of the house and compares Pemberley to Chatsworth that makes Chatsworth a good contender, as well as both real and fictional houses being in Derbyshire, it's also actually been used as Pemberley in the P.D. James continuation Death Comes to Pemberley as well as in the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Matthew Macfadyen. In fact they have the Matthew Macfadyen marble bust still there, though they request that you don't buss the bust. They have a Regency Ball there every summer which I long to be invited to! But even if that doesn't get you excited there is a deal breaker in my mind that makes this great house a must stop, and that's the connection to the Mitfords. Deborah Mitford, one of the famous Mitford sisters, was the Duchess of Devonshire and the family seat is Chatsworth. She not only spent her life surrounded by the literary, but she helped save the house after the tragic death of the heir and went on to make it a thriving business that allowed her to extensively expand the house's art collection with modern masters. So go for your Darcy dream, stay, and you can literally stay on the property, for the Mitford milieu.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bicentenary Ball, Chatsworth, Death Comes to Pemberley, Deborah Mitford, Derbyshire, Duchess of Devonshire, Jane Austen, Lyme Park, Matthew MacFadyen, Mitfords, Pemberley, Pride and Prejudice, Red Dwarf

Murder Rooms
Inspired by the life and works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Release Date: 2000-2001
Starring: Ian Richardson, Charles Edwards, Simon Chandler, Mossie Smith, Malcolm Sinclair, Dermot Crowley, Sean Wightman, Caroline Carver, Beatie Edney, Ben Macleod, Robin Laing, Claire Harman, Dolly Wells, Alexander Armstrong, Crispin Bonham-Carter, Rik Mayall, Charles Dance, Annette Crosbie, Paul McNeilly, Anton Lesser, John Sessions, Ronald Pickup, Nick Haverson, Roger Lloyd Pack, Ian McNeice, Clare Holman, Warwick Davis, Matthew Macfadyen, David Hayman, Ruth Platt, and Henry Ian Cusick
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Arthur Conan Doyle has gotten his medical degree from Edinburgh and set up practice in Portsmouth. Though the patients aren't exactly beating down the doors; in fact the longevity of his practice is a source of concern to those who care for him. One outlet to fill his time is to write stories, many of which get published. Yet his greatest literary creation is yet to come, and he will be based on his close friend and mentor, Dr. Joesph Bell. Dr. Bell is still working up in Edinburgh, but he finds the time to journey south and visit his most favorite student as often as possible. It doesn't hurt matters that Conan Doyle has started to partake in one of Dr. Bell's favorite pastimes, amateur crime solving. The sleuthing starts innocently enough with Conan Doyle trying to help one of his patients. With the arrival of Dr. Bell they become a detecting duo, much like Sherlock Holmes and Watson will be in the future. And once the duo are known to the police, they are invited to help on other cases, especially in the morgue where they are short staffed and men with medical knowledge are needed. The two insinuate themselves into adventures concerning Spiritualism, Fenians, and even soldier's with PTSD. They connect with their cases on many levels, some of which are personal. But only one thing is certain, the origins of the greatest literary consulting detective of all times was anything but staid. The dark beginnings of Sherlock Holmes are as memorable as the great detective himself.

Murder Rooms had it's origins in the TV movie Dr. Bell and Mr. Doyle, an uneven production that scandalously underused Matthew Macfadyen, had ludicrous wigs, a Doyle that could be outwitted by even the dumbest of Watsons, the requisite doomed love affair, and a tendency to stop and laboriously draw the connection between the real Dr. Bell and his fictional counterpart Sherlock Holmes. But for all that it was a clever conceit, to take truth and spin it into the most famous of fictions. Because that's where the genius lies. This show, at it's core, is based on truth. Not many people realize that Sherlock Holmes didn't spring fully formed from the mind of Arthur Conan Doyle. He in fact had a very real counterpart in Doctor Joseph Bell. The future author was a medical student when he met Bell in 1877 when Conan Doyle served as a clerk in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Bell was known for his keen observational eye and often helped the police with their investigations. Bell inspired Conan Doyle with his unique methods and the man himself was in fact flattered to know that he was, however loosely, the impetus for the detective that seized the imagination of the reading public; unlike Holmes himself who rather frowned at Watson's endeavors. Bell even got some notoriety outside the realm of fiction as an an expert witness in the sensational Ardlamont Murder. And right there is the key to why this series worked, like the Ardlamont Murder, this series embellishing of reality gives the show real world stakes; it makes Murder Rooms feel more alive than the staid Victorian adventures of Holmes. By having the author and his inspiration with Conan Doyle playing Watson to Dr. Bell's Holmes, there's this feeling of truth, an immediacy that was never present in the stories despite how well they were written. The "truth" in the beginning matters for what came after.

Yet for how fun the series is it would never have worked if they hadn't been willing to see the mistakes in that initial TV movie and fix them. I wouldn't say it was precisely a reboot, more like how when Being Human went from pilot to series, they ditched what wasn't working, aka original Mitchell and Annie, but kept the plot as a through line. So we still have Doyle dealing with the death of Elspeth, only it's a Doyle who can actually act and an Elspeth you don't long to see dead. We still have Ian Richardson magnificently cast as Bell, he did play Holmes once dontcha know, only he no longer has that very disturbing Tom Jones wig. Seriously, the TV movie has some of the worst wig work I've ever seen, but Ian Richardson as Tom Jones is the most surreal. The revitalized show also brought in many great British actors, as in a rounded cast of awesomeness, not just, oh here's Charles Dance cause he'll appear in anything, he's totally not the villain just our red herring, oh look, he has red hair, haha. Instead we get the likes of Clare Holman from Lewis and David Hayman from The Paradise, Roger Lloyd Pack from The Vicar of Dibley, Dermot Crowley from Luther, and Ian McNeice from Doc Martin and Doctor Who, and Anton Lesser from everything British you've ever seen. But most surprising of all, Rik Mayall from The Young Ones and Bottom. And not surprising because he's in it, but surprising because of the depth of his acting. You will not believe the acting he is capable of if you've only seen the slapstick and surreal humor of his work with Adrian Edmondson. He is a talent who we lost too soon. It's actors like these that make Murder Rooms memorable. Despite it's unevenness, which is still there in spite of the rejiggering, it will stick with you.

The real success lies outside the casting in the fact that David Pirie was willing to step back from the blunt and ludicrously overt Sherlockian references in the original script and develop a more cunning narrative by drawing on the lives of Conan Doyle and Bell. They reflect and mirror images we have seen in the stories, like "The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist" referenced in "The Patient's Eyes," but that is not where the mystery begins or ends. By taking this step back, for those who know a little about Conan Doyle's life, you get far more excitement working out the connections and also the foreshadowing of his life to come. The episode that excels the most in this regard is "The Photographer's Chair." By having a story that deals with Spiritualism and photography we get a glimpse into what will define Conan Doyle's later life. While he starts out as a skeptic at the beginning of the episode, you just know that it will soon turn to belief. In real life it was the deaths of many close to him that led him to take solace in Spiritualism. He defended his beliefs in word and deed. He even lost many friends over his unswerving convictions. But his second wife was a strong believer, she even claimed to be a medium. To see these facts as a burgeoning story dramatized on TV was just fascinating to me. Nothing is overt, it's all subtle. He participates in his first seance, he talks to the medium played by Clare Holman, and his convictions against a spirit realm are doubted. Could there be a world beyond? His doomed love affair of the TV movie also is used for the first time logically, giving him a reason to believe, versus creating a reason for a monastic existence like Holmes and a Moriarty like nemesis.

Though Conan Doyle's belief in Spiritualism also extended to other things beyond the ken of man, such as fairies. The Cottingley Fairies are infamous photographs for the fraud they perpetrated, but more so for the vocal support of Conan Doyle who was utterly taken in by the fakes. The reason they were able to stand up to scrutiny is that the girls didn't mess with the photographic process, they just took pictures of themselves with fairies they had made. Ten years ago I was lucky enough to get to see these originals, and you can almost see why Conan Doyle and others were taken in. They look real enough, but it's more because they wanted to believe. That is where the photography element comes into "The Photographer's Chair." Men and woman who have suffered grief are being killed in an attempt to capture their soul leaving their body. The villain is just trying to capture another aspect of the supernatural, such as the two girls did with the fairies, because he believes with the zealotry of a madman. To take that further, the killer expounds on frauds within Spiritualism, making sure that we know there is truth in the supernatural, but it's being corrupted by the scams. If you have an interest in the more odd Spiritualist frauds I suggest reading Mary Roach's Spook. But if you want a good mystery that tackles the possibility that this could be true or false, then please watch this episode. If you ever thought that Conan Doyle and his later beliefs were a little crazy, it makes you connect to him in a way you never thought you could. Oh, and the little photographic evidence at the end of the episode, it casts such possibilities that you're not quite sure what to believe.

And that's what it all comes down to in the end. Evidence. If that glass plate had survived, that might have been something... but evidence is what is needed for unassailable proof. And it's Dr. Bell's way of approaching evidence that is unique. He could literally be considered the beginning of the forensic sciences. He uses his observational skills to examine patients and come to conclusions about their health, or, if he's in the morgue, about their death. It is these observational techniques that Holmes uses in literature to examine all of life, not just the human body. It is just fascinating how forensic evidence can lead to analytical evidence which can lead to enlightenment. To take your doctoring skill set and apply it to crime solving. Of course in this day and age we take it for granted with all the various CSI offshoots that this is how crime solving was always done, but that isn't the case. Just as recent as the Regency period there wasn't even a police force as such, and if you have a desperate need to actually know more about that read P.D. James's Death Comes to Pemberley. So to have Dr. Bell going out and solving crimes in a way that is unheard of is revolutionary. Don't be jaded by all that has come after, or take anything for granted. Just because the popular image of detection comes from Sherlock Holmes shouldn't detract from "the beginning." It should enhance it! The subtitle for Murder Rooms is "The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes" but it really could be "The Dark Beginnings of Modern Detection." This might be nothing more than a TV show, but taken in the greater context of crime solving, it's a revolution.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Arthur Conan Doyle, Being Human, Cottingley Fairies, Dr. Bell, Dr. Bell and Mr. Doyle, Ian Richardson, Lewis, Luther, Matthew MacFadyen, Murder Rooms, Sherlocked, Spiritualism, Spook, Tom Jones, Vicar of Dibley

Little Dorrit
Based on the book by Charles Dickens
Release Date: October 26th, 2008 – December 11th, 2008
Starring: Claire Foy, Matthew Macfadyen, Tom Courtenay, Emma Pierson, James Fleet, Arthur Darvill, Alum Armstrong, Judy Parfitt, Sue Johnston, Eddie Marsan, Rosie Cavaliero, Ron Cook, Andy Serkis, Russell Tovey, Bill Paterson, Amanda Redman, Maxine Peake, Freema Agyeman, Eve Myles, Anton Lesser, Pam Ferris, Jason Watkins, Annette Crosbie and Ruth Jones
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Arthur Clenham has returned from the Orient with his father's dying words on his mind, as well as an entreaty from that man to his wife to "put it right." Upon reaching England, Arthur begs of his mother to not only abide by her husband's dying wishes, but to tell Arthur what he meant by "put it right." Consumed with righting the wrong that his family did, without knowing who the wrong was against, Arthur grasps at a straw. The straw is that recently, his mother took a young Amy Dorrit into her care. His cold, harsh mother who does not believe in charity. Arthur therefore gets it into his head that somehow it must be the Dorrits to whom his family must pay reparations... if only he could figure out exactly how to go about this or even figure out more about the Dorrits.

The Dorrits have spent many, many years in debtors prison. Amy was even born there, earning her father the moniker, the Father of the Marshalsea, which is the prison in which they reside. Yet Amy's life is a happy one, taking care of her father and being his connection to the outside world. The arrival of Arthur Clenham changes everything. It's not only that through his investigations and trials with the circumlocution office that he is able to release the Dorrits from their debts, and therefore prison, it is that he has unknowingly stolen Amy's heart. Though Arthur's work has risen the Dorrits and Amy's father views Arthur as an unsavory connection. Anyone with knowledge of their past ignominy is unsuitable. Therefore the family relocates to Venice, where their lives will be changed, for better or worse, only they will know. But Amy's heart will forever be with Arthur, even if she should know better than to associate with him anymore. Sometimes she dreams that life would be easier if she had never met Arthur... and perhaps she is right.

The cast made me know in my bones that I would love this miniseries. So many names from Doctor Who and of course, Matthew Macfadyen. I have loved Matthew for over a decade now and have watched everything he has ever been in (he owes me for the atrocities of Any Human Heart). But I am a fickle person, I was so excited to watch this originally, I was hesitant to start it in the first place. Obviously, I finally did and I loved it. Perfect and funny and, well, the ending was rushed and confusing and made me thing that our hero and heroine where brother and sister... which, thanks to Wikipedia I learned they are not, because that would have been too eww even for Dickens. I even found things like the absurdity of Andy Serkis's character, the murderer Rigaud to be menacing and enjoyable, diverging with what most critics thought. But overall, I adored it.

Therefore I was a bit hesitant to re watch it for my blog. What if it wasn't as good as I remembered. What if it was the opposite of me and Bleak House and instead of finding more to love in it I found things that bothered me and I then hated the miniseries!?! Yes, I was truly thinking this way. And when I started I was not immediately in the miniseries. There was that part of me going, "oh dear, I was wrong wasn't I?" I wasn't as worried about the confusing ending, having done my Wikipedia research, and also learning from my friend Amy that the book actually is that confusing so it was Dickens's not Andrew Davies fault. But something happened and half way through I was again in love with Little Dorrit. I guess I didn't realize until re watching that it wasn't until the Dorrits had achieved wealth and thrown their old life into stark contrast that everything sort of finally came together. Also, who couldn't love Venice and empathize with Amy (the character not my friend) and the strange new world she was thrust into.

Though with everything I still have gripes... but I won't dwell there, I will dwell on the one thing that makes this miniseries transcendent, and no, I'm not talking about the amusement I feel seeing Arthur Darvill, Rory from Doctor Who being a little pudgy in the face and a lot of a dick. I'm talking about Russell Tovey. Personally, while I love Matthew Macfadyen, I really think that Amy should have ended up with John, the character played by Russell Tovey. I know that Dickens is showing that we can't always choose what the heart wants or who it will love, but Tovey broke my heart. When he is rejected by Amy and has his little soliloquy about the mortal remains of John Chivery, I defy you not to be broken. That is some of the most emotional heartbreaking acting you will ever see. Sure, Tovey has become a master of the sad, lonely and broken hearted in his acting, but this is unparalleled.

"Here lie the mortal remains of John Chivery, Assistant Turnkey and later Chief Turnkey of the Marshalsea Prison for Debt. He was unlucky in love and endured a good deal of sorrow, but he rose above it and performed many an act of kindness, even to his rival. And always engraved, on stone, deep into his very heart, is the name of "Amy Dorrit"."

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Arthur Darvill, Bleak House, Charles Dickens, Claire Foy, Doctor Who, Little Dorrit, Matthew MacFadyen, Russell Tovey

Our Mutual Friend
Based on the book by Charles Dickens
Release Date: 1998
Starring: Paul McGann, Keeley Hawes, Dominic Mafham, Steven Mackintosh, Anna Friel, Peter Vaughan, Pam Ferris, Timothy Spall, David Bradley, Anthony Calf and David Morrissey
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Lizzie Hexam works with her father searching the river for corpses to see if those who have gone into the next world have left anything for those in this world. Lizzie doesn't want a better life for herself, but she wants one for her brother, Charley. One night they pull in the corpse of a John Harmon. John Harmon was returning to England to lay claim to his father's great fortune. His death has several repercussions, which society takes great delight in hearing through the estate's lawyer, Mortimer Lightwood. One interesting provision in the will is that John Harmon was only to inherit if he married a young girl of his father's choosing, Bella Wilfer. Bella is now stuck with her family, while Harmon the elders right hand man, Mr. Boffin, who ran his business operations in dust, is brought out of the muck with his missus and made a very wealthy man. They not only take in Bella to make amends, but also hire the mysterious John Rokesmith.

While the Harmon affair is moving along, things have been happening down at the river. Lizzie's father has turned up dead, and she has sent her brother Charley away to school. Yet ever since that night when her father brought in the body of John Harmon, Mortimer Lightwood's friend, Eugene Wrayburn has become obsessed with Lizzie. Soon he isn't the only one, as Charley's teacher, Mr. Headstone, because violently obsessed with Lizzie and threatens Eugene. This leads Lizzie to flee London, but the two men will not give up that easily.

With all the lives and loves intertwining, money and inheritances in question, people having multiple identities and people hoping to frame others, Dickens has created a story that's denouement will hopefully answer some of the muddle he has made.

The main theme in Our Mutual Friend is obsession. Personally, I know a bit about obsession, not anything like the depths sunk to by the characters in this miniseries, but, obsession on a lesser scale I get. I originally watched this back in the day during my Keeley Hawes obsession. See, I find an actor I like and I tend to then mass ingest their oeuvre, I should mention I'm not as bad as I was, but I still have my leanings in this direction. A famous past obsession was Ioan Gruffudd, which led to watching the horrid Very Annie Mary and Shooters, which kind of quickly made me stop watching his films, though the love is still there (Hornblower!), in that I actually gave Ringers a shot, not for Sarah Michelle Geller, but for him, yeah, that was a wasted attempt too. When I saw Keeley in Wives and Daughters, I was really impressed and decided to do a Keeley binge. Which is one reason I ended up watching Tipping the Velvet, which, I might say, though period drama it is, PG-13 it isn't, oh my. I also ended up being a fan of MI-5, which led to my Matthew MacFadyen obsession, and then oddly they got married in real life... but the one miniseries I really wanted to watch was Our Mutual Friend. I was kind of also doing a Dickens marathon of sorts at the time and this would be perfect, plus, the 8th Doctor was in it. Of course, at the time it wasn't available in the US, so I ordered it from overseas and was mildly impressed, but not in love.

I felt the same way rewatching this miniseries as I did originally, like, not love, also, the US edition made in pan scan, so lots of the framing is awful. I attempted to read the book after watching it the first time and failed miserably. Perhaps I shouldn't have tried reading Dickens's densest and most complicated and final novel as my first Dickens, but I swear, after re-reading a chapter ten times and not known if Dickens was referring to a person or a piece of furniture, I placed him aside and picked up Trollope. I have yet to pick Dickens up again, which is one of the reasons I'm doing my Dickensian Denouement, to force myself. But back to the miniseries. I applaud Sandy Welch, of North and South and Jane Eyre fame, for taking, what I felt a convoluted text, and making it easy to understand and follow. What I had trouble with was the acting. It wasn't cast with actors of equal abilty, or maybe it was the direction, but some of the roles are so flat and lifeless, mainly Steven Mackintosh as John Rokesmith. He smiles maybe once and the only time he shows real emotion it is so violent, if I where Bella I'd be rethinking my choice in husband.

But it's the obsessions with money and women that form the narrative that I find more than a little off putting. Yes, there is true love, but the love is born of deceit and stalking, I'm talking of Eugene's minimal stalking compared to Headstone's terrifying, blood spilling, willing to kill stalking. I believe this was the first film I had ever seen David Morrissey in and I have to say, if that kind of destructive passion was aimed at me, I too would run away, or be looking for a hit man, but watching it, his deterioration is kind of funny. Not funny haha, obviously, but, all that punching and hiding in bushes while looking like death with a feverish look in his eye, it came across kind of laughable. Maybe, it's just that you have to laugh or be scared. Yet, Morrissey as Headstone was at least passionate. The other to male leads where so laid back and ineffectual, that you could not understand why anyone would fall in love with them. Well, Keeley, not to rag too much on her, was kind of boring, so, that made sense. But Anna Friel as Bella! She had warmth and intelligence and a mind and she is tricked into her hearts desire. Because she was manipulated into her happy ending. Ok, yes, she at least got a happy ending, but still, at what cost?

And if you weren't scheming for a woman, you where scheming for money. Wegg, Mr and Mrs Lammle, Riderhood, they where all wanting more. They all believed they deserved more. Personally I feel I should have gotten more out of this miniseries. Instead I'm dissatisfied. The good won, the bad lost, but I couldn't really care about any of the characters enough to give a toss. Sure there was some great acting, but it was so uneven that I longed for something better, something more, something a cut above the rest. Maybe that's the answer as to why Dickens keeps getting adaption after adaption, no one is ever satisfied by the whole production and they must begin again.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anna Friel, Charles Dickens, David Morrissey, Ioan, Jane Eyre, Keeley Hawes, Matthew MacFadyen, North and South, Obsession, Our Mutual Friend, The 8th Doctor

Thanks to all who entered my giveaways, as you know, if it weren't for you I'd just be writing into the void. It's you who make the difference. That's why I wish I could reward you all, but as it is... only two lucky winners. BUT if you notice, I'm only 3 followers away from 300, and when that day is reached... there will be rewards a plenty. I really should start thinking about something awesome and fun now, like bookmarks and stickers and, of course, books!

Well, enough prattleing for today... the winner of (O)Mega Giveaway (aka the $25 giftcard to Amazon) is: donnas! Who is very much looking forward to Supernaturally, the followup book to Paranormalcy. Congrats donna!

The winner of the Jane in June limited Edition giclee is: Aia, who is a Colin Firth fan, and while we do love us some Matthew MacFadyen, it seems we are all lost to Colin, except vvb32 reads, which means more Matthew for you!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Colin Firth, Giveaway, Jane in June, Matthew MacFadyen, Mega Horde, Winner

Ok, so I added the little summer blockbuster speil... but then again, Jane has always been better than a summer blockbuster. You can turn on the AC, curl up in a chair and be transported to England, and not have to deal with crowds or trailers, sticky floors or spilled popcorn. Can you imagine ads before you were allowed to start reading? Sheesh, and total tanget. Anyways... Jane in June! This month, as she did last year, my friend Misty over at Book Rat is having another Austen spectacular. Jane all day everyday! There are prizes and interviews and read-a-longs. In other words, more fun than you can shake a stick at. I am therefore totally pimping her site and her work, and hopefully contributing her on my blog. My single goal is to finally finish Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It's been a few years since I started... I really should finish it. I should aim for the head right?

Same as last year, I'm going to have a little giveaway here. When I think of the first time I watched Pride and Prejudice, I think of that hot summer day, I believe it was a Friday. I started around 3 in the afternoon and kept going. Nearer nightfall, came the famous scene where Lady Catherine has the urge to have a showdown, which resulted in quite the opposite effect she had intended. So, here's a high quality giclee print of my piece "This is not to be Bourne!"

The Prize:
Oh, pretty Giclee depicting a scene from Pride and Prejudice, signed and numbered!

The Rules:
1. Open to EVERYONE, just because you haven't been following me all along doesn't mean you don't matter, you just get more entries if you prove you love me by following.
2. Please make sure I have a way to contact you if your name is drawn, either your blogger profile or a link to your website/blog or you could even include your email address with your comment(s).
3. Contest ends Thursday, June 30th at 11:59PM CST
4. How to enter:

Answer me this (not required, see below): Colin Firth or Matthew MacFadyen?

5. And for those addicted to getting extra entries:

• +1 for answering the question above
• +2 for becoming a follower
• +10 if you are already a follower
• +10 for each time you advertise this contest - blog post, sidebar, twitter (please @MzLizard), etc. (but you only get credit for the first post, so tweet all you like, and I thank you for it, but you'll only get the +10 once). Also please leave a link!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 10 comments  

Labels: Book Rat, Colin Firth, Giveaway, Jane in June, Matthew MacFadyen, Misty