strange and random happenstance

Celebrating All Creatures Great and Small: For the Love of the Yorkshire Dales by All Creatures Great and Small
Published by: Michael O'Mara Books
Publication Date: December 17th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 224 Pages
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The official patter:
"The official visual celebration of All Creatures Great and Small and its incredible setting: the Yorkshire Dales.

Featuring over 200 spectacular shots from all four series, plus an in-depth look at the characters and real-life inspiration for the show, this book tells the fascinating story of the program's main character: the Yorkshire Dales.

The official All Creatures Great and Small companion offers a glimpse behind the scenes of the award-winning show, with beautiful photography throughout."

I mean, we're days away from Christmas and this is the perfect gift for those who love a cozy heartwarming tale every Sunday night... Also I'm personally hoping for lots of pictures of Samuel West in those delicious brown boots Siegfried occasionally wears...

Invisible Helix by Keigo Higashino
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: December 17th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 288 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Detective Galileo, Keigo Higashino's best loved character from The Devotion of Suspect X, returns in a case where hidden history, and an impossible crime, are linked by nearly invisible threads in surprising ways.

The body of a young man is found floating in Tokyo Bay. But his death was no accident - Ryota Uetsuji was shot. He'd been reported missing the week before by his live-in girlfriend Sonoka Shimauchi, but when detectives from the Homicide Squad go to interview her, she is nowhere to be found. She's taken time off from work, clothes and effects are missing from the apartment she shared. And when the detectives learn that she was the victim of domestic abuse, they presume that she was the killer. But her alibi is airtight - she was hours away in Kyoto when Ryota disappeared, forcing Detectives Kusanagi and Utsumi to restart their investigation.

But if Sonoko didn't kill her abusive lover, then who did? A thin thread of association leads them to their old consultant, brilliant physicist Manabu Yukawa, known in the department as "Detective Galileo." With Sonoko still missing, the detectives investigate other threads of association - an eccentric artist, who was Sonoko's mother figure after her own single mother passed; and an older woman who is the owner of a hostess club. And how is Sonoko continuing to stay one step ahead of the police searching for her? It's up to Galileo to find the nearly hidden threads of history and coincidence that connect the people around the bloody murder- which, surprisingly, connect to his own traumatic past - to unravel not merely the facts of the crime but the helix that ties them all together."

And if the person you're buying a Christmas present for isn't into the cozier side of life, how about some murder? It's not the holidays without murder, in my mind...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: All Creatures Great and Small, Christmas, Invisible Helix, James Herriot, Japan, Keigo Higashino, Masterpiece Theatre, Murder, Samuel West, Siegfried Farnon, The Devotion of Suspect X, Yorkshire, Yorkshire Dales

I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who remembers the miniseries Cambridge Spies. Starring Toby Stephens, Tom Hollander, Rupert Penry-Jones, and Samuel West as the famous Philby, Bugress, Maclean, and Blunt respectively. This was a whose who of top British talent that followed the infamous spies from their halcyon days at Cambridge up until they were exposed. Needless to say it was kind of a rose tinted view of spying. They had scruples but their idealism, their conviction that they were doing this for the greater good, outweighed the downside. Yes they would touch on issues like Burgess's alcoholism, but I think it was more because Tom Hollander plays a wonderful dipsomaniac than any darker import like guilt. I felt at the time that it was missing a beat. The DVD set I had rented had a documentary on it and I think that did a better job than the entire miniseries in showing how what they did was a betrayal of their country. They might have been idealistic fools but they were also traitors. Which is why I was so excited for A Spy Among Friends. Based on the nonfiction book by Ben Macintyre, this seemed like it would actually give us a version of the truth. Because the truth is that we will probably never know the whole truth. And even here, even in a world of "truth" we are warned that some things aren't as they seem. This miniseries gets to the heart of the old boys network by showing that the education and comradery forged within the upper echelons of British aristocracy was ripe for infiltration because in the world they moved in it was something that simply wasn't done. The question isn't how it was done or why it was done it's a more intimate look at two friends who come to the realization that their shared history isn't what they thought it was. Damian Lewis as Nicholas Elliot was sent to Beirut to interview Kim Philby as played by Guy Pearce and Elliot let Philby run. Much like in the Watergate scandal there was some missing minutes on their taped debriefing and that lead to much speculation. A Spy Among Friends spins out what could have happened in that time and who is playing who. It's a cat and mouse game involving Russians, Americans, Britons, and old old friends. But by pulling back the iron curtain and seeing what Philby's life in Russia was actually like gives his crimes a greater weight. Was this the glorious life he was fighting for? And what of those he left behind and those he's reunited with? Through flashbacks and dreams, we see these two men circle each other. We see the same events over and over again through different eyes with new knowledge. The genius of this miniseries is that it relies on two of the greatest actors today, Guy Pearce and Damian Lewis. They bring a weight to this miniseries that makes every betrayal land a punch. You actually feel the dead Philby's legacy is propped up with. I don't know if I have ever seen a better Cold War thriller and the fact that it rests on the shoulders of so few yet talented actors shows that with the right people and the right material you can make magic.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 3 comments  

Labels: A Spy Among Friends, And the Emmy Goes To, Ben Macintyre, Cambridge Spies, Damian Lewis, Guy Pearce, Kim Philby, Nicholas Elliot, Rupert Penry-Jones, Russia, Samuel West, Spy, Toby Stephens, Tom Hollander, Traitor

The original All Creatures Great and Small has always held a special place in my family's heart. My grandfather, who has to be held partially responsible for turning me into an Anglophile by having the rule that every Sunday when we visited the TV had to remain on AND remain on PBS, had the complete series of books by James Herriot that I ran off with. As for my father, let's put it this way, when one of my friends announced she was marrying a rural Canadian vet his first question was had they watched All Creatures Great and Small together yet. I have a sneaking suspicion that my parents didn't get an invite to the wedding because my friend knew the gift would be the complete DVD set of All Creatures Great and Small followed by incessant pestering if they had watched it yet. Therefore when the new series was announced it was greeted with incredulity in my house. How could they remake such a classic!?! My Dad was actually a little flabbergasted that I wanted to watch it when it started on Masterpiece. I told him my reasoning. First, it had aired in Britain earlier and all my friends there who had the same fanatical devotion to the original show that my father has fell in love with it. Secondly, it would be a return to something comforting and secure on a Sunday night, which I think we can all agree we need right now. On January tenth the first episode, "You've Got to Dream," aired and I KNEW my father was hooked by the fact he was copiously sobbing at the complicated labor of a cow. I was more shocked than anything though when after a few episodes he said he thinks that Samuel West is a better Siegfried Farnon than Robert Hardy. This is as close as it gets to blasphemy in my house. But the show is magnificent. It's a breath of fresh air, and those gorgeous Yorkshire landscapes! THIS is what Masterpiece Theatre has always been about. Tapping into the perfect dream of England, with a little trouble and strife along the way, but a happy ending to cap it off. Nicholas Ralph who plays James Herriot says he hopes next season that his character and Helen go on their first date after her engagement with Hugh was broken in the Christmas special. Personally a true happy ending to me will be their marriage! Or I will be willing to substitute Samuel West wearing those gorgeous knee-high leather boots in every episode.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: All Creatures Great and Small, And the Emmy Goes To, Covid, England, James Herriot, Masterpiece, Masterpiece Theatre, Nicholas Ralph, Robert Hardy, Samuel West, Siegfried Farnon, Veterinarian, Yorkshire

Mr Selfridge is a series that really came into it's own in the second series. If it had kept on the self-indulgent and self-destructive trajectory of the first series it wouldn't have lasted beyond it's second series, and I wouldn't have watched another episode. Did anybody really want to watch the hallucinatory post car crash episode? NO! Well, probably Jeremy Piven, but no one else. Instead we were lucky enough to have four series, three of which understood that while Selfridge, the man and the establishment, were the glue that held the series together, it was really the supporting cast that made the show work. It was the romance of Henri and Agnes, Miss Mardle finding purpose in her life besides being Mr. Grove's mistress, Arthur Crabb just being Arthur Crabb, the unexpected alliance of Frank and Kitty, the machinations of Lord Loxley, the delights of Lady Mae, I could go on and on because there was so much to love in this show. But what really made the show click for me in series two, besides the tonal shift, was that I knew Rose Selfridge was on the way out. Here's the thing. Everyone has an actor or actress they just can't stand. Watching them is like having your eyes being slowly clawed out of their sockets or having really painful dental surgery. Well, for me, Frances O'Connor and that Jack Nicholson Joker-esque smile of hers is at the top of my hate list. The hate started for me with the horrific 1999 adaptation of Mansfield Park, of which the less said the better. My feelings were really solidified by the movie A.I., and well, the rest is history, as in, I historically and forevermore will hate her, not matter what, and I thank the stars above every day that the adaptation of the Locke and Key series wasn't picked up with her as Nina. Anyway, after the first series when the show was picked up for a second series I read a bit about Harry Gordon Selfridge and saw that his beloved wife Rose, played by Frances O'Connor, died in the pandemic of 1918. Not good news for the real Rose, great news for me! All I had to do was get through her scenes in series two, which were minimized because of expanding the plotlines to include the supporting characters, and I'd be home free. Series three starts with a very welcome funeral. Sometimes the tragedies of life can make me happy.   

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A.I., DEATH, Fifty Years a Masterpiece, France O'Connor, Harry Gordon Selfridge, Hate, Jeremy Piven, Locke and Key, Mansfield Park, Mr Selfridge, Pandemic, Samuel West, Supporting Characters, The Joker, WWI

The original All Creatures Great and Small has always held a special place in my family's heart. My grandfather, who has to be held partially responsible for turning me into an Anglophile by having the rule that every Sunday when we visited the TV had to remain on AND remain on PBS, had the complete series of books by James Herriot that I ran off with. As for my father, let's put it this way, when one of my friends announced she was marrying a rural Canadian vet his first question was had they watched All Creatures Great and Small together yet. I have a sneaking suspicion that my parents didn't get an invite to the wedding because my friend knew the gift would be the complete DVD set of All Creatures Great and Small followed by incessant pestering if they had watched it yet. Therefore when the new series was announced it was greeted with incredulity in my house. How could they remake such a classic!?! My Dad was actually a little flabbergasted that I wanted to watch it when it started on Masterpiece a few weeks back. I told him my reasoning. First, it had aired in Britain in the fall and all my friends there who had the same fanatical devotion to the original show that my father has fell in love with it. Secondly, it would be a return to something comforting and secure on a Sunday night, which I think we can all agree we need right now. On January tenth the first episode, "You've Got to Dream," aired and I KNEW my father was hooked by the fact he was copiously sobbing at the complicated labor of a cow. I was more shocked than anything though when after a few episodes he said he thinks that Samuel West is a better Siegfried Farnon than Robert Hardy. This is as close as it gets to blasphemy in my house. But the show is magnificent. It's a breath of fresh air, and gorgeous Yorkshire landscapes. THIS is what Masterpiece Theatre has always been about. Tapping into the perfect dream of England, with a little trouble and strife along the way, but a happy ending to cap it off. Or at least there better be a happy ending, the whole season hasn't aired yet as I type this. But at least there's going to be a second season, hopefully with Samuel West wearing those gorgeous knee-high leather boots in every episode.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: All Creatures Great and Small, Anglophile, Fifty Years a Masterpiece, Grandfather, James Herriot, Masterpiece, Masterpiece No Longer Theatre, PBS, Remake, Robert Hardy, Samuel West, Veterinarian, Yorkshire

Howards End
Based on the book by E.M. Forster
Starring: Vanessa Redgrave, Helena Bonham Carter, Joseph Bennett, Emma Thompson, Prunella Scales, Adrian Ross Magenty, Jo Kendall, Anthony Hopkins, James Wilby, Jemma Redgrave, Samuel West, Simon Callow, Susie Lindeman, and Nicola Duffett
Release Date: March 13th, 1992
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Helen Schlegel is visiting with the Wilcoxes at Howards End, where she becomes engaged to the youngest son Paul. In fits of rapture she writes a letter to her sister telling her of the happy alliance and due to her sister Margaret being unable to journey down to the house their Aunt Juley heads down to suss out the situation. Everything is muddled, the engagement was off before it really began and due to Aunt Juley's misunderstanding chaos reigns with the Wilcoxes and the two families go their separate ways. So how inconvenient that they happen to take a house in London directly opposite the Schlegels for the elder son Charles's wedding. Helen wisely takes herself off to Germany and Paul goes off to Nairobi. This gives Meg and the matriarch Ruth Wilcox a chance to become dear friends. Meg is Ruth's confidant, informing her of her illness, which she hasn't told her family about, as well as how Howards End is her place in the world. Meg longs to see Howards End with Ruth, but it is never to be. Ruth dies shortly thereafter. What Meg doesn't know is that Ruth asked her family to leave Howards End to Meg. The Wilcoxes think this is folly, not knowing the pain Ruth suffered on hearing that the Schlegels were to soon lose their house as the lease was up. But things have a weird way of working themselves out if they are meant to be. Meg ends up marrying Ruth's widower, Henry, and her possessions end up being stored at Howards End, much to the rest of the Wilcoxes displeasure. While Meg's life is sorting itself out, Helen's is spinning even more out of control. She has a hanger-on, Leonard Bast, a poor clerk whom she befriended after accidentally stealing his umbrella. Due to the interactions between the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes Helen hears of some advice for Leonard that she thinks is in his best interest. Instead his friendship with Helen slowly destroys him. Helen, unwilling to believe that anything is her fault, lays the blame on Henry and she cuts herself off from her family after a scene at Henry's daughter Evie's wedding. Helen's behaviour is odd. Something must be behind it. Could it be Leonard? Or could it be the end of everything they believe and hold dear?

I really don't know how many times I have watched Howards End. I wouldn't say it was overly much, in the realm of Clue and The Princess Bride, but then how do I know so much of the blocking and the gestures and the exact way the lines are delivered? So apparently, without my knowing it, I'm some kind of Howards End junky, or the film is just particularly memorable, you choose. But seeing as I had the recent and mortifying experience of learning a new brand of hatred for the book I was still willing to believe in the film. To believe that all this was just me. It was refreshing to find that I still like the film, but by watching it with a jaded and suspicious eye I picked up on the oddest things that I don't think I would ever have noticed were it not for my skepticism. The biggest change is in how the movie diverts from the book, what I call the music and meaning. When Helen first meets Mr. Bast at the concert of that title Merchant and Ivory basically show their hand as to how they are going to treat this film. Instead of Helen going on about the Goblins in the music, they assign that task to Simon Callow in his requisite cameo. Later Helen disagrees with this fanciful assigning of meaning and narrative to the music. She is more prosaic and that makes her differ from the Helen in the book. The film doesn't delve into the deeper meaning of the story. It doesn't dwell on the morbid thoughts of the leads, going instead for the flash and the gloss. This is why the film still works while the book now fails in my mind. The characters internal lives destroy them and make them unrelatable in the book, being petty and self centered asses. By taking things more at face value we are spared the shallow inner lives that Forster wrote and we are left with a satisfying story.    

The movie isn't hurt either by it's superb casting, it's a who's who of the best in British stars, from Antony Hopkins to Samuel West. Emma Thompson picked up her first Oscar for her portrayal of Margaret Schlegel, though personally, I could take or leave Emma Thompson. Yes, the film wouldn't have worked without her, but the truth is that Vanessa Redgrave deserved all of the awards for this film, because it is through her and her character of Ruth Wilcox that the entire tone of the film is set. I defy you to capture the whole feeling of the film better then the first few minutes where Ruth Wilcox is dreamily walking about the grounds of Howards End. It sets up her love of the house and the love of her family. This is the world entire to her and it is perfect. A role that in the book isn't more than a plot device to bring the two families back together after the rift of Helen and Paul is given such depth and pathos that you can't help but be moved. Through her carefully delivered lines we come to love Howards End as she does. Vanessa Redgrave sprinkles magic over the house at the center of the book and gives it a life. In the book you never quite get why the house is so important, why it is everything. Yet in that one speech where Ruth talks about the tree relieving the tooth ache, what in the book is an odd insignificant line, brings all the magic of home and belonging somewhere in the world. Because that is what Howards End is, a place to belong.

Yet if they hadn't found THE PERFECT house I don't know if all Vanessa Redgrave's magic would have worked. In fact, for quite some time this was my dream home. For the country that is. For the city I really wanted the Schlegels house... perhaps that's why I remember this film so much, I wanted to live in their homes. I wanted to live, not in their world or even with them, but in the places they inhabited. The one thing that Forster does and does better than anyone else is describe places in such a magical way that you feel as if you are there, walking through the fields blanketed with flowers. His world, despite the death and despair that always comes at the close, is a place for nature to show it's wonderful bounty. This film felt like the very best of Forster's writing on nature. While Leonard Bast's actual walk through the night isn't magical or mystical in the least on the page, the film captures the romanticism that is found on the road to Monteriano, the woods abundant and fecund with bluebells, even if Broadchurch has tainted my views on woods and bluebells ever so slightly, the magic is still there. There is a Pre-Raphaelite sensibility to the clothing and the flowers that romanticize the setting. Though I will saying that the coupling of Helen and Leonard might have taken the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic a little too far. Overtones of John Everett Millais's Ophelia, and John William Waterhouse's The Lady of Shallot, while apt for their love affair, just made you think how uncomfortable being seduced in a rowboat would be.

Though, for all they did right with the production of the film, whomever did the makeup needs to be called out. Seriously people. I am glad that I don't have a high definition television, because the horror of the men's makeup might not have been endurable. They all look like silent film stars, as in that very overly made up way. I kept expecting them to start mugging for the camera, or for ominous music to start as Emma Thompson was tied to the railway track, or even an Errol Flynn sweep across the screen on a rope as Samuel West showed off his swashbuckling skills. Across the board, their skin is a nice flat spray tan, with the eyes and eyebrows comically enhanced. So, was the makeup lady blind or just hired off the most recent Christmas Panto? Every time Anthony Hopkins wasn't shamefully hiding his face I was about to bust my gut with laughter. I wonder if he saw the dailies and came up with that clever hiding of his face when he had to talk about unpleasantness with Margaret just so that the hideous makeup job had less screen time. All I kept thinking of was the season seven episode of Red Dwarf "Blue," where in order to get Dave to stop missing Rimmer Kryten creates "The Rimmer Experience," a virtual reality ride of Rimmer's life seen through Rimmer's eyes. Everyone is heavily made up to the comical extreme. While it works in a comedy, I don't think that was the look they should have gone for in a period drama! As for how the women escaped this fate? I don't think all of them did, Helena Bonham Carter looks a little too Mary Pickford for my liking.

One thing that drove me crazy throughout was the film's heavy handed foreshadowing. So, if you don't want to be spoiled, stop now. Though it you've read my review of the book I kind of spoiled it without warning, oops. Anyway, so two key things that happen at or near the end of the book is that Charles Wilcox repeatedly hits Leonard Bast with the flat or a sword until Leonard dies of his heart condition, though it is manslaughter. The other is that it comes out that Henry Wilcox cheated on his wife Ruth with Leonard Bast's wife, Jacky, while he was in Cyprus. So how were they heavy handed? With Jacky and Henry, it's just a deliberate mentioning of Cyprus in both their pasts that is never mentioned in the book until they fatefully meet at Evie Wilcox's wedding. As for the killer blade? Oh dear me, even if you didn't know it is coming from reading the book, you would have known it was coming with how they handled every mention of the sword like it was semaphore code. "THIS SWORD IS IMPORTANT PAY ATTENTION!" First it's mentioned by Meg at a dinner party she has at her house with Mrs. Wilcox, then on Leonard's second coming to the house he plays with the hilt, then there's a big to-do with unpacking it at Howards End and hanging it under the mantelpiece, AND THEN Meg and Helen discuss how perfect it sits over the fire, AND THEN it's used as a murder weapon. Four, yes FOUR clumsy and obvious references to that damn sword. Couldn't they have alluded to it in a more sly way? Couldn't they have, I don't know, mentioned it twice and not felt the need to point it out with big flashing lights. The only thing they could have done worse is a giant lighted sign pointing at it going, "Keep Leonard Away!" So much for subtlety. But then again, they were painting the book in broad strokes, which overall worked, how can I fault them for doing a better job overall than the author himself?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Arnold Rimmer, Broadchurch, Clue, E.M. Forster, Emma Thompson, Forster Fall, Helena Bonham Carter, Howards End, Pre-Raphaelite, Red Dwarf, Samuel West, The Princess Bride, Vanessa Redgrave