TV SERIES -- DRAMAS

I haven't seen many movies lately or TV for that matter -- I have been in the woods etc. So I thought I would diverge from my movie list to create a list of TV series that I know about. I am not inlcuding mini-series or comedies, but may later.

SEEN & GREAT!
Six Feet Under – despite some self-indulgent characters fascinating from beginning to end
The Wire – some say it’s hard to get into but once you do you become entranced
The Sopranos – Violent in parts but so smart with fascinating characters
Deadwood – I wish it would have lasted and lasted
The Gilmore Girls – I guess it could be diminished by calling it a chick show but I loved it until the end though some thought it got lame at the end

SEEN & LIKED
Weeds –some stuff bugs me but pretty darn entertaing
Huff – only two seasons and cancelled but had great potential
WonderFalls- cute, only one season and cancelled
Big Love – regular-old plural marriage family ---wha?
The West Wing—probably all have seen it but if you haven’t
Veronica Mars – some silly storylines but VM is great!
Lost – a blit silly at times but hard to stop watching
Dexter – the first season was appallingly good
Battlestar Galactica – hard to believe I liked this sci-fi series as much as I did but love the tough women in it esp.


SEEN & CAPTIVATING but kinda cheesy
Entourage – First season is good but starts to get too outrageous
Rome—some thought stupid but I got into it
Heroes- pretty good with some great characters from around the world
Californication—I saw one season and don’t really want to see another (not really that captivating)

DIDN'T SEE but heard was good
MI5 – my friends LOVE this series
Mad Men -- 50s ad men
The Riches –Gypsies go normal
Burn Notice – Spy who tries to act normal
In Treatment --Gabriel Byrne as sexy psychiatrist

Watching Fools Gold makes me a fool

Because it is el stupido with lamo dialogue, boring chase scenes, tired old plot turns. It is highly fastfowardable. There is nothing worse that a lamo movie where the lameness isn't even funny. Why Matthew McConaughy and Kate Hudson chose to be in such dumb movie is beyond me. Perhaps the better question why I watched it. I even watched the special features. Bad movie extras are always funny because they praise the greatness of the film and in this case talk about the great chemistry between the two leads. I mean really.

Brideshead Revisited, Update

So I finished it. All 11 hours of the original miniseries, Brideshead Revisited, late last night, and it kept getting sadder and sadder. I don’t remember it being so sad. At the end we are left with people with pretty desolate lives, Julia, Charles, and Cordelia. And what happens to Sebastian and his “dipsomania” as his alcoholism is referred to, is just horrible. I think this profile of the English aristocracy before WWII, makes them all seem so incapable of dealing with their problems and so eager to suppress their emotions. The view of Catholicism, I can’t quite wrap my brain around it, but it comes off as another character in the movie – an authoritarian mother with no mercy for the wavering. Again, as I have said in earlier blog entries, watching “old” movies made even in 1979, seem like from a different time all together. Scenes are drawn out, people are shown walking from one location to another, and conversations last more than 30 seconds. This is a miniseries that really does justice to Waugh’s book of the same name, and I can’t imagine how the new movie, also of the same name, can possibly portray this expansive novel in 2 hours. I am going to see it surely. Maybe it will even come to a location near me, doubtful, but there are always DVDs.

Brideshead Revisited

I have been watching a few series lately. I just finished a BBC series called Lilies about three working class sisters from Liverpool. It tells about their exploits right after WWI. It's pretty good and I especially enjoyed the accents and their passionate-unrestrained ways. Taking place at about the same time, but about a completely different English class, Brideshead Revisted tells about Charles Ryder who becomes infatuated by the upper crust family who inhabit Brideshead Estate. I loved this series many years ago over 25 years ago (yikes, I must be getting old) and thought, with the new movie of the same name coming out, I had better see it again. I just started it -- it's a long one, 11 hours! So I will be working on this one for a while.
I will report after finishing it!

Becoming Jane, Again

It was at the library, that is why I got it again. I didn't really like it that much the first time, so why did I watch it again?I still found it weirdly inappropriate for the world of Jane Austen, boxing? Prostitutes? Naked buts? Come ON. I watched the extras and all of the actors dutifully shared their knowledge of the time, costumes, manners or the world of Jane Austen, yet the movie seems to stray from this, in so many ways. Anne Hathaway who plays Jane too.

Other thoughts
Super sexy brother Henry -- I could see him in something else
Not as good as PBS’ attempt at a Jane Bio, Miss Austen's Regrets

Mama Mia

I had the pleasure of seeing Mama Mia with my mother, aunt, and uncle which really added to the enjoyment of this rather silly movie. Besides the good company, the movie is worth watching to see Meryl Streep belt out Abba tunes and to marvel at the incredible Greek island where the movie is filmed. As a side note, the young groom in the film was the Willoughby in the recent PBS Sense and Sensibility. Gosh, there does always seem to be a Jane Austen connection.

Emma

The 1996 Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow is such a delight. Wow, it came out over ten years ago and back when the movie first came out I do recall, I found the movie too slick and snappy and missing key elements of the weighty novel. Right now I am listening to Emma on librivox.org, so I can more accurately compare the novel with this movie. I see now that it made sense to take out a lot of the stray plot elements and also was surprised how much of the movie’s dialogue comes right out of the novel. Gwyneth Paltrow is a charming Emma and the sexy Jeremy Northram is probably way too cute to play the staid Mr. Knightly but he is fun to watch in the part. Oh, and I forgot that Ewan McGregor plays Frank Churchill (making me think he often plays goofy fops (see entry on Stay). Oh and don’t forget Sophie Thompson, Emma Thompson’s sister, as the chatterbox Miss Bates; she is a hoot in this movie, and her mother in the movie is her real life mother, Phylida Law. It was a lot fun watching Emma again.