Postcards from Oz - AU Edition

Christmas Greetings to all with my annual nativity scenes pic spam!




( Franconian Bethlehem awaits )

In which Buffy Summers already knew that the hardest thing in this world is how to live in it, Carol.

( Spoilers have to choose between the girl and the world )

Aaaaand the first teaser for Nolan's Odyssey is out. In some ways, my "will be the opposite type of adapatation of The Return " expectation came true - i.e. firm emphasis on the adventure on sea part of the story - in some it didn't, because Nolan seems to go for a traumatized war veteran aura around Odysseus (and his men) as well. Also - is that Tom "Spider-Man" Holland as Telemachus? This conjures up a few weird images. Oh, and, to give credit where credit is due: the aesthetics are gorgeous.




Speaking of Greek myths adaptations, I never read a single one of the books, but I am following the tv series adaption of Percy Jackson on Disney + and am charmed. Definitely much closer to the myths than either Disney's past endeavours (*cough* Hercules *cough* or Marvel's relationship to Norse mythology), though am confused to why the second season apparantly (we haven't seen him yet, he just keeps getting mentioned in dialogue) has decided to include Polyphemus as a villain and yet no one has mentioned ( a major mythological spoiler. )


There are still free spots on the January meme list. Greek (and Roman) myths opinions totally count as a topic. Ditto if you want me to speculate how the Odyssey would have been adapted by: a) Orson Welles, b) JMS (given the Tennyson of it all on B5), c) Ronald D. Moore. Bonus: Charlie Chaplin.

Watched completely on Apple +: Down Cemetery Road, a new series (I would have written miniseries, except I hear there'll be a second season), based on an earlier novel by Slow Horses author Mick Heron. Starring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson, both cast somewhat against type and having fun with it. Emma Thompson plays Zoe, a cynical private detective right out of the hard boiled age, if that one had female cynical hard drinking PI's, Ruth Wilson plays Sarah, starting out as somewhat naive, idealistic and disorganized. (I have seen Ruth Wilson in roles where she isn't a brilliant sociopath before! I swear I did! But Alice and Marisa Coulter are just so memorable!) Zoe starts out the story married, to another P.I. who is more the benevolent goodshoe type and whom she has feelings for but cheats on and generally argues a lot with, while Sarah is with a guy hiding total jerkness between a placid facade, but before the pilot is over, neither of these relationships are existent anymore. Both women - who live in Oxford, not London, which is a change, but the action doesn't stay there - through different ways find themselves uncovering the central dastardly plot which unsurprising given the author the show is based on involves fuck-ups by awful government agencies and the attempt to cover this up which leads to an ever higher body count. The Zoe and the Sarah storylines after a brief meeting in the pilot stay apart for half the season, and I was about to complain, but then the second half reunites them and gives me these actresses playing superbly against each other. If I have one complaint, it's that there wasn't really a pay-off for the existence of Talia the new defense secretary. But presumably in the second season?

Started to watch and stopped watching: Gunpowder on Amazon Prime. Look, show, two podcasts managed to turn me around on James VI and I and got me interested in Stuarts beyond the Restoration era, I'm in the market for this ! I'm also with you pointing out Catholics got a truly rough deal in the late Elizabethan and in the James era. But Kit Harrington brooding as Robert Catesby isn't going to cut it, and who does Mark Gatiss as Robert Cecil think he's playing, Shakespeare's Richard III?

Started watching, may or may not continue: The Name of the Rose, new tv version on Disney +. I mean, if there is an early 1980s novel begging for the miniseries treatment, it's absolutely that one, the OG Murders at a Monastery story. I would have thought a mniseries could offer the chance to include a lot more from the novel than the movie was able to, but foolish me, the show creators instead thought they needed some adiditional subplots. Adson now starts out as not really a novice, though he wants to be, because his father wants him with the imperial army instead. That's right, he now has Daddy Issues. (This is where you can tell there must be some American money involved.) William of Baskerville, aka the cleverest Holmes avatar in another setting before House, is played by John Turturro, who doesn't look anymore like the (reddish blonde) William of the book than Sean Connery did but does a decent job playing him. Somewhat unsurprisingly, like the movie, the series beefs up the part of Bernard(o) Gui. Who in the book shows up only in the second half and leaves again long before the big showdown, but Jean-Jacques Annoud already decided he didn't want an evil inquistor going to waste, but apparantly so did the creators of this one, so while Gui still doesn't arrive in the monastery before half point, we see him being evil and fanatical en route in every freaking episode. Did I mention there are new subplots? About which Adson, who is our narrator (voiced as an old man by Peter Davison, omg, that was a nice surprise), can't know?

( More spoilery observations for the first part of the series )

Incidentally, the excellent podcast History of the Germans (currently in its "Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg" season where the family with the famous chin and lower lip first seemingly hits rock bottom in three generations before young Maximilian marries Marie of Burgundy) did a great episode last year about the actual political and theological background of the rl events The Name of the Rose touches on, hilariously summarized as "Der Kurverein zu Rhens - starring William of Ockham and the cast of the Name of the Rose". You can listen to it or read the transcript here.

Aka the third Benoit Blanc mystery plotted and directed by Rian Johnson. Now, each of these movies has a main character who is not Blanc whose fate and/or motivation to solve the mystery is at the heart of the story - Martha in Knives Out and Helen in Glass Onion respectively - and in this case it's Father Jud, played (well and movingly) by Josh O'Connor. In each case, the movie's structure harks back to the classic age of detective mysteries with various twists and turns and a grand denouemonet while also commenting on the here and now in its social satire. If Glass Onion among other things went for the tech bros and the self satisfied "disruptors", Wake up, Dead Man! is very much about the US under the Orange Menace despite his name not mentioned even once. And lo and behold - it even offers hope. And hey, there is even a Star Wars gag. (Just for the record, I still stand by The Last Jedi being the only one of the sequel movies which actually tries to do something new and creative with the franchise. #RianJohnsonwasRight . The gag has nothing to do with that at all, though.)

( Vague spoilers have to offer from their own free will in order for it to mean something )