the mum and i are suckers for historical period drama. just give us the costumes, the settings and base it in some loose historical trappings (e.g. Edo, Japan; court of Phillip III and Empress Catherine; vikings; pirates of Cornwall…) and we’re all in!
to that, i offer this gem we have stumbled across:
this German production has all that and some facts that are reportedly true (if this article from History Channel is to be believed):
tragic. we are only 2 seasons in, and yet we know it won’t end well for the beautiful empress.
I highly, highly recommend Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace, about the Chinese emperor who ruled from about 1740 to 1799 and his “inner palace”; his wives and concubines. The acting is absolutely top notch, a real tour de force of amazing actresses. It’s available on youtube with English subtitles. Interesting too that it’s a Chinese interpretation of their own history, and their view of the concubinage system, which is a lot intrigue and ladies drinking tea;
Also, but a bit more melodramatic in acting style is Magnificent Century, a Turkish historical drama about Sulieman the Magnificent, and his harem, particularly Hurrem, who he ultimately married, indefiance of Ottoman tradition; once again, palace intrigue from a non-western perspective. The show isn’t as salacious as the trailer hints at.
I was glad that I’m Still Here won best international, but bummed it didn’t also win Best Picture (like Parasite’s double win). I also wish Fernanda Torres had won Best Actress, she was amazing.
You’ve got to donate to see it without a very obtrusive watermark. They don’t say how much you need to donate, but a subscription to all their films for a month only costs $5. Subtitles in English and Spanish.
oh yes! we loved The Great. as you say, Elle Fanning was incredible and funny. i felt that Nicholas Hoult just tore it up as Peter! running around in his mum’s pearls and silk robes, alway going on about the food! (and he’s pretty!) and Gillian Anderson as Catherine’s mum… i won’t say any more!
I have read I think, all the novels. George MacDonald Fraser could really write, and his novels are full of adventure, seemingly ideal for adaptation.
Except…
The screenwriters would have to scrub out great masses of misogyny and racism to make the stories palatable in the 21st century. Unfortunately those are the characteristics that make Flashman Flashman, and Fraser deliberately wrote him that way. He’s supposed to be a cad and a bounder. I don’t think he reflected Fraser’s actual attitudes, since in the books Flashman is repeatedly outsmarted and dominated by women and men of other races.
The only adaptation of the books I know of is Royal Flash, which has the advantage of being set in 19th century Germany.
This weekend I met up with some old friends of mine and went out to see a movie. We were originally thinking of maybe seeing the new Captain America film but we all have Marvel fatigue and the reviews for that movie weren’t great. So, even though we’re all men in our 40s, and some of us had not even seen the first two films in the series, we decided on Paddington in Peru instead. No regrets! It was pretty much what I expected.
Meanwhile, apparently we weren’t the only ones shying away from the new Captain America movie. There were only two people watching it in the theater where this happened, both ok, thank goodness:
Captain America is apparently so bad that it literally saved lives!
I saw the new Captain America movie. I wouldn’t say it’s bad. But I also wouldn’t say it’s good. It’s ok. It may be the okayest movie I’ve ever seen. It’s almost aggressively ok. I don’t feel ripped off, but I also don’t think I got my money’s worth. On a scale of 1-10, I would give it a 5. It’s literally just . . . meh. And I think, for a Captain America movie, that feels like a horrible failure. The other Captain America movies are some of the best of the MCU. Winter Soldier is easily in the top 5 of MCU films, and Civil War and the First Avenger are both top 10. This one? I dunno. How many MCU films have there been? Divide that in two. It’s right in the middle. It’s really not a bad movie. It’s just also not a good one.
I don’t know, and there were a few earlier ones that I also didn’t bother to see, like The Eternals. But what I hear is that this new movie had callbacks to that film (which I hear that many people would just as soon forget existed) as well as one of the Hulk movies from 20 years ago. It’s too exhausting for me to try to keep up with these convoluted MCU plot lines anymore.
The film is as much a sequel to the Ed Norton Incredible Hulk film from 2008 (the second film in the MCU) as it is the latest installment of Captain America. The other Hulk film, starring Eric Bana and Nick Nolte, predates the MCU and is not part of the official MCU canon.
