Stop. Trauma time!
Sep. 16th, 2006 06:42 pmSo, the DVD of Trauma showed up today from Netflix.
( Traumakissangel, featuring the Cellar of Doom and the Fusebox of Death )
( Traumakissangel, featuring the Cellar of Doom and the Fusebox of Death )
Hey, choir starts tonight. Cool. *hopes it's good*
Speaking of music, a Ballykissangel file for you all: "Peter and Assumpta's Theme" (er, I assume that's what it might be called), from episode 3.7, "Personal Call." Is preeeeetty. Is very pretty. Is also an AIFF file, which plays in iTunes and Quicktime, and I assume most other music players, although I make no guarantees.
Speaking of music, a Ballykissangel file for you all: "Peter and Assumpta's Theme" (er, I assume that's what it might be called), from episode 3.7, "Personal Call." Is preeeeetty. Is very pretty. Is also an AIFF file, which plays in iTunes and Quicktime, and I assume most other music players, although I make no guarantees.
( Bits and pieces about Atlantis )
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( Dear Ballyk Season Three Writers )
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In other news, I am currently loving Vanity Fair. Although the plot is completely disimilar, it's like if Persuasion focused on Louisa Musgrove, aka the only interesting character in the whole book, instead of the oh-so-perfect Anne Elliot. It even has an Anne sort of character in Amelia, but Thackeray continually takes pot-shots at her. I love it. Okay, Becky Sharpe may be on her way to a complete lack of morals, but as of page 45, I'm in love.
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( Dear Ballyk Season Three Writers )
*
In other news, I am currently loving Vanity Fair. Although the plot is completely disimilar, it's like if Persuasion focused on Louisa Musgrove, aka the only interesting character in the whole book, instead of the oh-so-perfect Anne Elliot. It even has an Anne sort of character in Amelia, but Thackeray continually takes pot-shots at her. I love it. Okay, Becky Sharpe may be on her way to a complete lack of morals, but as of page 45, I'm in love.
( Brief comment on Ballyk ep 3.2, 'Changing Times' )
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The Celtic radio station on iTunes is currently playing a song from Brigadoon. While I get the connection, that doesn't mean I have to like it.
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The Celtic radio station on iTunes is currently playing a song from Brigadoon. While I get the connection, that doesn't mean I have to like it.
( Ballyk episode ramblings, back half of S2 )
So, Elf, have I convinced you to watch this show yet? ;)
So, Elf, have I convinced you to watch this show yet? ;)
Meta like whoa (Ballyk, NX)
Aug. 27th, 2006 12:48 amRemember how I said I wanted to do a paper on how a similar premise is treated by two different TV programs?
Er, yes. I got another disc of Ballykissangel episodes from Netflix today.
( Really, really long treatise on Ballyk and Northern Exposure, with related 'ship comparisons and some babble about differences between America and Ireland. Spoilers for everything. )
( Ballyk episode comments, season two, first half )
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Hmmm. Well, I meant to read another hundred or so pages of A.S. Byatt's Possession tonight, but my meta ramblings ate up my evening. Whoops. More on that book when I finish it...
Er, yes. I got another disc of Ballykissangel episodes from Netflix today.
( Really, really long treatise on Ballyk and Northern Exposure, with related 'ship comparisons and some babble about differences between America and Ireland. Spoilers for everything. )
( Ballyk episode comments, season two, first half )
*
Hmmm. Well, I meant to read another hundred or so pages of A.S. Byatt's Possession tonight, but my meta ramblings ate up my evening. Whoops. More on that book when I finish it...
Ballyk and other stuff
Aug. 22nd, 2006 03:58 pm*head pops up from three hours of TV*
I meant to spread out the three episodes on the Ballykissangel DVD that came today over the course of the day. Told myself I could stop after just one, go catch up on e-mail, etc. Spread the crack out just a bit.
Ha. Hahahaha. I suppose it was my own fault for clicking "Play All" instead of on individual episodes, but...OMG, you guys. This show is amazing. The first three episodes, most of its immense charm came from funny, quirky characters, but these three have not only that charm, but also really interesting, knotty conflicts, and, particularly in the last episode of the season, fantastic acting from the two leads that led to an emotional rollercoaster that was reminiscent of Farscape. FARSCAPE, PEOPLE. I don't make comparisons like that lightly. Said emotional rollercoaster perhaps did not have quite the towering highs (there were more chuckles than screaming laughter) or the depressing depths (there were also no tears), but it was definitely there, and oh my god, I think I'm in love.
The end of the third season is gonna hurt.
Um, I think I may have to watch all of these episodes again tonight. And screencap like whoa.
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BTW, the theme is incredibly earwormy. It's just so jaunty! Now you, too, can get it stuck in your head for all eternity!
That site also contains the Vicar of Dibley theme, which is a choral setting of Psalm 23, and which is also stuck in my head. It's an interesting contrast.
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( Haiku meme, book quiz thing )
I meant to spread out the three episodes on the Ballykissangel DVD that came today over the course of the day. Told myself I could stop after just one, go catch up on e-mail, etc. Spread the crack out just a bit.
Ha. Hahahaha. I suppose it was my own fault for clicking "Play All" instead of on individual episodes, but...OMG, you guys. This show is amazing. The first three episodes, most of its immense charm came from funny, quirky characters, but these three have not only that charm, but also really interesting, knotty conflicts, and, particularly in the last episode of the season, fantastic acting from the two leads that led to an emotional rollercoaster that was reminiscent of Farscape. FARSCAPE, PEOPLE. I don't make comparisons like that lightly. Said emotional rollercoaster perhaps did not have quite the towering highs (there were more chuckles than screaming laughter) or the depressing depths (there were also no tears), but it was definitely there, and oh my god, I think I'm in love.
The end of the third season is gonna hurt.
Um, I think I may have to watch all of these episodes again tonight. And screencap like whoa.
*
BTW, the theme is incredibly earwormy. It's just so jaunty! Now you, too, can get it stuck in your head for all eternity!
That site also contains the Vicar of Dibley theme, which is a choral setting of Psalm 23, and which is also stuck in my head. It's an interesting contrast.
*
( Haiku meme, book quiz thing )
Bah. Netflix is taking forever these days. I'm on the one-at-a-time plan, and I sent back my last DVD on Tuesday. They're just now shipping out the next one, for arrival on...Tuesday. More than a week after the last one. Pah. (I guess, technically, this is actually the USPS's fault. The last time I had Netflix, they would've had the next disc to me by Saturday. Perhaps the volume has gone up faster than can be handled.)
But anyway, more Ballykissangel tomorrow! To celebrate, I'm using one of my two new Assumpta icons. Isn't she purty?
I did manage to get the "Ballykissdibley" Comic Relief special from my library yesterday. Heh. I'd never seen Vicar of Dibley before, but I'd heard of it. I watched some of the actual episodes on the DVD as well; it's definitely amusing, but unfortunately I can also predict the next joke about fifty percent of the time, so I don't think I'll watch any more. But I would like to see some of the French & Saunders sketch show, 'cause Dawn French is hilarious.
As well as getting that DVD, I wandered into the poetry and the Irish history sections. Yeah. As usual. The Nashville Public Library apparently has greatly increased its stock of LitCrit volumes since I was last there, not to mention of modern poets. I got a bunch of Seamus Heaney1, and a couple travel essay collections or memoirs, and a book on the Troubles in Belfast from the seventies to the nineties, because I still don't know as much as I ought about that place and time period. I usually stuck to the Celtic Twilight and the Easter Rising when researching and writing about Irish independence movements.
Have also been reading, er, Ballyk fanfic, very little of which is any good. But they've got the names of the characters spelled out, which is interesting. I will never understand how one can get something like "Porrig" out of "Padraig." Where does the "d" go? And let's not even go into "Shivan" from "Siobhan," although at least I knew that one already. Irish spelling is on crack. Or "craic," as they'd spell it. *facepalm*
I keep thinking, "Hey, it would be neat to learn Irish!" And then I look at the orthography and run screaming. Even if that weren't a problem, I could never learn this language because I will never in a million years be able to wrap my brain around cases. A semester of Old English taught me that much. Any number of irregular verbs in Spanish didn't phase me in high school, and gendered nouns were even okay, although I didn't ever really get why they were gendered, but the idea of declined nouns just makes my head spin.
Speaking of reading and writing, does anyone else find that letting an LJ entry sit for a while just takes away any desire to finish it and post it? I have a half-finished entry on rereading Tam Lin (which segues into rereading Alma Mater and to W.B. Yeats and then on to some stuff about being an English major...yeah, it's rambly), but it seems that if I don't write an entry and post it in one sitting, I can't bring myself to bother finishing the thing. Hmmm. And I still haven't done the plot vs. language poll I meant to do last week. Oof, I'm lazy.
1 I think after a year in the UK and a trip to Ireland, I can actually appreciate him and his fixation with land much more than when we read him in Irish Lit. Interestingly, the exact opposite has happened with Yeats; not that I appreciate him any less (check out the 4,000-word paper I did on him and William Morris that year, for one), but I've moved on from his early fairies-and-landscape-related stuff and am now more interested in his later works, which don't have much to do with land. Anyway, his poetry that does deal with the landscape of Ireland isn't as...hmmm...true? evocative? as Heaney's is. Of course, the seventy-odd years separating them doesn't help much. Not to mention the fact that Yeats' poetry is generally considered to have gotten steadily better throughout his lifetime. ...I'm destroying my argument here, so I'm going to stop.
But anyway, more Ballykissangel tomorrow! To celebrate, I'm using one of my two new Assumpta icons. Isn't she purty?
I did manage to get the "Ballykissdibley" Comic Relief special from my library yesterday. Heh. I'd never seen Vicar of Dibley before, but I'd heard of it. I watched some of the actual episodes on the DVD as well; it's definitely amusing, but unfortunately I can also predict the next joke about fifty percent of the time, so I don't think I'll watch any more. But I would like to see some of the French & Saunders sketch show, 'cause Dawn French is hilarious.
As well as getting that DVD, I wandered into the poetry and the Irish history sections. Yeah. As usual. The Nashville Public Library apparently has greatly increased its stock of LitCrit volumes since I was last there, not to mention of modern poets. I got a bunch of Seamus Heaney1, and a couple travel essay collections or memoirs, and a book on the Troubles in Belfast from the seventies to the nineties, because I still don't know as much as I ought about that place and time period. I usually stuck to the Celtic Twilight and the Easter Rising when researching and writing about Irish independence movements.
Have also been reading, er, Ballyk fanfic, very little of which is any good. But they've got the names of the characters spelled out, which is interesting. I will never understand how one can get something like "Porrig" out of "Padraig." Where does the "d" go? And let's not even go into "Shivan" from "Siobhan," although at least I knew that one already. Irish spelling is on crack. Or "craic," as they'd spell it. *facepalm*
I keep thinking, "Hey, it would be neat to learn Irish!" And then I look at the orthography and run screaming. Even if that weren't a problem, I could never learn this language because I will never in a million years be able to wrap my brain around cases. A semester of Old English taught me that much. Any number of irregular verbs in Spanish didn't phase me in high school, and gendered nouns were even okay, although I didn't ever really get why they were gendered, but the idea of declined nouns just makes my head spin.
Speaking of reading and writing, does anyone else find that letting an LJ entry sit for a while just takes away any desire to finish it and post it? I have a half-finished entry on rereading Tam Lin (which segues into rereading Alma Mater and to W.B. Yeats and then on to some stuff about being an English major...yeah, it's rambly), but it seems that if I don't write an entry and post it in one sitting, I can't bring myself to bother finishing the thing. Hmmm. And I still haven't done the plot vs. language poll I meant to do last week. Oof, I'm lazy.
1 I think after a year in the UK and a trip to Ireland, I can actually appreciate him and his fixation with land much more than when we read him in Irish Lit. Interestingly, the exact opposite has happened with Yeats; not that I appreciate him any less (check out the 4,000-word paper I did on him and William Morris that year, for one), but I've moved on from his early fairies-and-landscape-related stuff and am now more interested in his later works, which don't have much to do with land. Anyway, his poetry that does deal with the landscape of Ireland isn't as...hmmm...true? evocative? as Heaney's is. Of course, the seventy-odd years separating them doesn't help much. Not to mention the fact that Yeats' poetry is generally considered to have gotten steadily better throughout his lifetime. ...I'm destroying my argument here, so I'm going to stop.
I've hit the glut of Ballykissangel DVDs in my Netflix queue. Eeee! I've been waiting for this to come out on DVD, and me to be in a position to rent it, for probably five years or so. It's quirky and funny and utterly charming, as I knew it would be. (Hi, I was a bit fannish about this show before I ever saw it. It's Northern Exposure in Ireland, how could I not be? [1])
For example, something that had me on the floor:
(In Assumpta's pub; she's stopped stocking Guinness because only one person in town drinks it.)
Brendan: I want my usual, I want my cultural inheritance, I want the drink that defines my country!
Siobhan: Give him a pot of tea, then.
Any show that includes jokes about tea is excellent in my book. (Particularly since, in the course of doing my tea paper last year, I found that, per capita, the Irish drink more tea per year than the English. For true! My cultural stereotypes were turned upon their ears.)
In that same episode (which was titled "Live in My Heart and Pay No Rent," which I desperately wish I'd thought of, because it's awesome) there was also a poor hill shepherd who, upon hearing that the EU agency which gave him a subsidy for each sheep he had was going to start counting them by satellite rather than sending an agent out to do it by hand, made approximately a hundred wooden sheep and scattered them across the mountainsides. Possibly you have to see the whole set-up, but I was cracking up.
Also, the first episode featured the installation of a state-of-the-art confessional with sliding doors and air conditioning. (The main character is a priest, BTW.) People got stuck in it at the end when the doors malfunctioned, and the whole thing had to be lifted out via the pre-existing hole int he roof by crane. Hahahaha.
The town they shot the series in, in County Wicklow, is gorgeous. And apparently it lives in an unusually sunny patch of the country. ;) Dervla Kirwan is ethereally beautiful, although she has a less-than-flattering haircut in this season. Stephen Tompkins's voice, which always sounds like he has a cold, is driving me a bit crazy. (He also looks a bit like Major Nelson from I Dream of Jeannie, which is a bit weird.)
Oh, and there will be defrocking by Season Three. Heh. Peter and Assumpta are cute when they spar, possibly helped by the fact that the actors were engaged for a while during the filming. Aw.
[1] And by "Northern Exposure in Ireland," I mean I think I remember reading something about how the creators had been in contact with each other before this one was made, and they worked out some deal that meant BallyK could proceed with essentially the same exact premise as NX. To say that the parallels are striking would be understating things (young city man comes to a small, quirky town, tries to fit in and doesn't entirely succeed while having UST with the local spitfire woman; cast of quirky characters, including a shady businessmen and hapless henchmen, look on), although the characters are actually quite different despite starting from the same archetypes. Actually, it would be really, really cool to do a paper on how that premise was treated in different cultures. Oh, to be a grad student in something like Media Studies or Sociology or Anthropology or some other -pology...
For example, something that had me on the floor:
(In Assumpta's pub; she's stopped stocking Guinness because only one person in town drinks it.)
Brendan: I want my usual, I want my cultural inheritance, I want the drink that defines my country!
Siobhan: Give him a pot of tea, then.
Any show that includes jokes about tea is excellent in my book. (Particularly since, in the course of doing my tea paper last year, I found that, per capita, the Irish drink more tea per year than the English. For true! My cultural stereotypes were turned upon their ears.)
In that same episode (which was titled "Live in My Heart and Pay No Rent," which I desperately wish I'd thought of, because it's awesome) there was also a poor hill shepherd who, upon hearing that the EU agency which gave him a subsidy for each sheep he had was going to start counting them by satellite rather than sending an agent out to do it by hand, made approximately a hundred wooden sheep and scattered them across the mountainsides. Possibly you have to see the whole set-up, but I was cracking up.
Also, the first episode featured the installation of a state-of-the-art confessional with sliding doors and air conditioning. (The main character is a priest, BTW.) People got stuck in it at the end when the doors malfunctioned, and the whole thing had to be lifted out via the pre-existing hole int he roof by crane. Hahahaha.
The town they shot the series in, in County Wicklow, is gorgeous. And apparently it lives in an unusually sunny patch of the country. ;) Dervla Kirwan is ethereally beautiful, although she has a less-than-flattering haircut in this season. Stephen Tompkins's voice, which always sounds like he has a cold, is driving me a bit crazy. (He also looks a bit like Major Nelson from I Dream of Jeannie, which is a bit weird.)
Oh, and there will be defrocking by Season Three. Heh. Peter and Assumpta are cute when they spar, possibly helped by the fact that the actors were engaged for a while during the filming. Aw.
[1] And by "Northern Exposure in Ireland," I mean I think I remember reading something about how the creators had been in contact with each other before this one was made, and they worked out some deal that meant BallyK could proceed with essentially the same exact premise as NX. To say that the parallels are striking would be understating things (young city man comes to a small, quirky town, tries to fit in and doesn't entirely succeed while having UST with the local spitfire woman; cast of quirky characters, including a shady businessmen and hapless henchmen, look on), although the characters are actually quite different despite starting from the same archetypes. Actually, it would be really, really cool to do a paper on how that premise was treated in different cultures. Oh, to be a grad student in something like Media Studies or Sociology or Anthropology or some other -pology...
Oof. I can't believe I even watched an hour of that horrid The Cutting Edge sequel/remake that was on tonight. If they'd had D.B. Sweeney and Moira Kelly back to play Doug and Kate, it might have been worthwhile, but that was just...ick. Not that I was expecting anything good to come of that thing, but...yeah. Ow.
In better news, I got ahold of the first episode of the Casanova miniseries David Tennant (who is really very, very pretty) was in last year. "Hilarious" does not begin to cover it, I don't think. The opening absolutely hooked me, and then it went on from there. I cracked up so hard at DT's delivery of "This is beginning to scare me" directly to the camera when his third completely off-the-wall venture--from lawyer to doctor to astrologer--worked. Yay for breaking the fourth wall. Can't wait until PBS airs this at some point this year.
I kept thinking that Casanova's mother (played by Dervla Kirwan) looked awfully familiar, but couldn't imagine why. Then, for no apparent reason besides not wanting to face my research, I decided to see if there was any new Ballykissangel fanfic, and, through a long chain of events that involved me looking up an episode guide to try and remember what event a writer was referencing, I finally realized that she'd played Assumpta the pub-owner. Hee! Ballyk is, like Cupid was until last fall, one of those shows I've never actually seen, but which I've read and heard all about and still occasionally read fic for. ('Cause I'm a great big dork like that, you know.) Hey, it's basically Northern Exposure in Ireland, and there's the added bonus of defrocking of a priest. I'm in. Although that ending to season three is the stuff of nightmares, man. Talk about smooshing puppies, and I've never even seen it. It's times like this when I wish I had BBCAmerica.
...Ooooh, Netflix has DVDs. Say, flatmates, you wanna go in for a month of Netflix with me around the middle of April? It could be fun, particularly during senior week...
I'm beginning to realize that the BBC's usual stable of actors is apparently even smaller than that of whatever union includes all of those Canadian actors who regularly show up in sci-fi shows (Lisa Ryder, I'm looking at you). Aw. The chick who plays Henriette was also Kate the blacksmith in A Knight's Tale. Which isn't BBC, but is vaguely related to this topic. And now I'm just rambling, so I'm gonna go off and maybe do something useful, or at least something that doesn't involve me blathering away like this...
In better news, I got ahold of the first episode of the Casanova miniseries David Tennant (who is really very, very pretty) was in last year. "Hilarious" does not begin to cover it, I don't think. The opening absolutely hooked me, and then it went on from there. I cracked up so hard at DT's delivery of "This is beginning to scare me" directly to the camera when his third completely off-the-wall venture--from lawyer to doctor to astrologer--worked. Yay for breaking the fourth wall. Can't wait until PBS airs this at some point this year.
I kept thinking that Casanova's mother (played by Dervla Kirwan) looked awfully familiar, but couldn't imagine why. Then, for no apparent reason besides not wanting to face my research, I decided to see if there was any new Ballykissangel fanfic, and, through a long chain of events that involved me looking up an episode guide to try and remember what event a writer was referencing, I finally realized that she'd played Assumpta the pub-owner. Hee! Ballyk is, like Cupid was until last fall, one of those shows I've never actually seen, but which I've read and heard all about and still occasionally read fic for. ('Cause I'm a great big dork like that, you know.) Hey, it's basically Northern Exposure in Ireland, and there's the added bonus of defrocking of a priest. I'm in. Although that ending to season three is the stuff of nightmares, man. Talk about smooshing puppies, and I've never even seen it. It's times like this when I wish I had BBCAmerica.
...Ooooh, Netflix has DVDs. Say, flatmates, you wanna go in for a month of Netflix with me around the middle of April? It could be fun, particularly during senior week...
I'm beginning to realize that the BBC's usual stable of actors is apparently even smaller than that of whatever union includes all of those Canadian actors who regularly show up in sci-fi shows (Lisa Ryder, I'm looking at you). Aw. The chick who plays Henriette was also Kate the blacksmith in A Knight's Tale. Which isn't BBC, but is vaguely related to this topic. And now I'm just rambling, so I'm gonna go off and maybe do something useful, or at least something that doesn't involve me blathering away like this...
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