You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January 2009.
Actually, it’s a bit of a bleg.
Have any of my fellow port swillers out there seen the 2001 tee vee version of Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy?
I must admit that I have an awful hard time seeing Daniel Craig, of all people, as Guy Crouchback. Too much beefcake, I should have thought.
Anyhoo, I’m just trying to decide if this flick is Netflix-worthy.
From the Telegraph, it’s competitive underwater ironing. (Sorry I can’t paste the vid directly.)
No, I don’t believe this is a latter day Monty Python sketch. What a lot of American fans of Python don’t appreciate is that for the most part the Team didn’t make things up, but instead capitalized on the weirdness around them.
Those of you who regularly read Ace of Spades will know that the folks over there are considerably more on teh wild side than your humble host. However, for all their high octane hijinx, they certainly hit the nail on the head consistently (which is why I brought them along to the port-swillers’ blogroll). Witness Ace’s remarks in response to a post by Dr. Helen about the role of sex in maintaining relationships:
Men are simple creatures. Protoplasms. It is a strange irony that a woman can pretty much get whatever she wants from a guy with no arguments and no disagreements —- nothing but “Absolutely, dear” and “Whatever you want, honey” — by doing just one thing (but doing it two or three or sometimes four times a week).
Either women don’t quite get this, or are, you know, just too complicated to act upon it.
It’s baffling that women’s magazines even exist. All those wasted pages on “How to Keep Your Man.” Any article on this topic that contains more than three words (“Screw him lots”) is missing the big picture and dwelling on trivialities.
I’ve been laughing at this all afternoon.
Talk of the fact that Ciaran Hinds is too old to play Aragorn in the moovies now got me to thinking — What about Clive Owen?
And in what I can only take as a sign that I must be on to something, Mark Steyn just so happens to have reposted one of his All Time Great movie reviews. A sampling:
King Arthur (2004) is not your father’s Round Table. There’s no castles, no sword in the lake, no Mordred, no Holy Grail, no Camelot, no love triangle, no Richard Burton warbling ‘How To Handle A Woman’, and not a lot of women to handle in any case. Instead, this is supposedly the first Arthurian tale to be rooted in historical Arthenticity. There is a Round Table, but it looks alarmingly like the UN Security Council table, which, for all the claims of authenticity, I doubt you’d have found in a 5th-century Berwick furniture showroom.
And that’s where we are – the 5th century up at Hadrian’s Wall in the fag end of the Roman Empire. A group of elite soldiers from Sarmatia known as ‘knights’ are coming to the end of their 15-year tour of duty in Britain. Their leader is Arthur (Clive Owen), who’s no king. Instead, he’s half-Roman, half-Brit, but all knight, commander of the most respected band of fighting men in a fading empire. North of the wall is Scotland or, as it’s known here, Woad country, where the Woads live. The Woads are so called because they’re blue. You’d be blue, too, if your beloved native land was occupied by the Romans, and so a cunning Woad called Merlin is leading a guerrilla insurgency against Rome. If there was a song at this point, it would be ‘How To Handle A Roman’. But there isn’t, so instead the Woads slip across the wall, determined to push the Romans back down the M1: all Woads lead to Wome, as Elmer Fudd would say.
Nip over and read the rest.
Recently, in order to try and save a bit of dosh in these uncertain times, I started buying plonk-in-a-box, specifically the 3 liter Corbett Canyon Pinot Noir, which goes for ten bucks at the local Total Bev.
I must say that I am taking a keen, almost perverse, delight in this switch. Not only am I slashing my wine expenditure by about 75%, I find that for an ordinary evening’s swill the stuff really isn’t all that bad. I haven’t yet decided whether I like the taste because of the cheapness or in spite of it.
Sleepy Beth, in commenting on the post below about the painting of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy, has this to say:
“Firth has nothing on Ciaran Hinds.”
I highlight it because I’ve always thought that if I were responsible for casting a Lord of the Rings movie, Hinds is the fellah I’d want to play Strider/Aragorn. He’s got that rugged exterior and veiled majesty that Tolkien spends a lot of time developing but that seemed to sail right past Viggo what’s-his-name.
This reminds me: The other day a colleague expressed significant surprise when I mentioned that the eldest gel and I were deep into reading LOTR and that she was thoroughly enjoying it. He seemed to think it a bit odd that a girl should be so interested in the books. I don’t keep up with these things – is it unusual?
By the way, for those of you keeping track, last evening we read the discussion among Frodo, Sam and Faramir in the cave at Henneth Annun. If I may say so, I positively nailed Sam’s blurting out of his opinion of Boromir and the secret of the Ring, Frodo’s aghast response and Faramir’s reply. Perhaps this is because this passage is one of my favorites in the story (and Faramir one of my favorite characters).
Good Lord. A portrait of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy goes for £12,000 at auction:
Bonham’s auction house in London received several advance bids for the portrait, and competition between Austen fans pushed the price well above the £7,000 estimate.
The oil painting, which shows the actor gazing soulfully through the canvas in full period costume, featured in the fourth episode of the drama in which Elizabeth visits Darcy’s ravishing country estate, Pemberley.
It was accompanied at auction by a signed letter from Firth, who caused women nationwide to swoon collectively when he emerged from a lake tousled and dripping in a wet shirt during the same episode.
The actor wrote: “The painting was basically a bit part player in episode four of the BBC’s 1995 production of Pride and Prejudice.
“Looking at him now I would say he has weathered better than most of us. In fact, he is the only character you can meet in person who looks precisely as he did the day he was filmed.
“Whatever you think of him today, you can consider yourselves fortunate to have been spared his earliest incarnation. Mr Darcy mark one came across as a shabby, insubstantial, derelict looking actor.”
Julian Roup, a spokesman for Bonhams, said: “This painting sold for double its estimated value for the simple reason that the series so captured the heart of the viewing public, particularly the fairer sex.”
Actually, I know several lovely ladies who drop by here for a glass of port on a regular basis who’d heartily agree with this sentiment. But I’m not all that convinced that it is Austen’s literary merit that propelled such demand: I’ll bet that had the portrait been of Mr. Darcy emerging from the horse pond instead, the final price would have been even higher.
I’ve had about half a dozen liberal colleagues approach me so far today trying to get a rise out of me about the inauguration.
I have answered each approach – everything from snide barbs to bright, cheery enthusiasm – with the same thin and enigmatic smile.
Drives ’em nuts every time.
Close to the National Mall, Dee Cee is still pretty trashed this morning.
It’s not quite so bad as downtown Mobile, Alabama was when I was there the morning after Mardi Gras a couple years ago, but there are some definite similarities, both in sight and smell.
All in all, I think my decision not to wear my nicer shoes today was probably a good one.
My lunch today (Breakfast? Feh. A couple cups of coffee) was a big ol’ fruit concoction from Roebucks.
I spent the shank of the afternoon wracking up an hour’s worth of WiiFit exercise minutes, many of them accompanied by offensive computer commentary about my sense of balance.
My revenge? A Five Guys cheeseburger for din-dins, accompanied by a mound of fries and a couple glasses of wine.
La dolce vita, as far as I’m concerned.
The Port Stands At Your Elbow 
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