The Captive of Kensington Palace

Author: Jean Plaidy

Genre: Historical

Rating: C+

The Captive of Kensington Palace is the first in historical fiction author Jean Plaidy's Queen Victoria series and follows the life of the future Queen in the years of her childhood, primarily during the reign of her uncle King William IV - the book picks up shortly before the death of George IV and ends with the death of William IV.  Following a number of characters, but centred entirely around Victoria, it shows the conflicts between the English house of Hanover and the German house of Saxe-Coburg and Gothas which compete over control of Victoria - on one side is her long deceased father's family, and the uncles through which she will inherit the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and on the other side is her ever present and rather domineering mother and her mother's rather ambitious comptroller Sir John Conroy.

The thing that both makes this an exemplary work of historical fiction while also seriously disabling the book is Plaidy's adherence to history.  Often historical fiction looks at events from the perspective of fictional characters, created for the purpose of giving the author some creative licence, but Plaidy's works (both in regards to Captive and her many other books) instead look at things through the eyes of the real people during the real events.  She relies heavily on the use of non-fiction sources and primary sources - in this case including the letters and diaries of Victoria, passages of which are outright quoted here.   In a way, I really love it because it gives you such a strong sense of what actually happened, but at the same time it kind of makes the story itself a bit jilted and repetitive.  Peoples day-to-day lives tend to not be all that interesting, even when they're royalty, and can be rather repetitive, as we see in this work.  The problems that continually rise up, and the conversations (and arguments) that happen all just repeat the same things over and over again - Victoria will be Queen one day, William IV is like his father and destined for the straight jacket, the Duke of Cumberland wants to do away with Victoria although he will take the kingdom of Hanover as second place, the Duchess of Kent and Sir John want to control Victoria and fear the influence of the King and his wife, the King has no legitimate children and his wife is rather plain, but they're both in love.... it goes on like that.

The other problem with this book, and its follow up The Queen and Lord M, is that Victoria is very young and naive here, and as such her voice gets rather annoying after awhile. I found myself wanting to yell at her half the time, and tell her to learn about the position she is about to have thrust upon her - or even better, to yell at William IV or the Duchess of Kent for allowing Victoria to remain so uneducated on the matter.  In the case of the Duchess I really got it - an educated Victoria was a Victoria she could not control - but it pissed me off in regards to William IV, who did not want his heir controlled by the Duchess.  But then, that was the way history worked out here, so I can't really fault Plaidy, can I?  Overall, not Plaidy's best work, but still enjoyable.

Dark Lover

Author: J.R. Ward

Genre: Paranormal, Romance, Erotic Fiction

Rating: B

 Wrath is the King of the Vampires, known as the Blind King, but hasn't really embraced his title.  Then, one day his long time friend and brother in arms Darius asks Wrath to help his daughter, Beth, through her transition to vampire, shortly before being killed by a lesser - the vampires enemies.  Wrath then takes it upon him to help Beth, before slowly coming to realize that it is not enough to fight the lessers with his brothers, he must also lead his people.

There are a few things that should be noted here.  One is that while Dark Lover is not the best book in J.R. Ward's The Black Dagger Brotherhood series it is the one that opens us up to the world within which the series is set - and what an interesting world that is.  The second is that Ward's vampires here are really very different from other vampires, eliminating a lot of the things that really make them a threat to humans - and really removing them from the world of humans.  The third is that these books are to a degree formulaic and once you figure out the formula the ultimate ending to things becomes clear - not that you're not goign to be apprehensive and crying at some point before hand.

This book is fun.  The vampires are awesome, and really love how Ward goes back and forth between a number of different perspectives - telling the story of both the book's core relationship and things that are going on in the periphery.  I really liked the humans in this book too, although I was a bit disappointed to see that with the exception of Beth and Butch they disappear in the later books.  My favourite part, though, is that the vampires are just so different from any other vampires I've ever seen before. I love when I'm reading a fantasy book that seems to be inspired by other fantasy books but are also different and strike out on their own.  The problem that I have with some books is that their authors so clearly don't enjoy reading the genre in which they write, which is something that I never felt in Dark Lover.  It's a good, engrossing, quick read.  Perhaps a bit smutty or trashy, but still fun.

Week in Review: December 24 - 29

Birthdays - Two birthdays this week, Game of Thrones' Kit Harington, better known as Lord Jon Snow, and Dame Maggie Smith, known most recently for her work in Downton Abbey, as the Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, and the Harry Potter films, as Professor Minerva McGonagall.

Movies - No new movies this week, so instead we did Christmas romance in Love Actually, the story of Jesus' birth in The Nativity Story, and rather raunchy comedy in Bachelorette. 

Books - Book of the week was Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon, the fourth in the Outlander series and the first set-in-America book of hers.  While not as strong as the first ones in the series, it's definitely better than Voyager.

TV - Earlier in the week we did this year's Christmas Special of Downton Abbey, which I enjoyed despite its heavy handedness, and yesterday we did the fourth season of Project Runway Australia, which I did not enjoy, and the second season of Homeland, which I had mixed feelings about.

Recommendations - The only movie recommendation this week that I didn't also make last week was for Promised Land, which is getting a limited release.  Not that I'm complaining though, as it gives me a chance to get caught up on some of the movies released in the last few weeks.

Next Week - Next week is going to be a surprise of a week.  Les Misérables will be up, as will The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, making up for the lack of a new movie this week.  Book of the week will be Dark Lover, the first instalment in J.R. Ward's paranormal romance series The Black Dagger Brotherhood, which I've gotten really addicted to.  I'm not too sure what else we'll be doing, movie, TV, or bookwise, so you'll have to wait and see.

Requests - Anything I should check out? Let me know!

Project Runway Australia (Season 4)

Starring: Megan Gale, Alex Perry, Claudia Navone, Peter Morrissey

Creator: Eli Holzman

Genre: Reality, Competition, Fashion

Rating: C+

The fourth season of Project Runway Australia  is, much like all seasons of instalments in the Project Runway franchise, follows a number of designers - primarily from Australia (although two contestants came to Australia from elsewhere, one from San Francisco and one from London), and primarily in their early-to-mid twenties - as they compete to be titled the best designer.

Um., so yeah.  While I really enjoy the American instalments in the Project Runway franchise I wasn't a huge fan of the Australian one.  There was a general culture issue - the big names in celebrity guest judges were names that I had almost entirely never heard of before, and thus was never really wowed or amazed by - nor did I make the link between the challenge and the guest judge, although that's my fault and not the show's.

The season's biggest flaw, in my opinion, was the general unlikeability of the contestants.  There were a few that I did like and found myself rooting for, but for the most part they were all whiny, annoying individuals who seemed to be just out of fashion school.  They often seemed to be either amateurs or costume designers, and as such watching them week after week after awhile got rather dull.  I also disagreed with the winner, whose collection overall I thought was probably the weakest.  In all, I doubt I'll watch the next season (if there is one) of Project Runway Australia.

Homeland (Season 2)

Starring: Claire Danes, Damian Lewis, Morena Baccarin, David Harewood, Diego Klattenhoff, Jackson Pace, Morgan Saylor, Mandy Patinkin, Jamey Sheridan, David Marciano, Navid Negahban

Creator: Gideon Raff

Genre: Psychological Thriller, Serial Drama

Rating: B+

I'm still a bit undecided on the second season of Homeland, owing largely to the sheer  unbelievability of a lot of it.  It kind of lost me about mid-way through the season, only to bring me right back into it at the end.  While I like being brought back, I don't like being lost in the first place.

The second season of Homeland switches things up a bit from the first.  At first things are all about getting Carrie (Danes) back into the business of the CIA, while Brody (Lewis) struggles with the duality of his life and identity, as he acts as both a patriotic family man and a covert terrorist.  Then the CIA finds his suicide video and discover what he's up to - and use Carrie to manipulate Brody into acting as a agent for the CIA against Abu Nazir (Negahban).  Through it all, there is the underlying theme of the relationship, or possibility thereof, between Brody and Carrie, and the implications that it has for both her job and his family.

I really didn't buy Brody's conversion back to being a patriotic American.  I don't think that you can have feelings as strongly as he had in the first season - he was prepared to blow up himself in order to kill the Vice President of the United States - only to very quickly switch back to being a patriot again.  As such, the whole plot with Brody really bothered me because I never really thought that he was being straight with us.  This is in a huge contrast to season one, when I spent the a huge chunk of the season unsure of Brody's motivations and allegiance and hoping that it was one way, but suspecting that it was another - this season I was told it was one way, then another, all while getting a bit bored with it.  I think I liked Brody more as a terrorist than as a former terrorist.

I liked what they did with Carrie a lot more.  Her mental instability really is key here, and I think in a lot of ways the relationship with Brody - and the things that Brody kind of gets away with - is dependant on her being mentally unstable.  I think Danes' character here is probably one of my favourite characters on TV right now, which kind of says a lot because I love a lot of TV's characters.  Danes does a great job, even when I'm not buying the actual plot of the show.  In a manner, while the character's believably is aided heavily by her mental instability it is Danes' skill as an actress that makes that instability believable in itself.  Kudos!

My favourite part about this season, however, has to be Brody's family, namely his daughter Dana (Saylor).  Her struggles were far more believable and relate-able to me than anything else that was going on here.  There was a point when I almost wished that Homeland was not about the plot to say the USA from a terrorist threat (or multiple terrorist threats) but rather about a family dealing with a father's rise into politics (with or without the whole father-is-a-possible-terrorist aspect of the plot).  There was a lot of greatness and potential for even more greatness within that plot.  Furthermore, I kind of see potential for greatness within Morgan Saylor that I expect to see in her future endeavours.

Birthday: Dame Maggie Smith

Today is the 78th birthday of Dame Maggie Smith, a woman who in my humble opinion should be considered to be a national treasure in Great Britain.

Dame Maggie's most recent work has been as the Dowager Countess of Grantham, Violet Crawley in the critically acclaimed Downton Abbey, where she is by and large the best part of the show.  In addition to being a Dowager Countess, she has also been a nun in the Sister Act films, a wizard and a teacher in the Harry Potter films, a Countess in Gosford Park, a Queen in All the King's Men, a Duchess and mother to a King in Richard III, a Greek god in Clash of the Titans, and as Wendy Darling in Hook.

In addition to being an absolutely amazing actress, Dame Maggie is also a mother to actors Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, through her first marriage to actor Sir Robert Stephens (whose last wife, Patricia Quinn, is probably best known as Magenta in The Rocky Horror Picture Show), and a grandmother through both her sons.  Dame Maggie's second husband was playwright and screenwriter Beverly Cross, whose second play, Strip the Willow, is credited with having helped make her a star.  In addition to turning 78 this year, Dame Maggie has also received numerous nominations for her roles in all three works that she's appeared in this year, Downton Abbey, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and Quartet, including two Golden Globes (results still pending), two BAFTAs, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards (also still pending), and won an Emmy, a Satellite Award, and a Women Film Critics Circle Award.

Clearly the woman is still going strong, even at 78.  Happy birthday, Dame Maggie!

Recommendations: December 28

Most of these I already recommended last week, because they were released on Tuesday, but I'm going to recommend them again in case Christmas got in the way of your movie viewing.

Django Unchained - Feel good movie of the year, right? Or not.  This one's getting a lot of criticism because of the tone that it takes and the language that it uses, but is reported to be good.

Les Misérables - The musical about the French Revolution, this one just looks great all around - and the fact that it's directed by the guy who did The King's Speech just, in my mind, makes it better.

Promised Land - This one's just getting a limited release for now, I'm unsure if it will be getting a wider release later on.  Reuniting Matt Damon with his Good Will Hunting director Gus Van Sant, this environment minded drama looks good although it's getting mixed reviews right now.

The Words - If you missed this one in theatres (lucky you) and still want to see how you shouldn't do a movie about writing a book, The Words is now out on DVD!  Despite the general hotness of its leads, it really falls flat.

It's evidently a really slow week for DVD releases, because asides from The Words the only other release I can find is the box sets of seasons 1 - 3 of Veronica Mars, which I'm pretty sure was already available on DVD.  So... yeah.  Go watch Batman or something, everyone.

Les Misérables - Before it was a musical it was a book by French author Victor Hugo.  In the many years since its release it has become known as one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century, which is saying something if you really think about it - all of the novels of the nineteenth century that the common person can name tend to fall into the category of being great novels.  Definitely worth a read, although there is far less singing in this version.

Downton Abbey (2012 Christmas Special)

Starring: Hugh Bonneville, Jessica Brown Findlay, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Brendan Coyle, Michelle Dockery, Siobhan Finneran, Joanne Froggatt, Rob James-Collier, Phyllis Logan, Elizabeth McGovern, Sophie McShera, Lesley Nicol, Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Penelope Wilton, Amy Nuttall, Lily James

Creator: Julian Fellowes

Genre: Period Drama

Rating: B+

Okay, so I spent a lot of this episode cringing for various reasons.  It's a bit heavy handed, especially with the foreshadowing,and so a lot of the episode is spent going "don't do this, don't do this."  Set in September 1921, about nine months after the conclusion of season three, this year's Christmas Special followed a number of plots.  The main part of the Crawley family, has gone north to Scotland to see Lady Rose MacClare (James) and her parents, the Marquess and Marchioness of Flintshire (Peter Egan and Phoebe Nicholls).  There Lord and Lady Grantham (Bonneville and McGovern) try to help the Marquess and Marchioness with their failing marriage, Mary (Dockery) and Matthew (Stevens) fret over the impending birth of their child while also worry about the attention that Edith (Carmichael) is getting from her newspaper editor, Michael Gregson (Charles Edwards).  Bates (Coyle), Anna (Froggatt), Molesley (Doyle), and O'Brien (Finneran) all make the trip, with O'Brien coming to head with the Marchioness' lady's maid.  Not invited on the trip is Tom Branson (Leech), who remains behind at Downton with the staff.  Here he's brought to question his role and position in the family, and whether or not he's being true to himself, by new maid Edna (MyAnna Buring), who happens to be attracted to him.  Meanwhile the younger staff, lead by footmen Jimmy (Speleers) and Alfred (Milne) are hoping for some time off while the family's away, but Carson (Carter) has other thoughts about that.  Also back in Downton is Isobel (Wilton), who has begun to get cozy with Dr. Clarkson (David Robb).  Oh! And Mrs. Patmore (Nicol) has a suitor in new grocer Tufton (John Henshaw), although Mrs. Hughes (Logan) isn't too sure of his motives.

I enjoyed the struggle between the younger staff, who want some time off, and the older staff, who view the family being away as a time to clean the house properly.  I thought it was a really great plot, especially as Mrs. Hughes supports both the younger and the elder staff, depending on which one she's talking to.  I'm really glad that she wasn't the character they decided to kill off last season, simply because I don't think the house would run nearly as efficiently without her.  Actually, I think all around I really enjoyed the various plots for all the main servants, even O'Brien, who's struggles for once make her look like something other than the villain.

What I was a bit more iffy on was the storylines for the Crawleys and Tom in general.  Isobel's was cute and I was really into it throughout and I look forward to how, if at all, they deal with it in the next season.  I hope so; I'm never really a big fan of her storylines, but I think this could be one that I'd really enjoy.  I'm not too sure how I feel about the Ethel plot line - I can't help but think that we're being set up for Ethel being screwed over romantically, which I feel we've done enough at this point.  I get it, Ethel is unhappy in love and going to die an old maid.  Let's move on now, shall we?  I kind of saw the solution to the Flintshire's problem coming a mile away, although I'm not complaining - I think Lady Rose is going to be a good addition to the cast, especially with the departure of Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay).  I think, if given the chance, Rose could become my new favourite of the upstairs ladies.

The two things that I hated the most, however, was the foreshadowing about the Matthew/Mary plot and the overall Tom plot.  Let's do Tom first, because the Matthew/Mary stuff is somewhat spoiler-ish.  I think over the course of this series Tom is one of the characters that has probably grown and changed the most - and it's a growth and change that I really like.  He was a member of the staff who fell in love with the Lord's daughter, got married, unwillingly joined the family, then gradually became accepted by the family.  Now, however, without Sybil he's still a bit lost and left alone, without the family he's beginning to question how much he's changed.  The overall relationship, and flirtation, with Edna, left me worried - I'm not ready to see Tom leave the Crawley family and go back to being the person he was at the start of the series, nor am I ready to see him move on from Sybil.  I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.  Now... if you've paid attention to the rumours about Downton since the end of season three, then you kind of new what was coming - and if you didn't pay attention, the show gave you plenty of opportunity to anticipate it (and I'm going to very strongly allude to it in the next bit here).  There's a degree of foreshadowing that's appropriate, then there's what Downton did here.  That's not to say that I didn't like the actual plot, I did and really it's exactly what I was hoping would happen given the rumours, I just didn't like sitting there going "oh, yeah, x is going to happen."  In the end, it was handled nicely, but the lead up was too heavy handed.

Bachelorette (2012)

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher, Lizzy Caplan, James Marsden, Kyle Bornheimer, Rebel Wilson, Adam Scott

Director: Leslye Headland

Genre: Comedy

Rating: B

What do you do when your "fat friend" gets married before you?  This is the problem presented in Bachelorette, as three friends, Regan (Dunst), Gena (Caplan), and Katie (Fisher) come to terms with the impending marriage of their "fat friend," Becky (Wilson).  Regan, the maid of honour, has always thought that she would be the first to marry, and is particularly devastated.  Gena, is insecure in her life, possibly addicted to drugs, and not yet over her ex-boyfriend, Clyde (Scott), who will be at the wedding.  Gena, really, is just a bitch.  After a fight with the bride the night before the wedding the trio get drunk and do cocaine, lament about their lives and the wedding, and decide to play with the wedding dres.  This all goes horribly wrong when they manage to rip the dress in two, and the night is spent in a mad scramble to try to fix it.

Going into this, I wasn't particularly sure about the film.  The three leads aren't exactly likeable, and I found the humour to be more offensive than funny.  Then the dress rips and the mad scramble starts and things really start to fall into place.  I really enjoyed the mad scramble and I found that with a goal in mind the characters all really seemed to become more likeable.  I never really wanted to embrace Isla Fisher's Gena - at the end, she was still really just a bitch, although I must say I didn't outright hate her or anything.  I loved Lizzy Caplan, though.  At the start she was the only character who I thought I might like, then I didn't, then I absolutely loved her.  Hers was the journey that made the most sense and was the most fun - but then, anything that includes "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" by The Proclaimers is awesome.  In the end, though, I found Dunst's character to be the most intriguing. It's really your typical story of a girl who appears to have everything, but really has nothing, but I still like what they did with it.

This movie gets a lot of comparison to The Hangover and Bridesmaids.  In my opinion it's a far better female equivalent of The Hangover than Bridesmaids ever was.  Where Bridesmaids is about women hating each other and fighting over whose the best bridesmaid, The Hangover series is about guys getting drunk and having an adventure before a wedding, with hilarious results - while Bachelorette does have a good amount of infighting among the bridesmaids and with the bride, the key element here is the pre-wedding adventure, with hilarious results.  It's a movie centred around a wedding, but also not centred around the wedding, and that's really why I enjoyed it.  It was fun.

Birthday: Kit Harington

Today is the twenty-sixth birthday of Kit Harington, better known as (Lord) Jon Snow, on TV's Game of Thrones.

Prior to Game of Thrones, Kit was in absolutely nothing (at least according to his IMDb page).  The only other thing he's been in, so far, is Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, which he appeared in along-side his GoT on-screen father, Sean Bean.  Game of Thrones, however, is not his only book-to-movie adaptation; in the next couple of years he's set to appear in The Seventh Son, based on the young adult novel The Spook's Apprentice by Joseph Delaney, and after that he is to voice the villain in How to Train Your Dragon 2, which is loosely based on the books by Cressida Cowell.  He has other stuff coming out too, but most importantly is the third season of Game of Thrones (as well as any future seasons, assuming he survives the third, which is an assumption you should never make with this series - the author of the books upon which the show is based, George R.R. Martin, loves killing people).

Point being, happy birthday Kit, and let's hope you survive long enough to do many seasons of GoT.

The Nativity Story (2006)

Starring: Keisha Castle-Hughes, Oscar Isaac, Shaun Toub, Ciarán Hinds, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Stanley Townsend

Director: Catherine Hardwicke

Genre: Drama, Family, Religious

Rating: C+

Despite the fact that I've never really been religious, I've always enjoyed religious movies.  I might not believe that the story actually happened, but I've never found that it's stopped me from enjoying the story itself - much like how I enjoy Harry Potter without believing that Hogwarts exists.

The Nativity Story tells the story of Mary (Castle-Hughes), a young girl who has been told by God that she will become pregnant with His child, who will be named Jesus.  Mary is betrothed to Joseph (Isaac), and through the course of the story the two must struggle with what Mary's pregnancy means for each of them and the world around them.  Also dealing with such a struggle is King Herod (Hinds), who has learned of a prophecy predicting that a man will emerge as King of the Jews - a title which Herod thinks is rightfully his.  Herod is willing to go to great lengths in order to ensure that the prophecy is not fulfilled, and these lengths in turn influence the struggles of Mary and Joseph, the parents (in a manner) of the prophesied man.

This is not an original take on the story, and as such I think it really suffers.  The story that it's telling is one that we've heard many, many times before and thus this movie can be a bit dull.  The acting isn't stellar either, asides from Keisha Castle-Hughes and Oscar Isaac everyone's performance is a bit forgettable.  There's nothing really amazing about this movie - which in itself is sad, given as it's about Jesus.

Where Nativity does do well is in the depiction of the relationship between Joseph and Mary.  I think my favourite part about this entire film was Joseph and seeing him coming to terms with what his life has become.  At one point, Joseph says to Mary "I wonder if I will even be able to teach him anything," and in a single sentence surmises much of the struggle that he's been going through throughout this movie - the actual him having to come to terms with the fact that his wife is pregnant with the child of someone else is dealt with rather quickly.  I love this sentence and I really loved how you can see Joseph's struggle throughout, and in a way relate to it a lot more than Mary's struggle.  As weird as it sounds, the hero of this piece for me was Joseph, not Mary or her unborn child.

Love Actually (2003)

Starring: Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightley, Martine McCutcheon, Bill Nighy, Rowan Atkinson, Lúcia Moniz, Thomas Sangster, Gregor Fisher, Andrew Lincoln, Kris Marshall, Heike Makatsch, Martin Freeman, Joanna Page

Director: Richard Curtis

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Rating: A

"Let's go get the shit kicked out of us by love"

Love is all around.  That is, very literally, the message of the 2003 film Love Actually.  The thing is, however, that this film isn't just about romantic love, although that does feature rather heavily, as it looks at the love between lovers, friends, and family.  There's even the loss of love and unrequited love and the whole shebang.  Love is all around.

The film follows a collection of people, all intricately connected to one another.  David (Grant) is the newly elected Prime Minister of Great Britain, and develops an attraction for a new junior member of his staff, Natalie (McCutcheon).  David's sister, Karen (Thompson), is having problems in her marriage - although she's not entirely aware of it yet - as her husband, Harry (Rickman) is enticed by his flirtatious new secretary Mia (Makatsch).  Also working for Harry is Sarah (Linney) and Karl (Rodrigo Santoro).  Sarah is in love with Karl and has been since she started working at the company, although neither she nor Karl have made any moves yet.  Karen's friend Daniel (Neeson) is newly widowed and unsure of how to help his stepson Sam (Sangster), who has fallen in love with classmate Joanna (Olivia Olson).  Sarah's friend Jamie (Firth) has discovered that his girlfriend is sleeping with his brother and in order to deal he retires to his French cottage, where he meets Aurélia (Moniz), who only speaks Portuguese.  Jamie and Sarah both attended the wedding of Juliet (Knightley) and Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor).  Juliet has long thought that Peter's best friend Mark (Lincoln) hated her, when in actuality he's been in love with her this whole time.  Also at the wedding is Colin (Marshall), a British man who has decided to go to America where his accent will instantly make him a hit with the ladies.  His friend Tony (Abdul Salis) doesn't believe this is the best idea.  Tony is the production assistant of a film where John (Freeman) and Judy (Page) are body doubles for a sex scene.  Overseeing it all is rock and roll legend Billy Mack (Nighy)'s attempt to have a #1 Christmas hit, a variation of The Troggs' "Love is all Around".  Billy Mack's one friend is his longtime manager Joe (Fisher).  Oh, also, there's minor character Rufus (Atkinson) who provides a couple antics and was initially supposed to be a Christmas angel before being dropped as such - I still like to think of him as one.

This is the kind of film that movies like New Years Eve, Valentine's Day, and What to Expect When You're Expecting all try to be.  Centred around one common theme it tells the story of a bunch of different people who are all connected but at the same time unrelated.  There's the perfect amount of characters here, with the story focusing heavily on some and not so heavily on others.  There are no real twists, you can see the endings that end up happening coming for miles, but it's not really a movie that needs twists.  Each of the storylines is absolutely awesome and each of the characters is great.  Even John and Judy, who get the briefest of scenes, have the feel of being these thoroughly developed characters.  You know that they exist outside of the sex acts that they're miming.

The other thing that I really like about the film is that while you can see the endings coming, some of them aren't necessarily the ones that you want to see happen.  I always feel a but guilty as I watch the Mark/Juliet/Peter triangle, because no matter how much I know Juliet and Peter are in love and even though I think Peter's a great guy, I want Juliet to leave him and hook up with Mark.  At the same time, I want Harry to smarten up and be with his wife.  I don't care so much about some plots - like the Colin one, which I think was just for laughs, or the Sam one, which I think is a bit cliched - but Love Actually is more than just the sum of its parts.  It's just sheer awesomeness.

In addition to being a story about love, this is also a comedy, to which it does so rather nicely.  The amount of comedy is different in each plot, and to an extent so is the style, but somehow it works here.  Even with their differences, they all seem to work well together, they mesh like a really good collage - like a puzzle depicting a picture of Mickey made out of a bunch of smaller images of scenes from Disney movies.  The one-liners keep on coming in this one, as do the little scenes that are just hilarious.  If you haven't seen this movie yet, I recommend you at least look up the image of Hugh Grant dancing to "Jump (For My Love" by The pointer Sisters.

Drums of Autumn

Author: Diana Gabaldon

Genre: Historical, Romance, Sci-Fi

Rating: A-

The fourth instalment in the Outlander series, Drums of Autumn takes our heroes Claire and Jamie Fraser to the American colonies just before the American Revolution.  While Claire knows what is going to happen she's not certain an all the details and knows that she and her family must walk a thin line so as to survive the Revolution with their lives intact.  Newcomers to the land, the Frasers must establish themselves and Jamie dreams of gathering up the men that he was in prison with.  Meanwhile, in the mid-20th century their daughter Brianna is coming to terms with now essentially being an orphan, having lost her mother and the father that she has only just learned of.  In order to come to terms with this, Brianna and the historian Roger Wakefield seek out information about Claire and Jamie, with the hope of discovering what happens to them.

The question that I always have here is just why Claire and Jamie decide to settle in America, at least knowing what they know.  Regardless of their allegiance to the British crown (which does exist for Claire if not her husband), being somewhere largely unaffected by the war just seems kind of safer and in the long run smarter.  Once they commit to making life work in America I get why they chose to stay, but I always wonder why they decided to make that commitment in the first place.  I don't even buy that Jamie wouldn't have had friends or family in Canada to help him establish himself - Jamie seems to have friends or family just about everywhere he goes.

That being said, I did like the general story of Drums.  Things get a lot more complicated in this part of the series than they ever seemed to be in the first two (or three) books, but it's an enjoyable complicated.  I am never too sure about Brianna and Roger as characters, and even less so as time travellers.  Claire seems to have fit in both the 18th and the 20th century, while Brianna and Roger seem to only fit in the 20th, despite their travelling to the 18th (and Jamie, who is stationary in time, doesn't seem as though he would fit in the 20th, although if given the opportunity and need I have no doubt that he would make it work if it meant being with Claire).  I do like the overarching villain of Stephen Bonnett, though, and find the threat that he adds to things to be really interesting.  I grew to kind of hate Geillis in the earlier books, and not in a good way, so I was glad to see that they were really done with her and had moved on to a new threat - or to at least be given that feeling.

Week in Review: December 17 - 22

Birthdays -  Birthdays this week were Steven Spielberg and Eugene Levy, who both turned 66.

Movies - New movie of the week was The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2, which is my new favourite instalment of the Twilight Saga.  Older movies were Man on a Ledge and The Ledge, neither of which was very good, and two shorts, Paperman and Partysaurus Rex, which were both good.  My favourite of the week was probably Paperman.

Books - Book of the week was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which is probably my least favourite of the Harry Potter series.

TV - Three TV shows this week; the third seasons of Grey's Anatomy, The Big Bang Theory, and Sons of Anarchy.  While I liked them all, I had some mixed feelings about elements of the plots.

Recommendations - This week we actually did two sets of recommendations, one for Friday and one for Christmas Day.  The Friday movies that I'm looking forward to seeing the most are This is 40, Zero Dark Thirty, and The Impossible, while the Christmas movies that I'm looking forward to seeing are Les Misérables, and Django Unchained.

Next Week - Okay, so book-wise we're going to do Diana Gabaldon's Drums of Autumn, and TV-wise we've got the second season of Homeland and the fourth season of Project Runway Australia.  Movie-wise, I'm not entirely sure yet - for sure we'll be doing Love Actually, The Nativity Story, and Bachelorette.  There may or may not be a new movie, we'll see.

Requests - Anything I should watch or read? Let me know!

Grey's Anatomy (Season 3)

Starring: Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh, Katherine Heigl, Justin Chambers, T.R. Knight, Chandra Wilson, James Pickens, Jr, Isaiah Washington, Patrick Dempsey, Kate Walsh, Sara Ramírez, Eric Dane

Creator: Shonda Rhimes

Genre: Medical Drama, Serial Drama
Rating: B-

In many ways the third season of Grey’s Anatomy is one of my favourite seasons of the show, while at the same time in many ways it’s my least favourite.  I love what the show does with some of its more secondary main characters and I love how many characters are introduced or bumped up in this season. I love the dynamic that Callie (Ramírez) and Sloan (Dane) bring to the show, and the way that Meredith’s (Pompeo) father and his other family are introduced more – and the way that Meredith further embraces her other family, and the way in which her relationship with the Chief (Pickens) develops.  I love the whole idea of the Chief being a surrogate father for Meredith, and it’s in this season that we really begin to start to see that.

The third season of Grey’s Anatomy starts with Meredith trying to choose between McDreamy (Dempsey) and McVet (Chris O’Donnell), Izzie (Heigl) trying to cope with Denny’s death, Christina (Oh) and Burke (Washington) deal with the results of the shooting, the Chief is forced to choose between his wife and his job, Bailey (Wilson) tries to reaffirm her status as a surgeon post-becoming a mommy, and George (Knight) tries to figure out his relationship with Callie. And, of course, to mess with it all, Mark Sloan returns to Seattle Grace. As the season progresses there are hook ups and break ups, marriages and divorces, births and deaths, comings and goings. The season seems to go into so many different directions, with so many plots being picked up and dropped, that it’s hard to provide a quick summary of it all without spoiling the way in which things with the earliest plots develop.

Okay, so the McDreamy/McVet thing was great.  As was the addition of McSteamy and the Dirty Mistresses club.  I love McStreamy and the element that he brings to the show.  Somehow, the Mer/Der/Addison (Pompeo) triangle is so much with the addition of a viable love interest for Addison.  I also like the fact that Sloan is as much about getting his friendship with Derek back as he is about doing anything with Addison - and the fact that he's very much about sleeping with as much of the hospital's female staff as possible.  It's such a great element of his character, I love it.  I really enjoyed elements of the George/Callie relationship too.  I love how the crush that George had on Mer is gone, and that he's trying to become an adult and enter into an adult relationship with someone.  I hate where the relationship ended up going, but then my overall dislike of Izzie at this point may have been a huge contributing factor there.  Also, am I right in thinking that George's friends are complete asses for how they treated Callie here?

I didn't like the second half of this season nearly as much as I liked the first half.  Things kind of change following the three parter, "Walk on Water," "Drowning on Dry Land," and Some Kind of Miracle." While I really did like what they did with each of those episodes - and especially the reactions to Mer's situation in "Some Kind of Wonderful" - it marked a turning point in the season where everything just started to go to shit again.  I do like how the season ended, but the steps that they took in getting there just bugged me.  Sometimes I wonder if our Interns are growing up or if our Attendings are simply sinking down to their level.

That being said, I did absolutely love the season's finale.  The relationship between Christina (Oh) and Burke (Washington) has always been an interesting one, and I've found it intriguing to watch how much of herself Christina has been willing to give up for him.  There's a part of me that wonders what would have happened had real life not shaped the direction of the plot here - Washington's controversial behaviour on set had a huge play in things - but I like how they dealt with things as it was.  In my opinion, there was no better way this relationship could have gone.

Sons of Anarchy (Season 3)

Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Katey Sagal, Mark Boone Junior, Kim Coates, Tommy Flanagan, Maggie Siff, Ron Perlman, Ryan Hurst, William Lucking, Theo Rossi, Dayton Callie
Creator: Kurt Sutter 

Genre: Crime, Drama, Action, Comedy
Rating: A-

Have I mentioned yet how much I love the music in Sons of Anarchy?  I don’t think that I have.  A lot of the series’ music is stuff from lesser known, newer artists with a traditional rock and roll tone to it, although a few artists who are more established are also briefly used.  There’s also a lot from series composer Bob Thiele’s band The Forest Rangers, often featuring a vocal accompaniment by another artist.  There are also frequent covers, done in a way that feels different but at the same time totally fits with the tone of the show.  If you haven’t already, you should definitely check out the soundtracks.

I think the third season of Sons of Anarchy managed to both improve on the previous seasons and lose some of the charm.  The plot continues to grow in direction and become less overly complicated, but I think some of the elements of it were a bit rushed and I found at some points I really needed to suspend my disbelief.  I really liked the note that the season ended on and the implications that it had for the next season, but some of the journey was a bit bumpy.

Season three picks up a bit after where season two left off: Gemma (Sagal) has fled from Charming and is in hiding with Tig (Coates) and SOA members from another charter guarding her while the other Sons are searching for Cameron (Jamie McShane) and Abel.  The search is not going well, however, as Cameron flees to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he seeks help from his cousins Maureen Ashby (Paula Malcomson) and Father Kellan Ashby (James Cosmo), the latter whom acts as an intermediary between Jimmy O’Phelan (Titus Welliver) and the Real IRA.  Rather than simply hand Abel over to the Sons, Father Ashby and the IRA begin to weave their own intricate plot in which the Sons of Anarchy are just pawns.  Meanwhile in town all the violence is beginning to catch up to the Sons and following a drive-by shooting at Half-Sack’s wake the townsfolk begin to turn against the club and those associated with it.  In order to maintain their standing the club has to restore order, but they’re being opposed by Jacob Hale, Jr (Jeff Kober), who is now running for mayor and is even more determined to remove SAMCRO from Charming.  Gemma, meanwhile, is longing for her family and, unable to return to Charming, goes to visit her newly widowed father, Nate (Hal Holbrook), who suffers from dementia.  I kind of love how I just wrote a summary of the season’s events while only mentioning two of the series’ stars by name.  The creepiest moment by far, however, is the guest appearance of Stephen King, who plays a man named Bachman.  That man is just… yeah.

So, I'm going to look at this season in two different lights; on the one hand you have the plot with Gemma in the US, and on the other hand you have the plot with the search for Abel in Ireland.  I loved the plot with Gemma and the way that we got to see her relationship with people beyond the Sons.  We got to see a bit of who she was before she became an Old Lady.  I also really love the development of her relationship with the Sons who aren't Jax (Hunnam) and Clay (Perlman).  We really get to see that she is as much a part of the club as the members; we see that she is as loved as any of the men in it, possibly more so.  I really get the feeling that if Clay wasn't around, any one of the older men in the club would make a try for her, even Tig who's sexuality is a reoccurring joke on the show.  I also love that the issues that Gemma is trying to overcome here bring up cause to develop the relationship between her and Tara (Siff).  That's a really great relationship, and I like seeing where it goes.

So, yeah.  While I loved the plot with Gemma, I kind of question the Abel plot.  There were great elements of it, but in the end it was a bit much.  I can really see how this whole thing is going to end up completely screwing the Sons over, especially Jax.  Sometimes, I think the show is being set up for a massive kill-them-all ending - a thought that is only reinforced by the Shakespearean themes to it - and the whole thing with the Irish was one of those moments.  Can't you see the show ending like that, with everyone dead?  I do.

The Big Bang Theory (Season 3)

Starring: Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar
Creator: Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady
Genre: Sitcom
Rating: A

Up to this point, the third season of The Big Bang Theory is in my opinion the best yet; overall I think it’s actually very nicely tied with the fourth season.  The focus in these two seasons seems to be more along the lines of pairing the characters up romantically than their more typical exploits, which I enjoy in itself and find helps expand the show.  Even with this pairing up, however, there’s still a huge will they-won’t they element to the show, as well as the more typical confusions and challenges that exist as the result between the differences of the way that Penny sees the world and the way that the guys see it – this is enhanced further in season four.

The primary overlaying plot this season is the relationship between Leonard (Galecki) and Penny (Cuoco), and the many trials that they’re faced with – including, as usual, the fact that Leonard over thinks things and that he’s more emotionally invested than Penny is. It’s in this season that the difference in age between the two really comes to play; Penny’s only in her (presumably) early twenties, while Leonard is in his thirties. Furthermore, she has dated a lot while Leonard is a bit starved for affection. As a consequence of the relationship between Leonard and Penny, Howard finally gets a girlfriend – Bernadette Rostenkowski (Melissa Rauch), a friend of Penny’s and a microbiologist who is set up with Howard mid-way through the season. Rounding it up is the end of season introduction to Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik), Sheldon’s apparent match, after the guys put Sheldon on an internet dating service.

So, my favourite part of this season is the addition of  Bernadette and, later on, Amy Farrah Fowler.  The two really serve to humanize their male counterparts and, in the case of Bernadette, make him a lot less creepy.  I'm not too sure how I feel about some of their later development, particularly as it pertains to Amy, but for now it's great.  I also really like the development of the relationship between Penny and Leonard.  At tthis point in the game their struggles really make sense, and both the progression and digression are great.  The will-they-won't they isn't yet about to push on being ridiculous and overdone.  It's still really rather tight and understandable.  While I wasn't a huge fan of how things went for them throughout the entire season, I did really love how it played on her development with the other characters - notably Sheldon.  My favourite episode of the season is probably "The Spaghetti Catalyst" just because of the way that it looks into the friendship between Penny and Sheldon.  It's great.

Where the season kind of lost me a bit was with its treatment of Raj.  The "is he gay" thing can only last for so long, as can the general awkwardness around women.  As they're clearly pairing up the other characters in the series it kind of feels like they're just leaving the foreigner out of things.  I would really like to see them do more with him in the future, to develop him more, to give him the same kind of archs that they're giving the other cast.

Recommendations: December 25

The movies listed below are, for some reason, being released Christmas Day.  Because why wouldn't you go see a movie Christmas Day?

Les Misérables - Because everyone needs to see a musical about the French Revolution on Christmas Day.  This is based on the book and the musical that was inspired by the book and looks absolutely awesome.  Directed by Tom Hooper, Les Mis is predicted to be the second best adaptation of the book by Victor Hugo, the best being the 1934 adaptation by Raymond Bernard.

Parental Guidance - Billy Crystal's attempt at a career revival continues, with Parental Guidance.  Also featuring the amazing Bette Midler, this one is about two grandparents who agree to look after their grandchildren, and have the old school parenting methods collide with 21st century children.  I'm sure I've seen this movie before - many times - but I like both Crystal and Midler, so I'll see it again.

Django Unchained - Quentin Tarantino's latest, Django Unchained tries to prove that Christmas time can be about extremely violent movies.  This follows Jamie Foxx as a slave-turned-bounty hunter on a quest to rescue his wife from a brutal slave owner.  Expect lots of violence, blood, gore, swearing, etc.

"A Visit from St. Nicholas" - Also known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" and "The Night Before Christmas" this poem (allegedly) by Clement Clarke Moore is another Christmas staple.  Much like A Christmas Carol "Night Before" has been the subject of a vast number of adaptations, parodies, and pop culture references.

Recommendations: December 21

This Is 40 - The sort-of sequel to Knocked Up, This is 40 follows Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) a few years after the events of Knocked Up, presumably without going into them as neither Katherine Heigl nor Seth Rogen are appearing.  Pete and Debbie were by far the best parts of Knocked Up and this looks pretty funny, so I'd say check it out.

Zero Dark Thirty - The movie about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, this one's being given a limited release right now, presumably so that it's out in time for the awards season.  Director Kathryn Bigelow definitely knows how to play the controversial card while still being good and her last war film, The Hurt Locker, made her the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Director - despite being up against James Cameron's Avatar.

Jack Reacher - Another book-to-movie adaptation, Jack Reacher follows homicide investigator Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) as he goes after a trained military sniper.  Cruise's character here appears to be a bit mentally unstable, but at the same time is also returning Cruise to the action roots that we came to really love him for.  It could be good, it could be bad, but I'm willing to give him a chance.

The Guilt Trip - Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen pair up as a mother-son duo on a road trip.  This is another one that could be really good or really bad, I'm going to go with good.

The Impossible - I suspect I already know how this one's going to end, having watched just the trailer.  The Impossible follows a family torn apart during the mayham of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.  I expect that this will be good and I will cry.

On the Road - The latest book-to-movie adaptation of a Jack Kerouac novel, this one takes to the road and has a cast that makes me really want to see it.  It's not gotten the best of reviews so far, though, so I don't think I would hold your breath expecting greatness.

Pitch Perfect - This movie is absolutely awesome.  Pitch Perfect knew exactly what it was trying to be and completely went with it.  It was a full out comedy without attempts at being a serious drama as well.  The one liners just don't stop, and the music is actually pretty good too.

Total Recall - The remake of the original, this movie wasn't really well received but I enjoyed it.  Don't try to make sense out of it, but just enjoy the sci-fi action.

Trouble with the Curve - This is another one of those ones that could have been more than it was.  It was okay, but definitely didn't live up to the expectations.

Arbitrage - I haven't seen this one yet, but I really want to.  At one point it had awards buzz around it, but the reviews it's gotten have since silenced them - I suspect that this is going to be like Trouble with the Curve in that it'll be enjoyable but not nearly as good as it should have been.

Liberal Arts - Okay, so I want to see this because Zac Efron's in it.  It's one of the artsy movies that he ends up in that no one actually ever hears about.

Premium Rush - This was a fun movie.  Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and about bike messengers, it somehow still has the suspense of an intense thriller and at least some of the action of a good action flick.  Check it out if you haven't already.

10 Years - Another one of those probably not really good indie flicks starring a cast that I enjoy watching.  10 Years seems like it's really one of those flicks you just watch for fun.

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens' Christmas classic, A Christmas Carol is the story of one Ebenezer Scrooge, who is visited by Jacob Marely and the three Ghosts of Christmas (Past, Present, and Yet to Come), one Christmas Eve.  A classic in the purest sense of the word, A Christmas Carol has been adapted by roughly everything and has always been one of my favourite books to read in the week leading up to Christmas.

The Ledge

Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Terrence Howard, Liv Tyler, Christopher Gorham, Patrick Wilson

Director: Matthew Chapman

Genre: Drama, Thriller

Rating: C

Athiest Gavin Nichols (Hunnam) is about to commit suicide by jumping off a ledge.  Detective Hollis Lucetti (Howard), who is having a particularly bad day to begin with, is responsible for negotiating with Gavin and attempting to get him to come down.  Over the course of the film the story goes back and forth between the present and the past, following the events that lead to these two men being there - for Hollis, it's what happened after he discovered that he's sterile and his kids aren't his kids, and for Gavin it's the development of a relationship with his neighbour, Shana (Tyler), who is married to the Christian fundamentalist Joe (Wilson).

Okay, so to start, I loved the ending of this film.  It wasn't what I expected at all, and I love how they decided to just go with it.  I really liked it.

The ending was probably the only thing that I liked about the film, though.  I found the characters portrayed by both Hunnam and Wilson to be unlikable - I thought that both of them were trying to go to great lengths to offend the other, which in turn just offended me.  It bothered me that the whole thing was based on the idea that the two of them were going to be trying to force their religious beliefs (or lack-thereof) on the other, and then that Hunnam's character decided to sleep with Shana in an attempt to get back at Wilson's character for being religious.  In the end, I think I really understood Wilson's character's motivation the most.  Even though I didn't support him, or even like him, at all, I could at least see his reasoning.

As for Terrence Howard's character... I really didn't see how his back story was relevant to the rest of the film.  It was unnecessary and kind of stupid.  That being said, I did really like the way that they handled the actual negotiation.  I liked the relationship that was built between Howard and Hunnam.  Asides from the conclusion, that was possibly the best part of the film.  There was this potential here, and they just kind of wasted it.

Man on a Ledge (2012)

Starring: Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks, Jamie Bell, Anthony Mackie, Génesis Rodríguez, Ed Harris

Director: Asger Leth

Genre: Psychological Thriller, Crime, Action

Rating: C+

I suspect I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I should have.  By which I mean, I enjoyed this movie when I realize that it wasn't really all that good.  It's fun and the action is good and the tension is definitely there - although, I'm absolutely terrified of heights, which I suspect played a lot into that.  This movie really freaked me out, but I'm like that.

Man on a Ledge follows Nick Cassidy (Worthington), a former cop and an escaped convict.  He was imprisoned for stealing a $40 million diamond from David Englander (Harris), which he swears he did not do.  At the start of Ledge Nick checks into the Roosevelt Hotel under a false name, goes to his room on the 21st floor, and steps out onto the ledge.  When negotiators arrive, he insists that he will only talk to negotiator Lydia Mercer (Banks), a negotiator who is on leave of absence following a failed negotiation leading to the suicide of a policeman a month earlier.  Unbeknownst to the police, while Nick is distracting them his brother Joey (Bell) and Joey's girlriend Angie (Rodríguez) are on the building across the street, planning on breaking into Englander's vault to prove Nick's innocence.

So... yeah.  The plot is a bit much, and at no point does it enter into believe-ability.  From how he escapes from prison to the whole heist, and the general plan to clear his name, is just all over the top.  It's just... yeah.  It's kind of all over the place.  I think the idea in general was an interesting one, but the way they did it was a bit preposterous and just too much.  You have to suspend your disbelief a lot in order to follow it, although I will grant that it does play in rather nicely to the theme of "corrupt cop" that movies tend to like.

I think the thing that makes this movie really work for me, however, is the dramatic tension between Banks and Worthington.  Regardless of how believable the rest of the film is, I really believed her character.  Her motivations were real, her struggles were real.  She really wanted to help him, whoever he might have been.  I believed that, although I think it went too extreme at the en.  The whole "corrupt cop" plot didn't work well and kind of jeopardized the loveability of Banks' character.