What I watched: We continue to watch Inspector Lewis episodes, and the the Good Witch. But I was just wishing for the new season of the Great British Bake Off, when lo and behold, they have announced the cast for the 2021 season, returning for its 12th season on September 21st in the UK, and on Netflix starting September 24 in the U.S., with new episodes dropping every Friday.
Here is a trailer (8-minutes of GBBO goodness):
What I read:
The Spy Master’s Scheme (Glass and Steele Book 12) by C. J. Archer. These books are historical fantasy (magic is real but secret) mysteries set in Victorian England. As with any long-running series, there books vary in quality – this one was superior…
I also read book 8,000 53, Forgotten in Death: An Eve Dallas Novel in J.D. Robb’s “in Death” series. The first book was published in 1995, when the setting of 2058 seemed far away (it is now 2061 or so in the series). Today, in 2022, it is closer in time, and reality has some catching up to do…What never changes is the love affair between the police Lieutenant and the reformed Irish master thief and billionaire. The rich folks are usually the bad guys, the crimes and their solving are well-plotted, and they are totally my jam. Robb is also author Nora Roberts, and her output is prolific.
Last week I mentioned The Familiar and the Mage Series which I was not in love with. My bad – book two in the four-book series, The Void Mage, is excellent, and the world-building has really taken off. In this book the alien-like entity Toh’sellor is taking over large swaths of their world via shards that twist and kill all things within its sphere of influence. I suspect that I was getting impatient with out the back story/ positioning in book one…so I take back anything bad I said about it!
What I listened to this week: My Spotify algorithm for the Release Radar playlist was killing it this week:
KEØMA – Rich Man; Hearts Hearts – Ikarus (I Feel a Change); Hayden Thorpe – Metafeeling; Glass Animals – I Don’t Wanna Talk (I Just Wanna Dance).
So, dearest DeadSplinterites, how are you? What have you watched, read, or listened to? Are you venturing out into the world, or are you gearing up for hibernation part two? What is going on in your world? Was there any fun in your life? Please check in, tell us how you are, and share what you are up to!
After that sexy armpit smelling scandal, I started watching Scenes From A Marriage. It’s everything the scandal was not.
To clarify, the show is about their lack of chemistry after a decade of marriage.
I saw the original by Bergman. It’s intense.
@HammerZeitgeist yup yup yup, that was super sexy.
That man
the smolder
I mean damn
I might need a moment
Saw on Netflix:
Bill & Ted Face The Music, it’s not bad as I expected, but one thing I got out of it is you really can’t live in the past (cough… cough.)
Started the new season of Sex Education. The first season was really good. The second was meh. Hoping this one is better.
@MancuCandidate, good to know, about Bill and Ted. The only past I go for is the occasional decades-old music; I am always most interested in what is next.
I watched the first episode of season 3 and it was great. They’ve given all the supporting characters more depth and plot.
Do you find that they all look old now? Like they don’t pass for teens anymore? I wonder if it’s because they are all having sex and so I perceive them as more adult or if they are hitting that mid twenties threshold IRL. Or maybe they changed make-up artist and the lighting is off.
Yeah, I noticed that too as they really look older. Most of the actors are in the mid/late 20s. One can only look like teen for so long…
I also realized that I still have the hots for 50s Gillian Anderson even if I see her once in a while as Maggie Thatcher. Some things from the, cough, past never change.
…I watched kate on netflix…all in all not bad but there’s getting to be a surfeit of potentially-doomed-femals-assissin movies recently…& all in all I think I found jolt more enjoyable…& the protégé (a maggie q one) arguably males less sense than either…but has some pretty good action-y bits…& samuel l jackson as a bonus?
…kinda want to dig up a copy of the original nikita now…or maybe lady snowblood…or…who am I kidding…it’s been kind of a thing for a while, really
Kate on Netflix? Excellent, a show I can access!
That was to @SplinterRIP.
There’s also Gunpowder Milkshake on Netflix which is has a familiar assassin takes on an innocent kid premise.
We’re just running through iterations of Nikita, Leon, and Crank movies, it seems.
@theholyhandgrenade classics…sometimes the remakes are good, eh?
I thought Gunpowder Milkshake worked in the first half because the fights were really inventive, but then things bogged down as the bad guys just became cannon fodder.
Cannon fodder bad guys are pretty much as much of a drag in action movies as scenes of farmers discussing financing terms with a John Deere dealer.
You say that, but whenever right to repair comes up it’s a damn bloodbath.
Many stars for this comment, lol.
I just reactivated my Netflix account, so I may give this a try.
I’m also looking forward to the new season of British Bake Off!
I’m watching Rick and Morty. Somehow I managed to never see it until now. It’s predictable but funny.
I read The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones a horror novel about guilt, revenge, and native identity. It’s beautifully written but has moments of gruesome , explicit violence, some against animals. I had to skim the parts where dogs are harmed but even then it was pretty bad. You’ve been warned.
I’m listening to Holy Wave
Adult Fear
@Hannibal Adult Fear is the new soundtrack to my stress level. Thank you, I needed that.
I watched the first season of Rick and Morty, and it’s the sorta show I think would appeal to me, but it was a little heavy on the rape jokes for my taste. That, and the fandom kinda gets on my nerves.
Saw The Tomorrow War. Want a time machine to tell myself not to watch that shit.
I stopped 1/3 of the way thru because I was bored. That bad?
It can’t decide which better movie it’s trying to lazily rip off. So it lazily rips of all of them.
I have been reading far too much news. Which is ironic, since I refuse to act like I live in 2021, or the 21st century at all really. I know denial of reality never ends well (see The Cherry Orchard, or Long Day’s Journey into Night kind of, or the lesser known [in this country] All for Nothing [original German title Alles Umsonst] by Walter Kempowski.)
So currently I am reading Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France (in translation) by Madame Campan, her first Lady-in-Waiting, who somehow survived the Revolution and wrote these memoirs in her declining years.
@CousinMatthew that sounds like just your thing. Does Madam Campan include any menus or recipes?
@MatthewCrawley …sigh…see above.
Not yet, but it’s early days.
In the beginning she talks abut her father, who served Louis XV, and there’s lots of good stuff about him and the people who surrounded him. Apparently XV had a filthy mouth and loved nothing more than to hear and tell dirty jokes. Sadly, Mme. Campan is far too respectable and discreet to let us in on these jokes.
XV reigned for decades, he was like Queen Victoria and took the reigns very young, under a regency, but assumed the throne when he was the age of majority, which was when he was 13. He had a Chief Advisor who was calling a lot of the shots, a Cardinal somebody, but when he died XV’s attitude was “I got this” and reigned supreme. But I haven’t even gotten that far yet, and Marie Antoinette has not yet arrived in France.
Sigh, there’s that English homonym again. When XV reigned he took the reins.
In that vein if you are really curious is the Alexiad by Anna Comnenos.
She was the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Alexos in the 12th Century and tried to seize the throne after his death. She failed, and wrote her memoir of her father and herself while exiled to a convent. It’s lively, opinionated, gossipy and political, although obviously written from a thousand year old perspective that seems odd in a lot of ways today.
Oh that does sound good.
i spent the week re watching band of brothers…dont know why but theres something about that series that keeps making me come back…its…oddly cheerfull despite the material
conversely its follow up the pacific…i have seen and will never watch again…even tho the acting and production values are identical….its just a grim unhappy experience to sit through
aaaand…listening to rival sons
I just reactivated my Netflix account. Watched Jupiter’s Legacy, which was okay. I tend to like super-hero-ey stuff. Except, I was pretty drunk by the time I watched the last episode, so I kinda need to watch that episode again when I’m not as drunk, because I don’t really remember it…
Although, I kinda take issue with “the code” when a single battle killed three of their allies, and it’s not like the world is teeming with superpowered people…