Saturday Morning Brain Drain [2/4/22]

A place to let it all out.

2/4/22 Elliecoo 47
Image via Daily Express UK

Looking for Brain Drain Volunteers for April 9th, 16th, and 23rd. If you wish to take a Saturday, please reply in the comments, and know that you have my eternal gratitude.

What I watched:  Murder in Provence, a three-episode miniseries, based on the mystery books of M L Longworth. It stars Roger Allam, who played DI Fred Thursday in the TV series Endeavour and Nancy Carroll, who played Lady Felicia in the BBC series Father Brown. Both actors are cast as French persons, yet they speak with their own British accents, and they do not play expats, which is a little odd.

Murder in Provence follows Antoine Verlaque, an Investigating Judge in Aix-en-Provence, and his romantic partner Marine Bonnet as they investigate the murders, mysteries, and dark underbelly of their idyllic home. Their efforts are aided by Hélène, a detective and Antoine’s trusted confidante. 

What I read: A re-issue of Wait Until Midnight an historical mystery/romance by Amanda Quick. This review from publisher’s weekly is accurate:

Caroline Fordyce, who writes a popular fiction serial, and mysterious gentleman Adam Hardesty make a likable couple, but since virtually no obstacles stand in the way of their union, there’s little suspense in watching them come together after only a few heated kisses. Both skeptics, the pair become involved in the Victorian craze for mediums and all things spiritualist after Adam stumbles across a murdered medium and finds a list of names, with Caroline’s figured prominently. Alas, there are only two viable suspects, and Quick’s sleight of hand is scant. Her characters are given to chunks of exposition that reveal the mechanics of the plot. (For example, a medium delivers a convenient monologue in an empty room.) Despite these flaws, this book remains a pleasant enough diversion, even if it pales in comparison to the author’s best work.

I also read the first four of the eventual six-book series by Darcy Burke, The Phoenix Club. The series is your typical historical mystery/romance good person/redeemed person, HEA ending fare. Nice, easy fluff. She says:

Welcome to the Phoenix Club, where London’s most audacious, disreputable, and intriguing ladies and gentlemen find scandal, redemption, and second chances.

What I listened to this week: Bodi Bill – Loophole Traveling; The Nice Nice – Beached; and APRE – All Yours.  

So, darling DeadSplinterites, how are you? What’s going on? What have you watched, read, or listened to? Please check in, tell us how you are, and share what you are up to!

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About Elliecoo 588 Articles
Four dogs, one partner. The dogs win.

47 Comments

  1. i watched the adam project over on netflix

    normally i’d leave a trailer here…but i dont think i will this time…its a decent popcorn flick if you go into it blind like i did…does get disney levels of sickeningly sweet towards the end…but thats not nessecarily a bad thing

    the trailer doesnt leave a whole lot to the imagination tho… still..id recommend it as a dont think too hard sci-fi watch thats easy on the eyes

    also watched the first purge

    it was nothing special…not bad..just..well..just another purge movie i guess

  2. Watched:  Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, which came out a number of years ago.  It’s a dramatized variation on the life of the guy who developed the Wonder Woman character and his life with his legal and common law wives.  It was…interesting.

    Read:  I’m in the middle of something.  I’ll tell you about it next week.

    Listened:  Our latest stop on the tour of the best engineered albums of all time brings us to Breakfast in America by Supertramp.  As many of you may well recall, the first ingredient in a great recording is a great performance, and these guys always delivered.  Engineered by Peter Henderson, this album has so far sold over 20 million copies and is easily the group’s most popular album.  This is one of those albums that could have turned out sounding like garbage, because producers and engineers can get snowblind when going over the same material too many times–making unnecessary sonic tweaks which end up degrading both the production and sonic qualities of the recording–but they ran up against a deadline and had to submit the masters to the label for release even though they weren’t “satisfied” with the mixes.  Sometimes, having bean counters turns out to be a positive influence–but not often.

     

    • @HammerZeitgeist, THANK YOU! Not only will the DeadSpinterati enjoy a fresh voice, you are doing me a huge favor. Each April I am responsible for the content and the management of a major project which equates to a second full time job. Anything I can do to lessen my extraneous activities is a big deal…thank you again!!!!

      • It really is nice to hear other voices. Not that I don’t appreciate the regular features. But as @myopicprophet has mentioned before, everyone is someone special on Deadsplinter, we want to hear what y’all have to say.

  4. I watched Canada qualify for the World Cup.

    I also watched the Pope completely 180 to “apologise” for residential schools.

    I read political stuffs all week…no surprise there.

  5. I’ve been watching the Flight Attendant.  I’m only 4 episodes in the first season but it is pretty interesting.

    Listening to some pretty new Bootsy…

     

  6. Last night I watched the first episode of The Girl From Plainville based on the Michelle Carter case. Carter was tried and convicted of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging her boyfriend, Conrad Roy, to commit suicide. It has a good cast- Elle Fanning, Chloe Sevigny, and the always wonderful Peter Gerety. If Carter was this creepy in real life she was a walking red flag.

    I just started reading The Sentence by Louise Erdrich. It’s a ghost story set in Birchbark Books, the store Erdrich owns in Minneapolis. It takes place over the course of a year during the pandemic and the civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd. It’s about…everything, lol. Love, the importance of books, injustice, cultural appropriation, illness, and death.

    I’m listening to the Old Gods of Appalachia, a horror anthology podcast. I highly recommend it for horror fans.

    I’m also listening to New Long Leg by Dry Cleaning. I posted one of the tracks on last night’s DUAN. It came out a year ago, but I somehow missed it until now. I love Florance Shaw’s spoken-word lyrics.

    Strong Feelings

     

     

     

    • Yah @Hannibal, I like Dry Cleaning. When you mention something twice I perk up my ears, because I like your taste in music. Also, I added The Sentence to my wish list.

      Anyway, your comment made me go back again to last night’s DUAN, and I saw that @farscythe had posted a Vunderbar tune (I like them, too). Turns out that they have new 2022 EP:

       

  7. Thanks, I know you’ve recommended a lot of stuff I enjoy. I like that Vundabar tune. I need more hours in the day to listen to all the music I learn about on the DUAN!

  8. …so I intended to catch up with the second season of raised by wolves last week but got distracted by something else I know some folks hereabouts had good things to say about a while back…& am consequently part way through station 11

    …fairly certain I watched something else I meant to mention but quite what currently escapes me…& still keeping up with picard…although that seems to have enough plates spinning at this point that I’m crossing my fingers things don’t get out of hand in what I think is now the back half of the season…hopefully the smaller list of major players means better odds than it can seem like discovery enjoys sometimes when it comes to finding time to follow through on what’s going on with who?

  13. Watched the first three episodes of Julia on HBOMax, about Julia Child. It’s entertaining and I love seeing Bebe Neuwirth and David Hyde Pierce on a show together again. But also they chose to make a fake character and have a young black woman producer at the tv station. In the early 1960s.

    It feels like “oh fuck this cast is all white because all these white people only had white friends ahhhh how do put some people here who are BIPOC???” But without actually fleshing out what sort of experiences a young black woman would have in that role. I don’t know, I just think if you’re a show where your leads casually use the word fuck in their conversations then you can have a little more realism about her experiences.

    • …similar to my other comment, I was hopeful about that movie based on the trailer & that sounds encouraging…though to be fair I was perhaps not expecting realism…about archaeology or really much of anything?

  14. Also!!! I saw The Lost City last night and that movie was fucking hilarious. I think Channing Tatum is just kinda meh in general, but he played that cover model himbo so fucking perfectly! My face hurt from laughing in places. The casting in general was so damn good!

    Just don’t expect anything resembling accuracy or realism from the “archaeology” in there.

    • That’s generally a good rule for any fictional depiction of any profession. Don’t get me started on advertising agencies in Mad Men. Don’t ask lawyers about law shows, doctors about medical shows, or cops about police dramas.

  15. I woke up early so I could watch the Liverpool game. I might have done more reading of a book during the game than actually watching…but we won!

    Went out for lunch to a local seafood place and then to see The Lost City. I loved it! I haven’t laughed that much in a very long time. It definitely was one my romantic heart could enjoy.

    I plan on doing some writing now and relaxing all evening with the dogs. Hope everyone else had a good day. <3

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