Addenda to a busy month
Aug. 1st, 2010 03:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogNo post yesterday, but a few things to add today to things done and/or written about during July:
The BBC's version of Sherlock seems to have gone over well with me and the rest of the LJ-Street Irregulars, so I'll be continuing to watch that whenever 01:02 decides to pop up. (One troubling popup that's already online is one saying that my site for such things will be going dark next Saturday if a new admin isn't found.) Also, the introductory page at that site mentions that at the end of August, the Beeb is planning to release all three by-then-aired episodes, plus the unaired pilot, on DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK.
::makes puppy dog eyes at various British subjects with multi-region burners::
----
Our August weekends are fast filling up. Next Saturday will be a small gathering for Cameron's family here, as thanks for the party they invited us to a few weekends back. A chance to be together before the kids go their collegiate ways, share some om noms and some backyard beauty, without quite all the wretched excess of at least one "graduation party" that somebody was putting on around the corner from us the other night. A front-yard-filling tent, the graduate's sports trophies displayed behind the food table, and enough congestion on that street to make it rather unsafe to light a gas grill for a mile around it on account of the fire department not being able to get through.
The weekend after that is the final performance of the nearest Renaissance Faire, a couple hours to the east of here. We haven't all-three been to it in years, and Cam would be a natural ham for the festivities.
Past that, I'm scoping out dates for an unexpected Met home game, and then there's Labor Day weekend followed by the Parade of Parents and Possessions from here to Henrietta at the beginning of September. (RIT is still on quarters, so they start a little later than most colleges. Not that I'm complaining about that.)
----
Two films to commend to you, one Netflixed, the other Dipsonned:
* The Music Within was previewed on an earlier disk, and it's One Of Those Hidden Gems we somehow managed to miss awhile back. Not much of a known cast, except for The Queen's Michael Sheen playing the main supporting character, a genius and sweet-under-it-all student afflicted with CP in a 1970s America that could not yet cope with any disabilities, much less such visible ones. Eleanor and I shared stories from those years about people we had known with that particular disease, and we marveled at how far (yet still not far enough) we've come since then in spreading both understanding of and accommodation for people who have that or other disabilities. (It's also set, at least in the script, in the PDX, so at least one ::happy:: of ::birthday:: you ::this is not your shout-out:: might find the local color even more relevant than we did.)
* Then last night, as Eleanor already mentioned, we went out to see The Kids are Allright. Not the one-fewer-L-than-that film of that title which documented The Who of the very late 70s, but a just-released story of an unconventional yet very real family of the early 2010s. I commend it to any proponent of California's Prop 8, if only to show them that gay and lesbian couples can be just as dysfunctional, just as dramatic, and yet, most importantly, just as human as their straighter counterparts. The performances were amazing, the casting spot-on (you could really see resemblances between the two generations of the five major characters who, well,.... it's complicated), and when the two main antagonists among the adults both started singing Joni Mitchell's "Blue" in imperfect harmony, Eleanor and I both roared and near-cried at the same time. It was she, though, who sotto voce advised Annette Bening not to quit her day job to pursue her singing career, a good ten seconds before her character's son at the dinner table told her the exact same thing;)
----
A few days ago, I mentioned a very sweet piece I heard previewed on the radio about a racehorse. The full story of it, certainly worth reading, is here.
----
There. I think that catches everything up.
The BBC's version of Sherlock seems to have gone over well with me and the rest of the LJ-Street Irregulars, so I'll be continuing to watch that whenever 01:02 decides to pop up. (One troubling popup that's already online is one saying that my site for such things will be going dark next Saturday if a new admin isn't found.) Also, the introductory page at that site mentions that at the end of August, the Beeb is planning to release all three by-then-aired episodes, plus the unaired pilot, on DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK.
::makes puppy dog eyes at various British subjects with multi-region burners::
----
Our August weekends are fast filling up. Next Saturday will be a small gathering for Cameron's family here, as thanks for the party they invited us to a few weekends back. A chance to be together before the kids go their collegiate ways, share some om noms and some backyard beauty, without quite all the wretched excess of at least one "graduation party" that somebody was putting on around the corner from us the other night. A front-yard-filling tent, the graduate's sports trophies displayed behind the food table, and enough congestion on that street to make it rather unsafe to light a gas grill for a mile around it on account of the fire department not being able to get through.
The weekend after that is the final performance of the nearest Renaissance Faire, a couple hours to the east of here. We haven't all-three been to it in years, and Cam would be a natural ham for the festivities.
Past that, I'm scoping out dates for an unexpected Met home game, and then there's Labor Day weekend followed by the Parade of Parents and Possessions from here to Henrietta at the beginning of September. (RIT is still on quarters, so they start a little later than most colleges. Not that I'm complaining about that.)
----
Two films to commend to you, one Netflixed, the other Dipsonned:
* The Music Within was previewed on an earlier disk, and it's One Of Those Hidden Gems we somehow managed to miss awhile back. Not much of a known cast, except for The Queen's Michael Sheen playing the main supporting character, a genius and sweet-under-it-all student afflicted with CP in a 1970s America that could not yet cope with any disabilities, much less such visible ones. Eleanor and I shared stories from those years about people we had known with that particular disease, and we marveled at how far (yet still not far enough) we've come since then in spreading both understanding of and accommodation for people who have that or other disabilities. (It's also set, at least in the script, in the PDX, so at least one ::happy:: of ::birthday:: you ::this is not your shout-out:: might find the local color even more relevant than we did.)
* Then last night, as Eleanor already mentioned, we went out to see The Kids are Allright. Not the one-fewer-L-than-that film of that title which documented The Who of the very late 70s, but a just-released story of an unconventional yet very real family of the early 2010s. I commend it to any proponent of California's Prop 8, if only to show them that gay and lesbian couples can be just as dysfunctional, just as dramatic, and yet, most importantly, just as human as their straighter counterparts. The performances were amazing, the casting spot-on (you could really see resemblances between the two generations of the five major characters who, well,.... it's complicated), and when the two main antagonists among the adults both started singing Joni Mitchell's "Blue" in imperfect harmony, Eleanor and I both roared and near-cried at the same time. It was she, though, who sotto voce advised Annette Bening not to quit her day job to pursue her singing career, a good ten seconds before her character's son at the dinner table told her the exact same thing;)
----
A few days ago, I mentioned a very sweet piece I heard previewed on the radio about a racehorse. The full story of it, certainly worth reading, is here.
----
There. I think that catches everything up.
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-01 11:58 pm (UTC)1. Are these three episode it, or is there another series coming?
2. Any idea if BBC America might pick it up?
no subject
Date: 2010-08-02 12:12 am (UTC)Won't be on BBCA, but it's a WGBH co-production, so Mystery! or Masterpiece! or Whatever They Call It Now! will be showing it. Probably during a pledge drive....
no subject
Date: 2010-08-02 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-02 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-03 02:03 am (UTC)