The Cosmic Trilogy (The Space Trilogy) relates the interplanetary travels of Ransom, C.S. Lewis's ill-informed and terrified victim who leaves Earth much against his will and who, in the first book of the trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, published by the Bodley Head in 1938, encounters the imaginary and delightful world of Macalandra.
In the second book, Perelandra (1943), Ransom is transported to a world of sweet smells and delicious tastes, a new Garden of Eden in which is enacted, with a difference, the story of Temptation.
That Hideous Strength (1945) completes the trilogy and finds Dr Ransom returned from his travels in space and living in an English university town - where the Senior Common Room is given a mysterious depth, a more than earthly dimension which such things, in the author's view, always have in life.
The Trilogy should be required reading for all specially High School students, IMHO, for the message. The books are not really science fiction but more about deep ideas. I like that C. S. Lewis is never preachy and tells a great story that will make the reader think.
Aimee Mann has a new album Queens of the Summer Hotel. Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles also has a new album Bright Lights and one of the songs, a cover of a Badfinger song Name of the Game, features Aimee Mann. Great cover from two great musicianss. Both albums can be downloaded from Freegal.
I can't believe Aimee Mann is over 60 years old and she still sounds amazing. I read that she suffered a neurological disorder last year that distorted the way she heard music including her own. As a result she can only listen to Steely Dan songs. She said in an interview
Steely Dan's music have an enormous amount of feeling. The characters are sad, and pathetic, and despairing, and drug addicts, mostly involved in these terrible dead-end relationships. What's not to like? I feel like people have a serious damage and then I always relate to that.
Aimee always has a dark sense of humor IMHO. I own all of her solo and 'Til Tuesday albums, Bachelor No. 2 is still my favorite.
Jirisan is a Korean action drama series about mountain rangers at Jiri Mountain National Park. Seo Yi-Gang (Gianna Jun) is the best ranger who knows virtually everything about the area at Jiri Mountain National Park including where to climb the mountain. Kang Hyun-Jo (Ju Ji-Hoon) is a rookie ranger who graduated from the military academy and was once an army captain. They become partners in rescuing hikers who get lost around Jiri Mountain National Park.
I've seen the first episode and I loved it already including the OST by Jin of BTS. This is high-octane action drama with superb cinematography, even the CGI, and top-notch cast. Clairvoyant newbie Kang Hyun-Jo isn't given time to change clothes nor brief orientation and dives right into action.
The 9th season of Great British Baking Show's first episode started streaming today with new bakers. Something to look forward to on Fridays. The show opened with the judges and hosts wearing tacky Billy Ray Cyrus mullet wigs and singing their baking version of Achy Breaky Heart. Prue is even wearing moustache and cowboy hat. So. Much. Cheese. I like it.
You can have your fun
Make brownies by the ton
You can fill your donuts up with jam
You can ice your bun
And then when you are done
You can load your quiche with cheese and ham
You can do a choux
And then whip up a roux
Then produce a few nice cookies you can chew
You can sit and watch the muffins rise
You can make a cream puff and some pies
But don't bake my tart
My flaky pastry tart
I just don't think you understand
You'll over bake my tart
And that will break my heart
And then you'll never shake my hand...
My favorite baketestants so far are the funny Lizzie and the pretty Crystelle. I don't care if they are not the best bakers in the first episode. Lizzie and Crystelle have bright sunny personality and I hope they don't get eliminated quickly. Not only do Lizzie and Noel have matching pink smiley clothing, they have matching sense of humor and are very entertaining together.
Noel and Lizzie wearing matching clothes with pink smiley design
In the 1960s, Spain became a home to hundreds of survivors of the Mauthausen camp. Isabel, a young Spanish woman, is one of them. She is looking for Skorzeny, Europe's most dangerous man, but she is not alone.
Jaguar is a highly entertaining and binge worthy 6 episodes European Spanish thriller series set in the 1960s about a group of Nazi survivors trying to capture, shame, and punish Nazis sneaking into Spain and other European cities. The lead female actress Blanca Suarez as the title character Jaguar is enough reason for me to watch when the series started streaming yesterday. I first saw Blanca when she was just 18 years old together with Ana de Armas who was 19 in the 2007 Spanish melodrama El Internado.
Highly recommended. Watch in European Spanish with English subtitles.
South Korean dramas last year and this year created several family oriented and clean fun with very little romance or none at all. They are currently the favorites of viewers from around the globe, not just South Korea. I made a short list of my favorites so far and 2 are family friendly. All the series were broadcast in 2021.
My number 1 favorite drama is family and friends oriented, funny, has well developed characters, there are no lingering and annoying villains, the very young and very old people become close friends and are almost equally represented. A heart warming dramedy with plenty of humor and cheese [but in a good way]. The badminton games are surprisingly enjoyable and exciting as though the competitions are real. All the actors are excellent specially the teen boys and girls. I will surely binge watch the series again.
even when the much-awaited wi-fi was finally working at the house, the racket boys and girls prefer to hang out at neighbor grandma's house to enjoy her company and yummy food
2. Move To Heaven
Streaming on Netflix
10 Episodes
Based on the writings of a real person who cleaned up what the deceased left behind, excellent script and character development, great story telling, superb acting, no boring romance. Each story will probably make you cry, make sure there's a box of tissues nearby.
Geu-Ru is a 20 year old young man with Asperger's syndrome. He works in his father’s company, Move To Heaven, sorting out items left by the deceased. One day, Geu-Ru's own father dies and he is left alone but his father left a will assigning an unknown "uncle" Sang-Gu to be Geu-Ru's guardian. Sang-Gu is a bitter and cold man, a former martial artist who fought in underground matches. He went to prison because of a tragic incident during one of his fights. They run Move To Heaven together with the help of a teenage female friend and neighbor of Geu-Ru.
3. Hospital Playlist Season 2
streaming on Netflix
12 episodes, 80 - 90 minutes
I am not a fan of hospital dramas but this one is different. It is also about friendship, a little romantic relationships, and family. The "band" sings at end of each episode. It's an ongoing joke that the lone female doctor always sings out of tune and is hopeless.
"Wise Doctor Life" depicts the stories of doctors, nurses, and patients at a hospital. 5 doctors all entered the same medical university in 1999. They are friends since and now work together in the same hospital.
I've never heard of this group. The name of the band Closet Disco Queen joined by another band with a cute "cheesy" name The Flying Raclette plus the title of their new album, Omelette du Fromage, made me look, listen, and download from Freegal music. Not bad; I like.
The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient.
Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this remote and barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance. As a killer hurricane relentlessly bears down on them, a strange case takes on even darker, more sinister shades—with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. But then neither is Teddy Daniels.
I've heard of this book more than 10 years ago but never had the interest to read maybe because it was made into a movie with the trio I really dislike - director Scorsese and actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo and the movie sort of sullied the book for me. These 3 are the Hollywood people whose movies I avoid the most. Scorsese to me is an overrated director; DiCaprio acts the same way in all of his movies, and Ruffalo is a loud mouth Hollyweird personality with no talent whatsoever. But I digress. This post is about the book. Sorry. 😔
Although I have suspected who Teddy really is from the clues left by the missing inmate and when he finds and has a conversation with her in a cave, it is still a great psychological thriller and it kept me guessing the whos and whys up to the end. The ending has all the answers although Teddy's fate is a bit vague and it is up to the readers to draw their own conclusion.
He's All That is a teen romantic comedy movie which is a gender-swapped remake of the 1999 movie She's All That. Rachael Leigh Cook who starred in the original movie plays the mother of the main character, Padgett Sawyer, a high schooler.
Padgett earns lots of money with her status as a popular social media influencer. She is able to save money for college and helps her mom with household expenses. She gets humiliated on live video finding her boyfriend with another girl, losing many followers and beauty product endorsement earnings. She vows to get her influencer status back mainly for her college funds and makes a bet with her friends that she will makeover an unsuspecting boy in school because she is the so-called queen of makeovers. The 3 girls choose a loner boy who doesn't follow the trend in school. He has only 2 friends, his younger sister and a girl who is of Indian descent. The boy, Cameron, is not ugly, he is just not stylish and is a magnet to taunting by schoolmates because he doesn't socialize with them. Cameron is an amateur photographer who never shows his photos to anyone, works as a stable hand in the morning before going to school. He loves Kurosawa films which is a huge plus in my book.
