Wednesday

tags: fantasy, favorites, Netflix streaming, supernatural

😍😍😍😍😍

Best Netflix series and my favorite (along with Enola Holmes 2) for 2022. To fully enjoy the series, do not compare it and the cast with past TV shows and movies. This is titled Wednesday, not The Addams Family.

The dance scene is awesome.

And playing the cello - The Rolling Stones' Paint It Black - already downloaded from Freegal. Can you tell I'm obsessed? 😉

Slumberland

tags: adventure, fantasy, Netflix streaming

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Welcome to Slumberland, the world of dreams! Jason Momoa plays “Flip” an eccentric outlaw on a mission to help a young girl travel through dreams and flee nightmares, in hopes of reuniting with her father.

I never heard of the comics and cartoons this movie is based on. I loved this bittersweet, cute, and funny children's movie. Jason Momoa is good as "Flip" and one of my favorite characters is the little boy with a pompadour driving a huge garbage truck.

Don't listen to professional and armchair critics. This is a fun movie for all ages.

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Coming to Netflix streaming. 

Goose egg for the book

The trailer for the new Netflix adaptation is out on Netflix and I can't help but write a post on the terrible "reads like parody" laughable novel. No, the gamekeeper is not the hot guy shown by every Hollywood production. In the book Oliver Mellors is a sickly phlegmy skin and bones cough-a-minute guy with no sex appeal whatsoever. Oliver is henpecked by his termagant bully wife who left him and their 5 year old daughter. In the book the daughter appears just twice never to be heard of again.

After surveying his property, the invalid husband decides he needs an heir. He tells Lady Chatterley to find a lover, have a child with him, and they will make the child their heir. So yeah, the lady has permission to bed a guy other than her husband. But he doesn't want a lowly gamekeeper's child to be his heir and naturally does not approve of his wife's choice of lover and worries that she is falling in love with a worthless consumptive man. 

Lady Chatterley and Oliver Mellors find they are attracted to each other over a cageful of chickens that he raises on the estate adjacent to the small cabin where he lives. Chickens! I was laughing so hard at that scene. I was embarrassed for the author. I'm not kidding.  

The book was so controversial and banned in several countries at the time it was published because of the use of a four letter word and the sex scenes which to me are hilarious and ridiculous, exactly like Fifty Shades of Grey. These two lovers name their private parts John Thomas and Lady Jane and decorate them with flowers. They are loony to me, not sexy. 

Lady Chatterley together with her sister as teenagers were encouraged by their parents to get "deflowered" by young boys when the family went on vacation to Italy or maybe France. Indeed they were, by 2 German boys. What the heck! Their parents! The 2 sisters are promiscuous as young adults and settled down after their marriage to suitable gentlemen.

So it is head scratching for Connie (Lady Chatterley) to marry a wheelchair bound guy knowing she cannot have sex with him. The author tried to show that she is attracted foremost by his intellect. HAHAHAHAHA. But of course, she previously cheated on her husband before she met the tuberculosis guy. She had sex with an associate of her husband's right there in their house when he visited. The business associate encouraged her to divorce Chatterley and run away with him. She insisted in staying with her "brainy" husband to help him finish a publication he is writing. 

Then there's the Oedipus Complex thing happening between the nurse and the husband. What? She is there to get revenge on him but somehow she starts having maternal and sexual feelings for the invalid. Are you kidding me? It is sooooo stupid and yucky. 

Then the novel suddenly shifts to politics and Oliver's fight for the coal miners' right. Huh? Alrighty then. He ignores his new born baby with Lady Chatterley the same way he has been ignoring his older daughter with his wife. He's too busy with social justice issues doncha know! Sheesh. What a great lover!!?? 

Please, stay away from the book and the Netflix special to keep your IQ points intact. You're welcome!

Where The Crawdads Sing

tags: coming of age, drama, mystery. Netflix streaming

⭐⭐⭐

From IMDB

Abandoned by her family, Kya Clark, otherwise known to the townspeople of Barkley Cove as the Marsh Girl, is mysterious and wild. "Where the Crawdads Sing" is a coming-of-age story of a young girl raised by the marshlands of the south in the 1950s. When the town hotshot is found dead, and inexplicably linked to Kya, the Marsh Girl is the prime suspect in his murder case.

The movie is based on a best selling book which I haven't read and I never had the interest in reading it. I'm not into books about being one with nature and have "spiritual" themes (according to reviews on Goodreads).

Kya, the youngest of 3 children, is abandoned first by the mother who couldn't take anymore her husband's alcoholism and physical abuse. The older brother and sister also leave for the same reason. Kya is left alone with her father who at first is tolerant of her but she ends up all alone in their house. What a depressing story. Who does that to a little girl? Where are the grandparents? Uncles? Aunties?  And who enjoys reading such a stupid story? The mother never came back nor check up on her. She wrote once but the letter was burned by the father. 

Kya had to use her smarts in order to survive, digging up shellfish and sells it to the Black couple who runs a goods store. The couple are the only people who are nice to her. They give her used clothing so she can go to school where the children make fun and gossip about her and call her names. Discouraged, she runs back home and to the marsh where she is at peace. How she lived alone for 10 years since everybody left is a mystery to me.

She learns how to read when she is already a teenager. A friend of her brother shows up one day and sees she is talented in drawing. He teaches her how to read and suggests she submit her work to a publishing company. He becomes her boyfriend, her first love. But he also abandons her for university. 5 years she waits for him then another young man starts paying attention to her and she accepts him. The boy has a fiancée but still wants to have Kya as his sex toy. She rejects him when she finds out about the fiancée. He becomes aggressive and tries to rape her. Then the young man dies, either murdered or by accident.

The movie focuses more on the murder mystery, her trial, and acquittal. The ending reveals if she really killed him. All the clues are there. You just have to pay attention to Kya's poetic and metaphorical dialog. She dies as an old lady with gray hair and still married to her first love but the truth will never be revealed. There is no point anyway.

It is an okay movie, good not great. The acting and cinematography are good.

Light Perpetual

adventure, fantasy, historical fiction, Hussite Wars, medieval

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From Goodreads

After his adventures in The Tower of Fools and Warriors of God, Reynevan is on the run again, harried by enemies—some human, and some mystical—at every turn. These are cruel and dangerous times for a man such as Reynevan, and to survive, he must set aside his history as a peaceful healer and idealist and play the brutal role of Hussite spy as crusades sweep through Silesia and the Czech Republic, and the world around him is forever changed.

The third and final book of The Hussite Wars does not disappoint. The ending is satisfying, although heavy on history, bloodletting, and Latin. Reynevan doesn't get the happy ending he is pursuing throughout the book and it is heartbreaking and might get you teary-eyed reading that part, at about 80% of the 640 page book. By the time I finished I can read the weird names without effort and also am able to guess correctly the meaning of the easier Latin passages. 😌

The highlight for me is my favorite character, Samson Honeypot and how he left his "physical body" again reminding me of The Little Prince, or maybe he is a heavenly being who possessed the body of a halfwit monk when Reynevan performed a magic in Book 1. 

Light Perpetual has all the fantasy elements from the first 2 books - magic, shape shifter, murderous evil bishop, nonstop fighting and burning of towns and people. Joan of Arc is mentioned briefly, alchemy, a 200 year old witch, and a golem as awesome as Samson are added to the already superior fantastical characters and story.

Highly recommended.

Enola Holmes 2

tags: action, adventure, comedy, female sleuth, Victorian period

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Sequel to Enola Holmes streaming on Netflix. Millie Bobby Brown as Enola Holmes is a good actress and her character is entertaining. She and Henry Cavill as Sherlock have real rapport and fun to watch as brother and sister. As predicted, she and Lord Tewkesbury are an item confessing their love for each other. Her brother, Sherlock, has a bigger presence in the movie. They, with a little help from Tewkesbury, work together to find a missing woman and the death of a factory worker. I liked it regardless of the terrible and contrived version of Moriarty.😒

I am looking forward to the next movie although Dr. Watson will be played by an actor of Indian descent. *sigh* Can't escape this trend.

The movie made me bake a Scottish cake called Dundee Cake. It is a simple fruitcake with no spices nor candied fruits. The recipe with photos is here.

Save America - Save The World

Vote Republican November 8, 2022 and Save America.

Died Suddenly - A Documentary

Documentary will be streamed on November 21. Watch it, tell your family to watch it. It is no longer a conspiracy if healthy people of all ages suddenly dropping like flies. I hope this can be reversed.

Romantic Killer

tags: anime, comedy, Netflix streaming, romance

12 episodes

⭐⭐⭐⭐

A "non-heroine type" high school girl is thrown into a situation like something straight out of a dating simulation game! This slapstick adolescent romantic comedy follows the romance-averse Anzu.

Anzu Hoshino is a "non-heroine type" high school girl who pays no attention to fashion or romance and spends every day playing video games. After the wizard Riri suddenly appears and confiscates Anzu's three favorite things — video games, chocolate, and cats — she gets pursued by hot guys!

Super funny anime series. It's a departure from the usual anime love story. Anzu is not interested in boys, not even ikemen. She just wants to play video games, eat tons of chocolate, and play with her cat Momohiki. A wizard takes over her life and is forcing her to look at handsome boys and start dating. The episodes kept me in stitches. Brilliant script. Silly but entertaining as always. 

Highly recommended.

Don Matteo

 

tags: Italian TV series, mystery-crime, Terrence Hill

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Don Matteo is a TV series set in the town of Gubbio in Perugia, Italy. It has been airing in Italy since 2000 and still ongoing. The episodes starting from Season 1 are available to borrow from Hoopla through our county library. I have seen 4 episodes so far and they are good. The series is in Italian with English subtitles.

Don Matteo is a Catholic priest who has a keen sense of people and circumstances. He is able and more than willing to help the local police in solving crimes, just like Father Brown. His best friend is one of the policemen. Terrence Hill stars as the title character Don Matteo. He is 82 now and still filming the series.

Highly recommended for TV mystery viewers who don't mind reading subtitles.