Watching Stuff

Spent most of the early part of today watching the first three episodes of Downton Abbey's new season streaming online (as Dean would say about Dr. Sexy, "It's a guilty pleasure!") because the third episode has some shocking bits and I wanted to know what those shocking bits were without spoilers online anywhere (some dummy wrote it in big caps underneath one of the videos, so that plan was foiled anyhow.) Why would anyone write such a thing unless it had happened in the storyline? There you go. Ruined the episode because I could see it coming from the beginning.

And no, I will not put what happened here, namely because it is shocking, and namely because that episode won't air on PBS probably until next year in the States. Go spoil yourself on BBC.com because they were discussing it quite heavily today, or go watch the episode streaming online and find out.)

Then I switched to the miniseries of Count of Monte Cristo. It's apparently the only miniseries of this book that exists (there's another one in French with no translation,) so I will have to watch Gerard Depardieu for 6 hours. The whole thing is completely in French, with subtitles.

Mon Dieu.

I am 1/4 into this nightmare and Gerard is not impressing me one jot with his acting here, particularly when Dantes heaves his watery soup for the day at the wall and screams in a fit of childish rage on his knees, despite the fact that by then, he's been in the damn cell 14 years or so. Dantes by that point in the book was an educated man (which we hardly see at all-six hours of film and we spend five minutes or less on his education, which is extremely important to the plot) and had no need of such displays.

In fact, I was liking Dantes in the book's quiet reserve under trial...which is why I find Depardieu's outrageous anger and obvious plotting of revenge (instead of keeping it to himself like the book version did-there's the mark of intelligence missing right there. A guy who can keep his anger to himself and rip apart his enemies patiently, quietly, and steathily (book Dantes) is clearly a lot smarter than the guy throwing daggers at them and stabbing them in the heart (hints of this in the movie Dantes.) The whole anger thing is a bit off-putting.

Also, Albert is blue-eyed and blonde. Not to be racist (not at ALL), but he's born to a Catalan woman (Spanish) and a Spanish guy named Fernand Mondego. Spanish people do not usually produce blue-eyed blondes. Not saying it couldn't happen; it's just that I pictured Albert with dark hair and dark eyes thanks to the fact that he's completely dyed in the wool Spanish (a Spanish accent would be hard to fake, however, when the guy is speaking French.) Same with Edmund. The book lists him as dark. He's blonde. They could at least have dyed his hair.

And his Abbe Busoni looks like Patrick Troughton (2nd Doctor), and I laughed like an idiot when I saw him. I half-expected him to pull out a flute...

4 1/2 hours to go-we'll see if things improve or if I just quit the whole thing and go watch the movie with Jim Caviezel and Guy Pearce instead (much more tempting fare and I just might forget the miniseries with those two handling things.)

I will attempt to watch this thing and see how it goes.

Ta,
Bec