Various Sundry Items

I cannot tell you how much I love this image for the new series, Sleepy Hollow, coming to Fox in the fall. I love the headless horseman. I'm just wondering where his horse is. *wink*

I hope this show lives up to its poster.

*****

It's been announced that the film adaptation of the musical, Into the Woods, will come to cinemas on Christmas day 2014. It seems so far away. I guess it's because it is. 

So far, the following parts have been cast:

Witch: Meryl Streep

Baker: James Cordon

Baker's Wife: Emily Blunt

Cinderella's Prince: Jake Gyllenhaal

Rapunzel's Prince: Chris Pine

Wolf: Johnny Depp

Jack's Mother: Tracy Ullman

Cinderella's Mother: Christine Baranski (rumored)

The cast sounds good so far. I'm not sure if Emily Blunt can sing. I hope she can, because Stephen Sondheim's music is not easy.

*****

I was going to try to stay up-to-date on my blog with the rumors flying around about who will play the 12th Doctor on Doctor Who, but I don't want to post rumors. So, I will blog about the new Doctor when the 12th Doctor is officially announced.

Even though I'm not going to post about it yet, it is exciting to read about the actors who people think are front-runners for the part. If you want to keep up with the latest news on the search for the new Doctor, and any other Doctor Who related news, go to my favorite Doctor Who blog, Blogtor Who. 

*****

Coming soon to BBC is a new crime drama, Death Comes to Pemberley. Yes, it's a crime drama based on Pride and Prejudice. Actually, it's a crime drama based on a book (called Death Comes to Pemberley), which is based on Pride and Prejudice. The three episode series takes place after Elizabeth and Darcy's marriage, and one of the supporting characters is murdered.

There will be familiar British actors in the cast. Anna Maxwell Martin (North and South, Bleak House) will play Elizabeth Bennet Darcy, Matthew Rhys (Brothers and Sisters, The Abduction Club) will play Fitzwilliam Darcy, Jenna-Louise Coleman (Doctor Who) will play Lydia Bennet Wickham, Matthew Good (Leap Year, Chasing Liberty) will play Wickham and James Fleet (Little Dorrit, Sense and Sensibility) will play Mr. Bennet. The best news, however, is that Penelope Keith (Good Neighbors, To the Manor Born) will be playing Lady Catherine de Bourgh. I want to see it just to see Penelope play that part. 

*****

Auditions for So You Think You Can Dance are over, and the live performances have begun. Yay! And my favorite host of any reality show is back. She is so personable and fun, and just a great host. Nice to see you Cat! This is your year for the Emmy. 

I wanted to insert one of my favorite SYTYCD routines here, a hip hop number by Twitch and Alex, but youtube wouldn't let me embed the video, so you'll have to go to youtube here to see it. It's amazing and so much fun. 

I'm excited for this season, and I hope it holds many memorable routines that I can add to my favorites.

*****

Did you ever wonder what Star Wars would have sounded like if William Shakespeare had written it instead of George Lucas? Neither had I, but Ian Doescher did. Check out the first few pages of William Shakespeare's Star Wars. It's pretty funny, and pretty impressive.

I wonder how long it took Ian to write this book. If he stayed with iambic pentameter through the whole book, all I can say is - wow! From what I've read so far, Ian keeps pretty close to the iambic pentameter. My favorite lines that follows the pattern is the following:

C-3PO: I'll warrant madness lies within.

R2-D2:                                 -- -- beep beep,

I can't wait to read the entire thing. It would be great if someone produced it someday. I don't know how they would stage it, but it could be very entertaining. *wink*

Good Neighbors: Say Little Hen...

Tom and Barbara are on the road to self-sufficiency. They've bought a goat for milk and butter. They've tilled the front yard and part of the back yard to plant vegetables. They've made a chicken coup, which Barbara paints pink because they had pink paint in the shed, to house the chickens they've just acquired. They are quite serious about living self-sufficiently. And Jerry and Margo want to talk them out of their lunacy, so Jerry invites his boss over for dinner to talk him into asking Tom to take his job back. The discussion gets quite heated when Tom and Barbara come over for drinks prior to dinner.

This is the episode when we meet Margo for the first time. We only heard her voice in the pilot. And luckily for us, she says my favorite line twice in the episode, "Thank you very much, Jerry."

Quotes:

Margo: Jerry! She's smashing glass now.
Jerry: That's nothing. You should have seen Tom on the common with the goat.

Margo: Why can't they have a dog like everyone else?
Jerry: Dogs don't have udders.
Margo: Jerry, don't be obtuse. You know what I mean.

Margo: Well, thank you very much, Jerry. I shall not set foot in that car again until you've had it thoroughly valeted.

Margo: They are headed for degradation, misery and squalor. And we have to live next door to it.

Tom: Pink? You've painted our chicken house pink?
Barbara: Yes.
Tom: Have you put little chintz curtains in the windows as well?

Tom: This is just chicken voyeurism.

Jerry: They're happy. Perhaps lemmings are happy as they rush toward the edge of the cliff. So, I've taken steps.
Margo: Have you actually covered any ground?

Margo: Well, thank you very much, Jerry.
Jerry: What's wrong?
Margo: What's wrong? I need at least three weeks if I'm going to entertain a managing director. That's what's wrong.
Jerry: Three weeks to cook a bit of dinner.
Margo: I have never done that in my life. I prepare meals, Jerry. And I've nothing to wear.
Jerry: You could serve it naked.
Margo: Would you mind very much not being quite so vulgar. I just remembered, the candelabra being replated, and we don't have a new napkin in the house.
Jerry: Oh, forget it. I'll think of something else.
Margo: No. No, I'll manage, Jerry. A woman always does.

Jerry: I'm not awfully familiar with Taming of the Shrew.
Tom: No, Margo does get rather a lot of her own way, doesn't she?

Jerry: I think if I can get him back on the rails we should save him from himself. I don't think that's putting it too strongly.
Andy: That's awfully admirable of you, Jerry. But I'm running a business, not a psychiatric clinic.
Jerry: He's the best draftsman we've ever had. In fact, I don't see us keeping the Weber account without him.
Andy: Well, of course, I've always been very fond of... what's his name?
Jerry: Tom.

Felicity: Oh, look, a goat!
Margo: I'm so sorry, Felicity.
Felicity: Oh, no. I like goats.

Tom: Sorry about this. We're expecting our first egg.

Andy: There's a desk waiting for you at JJM.
Tom: You what?
Andy: Yes.
Tom: Has it been asking for me by name?

Margo: All right Tom, if you wish to commit social suicide and ruin the neighborhood while you're doing it, then so be it. But I think it's despicable to tow poor Barbara in your wake.
Barbara: Oi! I'm not no barge.
Margo: I know, dear. But I'm not sure you understand the implications.
Barbara: Now, look --
Felicity: Your goat, dear, has it got a name?
Barbara: Yes. Margo.
Margo: Jerry?

Jerry: If you come back to JJM, you won't have to work nearly as hard.
Andy: I heard that, Ledbetter.

Tom: We don't look on it as work. It's our way of life. I mean, it is work, because we tend to collapse at the end of the day, but we don't look on it as work.
Barbara: Yes. If I could understand that, I'd agree with it.

Felicity: I wanted to do something exciting when I was young. And then I married Andrew, and that was the end of that.

Felicity: Just trying is exciting.
Tom: Felicity, you've got it in one.

Barbara: At least you got the last word, and that's not easy with Margo.
Tom: Well, I excel at hollow boasting.

Barbara: Now, there's no need to shoot yourself, just 'cause you can't kill a chicken.

Tom: Chicken, I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse.

Felicity (to Margo): It looks just like the illustration on the tin, my dear.

Barbara: How can you miss a chicken from six inches?
Tom: It ducked. Anyway, we know how to make them lay now. Scare them into it.

Classic British Comedies: The Good Life (a.k.a. Good Neighbors)

Britain is well known for its great television. It has produced wonderful period dramas; Downton Abbey and the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice are probably the most successful. There have been many other popular period dramas, such as North and South, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Lark Rise to Candleford, Crandford, and many versions of Jane Eyre. (Someday soon I plan on writing up a post of all of the period dramas I would recommend.) British television has also given us many of the great comedy series. Fawlty Towers, Black Adder, Keeping Up Appearance, Are You Being Served?, To the Manor Born, and Red Dwarf, just to name a small number. British comedy is very different from American comedy. Some Americans love it, and some Americans just don't get the humor.

I would have to say that my favorite of all of the British comedies is The Good Life (known in the U.S. as Good Neighbors.) Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal play Tom and Barbara Good who live in Surbiton, a suburb of London. Paul Eddington and Penelope Keith play their neighbors, Jerry and Margo Ledbetter. On his 40th birthday, Tom leaves his job as a draftsman making plastic toys for breakfast cereal, because he doesn't feel fulfilled, and he's no longer able to take his job seriously. He convinces Barbara to try to adopt a self-sufficient lifestyle, and they turn their yard (front and back) into gardens to grow their own fruits and vegetables, and they buy chickens, pigs and a goat. The generate their own electricity, and they also try to make their own clothes. Jerry is confused as to why Tom would leave a perfectly good job to try self-sufficiency, and Margo simply horrified by the fact that she is now living next door to a couple who grow their own food, have chickens, pigs and a goat in the backyard, and create electricity using methane (i.e.,manure). Not to mention how it reflects poorly on her that they are her friends.

All of the characters in the series are excellent. The situation itself is ripe for comedic scenes, and the actors are perfect in their portrayals and have great comic timing. All of the actors are great, but I have to mention Penelope Keith's Margo specifically. Margo Ledbetter is one of the greatest characters ever to be seen in television. The character is well written, but it is Keith's portrayal of the Margo that makes it so wonderful. Someone just has to say to me, "Thank you very much, Jerry," imitating Margo's haughty manner, and I bust up laughing. I love this show!



Episode 1: Plough Your Own Furrow

Quotes:

Tom (reading a birthday card): "Mendelssohn and Mozart were dead by 40. Why aren't you?" How thoughtful.

Tom: When I get a birthday card from my wife, I expect a sentimental, loving, sickly verse. Not, "Another nail in your coffin, you wreck."
Barbara: Blow your candle out and eat your cake.

Barbara: Life begins at forty.
Tom: That's a fallacy for a start.

Tom: It's quality of life. That's what I'm after. If I could just get it right.
Barbara: What's "it"?
Tom: It? Well, "it" is... it.
Barbara: Well, if I see it lying about, I'll say, "Look here 'it,' my husband's had enough of you."
Tom: Not being very specific, am I?
Barbara: Borderline.

Tom: You look like an advert for gracious living.
Jerry: I am.

Commissionaire: Good morning, Mr. Ledbetter. Good morning, Mr. uh...
Tom: I've really made an impact with you over the years, haven't I?
Commissionaire: No. I've got sciatica.
Tom: Good.
Commissionaire: Charming.
Tom: No, no, no, that's my name. I've only been here eight years.

Brian: It really is something, isn't it?
Tom: Yes, it is. It's a mold for a plastic hippopotamus that's going to end up in a package of breakfast cereal.
Brian: You've gotta hand it to the ideas men on the fifth floor, haven't you?
Tom: Electric shock treatment probably. Ideas men? They sit up there like the gargoyles on top of Notre Dame.  Every now and again, one of them jumps up, puts on his jester's cap and says, "Eureka! Hippopotamus, oh!"

Brian: Oh, come. You wouldn't want us to go back to the dark ages, breakfast cereal without little plastic gifts?
Tom: It still tastes the same.

Tom: Listen you lot! I am a run machine! A run machine! And I bowl!

Tom: Will you mind explaining to those children in my office that I play cricket?
Jerry: Do you?
Tom: Well, no. But I could if I were asked!
Jerry: Still got the middle-age blues, have you?

Jerry: You use about 1/10 of your ability. I have to use all mine, and what I lack, I make up for with sheer, bloody crawling.

Tom: I can't see the world as a giant plastic toy. How can you make it your life's work.
Jerry: I don't. It just brings in the goodies.

Jerry: You're not going to walk into another job at your age, are you?
Tom: I'll hit you with my crutch in a minute.

Tom (on intercom): Miss Martin, it is funny, but not out loud.

Jerry: Don't go, Tom. (to Sir) I think that Tom ought to sit in on this one, Sir.
Sir: Why? Where's he from?
Tom: Fourth floor.
Sir: Oh, yes, yes. I'm afraid I don't get down to the fourth floor as often as I'd like.

Sir: How is it, um, uh...
Tom: Going?
Sir: Coming.

Sir: Now, look here. A bubble has just come off the top of the think tank. And I don't mind telling you that this is an absolute blockbuster of an idea. It's going to put our wildlife preservation series in the "Van Guard" of world, and I do mean world moldings. [Tom tries to hold in his laughter] Can you guess what it is? No, you can't, can you. Our next mold is going to be... a giraffe! And Tom, I'm thinking of putting this giraffe on your plate! [Tom runs out of Jerry's office and finally laughs]

Tom (to Barbara): Honestly, you should have heard Sir. You would have thought that he discovered penicillin. I couldn't help laughing.

Tom: I'd run off with you if you weren't married. I even love your varicose vein.
Barbara: I'll grow it in the shape of your initial.

Barbara: We don't need a lot of things.
Tom: No. We're a very spiritually advanced couple, aren't we?
Barbara: Yes. Anyway, you don't make enough for a lot of things.
Tom: No.
Barbara: I'll tell you what's at the bottom of all this. All this "it" business you were on about this morning. I had a think in the garden after you left.
Tom: You know, why do you always go into the garden to think? You're not having an affair with the gnome we haven't got, are you?

Tom: Hey! I was brilliant at algebra in school, wasn't I?
Barbara: I don't know.
Tom: I was.
Barbara: Big head.
Tom: X, the unknown. "It." In order to track it down, all you have to do is what they do in algebra.
Barbara: What are they?
Tom: I can't remember.
Barbara: We're both really firing on both cylinders today, aren't we?

Tom: You've heard of the "don't knows." I've come across the "don't want to's."

Tom: New page. [rips off page and hands it to Barbara.] File that.
Barbara: All right. [wads it up and throws it in the corner.]

Tom: I want... it.
Barbara: Shall we go to bed?
Tom: Yes. No. No. I'll be up in a minute.
Barbara: All right. Happy birthday.
Tom: Big deal.

Tom: What do you think?
Barbara: I need to think.
Tom: Garden?
Barbara: Yes.
Tom: Right.

Barbara: Self-sufficiency in Surbiton?

Barbara: I couldn't kill chickens.
Tom: Right. I'll chop their heads off with my Black and Decker while you're not looking.

Barbara: What happens when we need new clothes.
Tom: I'll have made the loom by then.

[Barbara comes in from thinking in the garden]
Tom: Well? Well? Well?
Barbara: You're on. We'll do it.
Tom: Now look, have you thought about this?
Barbara: What do you think I've been doing? Taking my wellies for a walk?

Jerry: Sir sacked you for laughing?
Tom: Other way around. I sacked Sir.

Jerry: You're mad, you realize that, don't you? You're... you're... I'm looking for a superlative.
Tom: Totally insane.
Jerry: Yes.
Tom: Rubbish.
Barbara: (calling to Tom from the window): Tom! The man said the goat will be here by noon.
Tom: Lovely.
Jerry: A goat? This is sheer folly. It just won't work. You're... you're... totally insane.
Tom: Jerry, we've never been saner in all our lives. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got 300 weight of spuds to put in.

If Doctor Who Were a Woman

I love this article. It explores an alternate universe where all 11 Doctor Whos were played women.

From all of the British actresses to choose from, I wonder how the author settled on those eleven. I loved many of the author's choices, but the two I really would love to see play the Doctor are Penelope Keith and Suranne Jones.

I loved Penelope Keith as Margo Leadbetter in the BBC's wonderful 70's comedy, The Good Life (a.k.a. Good Neighbors). A Doctor with Margo's personality would be great!

Suranne Jones was wonderful as "The Doctor's Wife." She's already part of the Doctor Who family, so I'm sure she'd feel right at home.

There's still a possibility that one day the Doctor will be played by a woman, so there's a chance Suranne could play the part. I'm not sure that at 72 years old Penelope would want to play the part. But it wouldn't be the first time that the Doctor has been played by someone over 60.

My favorite parts of the article are:

During Honor Blackman's turn as the 3rd Doctor, Vanessa Redgrave appeared as the Mistress.

Penelope Keith played the Doctor at the same time as she played Margo in The Good Life, and "jokes were dropped into [the comedy series], hinting strongly that Margo and the Doctor were one and the same."

"The 8th Doctor was met with massive amounts of hype, with the unprecedented casting of Julia Roberts as the Mistress, overshadowing the entire production."