TV recap.

I didn't ONLY watch TV on the weekend. I did a lot of scootering, a lot of church, a lot of eating, and I read I shall wear midnight. I was fully tired by bedtime Sunday, mostly because of the scootering.

Royal Wedding.

• The bible was read well. Like the dude had never seen the bible read in public before so he didn't realise he wasn't supposed to know the passage or speak clearly or give eye-contact or generally communicate the bible clearly. He treated it like a very important piece of oration. Extra points for memorising it.
• I regret the loss of uniforms in modern society. Casual dress does not compare to a uniform with gold buttons and fancy hats.
• I didn't know the royal family don't have last names. How special they are.

Doctor Who. ***spoiler***
Rather strange first episode. The big event (complete death and cremation of the Doctor) happened so early that there was no emotional investment in the shock, just confusion. Has set up some nice intrigue and tension for rest of series though, and the aliens are scary.

The Logies.
I'm the sort of person who doesn't watch this rubbish, but since it replaced the Mentalist and there was nothing else on… I tolerated it for an hour. The prize announcers were of a higher calibre than the prize receivers, generally. I don't understand why Katy Perry is a singer.

Library DVD review: The Man from Snowy River.

FIrst time watching this Australian classic. It is beautiful. The mountain country is just stunning.

I think it was made in the 80s when period stories were heavily romanticised and women wore a lot of lace and men wore puffy shirts, but they all seem to be wearing pretty normal clothes. Period clothes, but they were plain and real-looking, and also drizabones and boots. Very easy to identify with the place.

It's not an amazing script, and the story is pretty simple, but it's a really good piece of Australian rural culture. Girls on the ag college I use to work at loved it. It's a shame there isn't more like it, because I think bush culture is under represented. It was cool watching Australian men do rugged, useful things like crack whips and boil tea on a fire, foggy forests and horses running over mountains, and that stuff is still there today. The whips, the horses, the mountains, the roughness. I don't get into dramas like Mcleods or East of whatever it was. It shouldn't be a soap and it shouldn't be false nostalgia.

It is basically a coming-of-age story, which is another story rarely told in our age of delayed adulthood. I've been hearing a lot of media conversation about when do boys become men in our society, how do we mark that... so there is a line in the movie that stuck out to me. The young bloke says "it's more than a man can take" and the old fellas say "Man?" and he answers "my dad raised me to be a man".

Anyway, it was good. Sigrid Thornton and Tom Burlinson are quite good. The horse ride down the cliff is very good. The landscape is the best part, and the people on horses improve it. Make another one and I'll watch it.

Library review: Wicked audiobook.

So this is a 16 CD audio recording of the book Wicked by Gregory Maguire. It is read very well by John McDonough. I had expectations about what the book of Wicked was, and it's not really like what I expected. I'm not really enjoying it. I guess it's an interesting story, and the world of Oz is richly detailed, but it's not nice, but it's not funny, in fact it's pretty coarse and unpleasant. I wonder about all the teenage girl fans of Wicked who buy it. The musical improved on it a LOT.

Library DVD Review: Sharpe's Gold, etc.

If you like Hornblower, you'll like Sharpe. Same thing but not on boats. The Great British Empire fighting the damned Frenchies. Major Richard Sharpe (Boromir) fights with Lord Wellington, but he's not a redcoat, he's a greenjacket, so he leads a squad of riflemen who seem to roam around skirmishing and rescuing, which is much cooler than just marching in lines with bayonets, which they also do, as well as sword fighting and blowing things up.

I like the adventure stuff, and the violence is almost silly, rather than gruesome. A bit of fake blood is all. I really like the different accents and the things they say, they have some very quaint ways of being rude, and they say "bastard" a lot. There is plenty of humorous impertinence.

The female characters are cliched. Feisty yet vulnerable "lasses", with a token scene of partial undress (in nighty with bare shoulders). Each one falls in love with Sharpe. Sharpe, of course, has a dead wife. The old dead wife thing. Gibbs, Monk, and Patrick Jane are all proud members of the dead wife club, which gives good men who fight evil the ultimate tragic past, makes them loyal and unavailable yet conflicted and available, deeply and interestingly damaged, and probably also provides a revenge storyline.

What sticks in my head is the music. An English folk singer called John Tam plays a part in the greenjackets, and sings cool vintage soldier songs, like O'er the hills and far away and Johnny has gone for a soldier. It adds a nice layer to the culture they are recreating.

Library DVD Review: Tad Hamilton

Win a Date with Tad Hamilton.

When this came out I was the target market, and I kinda wanted to see it, but David and Margaret were not enthusiastic and I never got around to going.

I took it home from the library with a bunch of other things, and it was the last one I watched, and it left me lukewarm. I'm not the target market anymore, and it's not the cleverest in the genre. T.H. is a basic hunk, and the perfect pretty Rosalee is sweet... but I realised the movie as actually about Pete. He goes through the most angst, has the best lines, and is the only one with ambition. It's about him getting the girl.

Review aside, I've watched it 3 times in the last week. I am addicted. And a little obsessed. And now I've got an overdue fine on it. There is something so comforting in a nice-but-not-very-clever teen movie. I would like to watch it again, but I'm going to watch some Sharpe, which is basically all frog-fighting swashbuckle, damn yer eyes.