This journal is now semi-locked.

I suppose it has been for awhile, but I guess this is just making it official. I'll still keep general posts, like fandom info, and memes and things, public, but my journal will be friends only.

At this time I'm not adding any more friends. Thanks for your understanding. :)

ingenu0us ingenu0us ingenu0us

Featuring the art of the lovely soteria. I had the banner on my computer, found it today, and immediately fell in love. ;) Very pretty, and I love that the words are from one of my favourite songs, "Mushaboom" by Feist! My old blue layout had been up for too long, and it was time for a change.

You can see my matching banner/profile here.

By the way, does anyone know where I can find some good LJ user icon/community graphics? I'm tired of mine but I can't seem to find any others.

Hollywood icon Paul Newman dead at 83

Newman, who had been battling cancer, passed away at his home near Westport, Conn., on Friday with family and friends by his side.

That's so sad. I'm not hugely aware of this actor — I know who he is, and I've been interested and what I've heard he sounds like he was a really nice guy. I haven't really watched any of his movies, but I've wanted to. It's just really sad. :(

I didn't know he was also a racecar driver. I did know something of his charity work. And he had a happy lasting marriage with wife Joanne. ...

Snagged from elvenjoy and modernelegance

( I'm a dreamer, which is really accurate... )

I'm planning on writing a real post soon! I've now moved into residence at university which is a little surreal. I really like the campus, and the residence is really nice. It sure is different from Capernwray! But I'm also missing Capernwray and my friends a lot... More to come. ;)

Just a little collection for fun... I always like their trailers.

( Tess of the D'Urbervilles )

( Sense & Sensibility )

( Jane Eyre )


And here are some DVD trailers, the first I'd never seen before:

( Cranford )

( Sense & Sensibility )

Bleak House

Unfortunately, that's all I could find. I've never seen an actual trailer for North and South — not on any DVDs or anything, though I've seen ads for just about everything else. (Wives & Daughters, Daniel Deronda, The Way We Live Now, He Knew He Was Right and Bleak House. Ah, well...

You can check out the official BBC site here. It looks really nice! Though they're putting less and less content up these days, it seems. Still, well put-together.

IMDb.com page.

The official BBC press packet for Tess of the D'Urbervilles is here. (You can keep clicking on "next section" to browse the archives.)

More info at Gemma-Arterton.net, a fansite for the actress who plays the main character, Tess Durbeyfield. The site also has an amazing collection of images from Tess. You can also browse the "Articles" section for full articles about the series (i.e. here.) Of course, this all focuses on the one actress, so the gallery isn't complete, but it's still excellent.

( My thoughts )

Is anyone else excited?

( Cut for casting/season three spoilers )

I feel so behind on everything — I haven't had the internet for five weeks!

I always love these kind of things, and this one is really great — there are sooooo many different options. Colours, styles, everything!



I mean, DOCTOR WHO!!! Of course I went for the TARDIS animation — ahem, the "Sci Fi Police Box." :P

So if you want to make one yourself...

The Dashwood Sisters' Secrets of Love by Rosie Rushton

So... if you've heard anything about this book, you probably already know what a waste of time it is. I picked it up at the library having never heard about it, and of course I would want to read a modern-day version of Sense and Sensibility. Even the bad reviews I read once I got home didn't deter me from reading it.

The result? It really was awful. Yet for some reason, I enjoyed it just enough to keep reading. I say this is a combination of my picturing the Dashwood girls as the recent cast of the 2008 BBC miniseries: Hattie Morahan, Charity Wakefield, Lucy Boynton and Janet McTeer, all in their period hairstyles with "modern clothes." Trust me, it was bizarre. Elinor and Margaret (or "Ellie" and "Georgie") were in overalls, for some reason, and Marianne (or "Abby") was in a red shirt and a black skirt. I don't know why I picture things like I do, but whenever I read a book, settings and characters just look a certain way and then I'm stuck. :P

So, as much as the premise of this book sounds like a good idea — bringing Jane Austen's beloved Sense and Sensibility to the modern teenage world, à la Clueless — it really didn't work here. At all.

There was no character and no storyline that came close to anything half as good as the original. What really bugged me was the pace of the whole thing — the author spent the first half of the novel on the weird situation with "Mr. Dashwood" — who, in this version, has run out on his wife and daughters and married a bimbo half his age. He then dies suddenly of a heart attack, and, as a result of his leaving the estate "Holly House" to his new wife, leaves his old family homeless and penniless. I much prefer Austen's short but satisfying introduction on the Dashwoods, with a loving husband who had nothing to do with the estate being "taken" from the girls.

After all of this boring setup, the rest of the story whizzes by and leaves you wondering where the "fairy tale romances" happened.

Edward — excuse me, "Blake" — is going out with Lucy for no believable reason, and unlike the Austen original, is very much a jerk in that he is not excused for his treatment of Elinor. I mean, Ellie thinks he is a jerk and is angry at him during parts of the book, which is completely untrue in S&S. Then again, I don't know how you would modernize the Edward/Lucy story without tarnishing Edward's charcter, but still...

Abby/Marianne is the most superficial brat who also manipulates anyone she has to to get what she wants — which is usually a date with the hottest "it" boy and drinks at the club. (Keep in mind that she's only sixteen, so I don't know why she is clubbing so easily...) Her relationship with Willoughby/"Hunter" is predictable and pointless — he's the hot, super-rich, arrogant guy who everyone can see is bad news except for Abby. Whereas everyone is supposed to be charmed by Willoughby, so it doesn't add up. The Colonel Brandon/"Nick" character was sweet, though I don't understand why he would ever fall in love with Abby.

Margaret also gets her own storyline/romance. In this version, her name is Georgina (or is it Georgiana? "Georgie" for short.) She's thirteen and is a tomboy who also has a boyfriend by the end of the book. *facepalm*

So, my final advice would be — don't waste your time. Unless, like me, you can't resist and your curiosity gets the better of you, and you feel like something mindless to read.

As a side note, it turns out that this author has written two other teen Jane Austen "remakes" — one of Northanger Abbey and one of Emma. Eeek! Check them out.

Why are all these Jane Austen tributes so terrible? It's like Debra White Smith all over again.

I'm not sure why I gave this so much space, but I really felt like reviewing something. :P Like a big check mark, ticking something off of my ever-growing reading list and accomplishing something, heehee.

Thank you all soooo much for your best wishes on Friday. :D They must have worked because I am now an officially licensed driver!! It's so exciting. Unfortunately I can't get insurance 'til tomorrow so technically I can't drive at the moment... I still have to take my first drive by myself! Strangely this all makes me want to drive more, haha.

AHHH. So we'll see how that goes. I think it could go either way, really, which is saying something for the relatively little time I've practised, and that last week or so I would have said I would fail. But yeah — I'm going to go and do my best, and if I fail, I'll at least know what I should work on for next time.

After that, I'm going to spend the weekend with my grandma. (Wow, I started writing "grandpa" with that...) My aunt and uncle are going away for the weekend so they don't want her left alone. It will be nice to have a quiet visit. :) We mostly read, heehee. And maybe we'll watch one of my period dramas...

(P.S. I know it looks kind of creepy, but I just love this P&P icon! The blue is so pretty, and I love the unique blending... Made by burymyregret @ watered_faith)

In no particular order:

Remember that Robin Jones Gunn contest I entered? I WON!!!! Along with nineteen other people, I won an autographed copy of Sisterchicks Go Brit!. I'm so excited because, a) it's about England, so that puts it at the top of the Sisterchick list, and b) IT'S SIGNED BY MY FAVOURITE MODERN AUTHOR!!!!!!!! How amazingly exciting. I still can't believe it.

There's another 1991 version of Robin Hood that I just recently discovered, via UKTV's list of the top 10 Robins. Shortly after, it was on TV so I couldn't help but watch it. The most exciting part? David Morrissey plays Little John! That takes my interest level up by few thousand. Not exactly George Kennedy, eh? But a very good Little John nonetheless. And they had a Much the Miller, and Will Scarlett was Robin's right-hand man. And Uma Thurman was Marian, which bizarre. She had the modern girl spirit, but still, I much prefer Lucy Griffiths. I didn't like that Robin and Marian didn't know each other before the story began — I like the idea that they have they're own complicated history. This version also focused on the tension between the Saxons and the Normands (eek, spelling?) which I didn't know was part of the "Robin Hood" story. So all in all, it's been worth watching, but nothing worth keeping. But I did like this quote:

Maid Marian: [watching Sir Miles Folcanet ride away from them] My future husband is sulking.
Will Scarlett: [watching Robin Hood ride up to them] Oh, I don't know, he looks quite happy to me.

I'm sooooo addicted to The Supersizers Go... TV series. It's about two people who go "back in time" for a week and eat only the food of that period. It's fascinating and usually very disgusting. (A Victorian boiled calf's head, anyone? Or a Restoration pie with every kind of meat you can imagine, including whole chickens heads?) They also experience how the people of that time lived — roles of the wife and husband, things they did for pleasure, how they entertained, etc. It's very funny and educational, and Sue Perkins and Giles Coren make a great team. I started a little backwards and watched the Victorian episode first, followed by the Restoration and the Wartime episodes. I'm most looking forward to the "Regency" episode! I just love seeing history and how people used to live...

David Morrissey and Lucy Griffiths to be in a new ITV film about a stalker. At first I thought David Morrissey was going to be the stalker which wouldn't be hard to picture given his Bradley Headstone role in Our Mutual Friend, but no, he plays the guy being stalked. Lucy plays a new love interest... Should be interesting.

Lots of new dramas from the BBC. There's a new Little Dorrit in the making, whose cast includes Freema Agyeman and Matthew Macfadyen! The BBC always does wonderful Dickens adaptations, so my hopes are high. Yet it sounds like they're trying to cash in on the success of Bleak House:

Adapted by acclaimed writer Andrew Davies (Sense And Sensibility, Bleak House) Little Dorrit will play out in soap opera format with 14 half-hour episodes following an initial hour-long episode.

Also, it looks like Tess of the D'Urbervilles is the next fall drama for the BBC. I've never read the book (by Thomas Hardy) but I know enough of the story. I prefer happy stories, but that doesn't mean I won't enjoy this — I guess I'm just not looking forward to it as much. but oooh, Hans Matheson!

I finally got to the library today and picked up A Room With a View by E.M. that I've been wanting to read for ages. I also found Mansfield Park (1983) and Vanity Fair (1998) on DVD, and the books Enthusiasm by Polly Shulman (which looks good and has good reviews) and The Dashwood Sisters' Secret of Love by Rosie Rushton, which has less-than-favourable reviews but looked too fun to pass up. (It seems like the other five Austen novels are much more neglected, so a Sense and Sensibility remake/tribute is at the very least a fun read... hopefully.) It's exciting having some books that I want to read! I've been in a lull for awhile.

And last but not least, I watched The War Bride the other day with Anna Friel and I really enjoyed it. It's about a London girl in WWII who falls in love with and marries a Canadian soldier. Soon she finds herself sent with her little girl to live with his family in the prairies of Alberta. Nothing extremely unique, but it was still well done — good acting — and a very enjoyable story about history and romance and enjoying life through hardship. Definitely worth watching.

Oops, one more thing — I found this video on YouTube which features the 1976 version of Our Mutual Friend. I though some of you fellow OMF fans would like to see it. I wish I could see the actual series... (And how bizarre to see other actors playing Bella, John, Lizzie and Eugene?!)

I am literally crazy because I've been working on this all night — it's 4:46 AM!!! But I just couldn't stop once I started. I actually thought that it would be longer and I would fit more clips in, but still, I love how it turned out. The words even fit perfectly!

( Summary with spoilers... )

three_nails, I blame YOU! These two mess with your head and they're made of SO MUCH WIN. :P

This is for you, Sarah, and your crazy love for everything Millais Culpin! I hope you like it. (And lil_chanteuse, my other Casualty 1907 buddy!)

And YAAAY my moodtheme picture is Charity Wakefield. :D

Remember when I mentioned that Canada is getting their own version of "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria"? And I was very disappointed that John Barrowman probably wouldn't have been on it.

He totally is on it!

Canada's decision will be guided by an expert panel of judges: Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical supervisor, Simon Lee, vocal coach Elaine Overholt, and West End and Broadway leading man, John Barrowman.

So as much as I really dislike reality shows, I can't help but love the combination of The Sound of Music + JOHN BARROWMAN on Canadian TV. ;)

It starts Sunday June 15 at 8:00 on CBC.

He even gets his own page!!

[/my geeky squeeing...]

ETA: And now I feel like watching Torchwood, which is great because I really want to cross that off my list, especially before I start something else.

I need to stop buying ridiculously priced fast food.

Within the last three days, I've spent:

$11.25 on 1 regular pop and popcorn for the movie
$2.60 something for a medium iced capp that turned out to be really gross :(
$8.75 for my lunch at the zoo today
$15 treating myself and my parents to Dairy Queen (and my Blizzard is all melting and not really worth the money :( )

That all totals too much money. And — well, I really shouldn't be eating this junk, either.

I vow to not get Tim Horton's for a week.

(Um, we'll see how that goes.)

On another note, I'm starting to practice my driving again after months and months (probably about a year) of not driving at all. I'm soooooo nervous. Just to torture me, a guy starting crossing a busy street right in front of me. I could have hit him, even though I was in the right! *shudder*

Sorry about that — rant over.

After my old Robin/Marian layout was up for just under a year and a half, I finally changed it! Of course, it had to feature the new Sense and Sensibility miniseries. ;) I feel like it's one step farther for me as far as coding goes, especially with the headings. I also really like the striped background. I'm just a little worried about the colouring — it probably looks dark and muddy on a lot of your monitors, but on my MacBook it looks pretty and soft. Oh, and I didn't mean to, but I ended up using the full width of my 1280x800 screen, so if your resolution is smaller than that, you might have to scroll a little more. Sorry about that! But all that being said, I still love it. :P

And the coolest thing? You can pick your own layout! I still had the coding for my last three layouts, so you can choose to use any of those if you wish. Oddly enough, three out of the four options feature Jane Austen adaptations — figures. Bet you can't guess where my taste lies.

Now I'm going through each individual page and making sure it fits with the layout, and I'm also updating those pages that need a lift! (i.e. My "owned sites" page.)

It's rather exciting giving my site a little makeover, and I hope you enjoy browsing! (I have to admit, I tend to forget that I have this site since I'm on LJ so much. Whoops.)

I saw Prince Caspian today with my dad and it was sooooooo amazing! Anyone who says otherwise doesn't understand the Chronicles if you ask me. :P ( I don't even know where to begin )

I wasn't expecting to be touched like that, but it was awesome to be reminded of God's character. Seriously, Aslan is amazing and I always think of God when I watch Narnia.

And yes, this wasn't the best movie as far as storyline goes, but you have to see it all as a bigger picture — this is just a part of the Chronicles of Narnia, connecting one part of the story to another. I think the next film — The Voyage of the Dawn Treader will have a lot more to work with, so I'm really looking forward to that. I also can't wait for The Silver Chair — I think that will make a fantastic movie!


ETA: Ohmygoodness, I can't believe I reviewed the first movie on my LJ when it came out. I've had this journal for that long! And I've been using it regularly too. (If you're curious, you can find my "review" for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe here.) I must say, I didn't go into much depth! And it also sounds like I had just read the book before seeing the movie.

There's a new book out by Robin Jones Gunn called Sisterchicks Go Brit and it looks wonderful! They've got a contest which I'm entering with this post, but you should really check it out too! I have to admit, it appeals to me even more since I've now visited London for myself. YAY! Robin Gun + London/England = MUST READ.

But honestly (contest aside), Robin Gunn is an amazing author and you should really check her out! I fell in love with the Christy Miller Series and since then I've been hooked. If you're a fan, too, be sure to check out the new Katie Weldon Series which starts right where we left off with Christy and Todd's wedding. I think it's great that she's taken a turn to focus on Katie and explore her character more. It's a great read, especially if you liked the Christy Miller and Sierra Jensen books.

Robin Gunn's Official Site | Sisterchicks | Christy Miller and Friends | Forever, my Fansite

(Um, I'm thinking I took this a little too far when the site said you just had to post that picture on your blog to enter the contest, but I want to spread the Robin Jones Gunn love. ;P )

It's a reality series based on the one from the UK but now it will be Canadians competing for the lead in the musical "Sound of Music" and a Candian audience voting. How bizarre — usually it's the American networks remaking British TV, not Canadians! Ah, well.

They showed clips in an interview and in the clips there was John Barrowman! I literally shouted out loud, and I couldn't remember his name for the life of me — all that was coming to mind was Jack Davenport, LOL, even though I know who that is, but anyway... For a split second I thought he would be on the new show, but no, those were clips from the UK show. I so would have tuned in for that!

Part Three is done! Whew, that means I'm finally finished. This has been fun, and I hope you've enjoyed reading/watching as well!

( &c. )

And we're done! I just love that miniseries, and personally I prefer it to the 1995 movie, but that's just my taste. ;) Both versions are so different that it really depends on what style you like best, and what you think about the actors... You have to admit, though, it's nice that these actors are closer to the characters' real ages, and it is all very pretty!

You can see part one here and part two here.