I'm Baaaaack!!!

Hi all! So, now that I know people actually read this I'll try to give you a dose of my scintillating prose more often (thanks, Kim). Christmas was very nice, though I got zero work done (which leaves approximately a week and a half to finish the PhD application -- arrrgh!). Went to see Sweeney Todd for the third time last night -- that movie is soooooo fab!! See it! I may be in love with Stephen Sondheim. Also went shopping in Dundee yesterday. I may also be in love with H&M. Have suddenly become popular in manner of Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton and am booked solid for parties, etc, every night this week. Have come to the conclusion that academics are the new rock stars. We can stay up wildly late, sleep later, give the vague excuse of 'oh, sorry...must write whilst I'm inspired' to get out of pretty much anything we don't want to do, and we're encouraged to be shamelessly self-promoting. And there's certainly enough in-fighting and salacious gossip to fill several tabloids a week. But it's a grand life.

That's about all for now, have not ventured out much yet because of jet lag and...erm...'welcome back' book club meetings. And knitting circles. ;)

Excitement!!!!!!!!

Oh my god, I have to just be a twittering fangirl for one minute---So I was looking at a London theatre guide online, just idly skimming and fantasizing about a time in the vague future when I can make it down to that lovely town, when to my utter delight I saw that Hamlet is going to be playing next summer. "Ah, perfect!" I thought. "My very favorite Shakespeare play! I wonder if anyone I know is in it?" So I went to the page and *OMG* Kenneth Branagh is directing (which would have been enough by itself) and JUDE LAW is Hamlet!!!!! Squeeeee!!!!!! Ok, done now. Actually, Judi Dench will be doing a show in London next summer too, as well as the opening of "Gone With the Wind: The Musical." Oh yeah, you know you all want to visit.

Absurdities

Ok, I realize it is like 2:30 in the morning and I need to go to bed as I am suffering from a rather nasty cold, but something has come to my attention which I must express my confusion about. Has anyone been tuned in to the hoopla surrounding the "anti-religious" sentiments of the Golden Compass books and movie which seems to have been building for some time now? It is interesting because I have heard nothing but good things about these books, though have not read them, and had always vaguely planned to see the movie after learning that His Shexiness Daniel Craig played a role. But on Facebook lately, TONS of people have been joining "Boycott the Golden Compass" groups--which I see as an overreaction at best and uncomfortably Naziesque close-mindedness at worst. Which prompted me to rather passive aggressively join a "Support the Golden Compass" group, although I have not actually read the books. Can anyone tell me what all the fuss is about? Is this an instance where my genuine lack of religious convictions has rendered me completely incapable of comprehending just WHAT these people's problem is??? Regardless, I think I have some additions to the reading list for Christmas break....

Oh yeah, and I may be attending the Second Annual St Andrews Miltonathon next week, in which all interested parties gather from 9 am till whenever it's finished to read "Paradise Lost" aloud. Jealous?

Sherlock Holmes? Och, Aye!

After spending a gorgeous couple of days in Edinburgh absorbing the cultural atmosphere, one cannot help but notice and be gratified by the respect and attention with which they treat writers of the Scottish persuasion. There's a glorious Writers' Museum that honors Scott, Stevenson, and Burns, a Scottish Storytelling Centre, and a Poetry Library in addition to the lovely National Library of Scotland. A veritable English major's paradise. Now, some of you who know me also know about my interest in (cough*obsessionwith*cough) all things Sherlock Holmes. Ok, so I've pretty much wanted to have his fictional babies since I was about ten. Whatever. I also am enormously proud of my adopted country, Scotland. Which is why this article is so interesting (though is is from a couple of years ago). I most heartily concur.

Another New Favourite

Should I be reading Anne Finch's poetry for class tomorrow? Undoubtedly. Instead I came across something a bit more modern by the fabulous Dorothy Parker:

Theory

Into love and out again,
Thus I went and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
Someone dropped me on my head?

From the Absolute Worst to the Absolute Best, Tudor-Style

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is the greatest movie evah!!!!!! Really, it is so, so stunning, loads and loads better than the first one even (and the first one was pretty damn good). Everything about it was completely gorgeous, from the costumes to the scenery to the musical score to Sir Walter "Sex Bomb" Raleigh as played by Clive Owen...not a joke, this definitely makes at least my top five favorite films of all time. It was even better because I spent all day analyzing Elizabeth and Mary Stuart's poetry, so it was kind of like the cherry and whipped cream on top of the academic sundae. Also it was just immensely satisfying, after a day of trying to pretend to be somewhat unbiased when it comes the whole Elizabeth/Mary relationship, to watch Elizabeth open up a giant can of whup-ass on Mary and icky Philip of Spain in glorious technicolor. To paraphrase the lady herself in the first Elizabeth movie, there is ONE mistress in this house and NO master, baby.

He's (Not) 'Enry the Eighth, He's Not.......

Ok, this may be a long rant, and it is so unrelated to my everyday life, but....I've been watching the Showtime series "The Tudors" in installments on Youtube over the last couple of days and can I just ask, WHAT WERE THESE PEOPLE ON WHEN THEY MADE THIS MOVIE?????? God knows I've never been a Henry fan, I think he was a spoiled and neurotic man with a deep-seated inferiority complex, daddy issues, and a touch of homicidal mania to boot, but even he does not deserve the inane stupidity that is this miniseries. Number one, this may be superficial and irrelevant, but we do have some idea of what these people looked like. They belonged to a social class that could afford to have their portraits painted often, not to mention those Early Modern versions of Perez Hilton, the ambassadors from other countries who liked to write home about the various quirks and foibles of those crazy English, so we can at least have a vaguely accurate idea of personal appearance from visual and textual accounts. So what were they thinking when they casted short, dark, slightly weaselly Jonathan Rhys Myers? Henry was (it is a FACT) over 6' tall with the distinctive Plantagenet reddish-blond hair so famously inherited by his vastly superior daughter Elizabeth. Also Thomas More is portrayed as a sincere and holy man who entertains no thoughts of irony whatever whilst writing "Utopia". Did they READ "Utopia"? Who am I kidding, probably not. And then, apparently the filmmakers thought that we, the viewers, are too dumb to handle the fact that there were TWO Tudor sisters, Margaret and Mary, (Margaret who was Queen of Scotland and Mary who was briefly Queen of France before her marriage to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk) so instead they give us ONE Tudor sister, named Margaret but based on Mary, and they have her marry the Really Old King of Portugal (Portugal??? Where did this random country come from???) and, unable to bear the thought of just waiting till the old guy is dead, which looks to be soon, she smothers him with a pillow.

WTF???????????????

We will not be watching episodes 5 & 6.