Brit film with fine cast of actors from the British theater, such as Richard Harris (Oliver Cromwell) and Alec Guinness (Charles I complete with stutter, but far too tall!), who emote in 19th C theatrical mode (hey, it beats the mumble core mode). Though not adapted from a stage production like Becket (1964) and A Man For All Seasons (1966), it sounds like those international box office winners. Queen Henrietta Maria, played by Dorthy Tutin (ya, never heard of her either) what sort of inflection is she bringing to her English? Not that of a native French person speaking English as a second language.
Historically it’s ridiculous, just starting with Oliver Cromwell as a man of the people representin’ for democracy. Film remains dear to many English, because they saw it as children, and because of its lavish production values and gloriously overblown re-enactment of the major battles of the English Civil War. It lacks characterization and narrative drive, as well as good lines, – i.e. a thin script. The film is about pageantry and impressive visuals, not political history. However, period spectacle does make for watching enjoyment all by itself for my sort of viewer who appreciates that sort of thing.
. . . . Perry Mason (2020) season 1? HBO Max Original
Overuses the tiresome by now visual trope of evoking classic noir era Los Angeles – the scenes dressed and lighted so murky and mustardy and muddy in color and lighting as to be barely visible. Otherwise I rather like it, having watched the first episodes back-to-back. For one thing it includes chicanos, which the 30’s LA noir seldom did, as far as I recall from my dad’s tremendous number of boxes in the attic containing crime-and-detection novels going all the way back to his own father’s youth.
It also contains Tatiana Maslany (who was brilliant in Orphan Black, as so many clones, each individual and different from the other) as a the charismatic radio celebrity faith healer of a god-for-profit church cult, sort of like the historical era’s Aimee Semple McPherson. An Aimee Semple McPherson type appears as Sharon Falconer in Sinclair Lewis’s satire of the USA's peculiar Faith for Money figures, Elmer Gantry (1927). So Maslany gets to act, again!
Matthew Rhys, made famous by the long-running series, The Americans, plays Perry Mason. So far, I am not liking Rhys’s Mason. But then, once it was clear that The Americans was making heroes of Russian spies working to bring down the USA, I ditched that show, because it seemed utterly insane to be pulling for that! And guess what? it was true! it happened!
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. . . . Made potato salad for dinner tonight, which somehow took me the entire afternoon, starting around 1 PM, not finishing until 5 PM. First rendering the lard out of the bacon. Boiling the eggs. Peeling and cooking the potatoes. Chopping celery and pickles. Slicing the potatoes. Slicing the eggs. Mixing them together with some vinegar and pepper and mayonaisse. Why so long? Even though I washed everything in-between each step, including the heavy big chicken skillet with lid, in which I rendered out the bacon? Dealing with bacon grease is complicated, to make sure none of it goes down the drain. So that was quite a few steps / procedures right there!
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