You all know I saw this three times at the Barbican this summer, so it’s my duty to report that they recorded the revival of Kiss Me, Kate and it’s coming to cinemas from today (17th November) and I am in fact going to see it, in my local indie today because a) I loved it and b) I want to see how it comes across on screen. It’s one of those event-cinema releases, so the dates may vary (the cinema where I’m seeing it is only showing it twice a couple of days apart at the moment) and you may need to look at either an indie or a larger multiplex cinema, but hopefully if you want to see it you’ll be able to find it.
Category: not a book
Book Adjacent: The Count of Monte Cristo
It’s Sunday and this week I have a movie to recommend, and it’s a bit of an epic. It’s not often that I recommend a three hour-long film, but honestly The Count of Monte Cristo didn’t feel that long because there is so much going on and it’s so much fun.
So this is the latest adaptation of the book by Alexandre Dumas (pere), and unlike The Three Musketeers, it’s not one of his that I have read so I can’t tell you how much this new French version has left out, but I suspect it’s a lot because it is a long book and covers a huge period. The early phase of this has a lot of “x years later” slates to get you to the point where Edmond Dantes returns to seek his revenge. But I’ve skipped a few steps. Here is the rough outline of the story, as told in the movie:
In 1815 Edmond Dantes, a young sailor, is falsely accused of aiding Napoleon and is arrested on his wedding day (before the knot can be tied). Betrayed by his friends and convicted by a corrupt magistrate, he is sentenced to life in prison. Some years into his time in prison, he meets an old abbé and while the two of them work to escape the Abbé educates him and also tells him where to find a mysterious treasure. On his escape, Edmond locates the treasure and sets himself up as the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo and in the 1830s arrives in Paris to wreak revenge on the people who put him in jail.
I love a bit of swashbuckling adventure, and this really delivers on that. It doesn’t have as starry a cast as the two recent French Musketeers movies, but it has a similar amount of swagger and adventure, and as I said at the top, there’s so much going on that you don’t notice the three hour run time. You might have to have a hunt around to find a screening of it, but it looks amazing on the big screen – it made me want to go to the south of France again as well as being entertaining.
Have a great Sunday!
Not a Book: Home Town
Given that I’ve already written posts about two series about home renovations and made a romance about a home renovation a book of the week, it should not be a surprise to you that I love a show about renovating houses – particularly American houses where it seems like it’s much easier to rip things up and reconfigure than it is here in the UK. And with autumn being all cosy and making me want to nest, this is the perfect time of year to be watching them!
Home Town is probably my current favourite of the HGTV series – and I’ve watched a lot, including several on my various long-haul flights over the last six months. Home Town is set in Laurel, Mississppi and features Ben and Erin Napier, a husband and wife duo (as do so many HGTV series) who restore historic homes. In the majority of episodes, Ben and Erin show their renovatees (is that a word?) a couple of housing choices, and present them with a painting of how the exterior would look after it’s been renovated and then once the hosue has been bought, they renovate it without the new purchasers seeing what is being done (or at least that’s what they say!) until the big reveal at the end,when they’re also presented with that painting from the start – now framed and with The *family name* house written underneath it. Coz every show has to have a thing right.
Ben is a carpenter and woodworker and Erin is a designer and artist. The series started in 2016 and having recently watched some of the earlier series you can see how both of them have got better at renovating things and also how prices in Laurel have gone up as more houses have been done up over the last eight seasons. I find Ben and Erin charming and I love that her decorating style isn’t black and white with shades of grey like some (Christina on the Coast I’m looking at you) but is all about colour and pattern. I also really like their commitment to improving their small town – which seems really genuine and backed up by the fact that they own and run businesses in the town. It’s all very low stakes, and low conflict and just perfect for watching while you’re doing the ironing!
Home Town is on HGTV and Discovery+ in the UK. Have a great Sunday
Not a Book: Mr McMahon
Back on a streaming documentary this week, and it’s more of an interesting watch than an enjoyable one, and less of a recommendation than that word implies for reasons which I will explain if you read on…
The basics: Mr McMahon is a six part Netflix documentary about Vince McMahon, the professional wrestling promoter who ran WWE (or WWF as it was) from the early 1980s until basically the start of this year. Interviews for this documentary started before the 2022 allegations of misconduct against him emerged, and McMahon himself cancelled his final interviews for the series after this happened (as the series tells you several times). McMahon took WWE from one of a number of professional wrestling companies to the dominant force in the industry – but to say his tenure was not without controversy is to vastly understate the case.
This is the point where I say that I am not a wrestling viewer. In fact one of the things I say often when people ask me what sports I do (or don’t) watch (usually in the context of the Summer Olympics) is that I will watch pretty much anything except boxing and wrestling. During the dominant years of WWE, it very much just wasn’t on TV at a time I was watching (or channels I was watching). And lets be fair – I’m not the target market for it anyway. So I went into this not knowing a lot about wrestling other than the fact that Hulk Hogan was one of the biggest stars for a period, that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and John Cena started out in WWE and that there used to be loads of WWE toys in the Argos catalogue that I used to flick through when I was younger. Oh and that the women of WWE are called Divas, and that the winners are pre-determined.
So this was an eye-opening (and horrifying at times) watching experience for me. And of course I have no idea what has been left out, or glossed over or otherwise elided. But it does explain a lot – whether it’s how wrestling actually works, or about the wider state of the world in some ways. One thing that really, really comes through is the force of Vince McMahon’s personality. He says on camera that he doesn’t really want people to get to know him, and even in the interviews recorded after the 2022 allegations, the WWE employees are still incredibly reluctant to say anything against him – one of them describes the stuff they’ve seen so far as a hit job.
And I should say that we got to a point where I wasn’t sure I was going to make it to the end of the documentary. The feeling started somewhere around the point where Owen Hart died (off camera but in the arena) during a Wrestlemania, and they continued the show, even with his blood on the ring, but intensified during the next episode where the Mr McMahon character and the Ruthless Aggression era just become overwhelming. But I was determined to stick it out to the end. And, oh boy. And that’s why I said at the top it’s not really a recommendation, because I came out of this pretty depressed that WWE still exists and is a thing, and that so much of it was allowed to happen at all, let alone in giant stadiums in front of baying crowds and then shown to worldwide TV audiences. But at least now I feel better informed about the world of wrestling, so I guess that’s something right?
Mr McMahon is on Netflix, you’ll probably need to be in a pretty resilient mood to watch the final few parts, and I would say go armed with a drink, but that’s not the sort of behaviour I should be encouraging, but I needed one by the end…
Book Adjacent: Pride and Prejudice (Sort Of)
We are back at the theatre again this week because I had such a good time at Pride and Prejudice (sort of) on Friday night that I needed to write about it asap.
So, if you’re here and reading this, I’m going to assume you know the story of Pride and Prejudice. And this is a modern retelling of the story through the eyes of the servants, and with a cast of five each playing a servant and then various of the main characters, who sing carefully chosen pop songs at key moments. Here’s a trailer to give you a bit of a sense of what we’re talking about because it’s sort of hard to describe.
The London production of this won the Olivier award for Best Entertainment or Comedy Play in 2022 and I can totally see why. The commentary on the events of the book is on point, the songs are witty (including Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow and You’re So Vain) and the running jokes are a hoot too. I laughed and laughed and laughed. I thought my mum who was sat next to me was going to cry laughing at more than one point.
We did wonder how it might work if you *don’t* know the story of Pride and Prejudice – which as I said may not be a problem for you but maybe your normal theatre going companion isn’t an Austen fan. Well luckily I know someone who went earlier in the week to me and who isn’t familiar with the original text and she also enjoyed it – her description was “pretty good” and she liked the meta-commentary on the events and also the sweary bits, of which there are a few. So I think it’s probably a pretty safe choice for a theatre trip – if you don’t mind a bit of swearing (my mum coped) and some double entendres!
We were the second stop of a new national tour around the UK – you can find all the rest of the dates here along with info on how to book.
Have a great Sunday!
Not a Book: The Thomas Crown Affair
You know there are some films where if you come across them on TV you just end up watching them again? Hot Fuzz is one of them for me – and the 1999 version of The Thomas Crown Affair is another.
Pierce Brosnan’s Thomas Crown is a wealthy industrialist and playboy. And as we discover in the opening sequence, he’s taken to stealing art from museums for kicks. Rene Russo is Catherine Banning, the insurance investigator sent to find out what happened to the Monet that has gone missing from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She soon grows suspicious of Crown and the two start a romantic cat and mouse game.
This has got romantic tension and intrigue galore and two brilliant heist sequences to boot. You can’t help but root for Thomas, even though he’s stealing things, and Rene Russo is impossibly glamorous as Catherine. This is a remake (although somewhat tweaked and updated) of an earlier Paul Newman and Faye Dunaway movie of the same name, which I keep meaning to try and find and then never getting around to. But in terms of a film where people have cool jobs and live amazing lives in New York, this is right up there. Just try not to think too hard about how much money this must all cost – although at least to give this some credit Thomas is explicitly super wealthy and Catherine explains she gets a percentage of the value of the artwork that she recovers, so it fairs better on that front than say You’ve Got Mail or When Harry Met Sally!
The Thomas Crown Affair pops up fairly regularly on the various ITV channels in the UK, and it’s also on the MGM subscription service within Amazon Prime. And just a couple of weeks ago it was announced that there is third version of the story coming – this time directed by and starring Michael B Jordan. I’ll be going to see it just to see how different it is from the other two…
Have a great Sunday
Not a Book: Swan Song
It’s probably stating the obvious, but it’s a long way from the UK to Kuala Lumpur, so on the way there and back I had plenty of opportunity to sample the inflight entertainment and although I did take full advantage of the fact that they had a number of my old favourite movies that I used to lull me to sleep (namely Sean Connery James Bond movies but also my beloved Pillow Talk and The Philadelphia Story), I do still have a recommendation to give you today from my viewing.
Swan Song is a feature length documentary (although if you are in Canada there was an extended four part series version) about the National Ballet of Canada’s staging of a new production of Swan Lake, under the directorship of their outgoing artistic director, retired ballerina Karen Kain. Originally due to premiere in 2020, the production was delayed by Covid, so it also shows an artform trying to regroup after the lockdowns and closures that threatened the survival of so many arts organisations. As well as Karen Kain, the documentary follows the company’s principal ballerina Jurgita Dronina and several members of the corps de ballet.
A lot of the issues that commonly come up when you’re talking about ballet are in this too – including the reckoning with racism and the fact that all the ballet “ideals” are built around white dancers, and the ever present spectre of eating disorders and body image issues. But it’s also got lots of beautiful dancing as well as a close up view of the effort it takes to mount a production like this, as well as how hard it is to be a member of the corps – which is something that often gets overlooked.
Regular readers will know that although I’m about as graceful as, well, something very ungraceful* I absolutely adored ballet books when I was a child – and in fact have all the Sadlers Wells and Drina books on my shelves to this day** and I really like documentaries that take you behind the scenes of ballet. The BBC has had a couple of really good ones – including Men at the Barre (sadly currently unavailable to watch on iPlayer) where we discovered that Vadim Muntagirov is known as Vadream by the ballerinas because he’s such a dream to work with – and so this was total catnip for me.
Although I’ve seen Swan Lake a few times and watched a whole load of documentaries about it, I wasn’t massively familiar with the National Ballet of Canada, so there was lots of interesting new stuff for me here. I wouldn’t count myself as a massive ballet fan though – so I don’t know how this would land for someone who is, but I think it would be interesting to the casual theatre or dance fan too. Him Indoors is usually my gauge of things like this for the non-fan – and I think there’s some stuff that he would have been interested in, but most of the backstage-y stuff isn’t for him, so it’s probably one that I would put on when he was out of the room and see what happened when he came back in, rather than one that I would put on to watch with him!
If you’re not going on a plane in the near future and want to watch this, it’s available to purchase now on the various streaming platforms. And just before I go it would be remiss of me to have a post about ballet this weekend and not mention the sudden death of Michaela Mabinty DePrince at just 29. Her journey from war-torn Sierra Leone to the highest level of ballet was remarkable, and she was a dedicated humanitarian as well as a beautify dancer. I’m still in a bit of shock about it to be honest.
See you tomorrow.
*I suggested Peter Crouch, but Him Indoors insists that Crouch is infact graceful. I was aiming for something that has too many legs and flails a lot. Answers on a postcard/in the comments
**in some cases more than once. Ooopsies
Not a Book: My Lady Jane
Another week, another streaming pick and I do apologise for the fact that they’re all over the different services. I’m as cross about it as you are – which is nearly as cross as I am about the fact that I now have to sit through ads mid show on some of said services. Hey ho.
Ever thought “what I really need right now is an alternative history Tudor dramedy with a bit of magic”? No? Me neither. And yet we binged My Lady Jane across three nights and it’s a real hoot and a half. As you’ll know if you’ve watched the trailer (or maybe just by the fact that I said it’s Tudor and she’s called Jane) this is about Lady Jane Grey, who due to the machinations of those around her had an incredibly short reign after the death of Edward VI and was then executed by Queen Mary after she took the throne back. But this is an alternative history, and so there is swearing, a distinctly un-Tudor voice over and a plot that gets more and more bonkers as you go on.
It’s also got a cracking cast. I hadn’t come across any of the younger leads before but it’s got Anna Chancellor as Jane’s scheming mother, Rob Brydon having an absolute ball as Lord Dudley and Dominic Cooper as Lord Seymour. It’s utterly utterly bonkers and incredibly watchable. The ending is left open for a second series, but Amazon have already announced that there won’t be one, much to the consternation of the fans who have started a petition to try and change their mind. Watch this space, and in the meantime, have the official playlist.
Not a Book: Only Murders in the Building new series
This is a bit of a preview, but the fourth series of Only Murders in the Building starts on Tuesday and I am very excited. Here’s the trailer – but don’t watch it if you’re not up to date with the series or you’ll get some spoilers. Instead, go and read my earlier post about the show!
Anyway, I’ve really enjoyed the first three series and I can’t wait to see how they build out the world in this latest one. As usual, we already know who the victim is, because we saw it happen at the end of series three. Selena Gomes, Steve Martin and Martin short are back as Mabel, Charles and Oliver, and it looks like Meryl Streep is too, given that she was at the premiere the other night (holding hands with Short – which has got all that speculation going again) and although it seems like Jesse Williams is not (another Mabel love interest bites the dust) there are a whole load of A-listers who are due to appear including Molly Shannon, Eva Longoria and Eugene Levy. I would say I can’t wait, but I will wait until the whole series is available because I do like to be able to go straight on to the next episode and not have to wait another week. Also I’ll wait because it’s on Disney + here in the UK and I don’t currently have a subscription to that so I’ll need to finish out some other things on the other services before I swap it in!
Have a great Sunday everyone.
Not a Book: Bernadette Peters
I usually try and write here about things that you can go and see. This is a bit of an exception, because it was a one night only thing. But I had a great time, so I’m writing about it anyway.
Bernadette Peters only made her West End Debut I. Sondheim’s Old Friends, but she is an absolute Broadway Legend. If you go on a streaming service and look for Stephen Sondheim songs or cast albums you’ll find her there. And now in her mid-seventies she’s still touring and sounding pretty darn good.
The set list for this included a lot of Sondheim – and pretty much all the stuff that I hoped she would do: Losing Mind from Follies (and Buddy’s Eyes), Send in the Clowns from A Little Night Music, Children Will Listen from Into the Woods, You Gotta Get a Gimmick from Gypsy (with special guests Joanna Riding and Bonnie Langford) and Move On from Sunday in the Park with George. But on top of that she also threw in a couple of songs from Hello Dolly – given that she’s played Dolly and Imelda Staunton is currently headlining that show elsewhere in the West End and things like Nothing Like a Dame, Johanna and Being Alive. It was a wonderful straight through hour and fortyish minutes and from my perch up in the balcony it was amazing. And I think the rest of the audience was as spellbound as I was.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 