The New Beginning: Julian Fellowes

Showing posts with label Julian Fellowes. Show all posts

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Some Photos for S4 of Downton Abbey

Here - and at the Masterpiece Theater website.

Downton Abbey Creator Julian Fellowes' Favorite Season 3 Moments

Friday, July 26, 2013

Trailer for Julian Fellowes' Romeo and Juliet

AICN: Beautiful Trailer For ROMEO & JULIET, From DOWNTON ABBEY Creator!

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Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Shakespeare Adaptations

First up, Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing -

Joss Whedon annoys me, but Amy Acker is in it, along with some others who have been in his TV shows. Still, that it is a "modern retelling" does not excite me.

JoBlo: The Trailer for the New Romeo and Juliet Features Haillee Steinfeld, Paul Giamatti, Damian Lewis, and Stellan Skarsgard

This time the name that causes some concern is that of Julian Fellowes. Downton Abbey did not make me a fan.

Will there be a season 4?

I did sit and watch most of the first episode of Downton Abbey last night, but started getting bored - drama for drama's sake, but what should you expect from a posh soap opera? Things have declined, in my opinion, since the first season, as the series has drifted more towards romantic excess, and making PC statements about this or that despite the rhetoric about duty and honor and the show's creator supposedly wistful portrayal of the old aristocratic order. (What should one expect from a UK network and company?) The viewer is left with the feeling that all that supplanted it is favored, dspite the newcomers' gaucheness and obvious lack of proper education - 'breeding.' (As in the case of Cora's mother, the American Mrs. Levinson, played by Shirley Maclaine.) No doubt there are also plenty of anachronisms for the historian fans and nitpicky.

Nonetheless, while the average view may side with progress and egalitarianism, she probably wishes to see her fashion elitism and spectacular consumption at the same time - Tom Branson protests the wearing of a morning coat for Matthew and Mary's wedding, but who is not secretly pleased that he is brownbeaten into wearing one? After all, he looks good in it!

Socons may like the show; how many fans at Art of Manliness forum? On FB it is apparent that plenty of Catholics do - they're looking for romance of some sort, something "better" and more acceptable in their circles than 50 Shades of Grey.

While the men have a role or occupation other than being a romantic foil, they seem to have less and less to do in accordance with it. Do they cater too much to women? I don't know if I want to stick around and see how the Matthew-Mary storyline plays out this season.

Related:
Brideshead Regurgitated By James Parker
The ludicrous charms of Downton Abbey, TV’s reigning aristo-soap
LA Times recap of the premiere
Seismic Change at Downton Abbey as Heard in the Waltz
Julian Fellowes
Julian Fellowes on the Rules of Downton
Julian Fellowes and Downton Abbey
Is this why Downton's creator is obsessed by class? Julian Fellowes' ancestors were not masters but SERVANTS on the estate that inspired the Abbey
Downton Abbey: Julian Fellowes on Interest in British Aristocracy

Friday, October 14, 2011

Items of Interest, 14 October 2011

An Introduction to Distributism
Joel Salatin in Time.
Slow Money Town Hall Meeting

Rod Dreher, Phillip Blond, Red Toryism, and power in America
Cars, Individualism, and the Paradox of Freedom in a Mass Society by Ted V. McAllister

Occupy:
My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters | Politics News | Rolling Stone
Making sense of the protests through a post-growth lens by James Johnston (EB)
Jack Hunter, What the tea party movement has that the Occupy movement lacks
Kevin Carson, Which Side Are You On (same as this CP article)
Tomgram: Steve Fraser, The Street of Torments

From Alte:
I Stand with the Protesters
Student Loan Racket Complete Infographic
Occupying Wall Street: The Start of a New American Movement
A Dose of Financial Reality

There is a lively discussion at Traditional Christianity about the movement and its participants -- one may fault some of the protesters for the bad choices they've made, but that doesn't later the fact that the political economy needs to be reformed in accordance with justice.