Saturday and Sundry Scribblings on Home Decor as Sleep Aid

During the last several weeks - months even - for various reasons I've had trouble sleeping. I removed myself from our bed, so as not to disturb the husband's sleep, and have taken to sleeping in one of the recliners we bought earlier this year, padded with a few pillows. As a sleep aid I turn on the TV, subtitles on, sound muted, watch until eyes signal imminent closure. I regularly choose a segment of something from the selection of documentaries or reality shows available via Netflix.

TV has become a definite sleep aid, even when I'm not trying! Earlier in evenings, of late, I've missed great chunks of TV series or movies we've been watching.

Among the jumble of sleep-aid stuff I've watched in snatches, in the early hours, have been episodes from a couple of series from the UK relating to house decor, sales, and how to best present a house when trying to win over the goodwill of potential buyers. I understand this kind of thing is called "home staging".

In one such series an American, rather over- bubbly, "house dresser" (Tracy Metro in "House Doctor") runs around different areas of the UK showing sellers where they are going wrong, then tarting up their decor, often in fairly iffy (to my eye) ways! It was nice to see a few of my old stomping grounds included though, as featured locations. Even a house in often ignored Hull was the star of one show!

In the other series a more down to earth estate agent, Sarah Beeny presents "Selling Houses". In each episode, a couple looking to buy a house in a specific location and price range, is featured. Three options of houses for sale are suggested. The sellers are allowed to critique one another's styles, first. Then they are given a thousand pounds to use on improvements to their decor and property, so as to better appeal to the chosen buyers. The conclusion (which I often missed) showed which house the buyers (allegedly) had chosen.

What amazed me more than some of the decorative style (or lack of same) in "Selling Houses" - both before and after so-called improvements - were some of the house (and flat/apartment) prices! Yikes! Admittedly the locations were in the south of England's "leafy suburbia" or one of the outer London boroughs, rather than the more down to earth (and pocket) northerly towns and cities. How do people afford these prices - three hundred and thirty thousand pounds + in many cases for a 2 or 3 bedroomed house, and just short of half a million pounds for a not all that swish apartment in outer London! These are in pounds remember, add around a third to translate to dollars. Jaw hits floor. The buyers (always supposing they are genuine buyers and not actors posing for this show) were youngish - in their late 20s or thirties. The mind boggles at the thought of mortgage payments !

The other thing I found surprising was how potential buyers fixate on wall colour, decor items, pieces of furniture. The latter will disappear entirely when owners move out, and the former are easily changed. I can appreciate that, in some cases, new owners prefer to move in with "nothing to do", but I'd bet that happens only rarely. We all like to put our own marks on our homes, and a few pots of paint will not break the bank. Ever the cynic, I wonder, could everything possibly be faked and scripted especially for these shows?

Fake or genuine, I've always had a soft spot for these types of programmes - I guess it's the arty farty streak in me. Years ago, back in the UK, I enjoyed "Changing Rooms" a then popular series with a house decor theme. Its presenter, who was part of the show's appeal for me, was one Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. He got himself in hot water more than once with house owners due to his outlandish style of decor. It was good to see him again a few months ago, somewhat older and a tad less flamboyant not, in this case as a sleep aid, but in a series of shows we watched: "Hidden Houses of Wales" (Netflix again). The series featured some historic houses in Wales, houses still lived in as real homes. The shows investigated the history of these houses, with current owners interviewed by Laurence.

Anyway, back to the point of all these scribbles...one of these nights I'll be back in bed, sans sleep aid - we have no TV in the bedroom. I predict numerous visits to bed and mattress stores in our future!

Martian Music Monday

For any Netflix viewers who have grown jaded from watching too many police procedurals, detectives chasing serial killers, etc etc, yet find the average 'romcom' to be somewhat hackneyed, no matter what spin is added - do give Martian Child a look.

Martian Child, a 2007 American comedy-drama film directed by Menno Meyjes and written by David Gerrold, is based on his fictional Hugo and Nebula Award-winning short story of the same name, and not on David Gerrold's semi-autobiographical novelette also confusingly titled The Martian Child. The film stars John Cusack as a writer who adopts a strange young boy who believes himself to be from Mars.

The movie is not as science fiction oriented as the title implies. It's a sweet story, with some superb acting from young Bobby Coleman as the child in question.

John Cusack is excellent, he strikes just the right note as the child's adoptive father, his real life sister, Joan, plays his fictional sister. David Schiff (Toby from The West Wing), and Angelica Houston (who will be, for me, forever Clara from Lonesome Dove) pop in to the story from time to time.


BUT - it's Music Monday, so what else but this?
Starman





Or this - I love this music, part of a great, and much, much longer story, that is pure science fiction:

...The chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one, he said
The chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one, but still, they come...

Saturday & Sundry Watchables

We watched, via Netflix, two movies one after t'other one evening during the week, and they unexpectedly turned out to have similar themes. Both movies had female leads - gals who, uncharacteristically, decided to take the law into their own hands:
Miss Meadows, and
I Don't Feel at Home in this World Anymore.

Miss Meadows has Katie Holmes as a young teacher with perfect manners, old world style, but packs a punch and a dinky firearm in her little handbag. She carries said bag a la Queen Elizabeth II, it's on her arm at all times. The story unfolds in both predictable and unpredictable ways.

In the film with the unwieldy title I Don't Feel at Home in this World Anymore Melanie Lynskey is Ruth, who is sickened by the human indecency around her. Her home is burglarized, the police are disinterested, so she teams up with her neighbor (Elijah Wood) to find the burglar and deal with him. It's complicated though. Things rapidly become far more dangerous than the pair ever expected.





Both movies belong to the genre 'black comedy'. Black comedy is a strange genre - I suppose a tag line for it could be "if we don't laugh we'll cry". There are a few wry chuckles available in these two films, about the characters themselves, rather than their actions, which is testament to the excellent direction and performances by all involved.


AND... for something completely different:

New on Netflix this month is Queer Eye, It's a re-boot of a 2003/4 show, back then titled Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I remember seeing episodes of the old 2003/4 show on TV, in England before I left. We've now watched the first few episodes of the re-booted version. The show now has a new cast, five different guys, but the mix of personalities is similar. One of the five is very camp - fun, lovable; the others are less overtly gay, all are charming. In the 2018 version we have diversity, this was missing in 2004. One of the new five is black, another is British and of (I think) Pakistani background.

As well as making over their subjects' personal styles of dress and grooming, and their homes being given an attractive uplift of new decor, there's an added psychological element. This, for me, is especially interesting. Lack of self-confidence is tackled in the first episode, and in the second episode the subject is a police officer. He has a touchingly candid conversation with the black member of the five guys, about....well you can guess. It's affecting, especially so at the end of the show as they all bid farewell.

Critics might judge Queer Eye as just another tacky reality makeover show, but it has more potential than that - and so far, for me anyway, it is living up to that potential.

THE CROWN ~ A pleasant surprise!

For some reason, a couple of weeks ago, husband and I started watching the Netflix series
"The Crown"
Wiki's first paragraph on the series:

The Crown is a biographical drama television series, created and written by Peter Morgan and produced by Left Bank Pictures and Sony Pictures Television for Netflix. The show is a biographical story about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. The first season covers the period from her marriage to Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in 1947 to the disintegration of her sister Princess Margaret's engagement to Peter Townsend in 1955. The second season covers the Suez Crisis in 1956 through the retirement of the Queen's third Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, in 1963 following the Profumo affair political scandal, and also the birth of Prince Edward in 1964.

From that description the series sounds less than fascinating! We were both amazed at how much we both enjoyed "The Crown". We watched season 1 and season 2 at the rate of two or three episodes per evening. Bear in mind that I am not, and have never been any kind of royalist, so my interest was not based in nostalgic rememberings of "the old country". The series is so well done and, to be honest the story is such an engaging one when seen, like this, in hindsight. There are times when I was thinking "you couldn't make this up!" It's a good story, by any yardstick. Historical facts are retained faithfully, intact; fictional parts of the script are, of necessity, conversations between the characters, in their private lives.

Casting and acting are excellent, for the most part. Claire Foy and Matt Smith (aka Dr. Who) lead as Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. John Lithgow does a creditable Winston Churchill in spite of the fact that he's way too tall for the part. Vanessa Kirby gets Princess Margaret, I think, "just right". My only doubt, so far, has been the way the Queen Mother (wife of the late King George VI) is portrayed. Victoria Hamilton plays the part. It's not her acting at fault, it's more the lines she's given. I always saw the Queen Mum (as she was known) as one of the most warm, human and humane of the lot of 'em. So far she has not come across as such. Also, Jackie Kennedy, portrayed by Jodi Balfour, came across as a bit of "a mean girl", but also as a much weaker character than I'd have expected; and JFK didn't look anything like JFK. There are numerous internet reviews and articles fact-checking, and touching on all aspects of the series, so I'll not expand further.

We shall await season 3 eagerly, though it'll have an entirely different cast, all characters will have aged some - and it will be at least a year, perhaps more, before it "hits the screens". Anyway, I heartily recommend seasons 1 and 2 to anyone who hasn't seen this series already.

"The Crown", by the way is very likely the reason for some frequent extra hits on a post of mine from 2010:
Royally Beloved in the Time of Scorpio

Movie Monday ~ Requiem for a Dream & Hippopotamus

For our double bill, one evening last week, I picked two films from the Netflix collection pretty much at random, by title and without prior research. I thought them unlikely candidates for slash-bang, or police procedural themes - of which we've had our fill. As it turned out, though the films had very different themes, styles, and locations, there was a gauzy link between them... well, I saw one!

Requiem for a Dream, at times proved quite hard to watch, theme and style are raw and brutal!

Directed by Darren Aronofsky, the film is set in Brooklyn Beach, New York, and is worth enduring to wonder at the superb, academy award-winning performance by Ellen Burstyn. The theme of Requiem for a Dream is addiction - to various types of drug. I'll say no more, the full plot is available at the Wikipedia link above.

The second movie of our double bill : The Hippopotamus. This one, in contrast to the first, is set in a snobby, snooty region of southern England, it's an adaptation of a novel by Stephen Fry.

Nutshell: Lead character Edward "Ted" Wallace is an alcoholic washed-up poet and theatre critic. He has been fired from his newspaper job, accepts a lucrative commission from his terminally ill goddaughter to investigate rumours of miracle healings at Swafford Hall, country mansion of Wallace's old friend Lord Logan. Synopsis available at Wikipedia.

Roger Allam plays Wallace, does a lot of narrating (probably words culled directly from Fry's novel) in a beautifully modulated plummy accent, an accent quite different from his more ordinary southern English, used in his role, in Endeavour, as Detective Inspector Fred Thursday.

So...where's that promised "gauzy" link then? Well, it's Neptunian in nature (waxing astrological!) Addiction is traditionally thought to link to Neptune, as are things considered to be "miraculous". Requiem for a Dream is totally Neptunian, The Hippopotamus less so, but bear in mind that its lead character is an alcoholic and the film's theme leans on supposed miraculous healing powers of a young man.

Nutshell: Requiem is brutal but well-meaning and superbly acted. Hippopotmus is stylised and fun - though I'm not sure it is capable of being fully appreciated by any but those with a good grasp of English fads and foibles.

Movie Monday ~ Z for Zachariah

There's nothing like a post-apocalyptic, movie to cheer one in these troubled political times. If nothing else, these offerings show us how much worse things could be - will likely be in fact, some future day in the absence of major change  - soon. We watched one such movie a few nights ago (Netflix):
Z for Zachariah. It's a loose (extremely loose , I think) adaptation of the 1974 novel by Robert C. O'Brien.

In a nutshell the story goes like this: nuclear war or accidental nuclear tragedy have left the world - well, maybe the world, but at least the USA, mainly unpopulated due to widespread radiation, and perhaps other ecological calamities.

Some little time has passed since the apocalyptic events. We meet a single survivor in a closely sheltered valley somewhere in eastern USA. We learn that this small valley area has missed the devastation of the rest of the world - or USA, due to a quirk of nature and its unusually sheltered location. There's a clean water supply. Suspension of disbelief is essential here because - what about when it rained ? The hard/ contaminated rain would have fallen there as well as everywhere else.

That aside, we meet a young woman, probably in her twenties, sturdily managing to survive working the small farm of her lost parents. She has enough food from crops, chickens and a cow, a little hunting and fishing to nourish her, clean water from a source not affected by outside radiation, and a faithful dog for company. Winter, though had been hard - without electricity after her generator ran out of fuel, she almost froze to death.

We meet her (Ann) in warmer times, as she is out hunting rabbits, and stumbles into another survivor (John), a black guy mabe a decade or so her senior, bumbling around in a huge hazmat suit with a laden trolley. She watches as he goes to bathe in a pool whose source she knows for sure is contaminated. She manages to alert him, but is too late, then tries to help him survive. Turns out he's a scientist, a quiet type, not easy to understand, but kindly and helpful to Ann.

That's a sketchy idea of the first part of the film, later on a third survivor arrives (Caleb) another male, this a more local fellow, one who turns out to be quite different in nature from John - a little sneaky, generally untrustworthy but not without some native charm.

We know, without benefit of synopsis, that this menage a trois will pose a problem, even in these terrible "end of days" circumstances, human nature remains human nature!

Z for Zachariah can be watched, as we did, head on (as it were), but after I'd read a little on line the next day from past viewers, it turns out there's a whole other way of seeing it: as an analogy. I had suspected there was an underlying Adam & Eve thing going on, but it goes deeper than that. There are biblical references, analogies, hidden hints, and important matters left unfinished, unexplained. One reviewer describes the movie as being a kind of Rorschach test. I agree, after having read through several lengthy threads of commentary about the film. There's mild exploration, if one looks for it, of issues connected to race, gender, class, religion, but in the kind of circumstances we all hope never to encounter.

I enjoyed the movie, but it's a definite slow-burn, needs patience, and maybe even a second viewing to appreciate all possible meanings. Just three characters support it (and a dog) - not a movie to attract those who enjoy lots of fast action, glamour and wall to wall noise. The acting is good to excellent, with Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Chris Pine it would be wouldn't it? With a trio of lesser actors this film could have been as disastrous as the times it depicted.

As for the original novel of the same title (which is a nod to a children's book: "A for Adam"), Wikipedia's synopsis tells me that the film adaptation uses nothing but the barest bones of the original story. The novel's tale sounds even harsher, goes where the film declined to go. Ann was much younger in the novel, teenage. Book version John had a rather nasty, controlling nature, wasn't black; and the novel introduced no third party to the scene. The film then has to be regarded simply as a stand-alone piece using a situation and location based loosely on the novel.

Another "Eve of ..."

CERN just dropped 300 TB of Large Hadron Collider data free online.
Oh goody!

Things had been quiet on the "God Particle" front and Large Hadron Collider so far this year. We were reminded of the old excitements as we watched a two-part mini-series on Netflix at the weekend: The Eve of Destruction. It's a too long 3-hour TV movie served up in two 90 minute slices. We didn't hate it, it did bring up, albeit in a somewhat garbled way, many of the ills of modern life on planet Earth: the greed of corporate bosses, the manipulation of nature for corporate gain, the dangers of human error, the dangers of well-meaning eco-terrorism, for instance. Eve of Destruction is a mix: one part mild sci-fi and one part disaster movie, on a moderate budget, special effects are limited.

Plot (hat-tip to Moria)

In Denver, Karl Dameron and Rachel Reed head The Proteus Project funded by GMO foods magnate Max Salinger. Their project, the DRIL Trigger, when activated, will tap dark energy and provide a source of unlimited power. However, a test run causes an energy discharge that kills a technician. Lineman Ruslan, a Russian immigrant, panics when he sees the purple glow the reactor emits into the sky. He tries to get to Dameron to warn him, saying that he was witness when the same experiment was conducted in Russia a decade ago and ended up wiping the entire town of Lhitiska off the map. Dameron is troubled by these claims and starts to investigate what happened. Meanwhile, the unscrupulous Salinger, who has an important government contract dependent on the success of the Proteus Project, starts putting pressure on the team to ignore the negative results and push ahead. At the same time, Dameron’s daughter Ruby has been drawn in by the radical protest group P53. She is able to get them one of her father’s security access passes, only to find herself dragged along as the group plans to blow up the power plant. As the experiment is activated, these coinciding factors create a runaway surge of dark energy coursing through the power grid that threatens the entire planet.

There's the kernel of a good movie there, but Eve of Destruction was either too long or too short to make absolute sense - even with disbelief suspended. The basic tale, with some repetition eliminated, and faux scientific chat pared down, could easily have fit into around 100 minutes. Using the same basic premise and two long episodes - plus much bigger budget - the ending could have been vastly improved. Heck - the whole world was being destroyed one minute, but a few linemen (nice touch having linemen as "the cavalry" for a change) stopped the "malfunction" (or whatever). Everything is hunky dory once again, but the big bad boss, evil look in his eye, and his sidekick are about to hop onto a plane to Mumbai where another of those collider thingies is already installed. The rest of the world, bless 'em are still trying to put out the fires, draw breath, and dig out the millions of dead bodies. Denver has been more or less obliterated....but hey, a fighting father and daughter are reconciled....and... here come the end credits!

Best actor in the film, by far, is Aleks Paunovic (Ruslan) the immigrant Russian lineman. Steven Weber (Dr Karl Dameron), Christina Cox (Dr Rachel Reed), Treat Williams (Max Salinger) aren't too bad, but at times were unconvincing.

There's an old pop song, sung by Barry McGuire with the same title as this movie; there was a 1991 movie with the same title too. It'd have been a good idea for producers of this 2013 movie to have stirred the old grey matter a bit longer to find a fresh title! Something about linemen would have been good, they never receive much applause, and they have been doing dangerous and essential work for decades.

Netflixing: The Hours

Casting around for a decent movie on Netflix last weekend I settled on The Hours.

"This one is unlikely to be full of slash bangs and violence", I said, "and look it has 5 stars!"
"It had better be good, commented husband - considering that cast list, it must have been a very expensive film to make, even in 2002."

Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore head the cast, with Ed Harris, Jeff Daniels, Allison Janney and Claire Danes in secondary or minor roles.

Two hours later, as the credits rolled, my first remark was - "What an utterly depressing and highly pretentious movie!"

I'd been constantly irritated by the film's every character except, perhaps, a little boy, a little girl, and Allison Janney (aka CJ Cregg of The West Wing).

According to the few reviews I read afterwards, I appear to be on the wrong side of the critical appreciation fence. The vast majority of reviewers heap praise upon everything connected to The Hours. I will admit that Nicole Kidman's acting was a whole lot better than in some others of her films, and that and she, equipped with prosthetic nose, as Virginia Woolf actually irritated me the least.

What's it all about?

Well...there's a bit of time travel involved - of a sort. The story, adapted from an acclaimed novel, same title, by Michael Cunningham, centres on specific days in the lives of three women of different decades of the 20th century. Virginia Woolf, British writer (Nicole Kidman)in the 1940s; Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), a 1950s housewife in suburban USA; and book editor Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep), a 1990s a sophisticated New Yorker. There are time-spanning links between the three women: one writes a novel "Mrs Dalloway", one reads the novel, and one lives the novel (kind of). It's a clever concept that could, in my opinion, have been put to much better use than setting its focus on suicide, and generally self-absorbed, spoiled individuals who had so much to be thankful for, but remained "unsatisfied". Two of the women had supportive, loving husbands, the other a long-term loving lesbian relationship - this is no tale of spousal abuse. On second thoughts though, perhaps it is, and mental abuse comes from the women involved causing different levels of pain and sorrow upon the males in their lives.

Was it a "Feminist Film"? If it was, I'm even less of a feminist than I thought! If I suspected that that's how most women are: spoiled, selfish, self-absorbed then I'd immediately tear up my (small "f") feminist card!

A decent review by Gabrielle Wenig from 2003 (I did eventually find one I agreed with), states:

The subversive message in The Hours is: Life is only worthwhile if it is fiercely exhilarating and intoxicating, and death is to be preferred over an existence that in any way fails to match this measure. In the world of the film, blessed ordinariness – love, affection, security, and routine – is death, while madness, that is, meanness or an exclusive and sadistic regard for one’s own interests, is life.

For that reason, it is difficult to think of The Hours as a women’s film, for the women in it find their escape from the ordinary through others’ pain. It is a film that calls on us to celebrate women who act on base instinct, ostentatiously abandoning the everydayness they are encumbered with, and searching for salvation only in choices that remove them from the simple things in life. This rejection of the so-called ordinary appears to fortify these women, giving them a feeling of entitlement to something different and better. The film conveniently sanitizes the hideous consequences of these choices, by exhorting us to admire women who achieve a self-awareness that is constructed from the wreckage of others’ emotions, and an obsequious servitude to their own impulses........

There is little doubt that The Hours will achieve Academy recognition for its showcase of superior achievements in all aspects of film, but the high level of craftsmanship serves a deeply disturbing end. It is a film that valorizes the abnegation of moral responsibility, and the poise and precision of its craft draws us into a willing suspension of our instinctive sense of what is life-affirming and good. We lose our moral bearing as we concentrate on the self-absorption of these women –and in the solipsistic world of The Hours, that is all that matters.

It's an expertly made, quality film, interesting for its construction, if irritating (for me) in its storylines.

Netflixing ~ Off time travelling once more...

I enjoy a bit of "timey-wimey", so when I noticed a recently added movie, titled Flight World War II in Netflix's catalogue, with a hint that time travel is involved, I had to investigate. The movie is a low-budget 2015 release, a tale about a present day 757 on a flight from the USA to the UK. The plane travels through a mysteriously violent storm and afterwards occupants gradually discover that they've travelled through time, to find themselves over France in June 1940. Not a healthy place to be!

In spite of the drawbacks of its low budget, we found it an enjoyable movie. Husband spotted a few flaws, disbelief definitely needs to be suspended. Some anachronisms and "goofs" can be covered by the fact that the 1940 they experience wasn't exactly the same 1940 as the one we know about.

The Doctor, written by Steven Moffat

After reading around a bit, I found that the movie has some similarities to a 1980 film, The Final Countdown. That one was a bigger budget movie with starry cast including Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen. It was a tale of an aircraft carrier in the Pacific... occupants also mysteriously finding themselves transported back to...well you can probably guess the rest. I've ordered a second-hand DVD of The Final Countdown to check it out. I never could resist that old timey-wimey!

Netflix Synchronicities - or Coincidences

I doubt I could link these Netflix coincidences in any meaningful way, but it was kind of spooky at the time. Some shows we watched, more or less consecutively over a few nights, all had themes of identity change, and they were in no way intentional choices for that reason.

Beginning with a movie, The Cobbler: a fantasy tale with threads of a mild thriller or mystery threaded through it. This film was directed by the same guy, Tom McCarthy, who directed The Station Agent (mentioned in this post).

When his modern stitching machine breaks down, a shoe repairer in New York finds it necessary to use an old pedal-operated stitching machine he found stored in his cellar. He discovers, after repairing a pair of fancy crocodile shoes using the old machine, then trying on the shoes - which happen to be his own size - then catching sight of himself in a mirror, he is, to put it mildly, amazed to find that he has transformed in appearance to the shoes' owner, a snazzily dressed gang hoodlum. The cobbler experiments with other shoes of his size, repaired using the old machine, and finds that he can change appearance in many ways, as long as both borrowed shoes are on his feet. Adventures of various kinds ensue - and a mystery.

It was all a bit Quantum-Leap-ish, not to mention that old saying, "walk a mile in his/her shoes!

The next night we set about watching a 2-part X-Files segment, titled Dreamland in which we were surprised to find that Agent Mulder, after being in line of a wave of time-space warp, had swapped appearance with another individual standing nearby at the time, a man of quite different temperament and aims from Mulder's. Scully isn't aware what has happened... dangerous muddles occur, at length!

Third coincidence, next night - or was it even the same night - don't recall, we decided to watch the pilot episode of a one season series titled Awake. Guess what? No...not exactly changing appearance this time, but a guy (played by Jason Isaacs) involved in a car accident which we are told had killed either his wife or his son (or both?) appears to be living in two different existences, one where his wife is alive but son dead, the other with his son alive and his wife dead. This guy is a police detective (a stumbling block for me), he has a different psychiatrist in each "reality", deals with different cases in each, and has different detective partners in each - but some strand of linkage is always present in the cases involved. The show is shot in two different "hues" too, reddish tinged when wife is alive, greenish when son is alive. The detective wears a red wristband or green one to help both himself (?) and the audience keep track of what's going on.

We can't decide whether this was meant to be heavily disguised sci-fi , or a story that will be rationally explained eventually. It's definitely a series where one's attention must not be allowed to wander! The show didn't receive sufficient interest, so NBC cancelled it after one season. We shall wander through through the 13 available episodes to see how it was all tied up, or if it was. My own pet theory is that the guy remains in a coma and is dreaming it all - highly complex dream though! I shall resist looking for spoiler information online.

Two of Each, Salt, Vinegar and Scraps.

"Two of each, salt, vinegar and scraps" was a common request at the local chippie (aka fish and chip shop) back in Yorkshire. The customer would be presented with two neatly packaged parcels each containing a portion of fish, fried quickly in tender batter, and a portion of chips, all properly seasoned (British chips are similar to the kind of fries in the US known as steak fries). Before I start dribbling on my keyboard.....

Two of each, on the blog today, refers to two videos that caught my interest this week, and two movies likewise.

Two Videos:

From Clay to Mosaics - amazing skills on show here - watching all the way to to the end is essential!





100 Years of Fashion in 2 Minutes. This is women's fashion, of course. Men's fashions have changed in subtle ways, but not nearly as dramatically as women's. Having watched the video I wondered whether any astrological links would be possible to coincide with changes - investigated Neptune transits 1915-2015, but decided that fashion has links to too many other factors to clearly relate to the old "as above so below" doctrine.






Two Movies:

Words and Pictures, new to Netflix this month, is another movie about teachers. This time it's not about a mythical magical change-your-life type teacher such as Robin Williams portrayed in Dead Poets Society back in 1989, but a "warts and all" depiction of a couple of teachers who specialise in English and Art and wage war over the question of whether words or pictures are more powerful. Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche star as the two brilliant but flawed teachers. I enjoyed what exploration there was about the comparative power of words and pictures - would have appreciated more of this, but that would have turned the story into a documentary I guess.

The film held our interest, though I found it hard to like any of its characters - maybe that's a sign of their good acting!

The Quiet American from 2002, also on Netflix. It's the second adaptation of a novel by Graham Greene. The first adaptation, in 1958, is said to have skewed the novel's core intent, must have been an attempt to save American face, and do a bit of flag-waving.

The tale is set in Vietnam in the early 1950s. Michael Caine plays Tom Fowler a middle-aged world-weary British journalist covering the war between French colonial forces and the communists. The quiet American, Alden Pyle, played by Brendan Fraser, arrives in Saigon, ostensibly part of a US Aid Mission. There's a layer of love story involving the two men and a lovely local girl, with an strong second layer involving political issues Vietnam, and the USA, were caught up in at that time.

We found it a sad but engaging and, for me, an enlightening movie. Michael Caine is "just right" in the part of Tom Fowler - I cannot think of anyone who could have played the part as well as he.

Graham Greene's novel has proved prophetic in many ways (see here.)
Snip

During the Vietnam War and its sequels, the novel became routinely labeled "prophetic." But what Greene was trying to tell us half a century [ago] now seems to border on sedition, as our government implements the President's declaration, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Indeed, The Quiet American has become so subversive that Miramax tried to deep-six its movie after 9/11 (it was originally set for a 2001 release), until Michael Caine forced a two-week run in December 2002 and a wider opening in early 2003. So now Greene's exposé of the U.S. machinations for imperial war in Southeast Asia in the early 1950s reappears amid the machinations for imperial war in Southwest Asia and the Mideast.

That was the "two of each" then...here's the salt, vinegar and scraps:

Another film - an independent one, little known outside of Netflix I suspect - The Station Agent. While I didn't like any character in Words and Pictures, I liked all the characters of The Station Agent. Co-stars are Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson and Bobby Carnavale. I enjoyed their individual quirks, their non-mainstreamness, their silences, their minimalist chat, their quiet - and the actors' wonderful portrayal of living life on the fringes of what is common. That's all I'll say so as not to spoil it for anyone else who enjoys an out of the ordinary sojourn with out of the ordinary people in ordinary, yet so out of the ordinary, circumstances.

TV Maturing Well ?

When we started watching Grace and Frankie, Netflix's own new series, without having read any reviews I was expecting a comedy - mainly due to Lily Tomlin's inclusion in the cast. Husband did laugh out loud a few times during the first couple of episodes - I didn't. I really disliked the show's pilot and second episode. Maybe it's due to my non-American background. Maybe due to ....oh, I don't know...my aversion to certain sitcoms about a certain "class" of Americans. They always live in big houses with pools and a view of the ocean, they are lawyers, surgeons, always wealthy, clever, successful etc. etc. Such situations might have been just the thing to attract an audience a few decades back. TV viewers in the USA, then, might have been anticipating their own rise to such opulence. Now - not so much!

Basic storyline of Grace and Frankie is that "Grace" and "Frankie" (Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, respectively) women in their 70s, have been long married to lawyers who are business partners, Robert (Martin Sheen) and Sol (Sam Waterston). The husbands announce to their wives, over a communal dinner, that they've been in love with each other for 20 years, and intend leaving their wives to set up home together and marry. The guys hope to live out the rest of their lives in tune with their natural instincts. Both couples have grown-up families, bringing in four more regular cast members.

Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are probably the only two actresses, of the right age group, who could have carried off the parts of Grace and Frankie. They're a classic "odd couple" thrown together by circumstance. There are other, lesser known TV faces who could have played the parts of the husbands to much better effect though. Martin Sheen remains Jed Bartlett (West Wing) to me for all time. Sam Waterston's Law and Order character loomed large for me over his characterisation of an ultra-sensitive, soft and gentle gay guy.

The show did grow on me some during the 13 episodes of its first season. It still isn't, for me, what it ought to be, and could be. Maybe Season 2 will improve it still further. In any case, it is good to see another show with its focus on characters of an older generation, and not portraying them like doddering old fools. In tandem with its more mature characters the show approaches what had been "a sensitive subject": being married to a heterosexual partner while gay. For those factors alone I should give Grace and Frankie a gold star!

Another show we saw early on in our Roku-owning time, was Amazon's Transparent, starring Jeffrey Tambor as a guy who dared to came out as transgender in later life. I much preferred the general tenor of that series to that of Grace and Frankie. The humour was less forced, more natural; the characters warmer, and far more believable.







An excellent British TV drama series we found, I think also on Amazon Prime during our free month's trial a while back: Last Tango in Halifax. It's another drama mixing love stories of an elderly couple (played by Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi), with an interwoven theme of a lesbian relationship of one of their daughters (played by Sarah Lancashire). Characters in this series were totally believable; there was humour and pain mixed with delicate deftness, skilled writing and acting. Maybe I'm a wee bit prejudiced because the action took place in my native county of Yorkshire!




Thank goodness some writers and producers are at last cottoning on to the fact that there is an audience out here made up of more than teens, twenties, thirties and forty-somethings! We have time to watch too, and we have been starved of decent drama and comedy to which we can easily relate. I don't want to watch nothing but "oldie" stories, I enjoy films and shows featuring younger people, as long as their themes are interesting, funny, witty, clever or science-fiction related - so few of them are though. Writers of such shows will often throw in a token "oldie" to keep things, as Fox News puts it "fair and balanced", but those token characters are usually portrayed in such a way that is anything but fair and balanced - just like Fox News!

Netflixing ~ The Homesman

We Netflixed into the movie The Homesman one night this week. Tommy Lee Jones is always good value, and in this case he not only took a leading part in the film, he directed it, and co-wrote the screenplay. The film is an adaptation of Glendon Swarthout's novel of the same name, a novel that has, I understand, been waiting for years for its transition to film. Originally the rights were owned by Paul Newman, then Sam Shepard, but neither was able to gave it the push it needed. If Newman or Shepard had intended taking the leading male role, much as I admire(d) both actors, in my opinion they'd not have made as good a "George Briggs" as did Tommy Lee Jones.

The film is one of those "warts an' all" stories of how the west - or west-ish - territories of the US were trying to be "won" by intrepid 19th century pioneers. The Homesman tale begins in the wild empty expanse of Nebraska territory in the 1850s. A small community of settlers has sprung up in Loup, near the Loup River. A few families are trying to survive amid devastating conditions, high winds, snow, ice, dust, poverty, on small farms, a long distance from the next small town.

In Loup we meet Mary Bee Cuddy, a farmer, she's living alone, unmarried, a former teacher from New York. She is relatively successfully farming her own small spread. Not all the females of Loup are coping as successfully as Cuddy though. Three (four in the novel, I think) have completely lost their sanity from trying to cope with the harsh conditions, loss of multiple children from disease (diphtheria), loss of love for their husbands many of whom have grown coarse and unfeeling, and ultimately loss of all hope. The townspeople, under advice from their church minister, have decided that the three women must be escorted back eastward to Iowa, where another minister's wife has established a help centre for the mentally unstable.

The men refuse the task of homesman (escorting immigrants back to their previous homes, or to another location). Mary Bee Cuddy (played by Hilary Swank) volunteers for the job. Cuddy has, not so secretly, wanted to marry, has even proposed marriage to single male neighbours, but has been turned down more than once due to her perceived bossy nature and plain appearance. She's not pretty-pretty, but she certainly ain't exactly plain to my eye. Ironically, the guy we see turning her proposal down is plug-ugly (as they used to say) himself, but that didn't matter, did it? Maybe they didn't have mirrors!

Cuddy realises almost immediately after setting out on her homesman duties that she'll need help. Fate or fortune brings her onto a path where a claim jumper, seated on a mule, has been left to hang. Cuddy persuades him that if she rescues him he must accompany and help her. "George Briggs" as the claim jumper calls himself is played by Tommy Lee Jones, of course, and is at his surly best.

I'll not give away the continuing storyline. There are lots of good reviews, of varied opinions, on line for anyone interested and unlikely to read the book or see the film.

The film reminded me of several others. First off I thought of Lonesome Dove, due mainly to the fact that both stories involve a long journey across wild territory, both with Tommy Lee Jones involved. Then, the unlikely mix of personalities portrayed in The Homesman: educated, bordering on sophisticated Mary Bee Cuddy and unruly, unprincipled, wild-eyed George Briggs simply had to bring to mind the pair of characters in that classic movie African Queen. Another "warts an' all" western, of more recent years, Unforgiven - a Clint Eastwood film - came to mind also.

The harshness of life for women pioneers was never properly addressed in all those sentimental, comfortable early western movies with which we grew familiar in the 1950/60s, and even later than that. There's a lovely statue/sculpture up in Ponca City, Oklahoma titled "Pioneer Woman", erected in honour of such women, but even the woman in the statue looks well-fed and prosperous compared to the women of The Homesman.

As we watched the movie I recalled a tiny group of marked graves we came across several years ago beside Talimena Drive, on the border of Oklahoma and Arkansas. Someone had left a plastic covered note on one of the small graves telling how it marked the resting place of a child of 6 years who had been killed by wolves, after her parents, pioneer settlers, had died. I've never forgotten that telling marker.

In The Homesman a nice point is made about civilisation in general. Harsh and crude as conditions were for early settlers, who themselves often descended into hardness and crudeness, there was still a kind of unspoken code of ethics and morality going on. People would help each other, come to aid of anyone when in difficulty, for instance. But, in an oddly out-of-place segment of The Homesman story, Tommy Lee Jones' character, transporting the three deranged women, comes upon a rather fancy hotel in the middle of nowhere (quite literally middle of nowhere).

A snazzily dressed would-be nobleman, in charge of the hotel (Irish accent clunkily affected by the otherwise wonderful James Spader) refuses food and rest to the starving travellers who haven't eaten for three days. The reason, he offers: he awaits a group of investors who will fill the hotel, speculators aiming to build a new "civilisation" in this wilderness. A huge spread of good food is awaiting the expected guests. After gentle, and not so gentle, begging by George Briggs, for at least some food for the women, Spader's character remains unmoved and refuses. So this is going to be the flavour of new "civilisation": cold, unfeeling, grasping. (This thought must have crossed Tommy Lee Jones' mind as director, and that of his fictional character, George Briggs).

It's not a great movie, but it's a good one for anyone interested in US history - the quiet, unsung history, not the well-known razzmatazz variety. Even if not historically-minded though, there are interesting relationship issues, civilisation issues, personality issues, redemption (or not) issues, women's issues to be discovered and pondered upon, all barely under the story's surface.

Dramatically Licentious Syzygy

In an X-Files episode titled Syzygy, Episode 13 of Season 3 (via Netflix) astrology played a role!

Scully and Mulder were sent to investigate a series deaths all involving boys from the same high school. They find the town in uproar, rumors of a satanic cult are spreading. Everyone in town seems to be acting slightly out of character, including, eventually, Mulder and Scully.

Mulder's visit to a local astrologer, Madame Zirinka, reveals that an unusual planetary alignment is currently in place. The astrologer tells Mulder that the planets in question, Mars, Uranus and Mercury come into such an alignment only once every 84 years. If certain additional alignments are present, anyone born on January 12, 1979 (birthdate of two female school friends mentioned in the episode) will have all the energy in the cosmos focused on them.
See HERE and HERE.

The planetary alignment which was stated to be the cause of the problems was between Mercury, Mars and Uranus. The alignment was shown onscreen in the episode and was depicted at night near a full moon. A full moon is always opposite from the sun and so Mercury could never be in a visual alignment with a full moon. Additionally, Uranus is not visible with the naked eye.
(See HERE)

Dramatic license was obviously in play, but did the episode's writers bother to consult an actual astrologer, I wonder? The 84 years equates roughly to the time it takes Uranus to orbit the Sun, so it's Uranus' party we're dealing with, I guess. On 12 Jan 1979 Uranus was at 20.7 Scorpio, but that doesn't tell us much. It's all about those "additional alignments" happening on the uncertain date of these X-Files events. Crafty scriptwriters!

It was nice to see astrology given a role in an X-Files episode. Not before time! It was all a bit nutty, lots of X-File in-jokes, an episode not meant to be taken too seriously. Whenever astrology manages to edge its way into drama, the only way the writers know to go is "nutty". Pity! Still, I did enjoy the Syzygy episode.

Netflixing: Cedar Cove, Knife Fight, Halt & Catch Fire.

Our Netflix diet of late has been a potpourri of The X-Files, Quantum Leap, and Cedar Cove, judiciously arranged so that soothing Cedar Cove episodes come just before bedtime. Retiring to bed after some of the more gruesome X-Files episodes can endanger a peaceful night's rest!

Cedar Cove, we've discovered, is one of those "comfort food" series: undemanding plot-lines, idyllic setting, pleasant, good-looking characters, decent script and acting. It originated on Hallmark channel, to which we've not had access, but I can well imagine most of its fare being of this good-natured ilk.

Cedar Cove is based on Debbie Macomber's novels of the same name. The series focuses on Municipal Court Judge Olivia Lockhart's professional and personal life and the townsfolk of her small town, Cedar Cove. The Judge is nicely played by Andie MacDowell. Her "love interest" (there always has to be one of those) is Jack (Dylan Neal) the newly arrived from Philadelphia leading (only) reporter on the town's newspaper. See Wikipedia for full cast list. Filmed on beautiful Vancouver Island, the series' location is actually meant to be Port Orchard, Washington State, a dozen or so miles from Seattle.

If anyone's looking for a bit of undemanding comfort viewing as antidote to ubiquitous slam-bang nastiness, this series acts as welcome relief.

Decent movies, as against TV series, on Netflix have proved harder to find. We've begun watching several only to dump them after 20 minutes or so. The majority are definite "C", "D" or "E"-list fodder - in our estimation at least. Last weekend we tried a movie newly introduced to Netflix, Knife Fight, subject matter not as one might expect from the title. The film is about shenanigans in the American political campaign business. Rob Lowe (once of the wonderful West Wing) heads a cast which also includes another West Wing alumnus, Richard Schiff - the pair share a couple of the best scenes in the film, bring in much-needed chuckle-worthy one-liners. I really enjoyed the film, but most critics panned it. American politics and their shenanigans being comparatively new to me, I'm probably more easily pleased. I've seen several other movies of this genre, and for me, though this isn't one of the best, it's definitely better than some critics would have us believe, and worth a viewing, especially as full-on campaign season is about to come down on us once again.

Another, fairly new to Netflix, series devoid of slam-bang is Halt & Catch Fire. It originated on AMC channel, which has a good record of screening excellent series such as Breaking Bad and Mad Men. With those two as recommendation we decided to give Halt and Catch Fire a try. It's set in Dallas, Texas in the early 1980s, when personal computer development and production was in its infancy. Whereas Mad Men is about the advertising industry and its personalities, Halt & Catch Fire is about the burgeoning personal computer industry and those involved.

I didn't much enjoy the pilot, but as husband was intrigued we stuck with it, and I eventually became hooked too. One doesn't really need much, or any, deep tech know-how to appreciate the story lines - they're all about the characters, and their creative aims and dreams. The show is worth a look-in if you're tired of police and courtroom dramas, or hospital tales, or historical themes, or nasty slam-bang - this is something different, not top-notch but interestingly different.

PS~~ Halt and Catch Fire, known by the assembly mnemonic HCF, refers to several computer machine code instructions that cause a computer's CPU to cease meaningful operation. (Wiki)

Netflixing & Beyond ~ The Killing & Joel Kinnaman

The Killing, a four season TV series adapted from a Danish series, began in 2011 in the USA, on AMC channel, with a 4th season produced by Netflix. This series has been our staple diet for the past couple of weeks, becoming more addictive by the episode. I'd been wary of watching yet another police detective series, we'd overdosed on 'em already this year. I'm very glad now that we did venture in to it, and were hooked. Plaudits have to go to writers as well as actors, naturally - but without talented actors even the best scripts will sink without trace in audience memory.

There are just one or two familiar faces involved, in secondary or minor roles, the two leading actors, Mireille Enos (Detective Sarah Linden) and Joel Kinnaman (Detective Steven Holder), were completely unknown to us. After a slow start, the pair have impressed us more and more with each episode. In fact, I'm convinced Joel Kinnaman in particular will, before long, become a superstar- Initially on the big screen, but I hope he'll return to TV in another series.

After The Killing, Kinnaman played the leading role in a re-make of Robocop, and has another big screen role coming up later this month, as Liam Neeson's son in Run All Night. We watched the Robocop re-make last week. Kinnaman was good in the role, but it doesn't offer the same kind of scope as The Killing. To be honest, Kinnaman is much too good for the Robocop part, but it has made his name familiar to millions more people.

Rather than rattling on about themes of The Killing, and spoiling someone else's enjoyment of it in the future, I'm going to say simply that its one of the best, top of my list in fact, among shows in the same police detective genre. We've watched, via Netflix, this year Broadchurch, The Fall, Top of the Lake, and Luther, I found The Killing more constantly engaging than any of those. Husband thought it well-acted, well-scripted, but a tad depressing. Ah well...he's a big Blazing Saddles-type fan, so he would, wouldn't he?

I'll concentrate here on Joel Kinneman. As episodes progressed I became intrigued by the character he plays, and plays so well: quirky, flawed, street-wise police detective, Steven Holder. He plays well against his less quirky but equally flawed female detective partner, Sarah Linden. There's that kind of love/hate chemistry and loyalty between them that audiences brought up on shows such as Moonlighting and Law and Order SVU (me) revel in. We'd watched seasons 1 to 3 before I looked for the actor's history in detail, plus his date of birth. He's Swedish born, with dual citizenship Sweden/USA - mother Swedish, descended from Ukrainian Jewish immigrants to Sweden; his father American born.

In a video interview (see below) Kinnaman mentions that he spent a year in high school in Texas as an exchange student. He says that the accent, general style and demeanor he adopted as Steven Holder is largely based on the voices and attitudes of his friends there. He said that the school was quite segregated - redneck types and black & hispanic minorities. He found friendship more easily with the latter two groups, enjoyed their attitudes and quips, drew on his memories of these when playing Holder. It works so well!

The video interview is a must watch for fans of The Killing and for fans of Joel Kinnaman.




There's also a shorter video interview with Jon Stewart - this one about the Robocop role.
See HERE.

Kinnaman comes over as being quite non-starry, down to earth, even a little shy at times, a world away from Steven Holder.

Why was I finding Joel Kinnaman's acting so engaging? I even dreamed about him (as Steven Holder) one night! Cut to the chase: I'd noticed his date of birth was 25 November 1979. In deciding to prepare this post I used my software to calculate a 12 noon natal chart for him - bingo! Moon in Aquarius (whatever time of day/night he was born). My Aqua-astro-anntenna was at it again! On looks and build alone, I'd have guessed on some strong Gemini emphasis - but unless he has Gemini rising I'd be wrong. I'll not post his natal chart - that would seem overly intrusive. I'll say just that he has Uranus conjunct Mercury in Scorpio, Sun, with Neptune conjunct Venus in Sagittarius, Moon in mid-Aquarius (at noon) and three personal planets in Virgo.

I'll be watching Joel Kinnaman's ascent with interest. He has, already, entered what I call my ABBO (always be a bit of) Hall of Fame, along with Bryan Cranston (there's always be a bit of Walter White in Bryan Cranston); Damien Lewis (there'll always be a bit of Brody and Major Winters in Damien Lewis). In Joel Kinnaman, there'll always be a bit of Steven Holder!

Netflixing & Continuum ...a bit of the old timey-wimey + corpy-worpy!

We're on our first month of Netflixing, and discovering all manner of delights! We've binge-watched the first season of True Detective - a cop series with a difference. Leading actors will change season by season. First season of 8 episodes starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson - a wonderful pairing of two superb actors.

We occasionally dip into first season of the long-running medical series, Grey's Anatomy. One episode at a time is quite enough for me of any hospital centred series, this one included. It's just so-so for me, but audiences must have absolutely loved it - it survived for 11 seasons!

My favourite discovery, so far, is Canadian sci-fi series, Continuum. I'd never heard of it, didn't expect much, but it didn't take long to realise that this is an intelligent piece of quality writing. Time travel is the series' main theme, with aspects of politics, friendship, family relationships closely intertwined.

Continuum is good in every respect, but the political slant, in tandem with time travel, is what is fascinating me most. Series creator is Simon Barry, a British born Canadian. A quick look at his noon natal chart (25 September 1966) shows a Libra Sun and Mercury; Venus conjunct Uranus/Pluto in Virgo; and Moon in Aquarius (whatever his time of birth). What a great combination for a science fiction writer!

The story's setting is Vancouver, initially in the year 2077, on November 5 in fact. The city, and presumably the country (maybe also the world, or at least North America), are governed by the corporations. A towering skyscraper housing the corporate congress has been blown-up resulting in many thousands of deaths. Perpetrators were Liber-8, a group of eight freedom fighters - or terrorists - depending on one's point of view. They are caught and ready to be executed in a high-tech communal execution chamber.

One female police officer is detailed to stand close, as guard. Seconds before the execution is carried out a blinding flash... when the screen clears those about to be executed, and the police officer, have disappeared.

We then find ourselves with the police officer, Kiera, as she finds she, and Liber-8 have been hurtled back 65 years to 2012. She looks distinctly out of place in her high-tech police uniform in Vancouver's streets, 2012.

That's how the story begins. After the first couple of episodes we began to wonder if this was going to be our cup of tea after all, or was it a series created for more conservative-leaning viewers who consider a city, country or world world totally run by corporations could be a good thing? After all, it seemed we were being led to see Kiera, avid supporter and defender of a corporate police state, as our heroine, with those painted as bad guys being the ones fighting an oppressive corporate oligarchy. Liber-8 might now have an opportunity to crush 2077's corporate governance in its infancy, if they can steer clear of Kiera.
Kiera manages to infiltrate a local police department to aid her search for the "terrorists", and her equally important aim of returning to 2077, her husband and family.

Simon Barry has said, in interview:

...."Our goal was to create a group of points of view. From our point of view Kiera is the lead because she is driving a lot of the storytelling perspective. That’s not to say Kiera is the emotional or political nexus of the show. Her journey is one of discovery; it is one of change. Therefore this grey area is not designed for Kiera but for the audience. Kiera has entered a world that we’re more familiar with than she is. That’s an advantage because now your main character is coming from a point of view that she’s open to new ideas, to a journey and exploration, and education. The audience is set in their ways in how they see the world that their living in at that moment. If the show can at all change the way people perceive things or force them to experience something through a different perspective then we’ve accomplished something small but important in terms of the themes of the show. We’ve always looked at those grey areas as being something that you define not that we define. We wanted to put everything out there in a way that felt more honest. There’s no all good and all evil. But there are always shades of grey and if you look around the world you’ll know that there is.”

It's this "grey area" that makes the series special, for those interested in politics and history. The corporate society of 2077 is controlled in every aspect of life and strictly policed. A liberated future, in 2035, of which we are given a glimpse later in the series, is a dark and dirty shamble of freedom with widespread horrendous abuse. Neither of those futures would be desirable.

 Rachel Nichols & Eric Knudsen (Kiera & Alec Sadler - the two key characters )

There's lots of other good stuff too, besides the political angle. My single criticsim of the series is that the fight scenes, roughly one per episode, are too long.

Rachel Nichols who plays Kiera said about her part in the series:

"Portraying someone who is unfamiliar with the present day requires playing a mental mind trick on oneself............ We try to find those little areas and nuances where her futureness can come out - whether she doesn’t know what the Bat signal means, , or she can’t drive a car, or she’s amazed by running water, or she has never seen a horse before. We find those moments and keep that thread going throughout the show.”

I don't want to give away more of the themes, twists and surprises, which do increase in complexity as the show develops. One mustn't become distracted from concentrating on the screen for even a few seconds. We have had to re-wind several times to make sure what was going on and why!

This must surely be one show that is far better watched several episodes at a sitting as we are doing. With a week's wait between episodes I'd have probably given up on it quite quickly. Simon Barry has mentioned, in that regard, that writers these days do have to bear in mind that they may be writing for two distinct audiences: those who watch episodes on TV weekly, as aired, and those who watch the series in larger chunks (binge-watching) via Netflix and similar outlets.

We're into season 3 now... and, so far, are feeling thoroughly confused! A layer of complexity is added to the already complex mix. Now, as well as a different timeline unfolding we have Freelancers, an ages old/ages new group or sect whose sole purpose is to act as guardians for the correct (as they see it) unfolding of time. They aim to prevent "glitches" and stop those whose purpose in time travel is likely to cause change and disruption.

In the episode we watched last night a company called Sonmanto was manufacturing, and selling chemical weapons...Sonmanto...re-arrange these letters to make a familiar word or name!

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... timey wimey... stuff.

There's something that doesn't make sense. Let's go and poke it with a stick.
          ~ Steven Moffat (Quotes from Doctor Who)

NOTE: For anyone who'd like more detail on Continuum's themes, there's a good piece with lots of photos and spoilers HERE.
There's also a good review of the opening episode of Season 3 at The Disgruntled Individual blog HERE