The Crown -- A Review

Kočka watching The Crown

My cat Kočka paid little or no attention to the second season of the Netflix Original series The Crown. In fact, he only watched a small portion of one episode. In this episode a large contingent of soldiers accompanied by bagpipes marches ahead of the queen as she proceeds to Balmoral, her castle in Scotland. Kočka has a thing for bagpipes. They will draw him from wherever he is in the house. He also loves Celtic Woman. Perhaps he was a Celt in one of his previous lives.

The Crown created and written by Peter Morgan and produced by Left Bank Pictures and Sony Pictures Television for Netflix, is a biographical drama about Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. (Please note: drama not documentary.)

Claire Foy plays Elizabeth, for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. Matt Smith plays Philip. He is probably more famous for being the eleventh Doctor in the long-running BBC series Doctor Who. (My daughter's favorite Doctor!)

The first season was about Queen Elizabeth's life beginning with her marriage to Prince Philip in 1947 and running through 1955. The second season begins in 1956 with England's problems in Egypt and runs through 1964.

I watched that first season and enjoyed it thoroughly. So much so, in fact, that I looked forward to the second season with great anticipation. It filled Downton Abbey's place in my television viewing life quite nicely. If you pay attention, you'll see several actors from Downton.

Both seasons of The Crown are filled with opulent homes and furnishings and, what to me were unusual and on occasion mean-spirited, formalities that the Royals had to live with.

I probably know more about Elizabethan English history than I do about modern British history. I may have been alive during Elizabeth II's reign so far, but I've been much more vested in American goings-on than in Britain's. So I knew little of Britain's colonial activities in the Middle East.

The second season covers times that you'd think I'd remember, but I guess I wasn't paying attention.

What I know of British activities in India and Israel/Palestine during the late 40s is more than they discussed in the series at all. I suppose because the series actually focuses on Elizabeth's own activities and those political crises were in her father's time rather than hers.

It's interesting to me to realize that the woman I always thought of as 'grandmotherly' and 'dowdy' with her purses and hats that looked like a hydrangea on her head wasn't always all that old. Of course in the 60s when I was paying attention to the Brits, it was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Twiggy. Politics and royalty figured not at all.

And I don't remember the Kennedys going to England. That must have been during his "ich bin ein berliner" visit to Germany.

In the scene when the Kennedys are first introduced to the queen, one thing especially caught my attention. Someone in the scene said sotto voce as though shocked "she didn't curtsy." That struck me as particularly odd. Why would they expect a woman who was not a subject of the queen to curtsy?

And I certainly don't remember the Kennedys having the kind of relationship with each other that this series portrays. No spoilers here. You'll have to watch for yourself. But the portrayal of Elizabeth's reaction to President Kennedy's murder, brought tears to my eyes. I'd never before even considered how people outside the U.S. reacted to that horrific event.

The writing and acting throughout both seasons is excellent. And the directing ... I was especially taken with the use of silences in the dialogue.

I don't know how historically accurate the series is. I do think it would be interesting to know what the British Royals think of it. Some of them don't get the rosiest of treatments.

The thing for me is that The Crown is a good story, well told. And if it's not exactly all true, that's okay. I certainly won't hold any of the real people to the historical fiction I enjoyed binge-watching.

And by-the-bye the video of the making of a crown during the opening titles is fascinating.

The Newsroom -- A Review

         Please take the time to click on The  Newsroom and watch the opening scene.

I've never worked in a television newsroom. I have worked in a newsroom. The newsroom for a small town daily newspaper where we didn't measure our stories in minutes, but in column inches. We had to leave space for our advertisers because that's where the money came from. Subscriptions and street purchases wouldn't have been enough to pay for the paper our news was printed on.

The Newsroom is television. It covers real news stories that occurred far enough in the past that the writer knows what happened and when. But recently enough that most of us remember following the stories as they happened and were reported from real TV newsrooms.  

The first season starts with the Deep Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and a Will McAvoy, played by Jeff Daniels, who is a pompous ass news anchor concerned only with himself and his ratings. Luckily for him, though he doesn't appreciate it, his boss, Charlie Skinner, played admirably by Sam Waterston, hires a passionately idealistic new Executive Producer.  British actress Emily Mortimer plays MacKenzie McHale, the new EP. She has a past with Will.

Will's redemption brings me to tears. The first season of this show is, if not the best, one of the best written and acted series I've ever seen. And I'm a died-in-the-wool Downton Abbey-Maggie Smith fan.

The second season runs through the Romney campaign while all hell is breaking loose in central Africa and Syria is gearing up to collapse in the tragedy the world is still dealing with today. This season deals more with romance. Okay, so the course of true love does not run smooth. There is humor. There is pathos. There is "Are you kidding me already?!" We get the private lives of the characters -- all the characters, the main characters, the supporting characters, the cleaning crew. (No, that's not true. We never find out who the cleaning crew sleeps with or wants to sleep with or used to sleep with.) I don't believe it lives up to the first season's promise.

But even with the second season being less-than, it is so far above standard television fare that I came back for the third season. And I'm glad I did. It is as good as the first.

The third and final season begins with the Boston Marathon bombing. This season deals with the downfall of the news organization -- battered on all sides by market forces, the competing interests of its owners and its news people, and ultimately the passage of time and life.

The Newsroom made me laugh out loud. And I cried because it was so touching and because it was so sad. That, for me, is the mark of good work.

Aaron Sorkin

Aaron Sorkin is the writer, the man who conceived of and wrote The Newsroom. He proves that Americans can write. I was beginning to think your middle name had to be Julian Fellowes and you had to be British to write and sustain quality TV material. Thank you Mr. Sorkin.

In this year of our country's history, this election cycle, this media frenzy, I cling to a life raft. A life raft of ideals lashed together with oft maligned ropes -- information, education, ethics.

And today's media? It is a child who wants to be popular, to have the highest ratings. It participates in a political arena that's been taken hostage by a circus. It's a regular kid being bullied by a spoiled rich kid. It's caught up in a maelstrom along with a certain portion of our electorate who are Pinocchio to that spoiled rich kid's Lampwick. I hope we don't all grow donkey's ears and a tail.

The sad truth is Walter Cronkite doesn't live here any more.

We are facing a choice between two less than inspiring people, each of whom is roundly disliked by portions of our society. And for good reasons.

Me? I'm going to vote for the person I perceive to be the lesser of two evils, and I believe The United States of America is strong enough to survive the next four years.

America may not be the greatest nation in the world. I don't think there is a 'greatest nation in the world.' But I do believe 'It can be.'

My Daughter's Ruining My Life -- Nonfiction

image from spoilertv.com

My daughter is ruining my life. She has infected me with Binge-Watching. It's a thing. There's even a Wikipedia entry for it. Click here.

There was a time when television series were available once. And once a week, at that. I watched Upstairs Downstairs one episode a week. The Six Wives of Henry VIII. I, Claudius. M.A.S.H. Northern Exposure. There was no Hulu or Netflix. No Amazon Prime.

I watched Downton Abbey for years. One episode a week. Even when I got the season's DVD early for contributing to my local Public Broadcasting Service affiliate. I would watch on Sunday night. Then I would watch that episode online at RMPBS again during the week -- maybe a couple of times. There were so many details that I wouldn't catch the first time through. I only watched the DVDs while I waited for each new season.

Grace tried to get me hooked on Orange Is the New Black. But there was a time when I attended meetings with inmates in the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center when it was in Oklahoma City. I understand they now have a newer facility in a small town east of the City. Let me just say prison is no fit place for anybody to live. You don't get to choose your roommate and if you get a difficult one, you damn well better be sure she takes her meds properly. Somehow I just couldn't get into the 'humor' of Orange.

You know how folks offer you a month's subscription free? Well, I got started watching Bosch on my free month of Amazon Prime. It's a police detective show based on Michael Connelly's novels, most of which I've read. In spite of the habitual cliff-hanger endings to each episode, I started out watching one show at a time. Often with several evenings in between. Toward the end of the second season I found myself watching two at a time. My husband liked that series, too.

Did you know there's something called commitment rings? You and your partner each wear one and they keep you from watching a TV series without each other so no one 'cheats' by watching ahead. (This one's for you Doctor Who fans. You know who you are.)

So, what started this rant? The Newsroom which Grace recommended. I've finished the first two seasons and am well into the third. In what? Less than a week.

Look -- I'm supposed to be writing a book, a literary piece of short fiction, a murder mystery short story featuring my senior citizen walking group crime solvers, and these blog posts. My father has dementia which presents as severe anxiety (among other things) if he doesn't see me daily and he lives thirty minutes away from my house unless there's traffic which there almost always is. (It's just a good thing he's cute.) I have a bad cat and clothes to take out of the dryer and hang up because I do not iron. (It's a good thing the cat is cute, too.)

And I've been reading the same book for a week. I'm a writer. I have to read. There are too many books out there I've never read and new ones coming out every week. Maybe every day. I don't have time to spend a whole week reading one book.

Binge-watching TV has no place in my world!

Did I mention HBO NOW? You don't have to have it in your cable package. I can get it for a monthly fee of $14.99 without upgrading my bare-bones Spanish Language Cable Package. I know. I know. No one in my house speaks Spanish, but that's another story.

Gotta get back to The Newsroom. I'll write a review when I finish watching.

I'll read the book when I go to bed.

Shakespeare, Downton Abbey, and Banana Bread

image from Vic Trevino on Pinterest

                                                    "All the world's a stage,

                                                    And all the men and women merely players"

                                                    "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
                                                    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
                                                    And then is heard no more"

The first quote is from Shakespeare's As You Like It, classified by scholars as a Comedy. The second is from MacBeth, classified as a Tragedy. The difference my friends is that a comedy ends happily for its main characters. In Shakespeare's tragedies, they usually end up dead.

As a writer, I have a tendency to see my life as stories. Not perhaps the most pragmatic way to live, maybe not even the sanest way to live. But I'm still here.

These past few weeks have been difficult. My 90-year-old father's mind is failing. That's not unusual, unfortunately. Since I am, for all intents and purposes, responsible for his care, I've been trying to find an appropriate place for him to live.

Until last September, with a bit of help from home care givers, Daddy lived with my husband and me. That had been a good situation. Daddy has always been a social person, interested in the events of the day and the people around him and their lives. His care givers were kind, efficient, and best of all, they enjoyed visiting with him.

As his dementia worsened, it was obvious that we needed someone awake 24 hours-a-day, so he would be safe. It would have been financially prohibitive to have individual care givers around the clock, and it was too much for me. So he moved into an assisted care facility.

The facility was beautiful. He had a studio apartment and could push a button on his wrist for a care giver and they would come right away. The food was excellent -- a priority for my father. His enjoyment of food has not diminished in spite of the dementia.

Now, Daddy has always been the kind of man to get things done. He would analyze a problem, consider the options, then solve it. His natural inclination to jump-to-it has not diminished.

Therein lies the problem. He could remember to push the call button, but he couldn't remember to wait for a care giver. He's wobbly. And the disinclination to wait has led to a number of falls. None has caused injuries more serious than bruising, but injuries were inevitable if we went on this way.

Looking for a facility that offers 24-hour care was in the realm of tragedy. I would visit one. It would smell clean. The rooms were bright and cheerful. The staff were gracious and attentive, but the patients were all sitting in wheelchairs staring off into the distance.

Then a friend told me that her father had been in a residential care home. These are regular houses modified to take care of people. They have six or eight patients with trained care givers 24 hours-a-day. In the one I visited, the patients were all involved in various things. The sun had come out and a good ending to this story seemed at hand.

Before Daddy moved to his new home, he was concerned that the other people there would not "be as bad off" as he. I reassured him that some would not be and others would be worse off.

And truly that was the case. His roommate uses a walker and oxygen, still reads the daily paper and works Sudoku puzzles. One day the man was watching a television show -- on a Spanish language channel. He is not Hispanic and multilingual people are a rarity in our society. I asked him if he spoke Spanish. He looked at me as though my question made no sense at all. "No," he said. So his Sudoku puzzles may be only an entertainment in the same way. I don't know. I've not looked too closely.

When Daddy's doctor asked him if he had a roommate, Daddy surprised me by saying there was "a man who rides the same broomstick." He meant his roommate. Comedy? Daddy has always had a good sense of humor, but this was not an example of that. His confusion is advancing.

Daddy moved March 5. We moved all Daddy's stuff out of his apartment Sunday, March 6. Kind of sad really because there isn't enough room in his new bedroom for his things. He does have the really big clock that he can see in spite of his macular degeneration and the wedding picture of him and Momma and Momma's high school graduation picture.

But that night I had Downton Abbey.

Downton Abbey has been my favorite TV series for all of its six years. My husband calls it a soap opera, and I suppose it is. But I care about the characters and it always seems to come out pretty much right for those characters or at least give me hope that it will. Eventually. It is the hour that I can escape my own dramas and enjoy someone else's.

The final episode. Everything changes. Everything comes to an end.

I was actually afraid that the whole thing would be tied neatly up with a shiny red bow. Words like "syrupy sweet" and "maudlin" hovered around me, threatening to undo my great regard for Fellowes' writing. How was Julian Fellowes going to end it without caving in the most Hallmarkian fashion to the public's desire that Edith be happy?

I was more concerned with Thomas. I know, I know. I adopt unlovable parrots that bite. Lovable dogs that bite. Eccentric cats that bite. I even liked Snape all the way through the Harry Potter books.

And, whether Fellowes handled it well or not (which by-the-bye, he did handle it well) the more anxiety provoking was what was I going to do with the rest of my Sunday nights?

Then, to top it all off, I decided to make a banana nut bread with the bananas Daddy had left in his apartment.

I turned on the oven to preheat, mashed the bananas, chopped the walnuts, stirred up the batter, poured it into a Pyrex baking dish that once belonged to my mother, and discovered that my oven was not heating.

Well, #$#@!

A new question -- does banana nut bread dough freeze well? Even more importantly does it bake well after being thawed?

But my husband looked it up oven repair on the internet and ordered a part. It's so nice to be married to him. Yesterday the part came and he fixed the oven.

Today is Sunday. And we have banana nut bread to eat with whatever I do with my Sunday night.

All's Well that Ends Well, not a line from a Shakespeare play, but the title. A play that the critics cannot put into a single category, but must be included in both his comedies and his tragedies. Just like life.

                    

           Thomas in a bowler, a sure sign of success at last.        A fine loaf of banana nut bread.

Downton Abbey Redeemed

It's Wednesday. I'm having leftovers from our favorite Mexican restaurant, a nice glass of Lambrusco, and streaming the most recent episode of Downton Abbey which aired last Sunday evening. I was too tired and fell asleep very early on so streamed it today from PBS.

Or, at least, attempted to stream it. It didn't work well -- constantly buffering and beginning again at a commercial.

I don't understand. We can stream Netflix seamlessly. And it has no commercials, much less the same commercial to sit through umpteen times.

Well, I finally made it through with a minimum of expletives that needed deleting.

And I am well pleased with this episode. The first two were somehow unsatisfying. It was like they were just preparing for the real Season 6 to start. Housekeeping, perhaps, so we'd be ready for the final season.

With this the third episode, I feel like the new season has well and truly and finally begun. And I like it.

A bit of fireworks from the grande dames; typical high-handedness from Lady Mary; atypical success for Edith; hope for the Bates's future; a wedding to bring a smile and a tear; and Barrow, alas, poor Barrow.

YES! Downton Abbey is back. And I'll take a nap next Sunday afternoon so I'll be rested enough to watch Episode 4 while it's being aired.

Downton Abbey -- Spoiler alertssssss

image from vanityfair.com

This photo is the first spoiler -- Lady Mary's riding astride!

I'd done reasonably well, waiting. But last night I was ready to strangle the PBS folk. At 7 p.m. my husband distracted me with Nova's Making North America: Human complete with geology, paleontology, anthropology -- all liberally sprinkled with scenes from my adopted home-state of Colorado. There was no way I could sit through 'Secrets of Chatsworth' when Downton was the only big English house I wanted to see.

And then, and then . . . there was an hour of anguish as some famous actress I'd never seen before showed clips from all the seasons of Downton and literally counted down the minutes to the first episode of the last season.

I've had TV series before that I could hardly wait for the next episode -- 'Upstairs, Downstairs,' 'Northern Exposure,' 'Boston Legal.'

And book series that sometimes required years of waiting for the next one -- Harry Potter and The Wheel of Time. (The latter involved my making threats against Brandon Sanderson's car tires. Though, to be fair, any poor soul who started reading Wheel at the beginning had to wait more than 22 years for the final volume to be published. Still, I did have to wait almost three years for A Memory of Light, the final volume in that 14-volume fantasy series.)

But I digress.

Two Hershey candy bars and countless complaints got me through that last hour. And we were away! A hunt with lots of dogs and horses coursing through the English countryside, after which my husband took his book and went to bed. He does like dogs and horses, but has little interest in the manners and mores of the English aristocracy.

Was it worth the wait?

This First Episode set the stage for the rest of Season Six. The cloud of Green's death was banished from Anna and Bates and now they can get on about their family plans. Carson and Mrs. Hughes, with a little help from our ever-practical Mrs. Patmore, can now get on with their plans. Edith is set on her future road. Earl Grantham saves Mary and proves himself more than just a man completely disassociated from reality.

And best of all, The Dowager Countess takes care of the trouble-making Miss Danker.

If you missed last night's First Episode of the Last Season, you can watch it online, just click here. And enjoy. It's all here -- the characters, the clothes, the posh houses, and lush English countryside all wrapped around intrigues and conflicts enough to make us forget this ridiculous American presidential campaign cycle. At least for one hour and seven minutes.

That's right, it started at 9:00 and lasted until seven minutes after 10:00. Had the news been on the same channel, it would have been delayed. How on earth did anyone come up with a TV episode time like that? Thank goodness for PBS. Only football gets to go over the hour.

Z is for Zed -- Nonfiction

I love English. It just satisfies my soul. American English, Australian English, British English. English from around the world.

British English comes in handy. I can use the vulgarisms and not feel the least inclination to blush. Nor will anyone around me take me to task for unacceptable language.

British television is such a gold mine of language. Not Downton Abbey. So far their only exclamation has been “Crikey” and that only twice. Plus it’s not really an expletive – I don’t think. I could Google it and the other words to find out how they translate into American English, but then I’d know what they mean and I might be constrained against using them freely.

Doc Martin is a better source. The Portwenn folk call him all kinds of things. And I understand why. He doesn’t have the best bedside manner. He seems usually to take it in stride, though. No doubt he’s used to it.

A couple of weeks ago one young patient, a lad of maybe nine or ten, went off on Doctor Martin Ellingham.

“You’re the W word,” he shouted adding “and the T word and the Zed word.”

Doc Martin stopped in his tracks and asked the young man “What’s the Zed word?”

My husband translated, “wanker and tosser.” He knows his Britishisms better than I, but he didn’t know what the Zed word was either.

Today is the last day of the 2015 A to Z Blogging Challenge and I hope it is the last one of its kind for me. It has been difficult.

My uncle told my father that the Veteran’s Administration will provide him with dentures at no cost to him. And being a naturally thrifty man, he wanted to get new dentures through them. Daddy was in the Navy in World War II, so it seemed possible.

He has some cognition problems and doesn’t walk long distances well so I took on the task of trying to enroll him for VA benefits. There’s an office not far from out home, so I gathered his Discharge papers, my Durable Power of Attorney papers, his 2014 Income Tax information and went to that office.

Today wasn’t a particularly busy day for them so my wait was about forty-five minutes. I had John Lescroart’s Hunt Club with me – on my e-reader which fits nicely in my purse. Then the customer service guy very kindly told me they don’t do that or medical care eligibility there and that I would need to go to the VA Medical Center in downtown Denver.

So I did.

Denver is not the biggest town I’ve ever driven in. Dallas and Houston are bigger. Los Angeles is bigger still. But I was younger then and very nearly invincible.

There are one-way streets, so you don’t want to make a wrong turn or you may not find your way back to the street you’re looking for. And traffic is high volume made up of drivers who know where they want to go and are not patient with the likes of me. But I got there.

And parking in Downtown Denver is difficult to find. I was pleased to find that the VA has a multistory parking garage. Finding the entrance is a little tricky but I got a parking place.

There were forms to fill out before I could see the Enrollment Officer. I filled them out as completely as I could. I got to one area that I had not planned for and tried to call my husband so he could get the information for me. I knew exactly where it was, but my phone wasn’t working. It had been working, but not anymore. I decided to go ahead and get in line. My ticket was 150 and they were serving 148 so my wait couldn’t be very long.

The waiting area was filled with people waiting for the Lab, a different number scheme on their tickets. And they were much worse off than I. Old people with walkers and on oxygen. Young people in wheelchairs. The thirty-something man who sat next to me smelled of tobacco smoke and I knew he must be more stressed than I was.

Again I read, avoiding eye-contact with the other waiting people who avoided eye-contact with me. Everybody there was having a long day and chit chat with strangers would not make it any easier.

After a shorter wait than some there, the Enrollment Officer called my number and asked “What can we do for you today?”

I told him my father needed new dentures and he stopped me right there. He didn’t look at the incomplete forms.

“We only provide dentures if the veteran has a service connected injury that causes him to need dentures.” He apologized for any inconvenience my drive downtown may have caused and called the next ticket “One-fifty-one.”

Backing out of my parking place I accidentally hit the rear bumper of a car parked behind me. It was the plastic bumper cars have and it was just scuffed. At first we couldn’t really tell which car it was I’d backed into. Those parking garages are so dark.

A VA policeman was johnny on the spot. But it took a bit to get some help there to direct traffic. You wouldn’t believe how many cars go in and out of that parking garage. And, of course, my vehicle was blocking one lane.

It took a while for all the paperwork and photographs and discussion about whether to let me go and them notify the owners of the victim car or keep me there until the owners returned. (They were somewhere in that great rabbit warren of a hospital.)

They did let me go, saying they would write it up as “Improper Backing.” Well, no duh. If I’d backed properly I wouldn’t have bumped into that car.

Traffic was a nightmare, I was shaky from the parking garage experience, and I’d never driven on those particular streets before. I knew my way home lay to the west, toward the mountains. The thing is, you can’t see the mountains from down there for all the big buildings and trees.

I stopped and got my phone fixed and finally made it safely home.

I may not know what the Zed word is, but I surely did have a Zed-word kind of day.

Thank You, Billy Crystal

The Red Knight from The Fisher King
from g8ors.blogspot.com

   The Emmy Awards Show last night was very interesting. I haven't watched it in years, but I'd heard that Billy Crystal would be paying tribute to Robin Williams during the show. Plus Downton Abbey was much nominated. And little did I know that Idris Elba was also nominated for Luther.
   My husband was surprised when I sat down to watch. I told him it was just until Billy Crystal did his tribute to Robin Williams. It didn't interfere with his reading so, for the most part, it was okay with him. Although the camera kept panning across the audience and showing Julia Roberts. Then very quickly moving on to other people in the audience. I could not remember her name and he didn't appreciate my asking him who she was because by the time he looked up she wasn't on camera anymore. I finally remembered the name of the one movie I could think of that she starred in -- Pretty Woman with Richard Gere. Then he told me her name and strongly suggested that I shouldn't involve him in my TV program any more.
   And who knew how much Seth Meyers looks like Ellen DeGeneres?
   The clothes were beautiful and neither the male nor the female of the species limited themselves to black.
   The attention Matthew McConaughey got seemed odd. I guess being on TV shows no longer carries the stigma for movie stars that it once did. Somebody said he was the Sexiest Man of the Year. Maybe it was that guy from Cheers. I agree that McConaughey is cute, but speaking of Richard Gere, now that was a sexy man. And probably still is.
    Then my husband and I got to talking about the movie Mud that McConaughey was in. We lived in far Southeast Arkansas for a time and we enjoyed McConaughey's accent. My husband remembered that he played a bad guy in that movie. To which I responded, "well yes and no." He said he was pretty sure that a convicted murderer qualified as a bad guy. So, okay, I'll give him that.
    Then the Emmy for the Best Supporting Actor went, not to our beloved Carson from Downton Abbey, but to some guy from a series called Breaking Bad, with which I am not familiar. And the clip of the winner ranting and raving while standing threateningly over some poor guy with a much bloodied face effectively guarantees that I will not become familiar with Breaking Bad.
    Not that I'm against violence in entertainment across the board. I do watch Luther which is pretty violent. Perhaps I just find violence with a British accent less realistic and thereby less scary.
    Like all good planners the Emmy Award Show saved the good for late in the production ensuring that people like me would watch all those other bits, including the commercials.
    The ads with Ricky Gervais did nothing to entice me into spending my time with anything else he's in, but Louis C.K. and his Louie does sound interesting and it's available on Netflix so no problem with commercials there.
    Then came the part I'd been waiting for. Billy Crystal spoke of the comedic genius and the high energy antics of the performer Robin Williams. But more importantly, he spoke of his friend Robin Williams.
    In Williams' unscripted appearances and comedic routines, his quick wit and wide-ranging references attracted me like a fly to honey. His frenetic delivery made it more like a moth to flame. Then there were his more serious movies -- Dead Poet's Society, Good Will Hunting, Awakenings, etc. -- the movies that allowed him to do a dramatic turn. They showed his humanity. For me The Fisher King is the best.
    The picture that opens this blog is of the Red Knight, Parry's demon. It is at once wonderful and terrifying as is Jack's alcohol, and for many of us, the tenuous link we have with life and sanity.
     Like us, Jeff Bridges' Jack and Williams' Parry are damaged. But they connect and it's that connection more than their wounds that makes them human. Beautifully human. The picture of Parry explaining the legend of The Fisher King to Jack as they lie on the grass, looking into the night together is, for me, the image of that human connection. Yep. That's the way I want to remember Robin Williams -- lying naked on the grass telling us telling us the legend of a grievously wounded hero who must have help to recover the Holy Grail.

from it.wikipedia.org

Reviews and Ratings

When are the Ratings Stars Over-Rated?

 

     Mysteries and Science Fiction are the two fiction genres I read most often. And that is true of movies I watch, too. I have not standardly rated books I've read or movies I've watched. Doing so has always seemed a little too close to being a critic. Generally speaking, I hold critics in the same high disregard as Emergency Room docs.

 

    Having recently been exposed to some excellent ER docs, and preparing to publish my first novel, I guess it's time to mend my pretentious ways and join the ranks of the amateur critics. All the experts say I need to get my name before the public. Those experts ask me what platforms I'm on. Pinterest? Twitter? Facebook? And I say that most of the time my platform of choice is Earth. They are not amused.

   

    So now -- Netflix, I will rate the shows I see, and I will review them so my name and opinions will be out there. (I'm not sure Netflix is what they mean by 'platform.' But the opportunity pops up every time I watch a show and I watch quite a few shows. Where else would I get my fix of British crime mysteries?)

 

    And Goodreads, if I can figure out how or get my daughter to show me, I'll rate and review the books I read.

 

    Twitter and Pinterest? I don't think so. (You should read that last sentence in the familiar sing-song of disdain.) Who knows, maybe someday I'll see the error of my ways and join those 'platforms,' too.

 

    That brings us to the Ratings Stars. How to do this. How? Easy -- right? Right, if I didn't like or hated the book or show, it's one or two stars. Then things get sticky.

 

    The African Queen, Downton Abbey, and  Prime Suspect are five stars. A Prayer for Owen Meany and the Wheel of Time series are five stars. I will watch and read them again and again. And there are many titles out there that I would rate five stars.

 

    But the vast majority of books I read and shows I watch are three stars. When you hover over the

3 Stars rating it says "I liked it." So why do I feel as though I'm dissing the work by rating it only three stars? Maybe it's from my public school days when a C was not good enough. B's were a little more acceptable, but anything less than an A was suspect.

 

     I thoroughly enjoy Diana Mott Davidson's mysteries and those by Nevada Barr. Michael Connelly and John Lescroart get good solid 3 Stars from me and I will always come back to them. With this in mind, when you see I've rated something three stars, that means I liked it. And I will seek out more work by that writer or actor or director.

    If I give something four stars that means there is something outstanding about it, but I doubt I will watch or read it again -- maybe like Boston Legal or Dan Brown's  Da Vinci Code it's well-done and incorporates surprise or maybe even shock, but by virtue of having watched or read it that surprise is lost. As great as they are, my 4 Stars will not bring me back with the same degree of passion and wonder as those magnificent 5 Stars.