Tag: Entertainment

Welcome Back, Jack

Entertainment

Am I the only one who found this little turnabout amusing?

Appetite for money, of course.  When Depp was first involved in that “#BelieveAllWomen” court case, Disney dropped him like a hot rock.

I wrote this at the time:

Considering that Depp’s performance was the only thing that made the whole thing at all watchable, this should be its death knell, and not a moment too soon.  I watched the first two Pirates movies with huge enjoyment, lost interest after that.  I doubt that anything Disney does would make me watch another one, unless the new lead character was portrayed by Carol Vorderman, in the nude.

Now that Depp’s been cleared of all the accusations made by his loony ex-houri, no doubt the foul moneygrubbers at Woke Disney will be all too willing to welcome him back into the fold, to play Captain Jack Sparrow for the umpteenth time so they can refill their vault at Gringotts Bank.

And I hope that he tells them to go and fuck themselves.

Desert Island Authors

Literature

Continuing the series on stuff I’d take to a desert island (see here for Guns, and here for Dames), let me remind you first of the island:

And now to the main topic.

Usually, the “Desert Island” series consists of only five items (e.g. 5 songs/discs), but there is no way on Earth that I could survive with only five books.  Recently, I have noted that such questions now allow compendia — e.g. the Sharpe’s Rifles series or the Hornblower series, and so on.

So now I’m broadening the scope, so to speak, to allow myself to take the complete works of five fiction authors onto that desert island.  They are, in no specific order:

  • Ian Fleming
  • William Shakespeare
  • D.H. Lawrence
  • P.G. Wodehouse
  • John Sandford*

*unlike the others, Sandford is still alive and writing, so I’d get at least one new novel every year, to keep things fresh.

I have other favorite authors, of course (Hugo, Dumas, Higgins, Follett and Ruark, for example), but unlike those listed, I don’t like everything they’ve written, whereas the above five are consistently good.

As for the five non-fiction authors, that’s a lot easier:

  • Paul Johnson
  • Victor Davis Hanson
  • John Keegan
  • Jacques Barzun
  • Thomas Sowell

Four historians and an economist.

Your own choices in Comments.

Excluded

Entertainment, Mocking Furriners

As Britishland gathered to celebrate their Queen’s Platinum Jubilee yesterday, the crowd was immense — even larger than the Lightbringer’s inauguration (click both pics below to embiggen).

I noted this picture, too:

Conspicuously absent were Prince Ginger and his Hollywood houri.  No doubt the Royals wanted the crowds to cheer (which they did, mightily) and not boo (which they would have).

Hidden Gem

Entertainment, Gratuitous Chick Pics

I am, as Regular Readers are aware, a huge fan of gloomy Scandi detective shows.  My latest binge was The Killing (on Prime), which I devoured, all twenty hours of it, over a couple days last week.

*Disclaimer:  I know that Denmark isn’t regarded as a Scandi country.  As far as I’m concerned, any country on the western shores of the Baltic which has damp, freezing, miserable weather, gets dark at about 4pm, and features actors speaking a language which sounds like a chicken with its throat half-cut, is a Scandi country.  Also, if the heroine detective — they’re all heroine detectives;  all the men are idiots, clowns or bad guys — is halfway between plain and ugly, and the plot is dense and contains about five different story lines, then it’s a Scandi detective movie.

As was The Killing, in absolutely every respect.

However, in this show I saw something out of the ordinary:  a woman with quite a large part, who was not halfway between plain and ugly.  Let me introduce you all to Marie Askehave:

In the TV show, she has coal-black hair which shows off those startling blue eyes to perfection:

Also, she’s one of those women who doesn’t do well in still photos — in a movie medium, though, she’s captivating.

The show’s good, too.

Lest anyone thinks I’m going overboard about plain-to-ugly Scandi female detectives, here’s The Killing‘s lead, Sofie Gråbøl:


…and that’s a studio pic — she looks far worse in the show.