The Best British Films/TV Series You Haven't Seen

Jeremy Brett is the quintessential Sherlock Holmes.  Once you watch The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, you will never be able to read any Holmes stories without hearing Brett's voice.  Available on Netflix Disc.

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Sir Alec Guinness is masterful as George Smiley in the ORIGINAL adaptation of John LeCarre's novels.  First watch Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and then follow it up with Smiley's People.  I can't say enough about the quality of the acting in these two BBC miniseries from 1979 and 1982, respectively.  The 2011 remake is significantly inferior.  Don't bother with it.  The original is available on Netflix Disc.

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When I was a boy, my family would sit together and watch All Creatures Great and Small on PBS.  To this day, it is still one of my favorite shows.  In fact, as you can see above, I visited the real Yorkshire town where the real "James Herriot" practiced.  The museum has the original BBC set, which you'll notice when comparing the photographs above.  The true adventures of veterinarian James Herriot in England's Yorkshire Dales in the 1930s and 1940s are family-friendly and a real treat.  It's just a shame that the original actress that played Helen, the lovely Carol Drinkwater, left the show after three seasons. Available on Netflix Streaming and Disc.

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The 2005 adaptation of Charles Dickens' Bleak House is a wonderful BBC miniseries!  Available on Netflix Streaming and Disc.  Features Big Daddy Lannister and Wedge Antilles from Star Wars!***************************************************************************

Island At War is a British miniseries about the German occupation of the Channel Islands during World War II.  A great dramatization of a difficult time for the Englishmen of Guernsey and Jersey.  Available on Netflix Streaming and Disc.
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Another fantastic adaptation of Dickens by the BBC.  I highly recommend this 2008 version of Little Dorrit. Not currently available on Netflix.
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Albert Finney and Vanessa Redgrave dazzle as Winston and Clementine Churchill in The Gathering Storm.  Available on Netflix Disc.
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Anthony Kitchen is absolutely perfect as Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle in Foyle's War.  A great view into life in England during and just after World War II.  Available on Netflix Disc.

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The Up Series (7 Up, 14 Up, 21 Up...all the way to 56 Up) follows a group of British children from age 7 to age 56 through a series of documentaries that started in 1964.  What a fascinating study of the lives of these human beings.  Available on Netflix Streaming and Disc.

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Behold the greatest detective in medieval England...Brother Cadfael of Shrewsbury.  Available on Netflix Disc.

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Long Way Round chronicles the real-life adventure of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman to travel round the world on BMW motorcycles.  Watch it, you'll love it!  Available on Netflix Streaming and Disc.

John Kerry...The Belle of the Ball

"It’s the buzz from Boston to the Beltway: What the heck is going on with Secretary of State John Kerry’s face???  The former senator’s usually craggy puss is now smooth, puffy and showing no sign of the laugh lines, crow’s feet or deep forehead creases that were evident in his 2004 official Senate portrait."  

-- Boston Herald, September 20th, 2013

ALL the international diplomacy fashion blogs were abuzz about it.  It was on the tip of the tongue of every diplomat, fashionista, and designer in and around Foggy Bottom.  Vladmir Putin blogged about it.  Bashir Assad wondered about it in cabinet meetings.  David Cameron and Francois Hollande gossiped about it ENDLESSLY.

 

The topic of conversation?

Was John Kerry pretty enough to bring about world peace?

Sure, his friends always reminded him how beautiful he looked in an ascot, or wearing a collared shirt with a few buttons tastefully undone.  But a Secretary of State can grow jaded about these kind of compliments.  I mean, it's one thing to have your friends say this kind of thing, but it's another to have a European foreign minister undress you with her eyes in front of everyone at the Palace of Versailles.

The problem is that everyone in the diplomatic community over-glamorizes physical beauty.  Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat received endless fan mail from teenage girls after the Oslo Accords.  Neville Chamberlain couldn't get Tiger Beat to leave him alone after his peace agreement with Hitler.  Screaming Parisian girls constantly disrupted the Paris Peace Accords whenever Henry Kissinger would appear outside for a smoke break.  Warren Christopher received so many marriage proposals after the Dayton Accords that he shaved his head and refused to appear in public without a disguise for six months.

Despite all the compliments about his soft skin...Despite the comparison of his eyes to the color of a patrician's private lake...Deep inside, John Kerry didn't really believe he was beautiful.  Many wonder if his diplomatic skills would have completely collapsed if Simon Cowell and Bruce Jenner hadn't taken him aside and shown him that there was another way...a shortcut to beauty, and therefore, diplomatic excellence.

The procedure didn't take long.  But the effects were lasting.  America's status in the world has skyrocketed.  John Kerry has been hailed as perhaps the prettiest Secretary of State since George Schultz.

Dreams really do come true.

To The Moon, To Mars, or To Nowhere?

This Blargh Post contains a link to some more information on the state of NASA.  I found this article incredibly dispiriting, but hope that policymakers change course in the next few years...  

Adrift - From the Houston Chronicle

To Infinity and Beyond

45 years and two days ago, approximately six years before I was born, America launched a Saturn 5 rocket towards the moon.  This rocket contained three human beings: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.  Over the next 3.5 years there would be five more successful Apollo program moon landings.  Then it all stopped.  In the last 42 years, no men have walked on the moon.  And there is little chance anyone will walk on it anytime soon.

NASA's Constellation program was intended to be the next leap to the moon.  But President Obama cancelled it.  If only NASA were as important as the "Obamaphone" program.  Perhaps you can tell that I am bitter.  I find it shameful that our federal government continues to spend money on programs best left to states, localities, or private enterprise, instead of funding programs uniquely suited to the federal government's abilities.

Dams, interstate highway systems, and a space program are the sort of federal program I can get behind.  I believe in the idea of human progress and I don't think it lies in increasing the dependency of our citizens on a government check.

Also, if you think the moon landings were a hoax, I hope Buzz Aldrin punches you in the face.

To The Stars Through Westeros

Thanks to the Reddit user boo-yay, we now have a Westeros-esque sigil for every state of the union.  House Kansas, as you can see above, utilizes our state motto, "Ad Astra Per Aspera".  The unicorn is, of course, a reflection of the widespread worship of Ehlonna in most parts of eastern Kansas.  Here are some more Kansas/Game of Thrones metaphors:





Johnson County = Casterly Rock:  Rich?  Check.  Perceived as arrogant?  Check.  Sisters and brothers sleeping together?  Nope, that's Missouri.



BTK = Ramsay Bolton: Do they both like to torture?  Um, yeah, that's the "T" in BTK.  Were they both in law enforcement?  Sure, Bolton Jr. was given enforcement tasks by dear ol' dad.






KU College Republicans = Brotherhood Without Banners:  They fight the good fight surrounded by a host of enemies...they are few and the odds are bad.  They sometimes return from the dead?  Yes, actually, I saw it happen in 1993.




The City of Topeka = Hodor:  Both incapable of rational thought, difficult to understand, and frumpy.  Biggest Difference:  Hodor is well-intentioned.



Kansas Cowboys = Wildlings/Free Folk:  Keeping it real beyond the civilized parts...keeping it real beyond the Wall.



Wilt Chamberlain = Gregor Clegane: The Mountain That Rebounds vs. The Mountain That Rides

Roy Scheider, BAMF

Tonight, I had the good fortune to be invited to a screening of William Friedkin's 1977 thriller, Sorcerer.  Friedkin is most famous for having directed The Exorcist and the Oscar-winning The French Connection, both of which belong in the pantheon of great films.  After the closing credits, the organizer of the screening arranged to have Friedkin participate in a Q&A session with us via Skype.  He quipped that Sorcerer star Roy Scheider became more difficult to work with after his great success in Jaws...which leads to this Blargh Post.

There are many overrated actors in Hollywood, but fewer underrated ones.  Scheider is one of the latter.  If you haven't seen The French Connection (Oscar-winner for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, etc.), you are missing out on many fine performances.  Scheider was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Buddy Russo, and he earned it.  He is very believable as a rough-and-tumble police detective, and expertly plays the "Robin" to Gene Hackman's "Batman".

Scheider as Amity Police Chief Martin Brody is the decent, middle-class average guy who provides the human center of the cast of Jaws.  With larger-than-life Robert Shaw as Quint, and Richard Dreyfuss as the rich biologist Matt Hooper, Scheider provides a character that the audience can relate to.  This cast was one of the best of the 1970s.

The undisputed star of Sorcerer, Scheider plays an Irish-American teamster who participates in a robbery gone wrong.  Forced to flee the country, he ends up in a hell-hole of a central American country.  Desperate to flee to a better hiding spot, he and several others in similar predicaments agree to transport by truck a decaying cache of dynamite through the jungle and mountains.  As you might expect, it is a precarious situation.  Scheider's sly humor always comes through in his characters, and this role is no exception.

After Marathon Man and All That Jazz (which resulted in a second Oscar nomination) Scheider never really had the opportunity to play many interesting roles.  The 1980s saw him work, but not in films of the same caliber.  The 1990s were even worse, with gigs in a number of straight-to-video flicks and a starring role in a less-than-impressive TV show featuring a talking dolphin:

Roy Scheider died of blood cancer in 2008.  I, for one, will always appreciate his talent.

Two Steps From Hell

A couple years ago I encountered one of the most bizarre types of dance known to humanity.  The Two-Step, or Texas Two-Step, is the preferred dance style for country music.  Personally, I encountered it at a local country bar (don't ask why I was there) and found it to be highly infuriating. I had no idea that I was going to encounter a dance style that stands in opposition to all reasonable definitions of rhythm and movement.

I don't mean to BRAG, but I'm a pretty good dancer.  By that, I mean that I have a good sense of rhythm and can move to a beat.  But don't worry, you don't need these skills to do the Two-Step.  In fact, you don't really need music.  Instead, you only need muscle-memory, memorization, a hatred of natural rhythm, and legs.

Two quick steps, two slow steps...in a circle...foreverrrrr.  Just don't go the wrong way...it will remind you of that wheel in the Turkish prison from the movie Midnight Express:

I tried the Two-Step that night, but found that it is so inimical to natural rhythm that I couldn't perform it properly.  I have never felt so unnatural on a dance floor in my life.  In order to better understand this strange custom, I watched a How-To video on YouTube.  The money quote by the instructors: "You need to Two-Step for about 5 miles before it starts to become ingrained in your muscle memory."  WHAT!?!?  In other words, this type of dancing is so far from the natural movement of the body, you must practice it endlessly to overcome any natural sense of rhythm you might have.  This is fine for people with no rhythm, but what about those of us who are able to dance?  My body needs to move...it calls out to gyrate...it yearns to GROOVE.

Should it be banned?  Probably.  No, definitely.  In some countries, political prisoners are forced to Two-Step as punishment for various crimes.  Here's footage:

But what would replace the Two-Step?  I enjoy a lot of roots country music, and you've got to dance to it somehow.  You can't blame country music for the Two-Step, but there aren't a lot of other dance style alternatives. In the meantime, the key to dancing to the Two-Step, when you must, is to first suppress all internal rhythm.  Ignore the music, it won't help.  Memorize your steps, go counter-clockwise and ride it out as long as you can.  The song will eventually end.

I hereby call on someone to please create a better form of dance for this type of music. Perhaps a style that can utilize natural rhythm would be best.  Sorry, non-rhythmic white people, this outrage must come to an end.  The hardest part of a revolution is taking the first step...and avoiding the 2nd.