Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson (My thoughts on the previous episode are here.) “I came here to tell you something. I’ve gone and fallen in love. It’s absurd, and probably a big mistake. Most probably a big mistake.” At the end of this episode, Johan is packing up for a trip to… Read More Scenes from a Marriage S1E3, “Paula”
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Gunnel Lindblom (My thoughts on the previous episode are here.) Of the six episodes of this miniseries, “The Art of Sweeping Things Under the Rug” is the shortest by a good ten minutes. Once again, despite giving us some time with Johan and Marianne in the early… Read More Scenes from a Marriage S1E2, “The Art of Sweeping Things Under the Rug”
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Bibi Andersson Johan (Josephson) and Marianne (Ullmann) are hosting a pair of old friends for dinner. Peter (Jan Malmsjo) and Katarina (Andersson) belong very much to the same social stratum as our heroes. Johan is a professor and Marianne a lawyer specializing in family law, which boils… Read More Scenes from a Marriage S1E1, “Innocence and Panic”
I’ve completed a series of episode-by-episode reviews of the marvelous television miniseries Brideshead Revisited. I’ve decided to make it easier to access these posts as part of a group by making this page as an index. I’ve also added a short synopsis of each episode so that you can find what you’re looking for quickly.… Read More Brideshead Revisited (1981)
Dir. Charles Sturridge. Starring Jeremy Irons, Laurence Olivier, Diana Quick (My thoughts on the preceding episode are here.) Daniel Day-Lewis is, by virtually any standard short of the box office, the greatest film actor we’ve ever had. Nine times out of ten I think so. And then, that one time out of ten, I think… Read More Brideshead Revisited S1E11, “Brideshead Revisited”
Dir. Charles Sturridge. Starring Jeremy Irons, Diana Quick, Phoebe Nicholls (My thoughts on the preceding episode are here.) It takes the greater part of the first episode, all of the second, and all but the last thirty seconds of the third to build us up to a state of great joy in Charles and Sebastian’s… Read More Brideshead Revisited S1E10, “A Twitch Upon the Thread”
Dir. Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Starring Jeremy Irons, Diana Quick, Jane Asher (My thoughts on the preceding episode are here.) “Oh, yes” Charles says. “He was the forerunner.” The beginning of this episode charts, as every other episode must, really, the ongoing changes and worsening of the Flytes. Yet it seems that everyone is very much the… Read More Brideshead Revisited S1E9, “Orphans of the Storm”
Created by Bruce Miller. Starring Elisabeth Moss, Joseph Fiennes, Max Minghella My thoughts on episodes 1-5 can be found here. As the show continues, there’s been a persistent wondering about the role of race in a show set in a dystopian America. My favorite take so far is from Vulture, but The Verge and Cosmo… Read More The Handmaid’s Tale, Season 1, Episodes 6-10
Created by Bruce Miller. Starring Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Alexis Bledel As a novel, one of the many things which makes The Handmaid’s Tale special is that it does not make up details about the activities of the Republic of Gilead; in other words, everything that happens in Gilead has happened before in real life. The executions,… Read More The Handmaid’s Tale, Season 1, Episodes 1-5
The Luminaries is an enormously enjoyable novel, with emphasis on the adverb. At more than eight hundred pages, it is the longest novel to win the Man Booker International Prize, and its author, Eleanor Catton, is the youngest to ever win the Man Booker. (She was twenty-eight when it was published, which makes me wish I… Read More Casting The Luminaries for TV: Utter, Wishful, and Shameful Fanfiction
Seeing Things Secondhand 