Friday, February 4, 2011

Cinema Betty

The Daughter of the Manor has a heroine with the last name of Crosby.  Hmmm.  Let's see what we can do with that:
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949)

His name is Hank, sire.  Do we have any skinny blonde tartlets he can carry back to America?
Hank the American (!) hits his head and goes back in time.  Unfortunately, the heroic Hank also incurs the hatred of both Merlin and Morgan Le Fay. While Hank persuades King Arthur, a semi-perpetual, cold-in-the-nose invalid, to tour his kingdom in disguise to see the true, wretched condition of his subjects, Merlin and Morgan plot to usurp his throne. When Hank tries to stop them, he is returned to his own time.
I am torn between seeing Merlin and Morgan as the dual nature of Tony the Snake and identifying them with Leonora's horribly inattentive/evil parents...

Betty Debbie had very strong feelings about the pick for A Kind of Magic by reason of the Grade-A old folks: 
Cold Comfort Farm (1995)
Rufus Sewell is my favorite.

Having been orphaned, Flora Poste begins to look for relatives with whom to live. She settles upon the Starkadders, relatives on her mother's side, who live on the isolated Cold Comfort Farm.
Each of the extended family has some longstanding emotional problem caused by ignorance, hatred or fear; and the farm is badly run -- supposedly cursed -- and presided over by the unseen presence of Aunt Ada Doom, who is said to be mad through having seen "something nasty in the woodshed" as a child.
It's in my Netflix queue.

7 comments:

  1. Betty Barbara here--
    Never saw Cold Comfort Farm, but the book is absolutely, hysterically funny. I laughed myself sick. Hmmmm, Rufus Sewell sure does look appropriately broody. I may have to watch this one.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I just ordered a used copy of Cold Comfort Farm from Amazon. Can't wait to read it.

    The movie is priceless..Ian McKellan preaching fire and brimstone to The Church of the Quivering Brethren is not to be missed..."There'll be no butter in hell!". It makes me giggle just to think about it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Okay, since it's a forgone Ima nae ginna watch the CREEPER, I'm offering this for Rosie and Fergus fans
    Fred ain't Greg, but he'll bring ya back in one piece.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Re: Cold Comfort Farm. The book is delightful, I love to re-read it about once a year! But, in this case, I must say that the movie does a very good job too -- so funny! I'll warn you that I found it quite difficult to understand the dialect at first, and have had to re-watch it several times to appreciate all the hidden gems in the script.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm with you on the Rufus Sewell thing, Betty Keira. A few months ago I watched the mini-series Pillars of the Earth, and am pleased to report that Rufus seems to be aging *very* gracefully.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Here's my soul-mate fist bump, Betty Andrea.

    ReplyDelete