All I want for Christmas is Mr Darcy

Well, hell. I was gonna go run errands but it's raining. It's not loud enough that I can hear it from the living room any more, though, so perhaps I will go anyway.


I have been reading The Annotated Pride and Prejudice, and at first I was thinking it was a bit of a waste because I have read enough Jane Austen that I already know a lot of the things that it says. However, I have have changed my mind about that. It gives lots of little insights into things that I hadn't thought of. Nothing that really gives me an earthshaking re-interpretation or anything, but still, I am enjoying it. I wouldn't mind having annotations for her other books, too.

I also watched Bride and Prejudice for the first time the other day, and really loved it - no surprise because I tend to love all things Austen-ish. I believe I was interested in seeing this when it first came out and it never did show up in our little corner of the sticks, and I subsequently mostly forgot about it until something reminded me to put it in my Netflix queue. I'd forgotten, if I had ever known, that it was the same director as Bend It Like Beckham, although I started suspecting almost as soon as the movie started. There was something about that blend of Western and Indian culture that had her stamp on it. It stuck more closely than I expected to the original, which I liked. The Amazon page has some criticism of Mr Darcy but I really can't say I agree with that - if you make Mr Darcy an American, and a 21st-century American to boot, then you shouldn't expect to see anything like Colin Firth at his starchiest. Martin Henderson is certainly pretty enough to suit me. (And, hmm, is not actually American.) I won't say I agree with every decision Ms Chadha made in making this movie, but on the whole, it definitely works.


(Ha, look, I already had a Darcy icon.)

Internet webisode-thingys

Have we discussed The Guild? (Here's a page with all the episodes except the very first one - I'm not sure why that is, and um, I thought the missing one would surely be available at watchtheguild.com, but I don't see any links at all to the first season there. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that it's coming out on DVD. You used to could get it on iTunes as a podcast, though, it could still be available over there.) Anyway, I had sort of vaguely wondered where Felicia Day of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog came from, and it turns out that The Guild, which she wrote and starred in, is the thing that made her an internet celebrity in the first place. Evidently she is a reformed WoW-junkie, and decided to make this little homemade series about it. Most of the first season was financed by viewer donations; presumably MSN is financing season 2. You can tell that everything got quite a bit more slick, although it's still not exactly what you'd call big-budget. Anyway, the gamers who haven't already seen it should do so, it's pretty funny. I'm not sure about how well it will translate for non-gamers, though. (It's worth a try, the episodes are very short!)

(There's also The Legend of Neil, which makes even season one of The Guild look big-budget, but which has its moments. And which Felicia Day is also in, actually, although she only turns up in a couple of episodes. I suspect it will tell you a lot about this one if I tell you she plays a very horny fairy.)