Musketeers and pirates
20/1/14 00:22![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darkemeraldsOh look. A new take on The Three Musketeers.
Musketeers was fun. I liked the depiction of Paris in 1630--filthy, rough, dangerous. I liked the whinybaby portrayal of Louis XIII. I liked the jokey spirit (which is really quite true to the original), and I didn't hate Peter Capaldi's Cardinal Richelieu. I mean, I did hate him, as one must, because a more villainous villain doing villainy because he's just plain villainous has rarely ever been written.
I can't decide how I feel about the female characters so far: the source material doesn't provide a huge amount to work with (but then the source material doesn't imply that Porthos is a person of color either, and yet the show manages to make that alteration beautifully, so, you know, selective hewing to "historical accuracy" and whatever).
Anyway, it was fun and I enjoyed it and it has huge fannish potential (as attested to by a flood of Tumblr posts today), and I'll probably watch the next two eps. It's certainly wonderfully filthy and muddy and harsh and the locations are gorgeous and the costumes: so much leather OMG.
No, I didn't watch "Black Sails". It's just...the system is forcing me into piracy, I swear. With the best will in the world and waving money around, I cannot buy the audiobook of Broken Homes, Ben Aaronovitch's fourth Peter Grant novel. It's been out in the UK for many months, but "due to geo-restrictions" (or something) Audible.com can't actually sell it to me--or even let me put it on my wishlist.
Seriously, Audible, and publishers, and whatever corporate intellectual property bullshit concerns: you can't give me books 1, 2, and 3 of a series then withhold book 4 and expect me to just wait like a good girl. So please don't expect that.
Musketeers was fun. I liked the depiction of Paris in 1630--filthy, rough, dangerous. I liked the whinybaby portrayal of Louis XIII. I liked the jokey spirit (which is really quite true to the original), and I didn't hate Peter Capaldi's Cardinal Richelieu. I mean, I did hate him, as one must, because a more villainous villain doing villainy because he's just plain villainous has rarely ever been written.
I can't decide how I feel about the female characters so far: the source material doesn't provide a huge amount to work with (but then the source material doesn't imply that Porthos is a person of color either, and yet the show manages to make that alteration beautifully, so, you know, selective hewing to "historical accuracy" and whatever).
Anyway, it was fun and I enjoyed it and it has huge fannish potential (as attested to by a flood of Tumblr posts today), and I'll probably watch the next two eps. It's certainly wonderfully filthy and muddy and harsh and the locations are gorgeous and the costumes: so much leather OMG.
No, I didn't watch "Black Sails". It's just...the system is forcing me into piracy, I swear. With the best will in the world and waving money around, I cannot buy the audiobook of Broken Homes, Ben Aaronovitch's fourth Peter Grant novel. It's been out in the UK for many months, but "due to geo-restrictions" (or something) Audible.com can't actually sell it to me--or even let me put it on my wishlist.
Seriously, Audible, and publishers, and whatever corporate intellectual property bullshit concerns: you can't give me books 1, 2, and 3 of a series then withhold book 4 and expect me to just wait like a good girl. So please don't expect that.
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20/1/14 08:48 (UTC)I still haven't finished book 1 of RoL. Oh dear. So far behind!
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20/1/14 08:51 (UTC)The Rivers of London audiobooks, read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, are absolutely stellar--even
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20/1/14 09:47 (UTC)(no subject)
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20/1/14 21:10 (UTC)(no subject)
22/1/14 18:49 (UTC)Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!
20/1/14 13:50 (UTC)The post just under yours in my LJ said that the fifth Grant is coming out in England in about six months.
Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!
20/1/14 18:34 (UTC)LOL! I'll have you know that I didn't have to consult IMDB for that at all. Those movies hit me that sweet, sweet spot in life, about age 16 or 17, when everything is reelingly fannish and you don't yet have much discrimination or taste. I read the whole series of Dumas novels as a result, and ended up majoring in French later, at least in part so I could read Les Trois Mousquetaires in the original (only to learn, from one of my professors, that really, Dumas Père was not considered literature).
So yeah, D'Artagnan and the boys and I go back a ways.
I should just have time to listen to Broken Homes, then go back through the first three Peter Grant installments, before seeking out book 5. Thanks for the heads up.
Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!
20/1/14 19:44 (UTC)Hey, even if it's French trash, you still need to learn French to be able to read it in the original.
BTW I'm now reading The Mystery of Edwin Drood for the first time; Dickens certainly wasn't Literature in his own day.
Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!
20/1/14 20:39 (UTC)I have a vivid memory of slow-motion swordplay in the Lester movie--the opening moments, as I recall, D'Artagnan practiced in a sunbeam-filled barn with something more like a broadsword than an epée. It was beautiful and startling and new at the time. I can see where it would inspire.
Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!
20/1/14 20:46 (UTC)Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!
20/1/14 20:47 (UTC)Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!
20/1/14 18:49 (UTC)Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!
20/1/14 19:41 (UTC)Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!
20/1/14 20:40 (UTC)Elizabeth Was King, Now James is Queen
20/1/14 20:45 (UTC)King James the Bible Guy definitely had lots of boyfriends, including the Duke of Buckingham, I'm just not sure if it was the same Duke of Buckingham, but I believe it was.
Re: Elizabeth Was King, Now James is Queen
20/1/14 21:08 (UTC)