darkemeralds | Musketeers and pirates

Oh 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.

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Musketeers is on my list to watch tonight *G* and Black Sails is worth a watch if only to see Toby Stephens swashing a very fine buckle as Captain Flint!

I still haven't finished book 1 of RoL. Oh dear. So far behind!

The only reason I ever finish any books is because I listen to so many of them rather than reading, and I can get a hell of a lot of book-listening done while in transit or doing housework.

The Rivers of London audiobooks, read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, are absolutely stellar--even

ravurian says he could tolerate them. Just about the perfect juxtaposition of actor and material. Highly recommended.

You forgot to mention that d'Artagnan has very pretty hair. :)

LOL! Well, I noticed that you had covered that on Twitter.

I like to get straight to the core message of a show.

AWESOME.

I still remember Christopher Lee, dagger, and diamonds from the Richard Lester version.

The post just under yours in my LJ said that the fifth Grant is coming out in England in about six months.

You mean the movie-made-into-two-movies starring Michael York as D'Artagnan, and Richard Chamberlain as Aramis, and Oliver Reed as Athos, and Faye Dunaway as Milady de Winter, and Raquel Welch as Constance Bonacieux? Nope, don't remember that one.

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.

I've always loved that D'artagnan and Constance basically related on the basis of being good-hearted and complete dorks, not because of being cute. And I suspect my years of fencing were inspired more by that than by vague memories of whichever Errol Flynn movies I've seen.

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.

Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle both qualify as cheap trashy reading, more or less, in their day. I love that about them.

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.

Also, Serenity-the-spaceship is a *direct* descendant of D'Artagnan's horse.

Hey, at the Globe Theatre they had a guy collecting pennies and tuppences, not a guy taking pledges for Public Broadcasting.

Oh! And Charlton Heston as Richelieu and Geraldine Chaplin as the queen. (After that, I did have to go to IMDB--I'm afraid Frank Finlay as Porthos didn't register much on my teenaged mind, but I remember being blown away by how handsome Simon Ward was as Buckingham.)

I think he was the same Buckingham who was King James' bf, which has got to be some kind of a record.

Wait--what? King James the bible guy? Had a BF? Is this a movie with Simon Ward or a piece of history that I need to read more about?

...as they used to say, albeit very quietly.

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.

I'll be damned. I had no idea.

Musketeers and pirates

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Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!

Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!

Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!

Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!

Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!

Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!

Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!

Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!

Re: Up, Cardinal! Down, Queen!

Elizabeth Was King, Now James is Queen

Re: Elizabeth Was King, Now James is Queen