Last month, Her Ladyship published a cursory review of the first episode of BBC’s The Paradise and was left interested, rather than addicted. Having now had occasion to watch the entire series, she is delighted to announce that her attitude to the show, which transfers Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames to Northern England, is now…
Month: May 2013
What Sansa would have done in Arya’s place.
My dear friend the Lady Héloïse and her inestimable sister the Lady Catherine recently planted a delightful seed in my head following my defense of Sansa Stark entitled What Arya would have done in Sansa’s place. Why not do it the other way round? I jokingly responded that the post would only have to be…
The Bear and the Maiden Fair: Game of Thrones S03E07 (Review)
A mostly character-based little oddity of an episode that leaves one thinking that this entire season could have been done in eight episodes instead of ten, The Bear and the Maiden Fair strews a lot of building blocks along its merry way, some of them haunting and many of them perplexing. We are nevertheless rewarded…
Stoker (Film Review)
‘My ears hear what others cannot hear. Small faraway things people cannot normally see are visible to me. These senses are the fruits of a lifetime of longing. Longing to be rescued; to be completed. Just as the skirt needs the wind to billow, I’m not formed by things that are of myself alone. I…
The Great Gatsby (Film Review)
Fearless, sexy, creative, and yet more to be admired than loved, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is a well-written, well-acted and gorgeous experience for the eyes that almost perfectly juxtaposes respect for a well-loved classic with the willingness to do new and interesting things with it. Sadly, it does lack that X-factor spark of the…
The Climb: Game of Thrones S03E06 (Review)
Westeros blows off steam following last week’s festival of constant high emotion and tears in this little intermezzo of an episode, many beautiful, tiny scenes circling the great central melody of the wildlings’ climb of the Wall like a double helix. In some of the highlights within this helix, Tywin Lannister continues to destroy happiness…
North and South (2004): Review
‘I wish I could tell you, Edith, how lonely I am, how cold and harsh it is here. Everywhere there is conflict and unkindness. I think God has forsaken this place. I believe I have seen hell. And it’s white. It’s snow white.’ So ends the dazzling first episode of North and South, the BBC’s…
Kissed By Fire: Game of Thrones S03E05 (Review)
Maisie Williams rips our hearts out and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau gives the performance of his career in an episode that delivers three of A Song of Ice and Fire’s most titanic scenes (The bath scene, the cave scene and Sandor Clegane versus Beric Dondarrion), interspersed with beautifully-acted smaller scenes from the capital and from Essos; events…
What Arya would have done in Sansa’s place: being the ramblings of a young lady who adores both Stark girls and is rather sick of the above notion being used to favour one at the expense of the other.
Let us imagine for a moment that Arya hadn’t been so fortunate as to be picked up by Yoren at Ned Stark’s execution (well, how fortunate this event actually was is debatable). What if she’d been taken by the Hound instead, or denounced by someone in the crowd, or even recognised by Joffrey, who is…
And Now His Watch Is Ended: Game of Thrones S03E04 (Review)
‘The gods have seen fit to make it so,’ croons an insincere Cersei Lannister in And Now His Watch Is Ended, this week’s Game of Thrones that has much to say on the trials of being brilliant and female in Westeros, and how politically ambitious women like Cersei, Margaery and Lady Olenna are forced to shadow-rule…
LADYGILRAEN 