Georges Bizet wrote of Carmen, “I have written a work that is all clarity and vivacity, full of colour and melody. It will be entertaining. Come along - I think you are going to like it.” The Met’s 2014 Carmen is a welcome return for Richard Eyre’s wonderful 2010 production. It was brooding and atmospheric and claustrophobic and doom-laden and I ( Read more... )

Even more spoilers, obviously.

I wanted to like this as much as “Dark Water”. And I did really like it: the character beats with the Doctor and Missy, Clara and Danny, and the witty banter with U.N.I.T., were exceptional.
Kate Lethbridge-Stewart: Now that I have your attention, [gestures the Doctor forward] welcome to the only planet in the ( Read more... )

Yes, there are spoilers. Lots of them.

I have no idea how someone new to the program would react to this one, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nods to everything from the Second Doctor stories Tomb of the Cybermen and The Invasion (which apparently gets an even more tangible link next week, when Kate Lethbridge-Stewart throws the head of one of the ( Read more... )

First, when they make the “Strax Was Right!” T-shirts, I want one.

Second, on the madly bogus science, take a deep breath and remember that this is Doctor Who, where a box can vanish from one physical location and reappear in another, laws of conservation of mass be damned. I was in high school when Full Circle came out, and when Tom Baker said “ ( Read more... )

It was brilliant. Just go see it already. More coherent notes might possibly follow, but that's the gist.

And on trying to follow a link from poisoninjest to the_red_shoes , I discovered the_red_shoes's post with Ben Jonson's translation of that verse by Petronius, which I had only seen before in Helen Waddell's translation:

Foeda est in coitu et brevis voluptas ( Read more... )

I was crediting poisoninjest for her mood icons when I came upon her post discussing with some heat that a month ago Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance sent forth a petition doubting that Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare. And I must admit that in this case, when I violently agreed with the arguments being made, and shared the dismay at some of ( Read more... )

From Gaudy Night, chapter one, Phœbe and Harriet:

"...He's writing a paper that contradicts all of Lambard's conclusions, and I'm helping by toning down his adjectives and putting in deprecatory footnotes. I mean. Lambard may be a perverse old idiot, but it's more dignified not to say so in so many words. A bland and deadly courtesy is more ( Read more... )

So I was wearing my old college scarf yesterday, not for any snobbish reasons but because it's the warmest scarf I have and it has been cold. And someone came up to me and asked "Is that a Darwin scarf?" First time anything like that has happened in Toronto. And I admitted it wasn't, with that slight apology that Trinity people sometimes feel we ( Read more... )

Or, why am I still reading this awful book?

Well, it's an interesting idea, that there weren't actually widescale Anglo-Saxon invasions, that it was mostly acculturation.  And one I would once have been professionally very interested in.  And the idea may be valid even if his expression of it is off.  But I wish I could find a better and more ( Read more... )