British Legal Dramas, Bear McCreary and Sports Night

Nothing much to report. Work has been stressful for the past couple of weeks and it's that funny time when the sun is out but it's still cold and lately I've been feeling lazy and all I've been wanting to do is curl up in bed with DVDs.

Watched The Chatterley Affair. I love, love, love the concept of this movie, which is that two of the jurors in the Lady Chatterley's Lover obscenity trial embark upon an affair and decide to enact the sex scenes in the book. It's all there for debate: sex, love, art vs pornography, censorship, class, etc. Execution could have been better though. It felt like it needed another half an hour at least to actually explore the main characters and give a bit of meat to the Twelve Angry Men style juror scenes or the issues at the heart of it. Plus, it could have done with some more inspired direction.

Also, David Tennant has a cameo, and it is win.

Also in legal dramas featuring actors who've portrayed the Doctor, I watched “Let him have it” which is a biopic starting a very young and adorable Christopher Eccleston about Derek Bently, a nineteen year old kid who was hung for murder in Britain in the 1950s. He was tried and found guilty for murder under joint enterprise for the killing of a policeman. Bently was intellectually disabled and would under modern law probably have been found to have diminished capacity, didn't have or fire a gun, was technically under arrest at the time and the phrase that was used to convict him 'let him have it' probably was telling his co-offender to give the cop the gun, rather than shoot someone with it. Anyway, he was hung and later given a full pardon.

Couldn't help but compare the movie to the far superior Pierrepoint (which I raved on abouthere), and again, could have done with a bit more of the legal debate and public reaction.

Also, I have been listening to the BSG season four soundtrack a lot lately, particularly the Daybreak disk, which is the last outing of the magnificent themes that developed over the series and often they gorgeously merge into one another. The ending of Assault on the Colony stands out in particular, where at about ten minutes in it changes to Kobol's Last Gleaming which then merges into The Shape of Things to Come and then again on into All Along the Watchtower. There are about twenty other tracks I could rave on about (like the use of Gaeta's Lament in Blood on the Scales, I didn't notice that in the episode, or how being able to sit at a piano and start playing Kara Remembers would be a really neat party trick), but I shall spare you all. Yes, I think Bear McCreary is a genius. Although one who should sometimes just say 'no' to bagpipes (they do work amazingly well in big battle pieces, but not in emotional moments).

Finally, I bought Sports Night the complete series on DVD and am not so patiently waiting for it to arrive in the mail. Expect me raving on about why you should all watch this late 90s sitcom in the weeks to come.

British Legal Dramas, Bear McCreary and Sports Night

Nothing much to report. Work has been stressful for the past couple of weeks and it's that funny time when the sun is out but it's still cold and lately I've been feeling lazy and all I've been wanting to do is curl up in bed with DVDs.

Watched The Chatterley Affair. I love, love, love the concept of this movie, which is that two of the jurors in the Lady Chatterley's Lover obscenity trial embark upon an affair and decide to enact the sex scenes in the book. It's all there for debate: sex, love, art vs pornography, censorship, class, etc. Execution could have been better though. It felt like it needed another half an hour at least to actually explore the main characters and give a bit of meat to the Twelve Angry Men style juror scenes or the issues at the heart of it. Plus, it could have done with some more inspired direction.

Also, David Tennant has a cameo, and it is win.

Also in legal dramas featuring actors who've portrayed the Doctor, I watched “Let him have it” which is a biopic starting a very young and adorable Christopher Eccleston about Derek Bently, a nineteen year old kid who was hung for murder in Britain in the 1950s. He was tried and found guilty for murder under joint enterprise for the killing of a policeman. Bently was intellectually disabled and would under modern law probably have been found to have diminished capacity, didn't have or fire a gun, was technically under arrest at the time and the phrase that was used to convict him 'let him have it' probably was telling his co-offender to give the cop the gun, rather than shoot someone with it. Anyway, he was hung and later given a full pardon.

Couldn't help but compare the movie to the far superior Pierrepoint (which I raved on abouthere), and again, could have done with a bit more of the legal debate and public reaction.

Also, I have been listening to the BSG season four soundtrack a lot lately, particularly the Daybreak disk, which is the last outing of the magnificent themes that developed over the series and often they gorgeously merge into one another. The ending of Assault on the Colony stands out in particular, where at about ten minutes in it changes to Kobol's Last Gleaming which then merges into The Shape of Things to Come and then again on into All Along the Watchtower. There are about twenty other tracks I could rave on about (like the use of Gaeta's Lament in Blood on the Scales, I didn't notice that in the episode, or how being able to sit at a piano and start playing Kara Remembers would be a really neat party trick), but I shall spare you all. Yes, I think Bear McCreary is a genius. Although one who should sometimes just say 'no' to bagpipes (they do work amazingly well in big battle pieces, but not in emotional moments).

Finally, I bought Sports Night the complete series on DVD and am not so patiently waiting for it to arrive in the mail. Expect me raving on about why you should all watch this late 90s sitcom in the weeks to come.