Judi's Turn To Try

Dame Judi Dench and Imelda Staunton feature heavily on this Sunday's Masterpiece Classic, an adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford. The premise of this three-installment series: an 1840 version of McDreamy (Simon Woods, a.k.a. Mr. Bingley!) comes to town with new-fangled medical ideas, thereby putting the staunch-and-staid biddies of a small rural community in a tizzy (and sending some of the younger women into fits of rapture, I daresay.) The film appears to be an amalgamation of several of Gaskell's works, but all I know is, the Brits loved it when it aired there, so I'm looking forward to it.

Here's a preview from the PBS site.

The Triumph of Love or Whatever Happened to Mira Sorvino

Sunday night, sorely in need of an escape from the very real slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, I picked up Bernardo Bertolucci's The Triumph of Love (2002) from the local library. The romantic comedy is based on an 18th century French play and it certainly satisfied my desire for delicious brain candy. Mira Sorvino is the cross-dressing heroine, a bit of a reverse Cinderella who takes the lead in orchestrating her own happily ever after. She is such a wonderful actress and we don't see enough of her. She was also fabulous in one of my 5 Favorite Adaptations, Edith Wharton's The Buccaneers, in which she plays the tragic South American heiress Conchita Closson. --Kim

The Old College Try

On rare occasions, I regret not living in a dorm in college, but usually I'm okay with it, especially after reading Tom Wolfe's harrowing account of college life,I Am Charlotte Simmons, which is being adapted for film by U2 and REM music video director Liz Friedlander. I've been waiting for this film for two years, if only for the sort of guilty pleasure fluff it shall provide for someone who's proudly carried the "geek" mantle a time or two in her life. Who should play the awkwardly put-upon protagonist? Please, not Anne Hathaway, although I must confess that's who I pictured in my head while reading it. Anyway, she's too old now. I almost feel like an unknown actress would best depict Charlotte's wallflower nature, but you know that'll never happen. Feel free to suggest who you'd cast as Charlotte, her cruel frat boy seducer, Hoyt, or any number of peripheral "froshtitutes" in the story.

Hotties and Unicorns...

...what more could a girl ask for? A recent Googling of Ioan Gruffudd shows he's starring in an adaptation of Elizabeth Goudge's The Little White Horse. The film, called The Secret of of Moonacre, follows Maria Mayweather (Dakota Blue Richards), an English orphan in the 1840s who is sent to the crumbling Moonacre Mansion to live with her cousin, Sir Benjamin (Gruffudd). There, she discovers that she is the Moonacre Princess who must, with the help of a stable of mythical beasts, save the ancient estate from disappearing into the sea forever.

Ioan is also set to play former British prime minister Tony Blair in W., a biopic on the life and presidency of George W. Bush, which stars Josh Brolin (?!) as Dubya and Thandie Newton as Condoleeza Rice.

Finally, Ioan goes the "Touched By An Angel" route in the CBS television pilot "Meant To Be", which features Amy Smart as a dead woman sent back to earth to help people. Gruffudd plays her tour guide and mentor, her "Clarence," if you will. Sounds kind of lame, unless, as her spirtual guru, he's saddled up on a unicorn. That I'd tune in for.

Like a House Afire

The executive producers of House are adapting Brock Clarke's bestseller, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, which centers on a man who accidentally burns down Emily Dickinson's Amherst home only to be later suspected in a string of fires set at historical landmarks.

source: The Hollywood Reporter

This Will Make You Laugh Out Loud

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809936390/video/7508629

I like to consider it "Waiting for Guffman" meets Shakespeare. Can't wait for August.

Perfect "Sense"

I confess I needed a break from "The Complete Jane Austen" in recent months...(as much as I'm obsessed with all things Jane, one a week is sensory overload....I also generally don't like that PBS now clumps all the Masterpiece Classics together only to make us tough it out for the rest of the year.) That said, I've been saving up "Sense & Sensibility" until I was good and ready to relish it.

....And, now, couldn't we all stand to relive those last eight minutes?