Yesterday was interesting. I was interviewed by Anthony Brenzican a couple of weeks ago for an article he was writing about King for the New York Times. He used to write for Entertainment Weekly and is now working for Vanity Fair, but he had a few months between those gigs this summer where he freelanced, and this was one of his assignments. The article appeared in the New York Times yesterday, and I got mentioned and quoted a couple of times, as did Rich Chizmar, which was cool. It will also be in the Friday print edition of the paper.
My review of The Institute also went live yesterday morning. Then, last night I drove into Houston for a press screening of It Chapter Two. It was a the same multiplex as where I saw Chapter One a couple of years ago. The original screening then was cancelled due to Hurricane Harvey, and the rescheduled event was an odd late-morning thing with only a handful of reviewers in attendance.
Last night’s screening was in an IMAX theater, and the majority of the attendees were people who got there via Radio Now 92.1, which I confess I’ve never heard of before. So the theater was packed, which was nice. A row of seats in a prime location was reserved for press, which was also nice! There was a trivia contest at the beginning, and they gave out movie posters after the event. My review will be up at News from the Dead Zone tomorrow morning, but suffice to say I really enjoyed it, and I didn’t mind its 2hrs 48 min runtime in the least. In fact, I may go see it again this weekend when I can watch it without being in reviewer mode.
Over the holiday weekend, we watched a number of series and movies in between listening to music, reading and enjoying home-cooked meals. We started with an Amazon Prime series called Doctor Thorne, written by Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey). It is based on a novel by Anthony Trollope, about whom we knew little, but we enjoyed the four-part 18th century melodrama, starring Tom Holland, enough to look for more.
I found The Barchester Chronicles on YouTube, all 7 parts. It’s based on the first two of Trollope’s novels in that series, and stars Donald Pleasance in a rather sedate role as a minister who is also the warden of a care home for a dozen elderly men. He gets blindsided by a group of reformers (including his potential future son-in-law) who attack him as part of a barrage against the Church of England. Two episodes are based on The Warden and the other five are based on book two, Barchester Towers, about a new Bishop coming to town, along with his sniveling aide, played by Alan Rickman. The Bishop is played by Clive Swift, familiar to us primarily as Hyacinth Bucket’s beleaguered husband from Keeping Up Appearances.
Going back to the Julian Fellowes thread, we watched Gosford Park and then another film he wrote called The Chaperone, starring Elizabeth McGovern, a woman of a certain age who accompanies a 16-year-old dance student to New York for several weeks. While she’s there, she tries to track down her birth mother. This is in the 1920s–she was a product of the Orphan Train Movement that saw her adopted by a family in Kansas.
We also started on another series called The Aristocrats. Lo and behold, who should show up playing the family patriarch but…Julian Fellowes. And the King of England? Clive Swift!
