#benjamin whitrow

[didanagy]

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1995)

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[ludojudoposts]

One Fine Day (1979) Dir. Stephen Frears

Starring: Dave Allen, Robert Stephens, Dominic Guard, Benjamin Whitrow, Harold Innocent

[ronavorona]

My favorite supporting character in P&P, lol.

[adamwatchesmovies]

Chicken Run (2000)

Chicken Run is stuffed so full of jokes you’ll be laughing non-stop. It doesn't matter if you're young or old. Actually, parents (or non-parent adults) are likely to enjoy this film even more than children. Only they will truly appreciate the clever wordplays and sight gags found in this stop-motion animated film from the team that brought us Wallace and Gromit.

Sensing that their time in the chicken coop is coming to an end, Ginger (Julia Sawalha) has been continuously attempting to find an escape route for her and her fellow hens. Hope comes in the form of Rocky Rhodes (Mel Gibson) a laid-back smooth-talking rooster that crash-lands and offers to teach the chickens to fly.

The impeccable comedic timing, wildly hilarious antics and slapstick humor will delight children, but young viewers are unlikely to appreciate the high-quality voice acting. Mel Gibson is perfect in his role. In fact, several jokes have been written specifically with him in mind. There’s plenty to make you chuckle in the form of posters on the walls, actions by the background characters and a great use of props. All of those would’ve been more than enough, but that extra touch of looking at the cast and asking “now that we have these extra ingredients, what other side dish can I make to compliment what we already have?” is what makes this a great film. I see that extra effort you made at the screenplay level, Karey Kirkpatrick. I appreciate it.

The pun-filled dialogue is a treat for the ears. We're not talking groaners that will have you slapping yourself, but delightful plays on words. Every opportunity to sneak in more humor has been taken, whether it’s using human-sized objects as something completely different for the miniature chicken society, or taking advantage of the side characters’ quirks to expand on this bizarre world where chickens have teeth and the humans don’t notice. Speaking of which, Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson) and her moronic husband (Tony Haygarth) are great villains you love to hate and see get their comeuppance.

It almost goes without saying when discussing Aardman’s productions, but it's worth repeating: Chicken Run is a great-looking film. The distinct character designs combined with the meticulous stop motion animation make every frame desktop wallpaper-worthy. The visuals are so exciting they're likely to distract you from the puns or sly jokes that get tossed into the mix, giving this film great rewatch value. Maybe the second time around you’ll notice the spot-on The Great Escape parody scenes.

You’ll be laughing consistently and right up to the end of Chicken Run (quite literally, there are some gags during the end credits). If there’s a flaw to single out, it’s that you can sort of see where it’s headed fairly easily. You’ll be having such a good time you won’t mind and the film still contains plenty of surprises for you. You can’t go wrong with Chicken Run as a feature to watch by yourself or with the whole family. (On DVD, February 2, 2018)

[thebutcher-5]

Galline in fuga

Benvenuti o bentornati sul nostro blog. Nello scorso articolo abbiamo ripreso a parlare dell’animazione e ci siamo spostati in casa DreamWorks, arrivando a discutere del loro terzo lungometraggio animato ossia Giuseppe – Il re dei sogni. Rachele, moglie di Giacobbe, partorisce un bambino che chiamano Giuseppe e la venuta di quest’ultimo viene vista come un miracolo, in quanto la donna era…

[mariocki]

Six Plays by Alan Bennett: One Fine Day (1.5, LWT, 1979)

"One o'clock? It says 'while you wait'."

"Well, you can wait. But you don't want to hang around here all morning, do you?"

"Well, what takes so long?"

"He's got arthritis."

"Perhaps you ought to take the sign down."

"Well, we're ready for retiring. We've got to come out of here anyway. All this is coming down. Is it important? The key?"

"No, it's not important. One o'clock."

[perfettamentechic]

28 settembre … ricordiamo …

28 settembre … ricordiamo … #semprevivineiricordi #nomidaricordare #personaggiimportanti #perfettamentechic

2021: Michael Tylo, attore televisivo statunitense. Era noto al pubblico televisivo italiano per il ruolo di Quinton McCord, alias Quinton Chamberlain nella soap opera Sentieri  e dell’alcalde Luis Ramón nel telefilm Zorro, nonché per essere stato per anni il marito dell’attrice Deborah Hunter, conosciuta ora come Hunter Tylo (la Taylor di Beautiful). Aveva lavorato, inoltre, ne La valle dei…

[ardentlyinlovedarcy]

[princesssarisa]

Character ask: Mr. and Mrs. Bennet (Pride and Prejudice)

Favorite thing about them: They're both funny characters in their different ways: Mr. Bennet intentionally, Mrs. Bennet unintentionally.

Least favorite thing about them: Well, they're both basically terrible parents to their daughters and terrible spouses to each other. Mrs. Bennet's own foolish behavior makes all the troubles she worries about much worse, while Mr. Bennet's habit of doing nothing except mocking it all is both unkind and irresponsible.

On a meta level, I do sometimes wonder if Austen's portrayal of Mrs. Bennet shows classism (since her socially ignorant behavior stems at least in part from her lower-class background – although her brother Mr. Gardiner doesn't share her faults), and/or internalized misogyny (while Mr. Bennet's flaws are made clear, we never quite lose the sense that Mrs. Bennet is meant to be seen as worse). I understand why so many readers think her portrayal is unfair and mean-spirited, though I'm not sure if I agree.

Three things I have in common with them:

Mrs. Bennet:

*I can be neurotic.

*I can be over-enthusiastic.

*I sometimes make social faux pas.

Mr. Bennet:

*I prefer reading to socializing.

*I can be irresponsible, especially with money.

*I like Elizabeth Bennet.

Three things I don't have in common with them:

Mrs. Bennet:

*I'm not a middle-aged British woman.

*I'm not married and don't have children.

*If I had daughters, even if I lived in Georgian England, I would rather they stay single than be married to the likes of Mr. Collins or Wickham.

Mr. Bennet:

*I'm not a middle-aged British man.

*I'm less witty than he is.

*If I had children, I would remember my duties to them.

Favorite line:

Mr. Bennet:

"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at least."

"An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do."

Mrs. Bennet:

"Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied."

brOTP: Mr. Bennet: His favorite daughter Elizabeth, if anyone. Mrs. Bennet: Her sister Mrs. Phillips, and her favorite daughter Lydia.

OTP: Each other, if only because that's what they deserve. Ideally, though, other people whom they never met.

nOTP: Any of their daughters or their daughters' husbands.

Random headcanon: Mrs. Bennet's first name is Jane. Just because the 1995 miniseries calls her "Fanny" doesn't make that name canon, and in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was common for one daughter in a family, usually the eldest, to be named after her mother.

Unpopular opinion: We don't need to choose whether to side with Mr. Bennet or Mrs. Bennet. This isn't a case of "one is right, the other is wrong" or "one is the good parent, the other is the bad parent." They both have sympathetic qualities, yet they both have glaring faults that nearly ruin their daughters' futures too. The old-school viewpoint of "Mr. Bennet is the likable, sensible parent; Mrs. Bennet is an idiot" and the more recently popular viewpoint of "Mrs. Bennet is just trying to secure her daughters' futures; Mr. Bennet is the bad parent" are both faulty and reductive.

Song I associate with them: None.

Favorite picture of them:

This illustration:

And this one:

Mary Boland and Edmund Gwenn in the 1940 film (dressed in costumes from the wrong time period, but I couldn't resist the sight of Hollywood's iconic Santa Claus from the original Miracle on 34th Street looking very unlike Santa as Mr. Bennet):

Benjamin Whitrow and Alison Steadman in the 1995 BBC miniseries:

Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blethyn in the 2005 film:

[didanagy]

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1995)

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[the-rewatch-rewind]

Yes, I've watched this full miniseries 37 times.

Script below the break

Hello and welcome back to The Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies in a 20-year period. Today I will be talking about number two on my list: BBC and A&E’s 1995 mini-series Pride and Prejudice, directed by Simon Langton, written by Andrew Davies, based on the novel by Jane Austen, and starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.

Mr. and Mrs. Bennet (Benjamin Whitrow and Alison Steadman) have five daughters: beautiful and kind Jane (Susannah Harker), witty and strong-willed Elizabeth (Jennifer Ehle), homely and puritanical Mary (Lucy Briers), well-meaning but naïve Kitty (Polly Maberly), and frivolous and spoiled Lydia (Julia Sawalha). Because there are no Bennet sons, Mr. Bennet’s estate is entailed upon his cousin Mr. Collins (David Bamber), and the daughters are aware that at least one of them must marry well to provide for the rest of the family after their father’s death. When wealthy and friendly Mr. Bingley (Crispin Bonham-Carter) moves into the neighborhood, he and Jane quickly hit it off, and the Bennets’ problems seem to be over. However, Mr. Bingley’s sisters, Caroline (Anna Chancellor) and Louisa (Lucy Robinson), along with his unpleasant, proud friend Mr. Darcy (Colin Firth) have strong objections to the Bennet family, who strike them as undignified gold-diggers, even though Mr. Darcy unwillingly finds himself strangely drawn to Elizabeth.

Okay so yes, this is technically a TV show rather than a movie, but even though it’s over five hours long, I still tend to watch it as a movie, and it felt right to count it as such, although when I first wrote it down in my movie notebook, I never anticipated that it would become my second most-frequently-rewatched. I remember that my parents were really into it, and at some point when it was on TV after we finally got a VCR, they had taped it. I tried to watch it with them a few times when I was younger, but I found the flowery language difficult to understand, and I typically fell asleep in the middle without knowing what was going on. The first time I watched it and actually paid attention was in 2005, and the main thing I remember was that my dad assumed I knew the story by then and kept making spoilery comments. I don’t think I fully appreciated it at that point, but I definitely enjoyed it more than I thought I was going to. I ended up watching it twice in that year and then five times in 2006, which is when it became one of my favorite stories. I read the book and watched a few other adaptations that year. In 2007 I only watched this series once, but that was also the year that my family ended up getting two male puppies, and after much deliberation about what to name them, we determined that Bingley and Darcy were the best names that went together and represented something we all enjoyed. After that, I watched it three times in 2008, once in 2009, twice in 2010, four times in 2011, twice in 2012, twice in 2013, four times in 2014, once in 2015, once in 2016, twice in 2017, once in 2018, three times in 2020, once in 2021, and twice in 2022. I don’t remember exactly when, but somehow between my siblings, my parents, and I, we ended up with three copies of this on DVD in addition to the taped one. I should also mention that I only counted it when I watched the whole thing from start to finish within a few days, so I’ve watched it like that 37 times, but I’ve definitely seen pieces of it way more than that. I keep waiting to get tired of watching it, but every time I put it on, it remains delightfully enjoyable.

I know that Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is one of the most beloved stories in the English-speaking world, and probably beyond – although the number of people confused by my dogs’ names taught me that not everyone is particularly familiar with it – and that it has been adapted and retold dozens of times, and that fans of the story have very strong opinions about which is the “best” adaptation. The loudest debate is between this version and the 2005 film directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. The first time I watched that version was in 2006, in the midst of my mania for the 1995 version, and I thought it was terrible. I knew it had to be shorter for the feature film format, but they cut out so many of my favorite parts! It wasn’t until I rewatched the 2005 version in 2016 that I understood that the people who prefer that version love this story for very different reasons from me. If you’re mostly invested in the Elizabeth/Darcy romance, that’s the version for you. It’s all about the tension and chemistry between those two characters, and everyone else is kind of stuck in as an afterthought. But even though the Bennet daughters’ need to get married is central to the plot, I had never considered the main appeal of this story to be its romance. To 2023 me and you the listener, who know that I’m aromantic, that isn’t very surprising, but at the time it kind of blew my mind to learn that so many fans of the story are there for that slow burn. Even in 2012 to 2013, when The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was coming out, I figured the reason people were so obsessed with Darcy was because not seeing him until episode 60 added to his mystique. At the end of that show, I was way more concerned about Lydia’s story than Lizzie’s, and while I enjoyed seeing Lizzie and Darcy finally get together, it was more of a “yay, things are happy now” relief than squeeing over the adorable romance. Anyway, while I used to be one of those obnoxiously pretentious fans who maintained that the 1995 adaptation was way better than the 2005 one, now I’m more of the opinion that they’re both good, just different, and just because I prefer one over the other doesn’t actually make it better. So if you’re listening to this and are a huge fan of the 2005 version, or any other adaptation, know that I’m not trying to tell you you’re wrong. Ultimately, Pride and Prejudice is a great story with many layers, and I think it’s awesome that there have been so many different versions that emphasize different aspects.

Despite the fact that this version is quite long (although not nearly as long as the Lizzie Bennet Diaries), I personally love the pacing. The events of the story take place over about a year, and these six 55-minute episodes take their time bringing us through that year with the characters. Watching it now, I don’t understand how I ever fell asleep with it on as a child, because I am thoroughly engaged the whole way through. Sometimes I intend to only watch an episode or two at a time, but I end up sitting through the whole thing because I cannot tear myself away. These characters are just so fascinating, and the cast brings them to life so convincingly. In general, I try to separate actors from characters, but I will always associate this cast with this show. Part of that is because of how many times I’ve watched this, and another part is because most of these actors haven’t been in very many American films – with the major exception, of course, of Colin Firth, whose Hollywood career skyrocketed after the success of this series – so I haven’t seen them in many other things. But the main reason is because they all embody their characters so perfectly in this series that it’s hard to see them as actors. Every cast member fully committed to their character in a way that somehow makes them feel simultaneously larger than life and grounded in reality. Alison Steadman’s Mrs. Bennet in particular is over the top and ridiculous but manages to just barely remain believable. While the five Bennet sisters on the surface can be summarized by archetypes, they’re much deeper than they first appear, and I love the ways that both the writing and the performances gradually bring that out. Crispin Bonham-Carter perfectly embodies the puppy-dog friendliness and gullibility of Bingley, and Colin Firth nails Darcy’s transformation after Elizabeth calls him out. Benjamin Whitrow makes Mr. Bennet so likable that it took me a while to understand that part of the family’s plight is his fault. That kind of complexity is one of the major things that makes this movie so rewatchable. There are so many layers to every storyline and every character that you can’t possibly uncover them all in just a few views. There’s also a lot going on in the background – like, Mary doesn’t get very many lines, but I love watching her light up whenever Mr. Collins is around. The show is edited in such a way that the audience can see what every relevant character is thinking at all times, so that even when it’s difficult to understand the fancy dialogue, we still get what’s happening based on the characters’ reactions.

This adaptation receives a lot of praise for its faithfulness to the novel, but while it does follow the book quite closely, I don’t think it gets enough credit for the changes and additions it made that were still in the spirit of the original story. There is some dialogue that was taken word for word from the book, but Jane Austen tended to summarize conversations rather than transcribing them, so quite a bit of new dialogue needed to be added, and I personally find it difficult to tell where Jane Austen ends and Andrew Davies takes over. Austen didn’t write scenes that only featured male characters, claiming that she had no way of knowing how men spoke or behaved when there were no women present, but this show opens with a scene between Bingley and Darcy and focuses a bit more on their friendship than the book does. The change in this version that gets the most attention is when Darcy unexpectedly happens upon Elizabeth after having taken a swim in a lake on his property at Pemberley. I always just saw this as a silly way to add to the awkwardness of the situation, with Darcy trying to remain dignified in soaking, casual clothes, and it surprised me to learn that a lot of people love that scene because Colin Firth apparently looks very sexy in his wet shirt. The change that I personally find most interesting is in the letter that Darcy writes explaining himself to Elizabeth after she turns down his first proposal. In the book, he starts with the allegations about breaking up Jane and Bingley and then moves on to the more serious stuff about how Wickham (played by Adrian Lukis, who told Elizabeth that Darcy ruined his life) had tried to seduce Darcy’s younger sister. In this version, the letter starts with the Wickham stuff and ends with the Bingley stuff because we’re initially watching Darcy and flashbacks of his memories, and then halfway through revealing the letter to the audience, we see Darcy give it to Elizabeth, and then we see her reactions to reading his thoughts about her sister and the rest of her family, along with flashbacks of her memories. Darcy is rather arrogant when he talks about separating Bingley from Jane, so I feel like it makes a little more sense for him to start with that when he’s upset by Elizabeth’s rejection and then move on to the darker Wickham drama, but I really like the way this version shows their reactions to the part of the letter that’s most painful to each of them. And before he writes the letter, we see Darcy dwelling on Elizabeth’s words, and he reacts to what she said about Wickham by saying aloud to himself, “At least in that I may defend myself,” implying that the Wickham story is what prompted him to write the letter in the first place, explaining why he starts with that this time. So it’s true to the original without being constrained by the original, and I think that’s what makes it work so well as an adaptation.

As I said before, many people think of Pride and Prejudice as primarily a romantic story, and like, they’re not wrong, but there’s so much more to it than that. There’s a lot of focus on familial relationships, especially between the two eldest daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, which I’ve always appreciated for its similarities to my relationship with my sister. It’s also worth noting that in this society, women in the Bennets’ station could not get a job, so they basically had two options: marry well, or depend on a male relative. Marriage was essentially a business arrangement, not necessarily a romantic one. In the first episode, Jane and Elizabeth have a conversation about their situation in which Elizabeth says that because Jane is the prettiest and sweetest of the sisters, she will need to be the one to marry very well, and Jane responds with, “But Lizzy, I would wish… I should so much like… to marry for love.” And then she makes this amazing face like she can hardly believe how unreasonable she’s being. Elizabeth assures her, “And so you shall, I’m sure. Only take care you fall in love with a man of good fortune.” But when Jane asks Elizabeth how she feels about marriage, she asserts, “I am determined that nothing but the very deepest love will induce me into matrimony. So, I shall end an old maid and teach your ten children to embroider cushions and play their instruments very ill!” And they laugh. But Elizabeth is completely serious, at least about the first part, as she demonstrates when she turns down two very lucrative marriage proposals that most sensible women in her position would have eagerly accepted. Both men – Mr. Collins and Mr. Darcy – think they are doing her a great favor in offering their hand and are shocked by her refusal. Mr. Collins is a bit of a doofus, but he is also going to inherit her father’s house, and it would therefore be the honorable thing for him to marry one of the Bennet daughters so they could at least continue to live there after Mr. Bennet’s death. But Elizabeth knew he would make her miserable and was unwilling to put up with him merely for security. One could say she slapped amatonormativity in the face, and we love to see it. But interestingly, when Mr. Collins does get married, it’s to the very aro-coded Charlotte Lucas (played by Lucy Scott). Her good friend Elizabeth is utterly shocked that anyone, let alone someone she cares about, would agree to marry Mr. Collins. But Charlotte literally tells Lizzy, “I’m not romantic, you know. I never was.” Aromantic queen. And when Elizabeth vents to Jane about this, Jane has the great line, “You do not make allowances for differences of situation and temper.” Jane is the ally we all need. Later, when Elizabeth visits the Collinses, Charlotte makes it clear that she kind of just does her own thing and barely sees her husband, and Elizabeth feels bad for her friend, but honestly, Charlotte’s life doesn’t sound so bad to me. She has security, and her husband mostly leaves her alone. Things didn’t get much better for an introverted aroace woman in that society. Although part of me does still wish that Mary had ended up with Collins, since she also seems like an introvert on the aroace spectrum, but she actually likes him.

Elizabeth is the opposite of aroace, but the way she refuses to listen when society tells her she’s supposed to marry for money feels kind of similar to modern aroace people refusing to listen when society tells us we’re supposed to fall in romantic, sexual love. One of the things I appreciate most about this story is how it demonstrates that everyone and every relationship is different. Jane and Bingley immediately fall for each other and are perfectly compatible, but because they place so much trust in the people around them, it takes a while for them to officially get together. And I don’t just mean the way Bingley’s sisters and Darcy pulled him away – Elizabeth kept reassuring Jane that it was obvious how she felt about Bingley because it was obvious to her, and neither of them realized that a stranger would just see Jane’s kindness to Bingley as treating him like she treats everyone else. Elizabeth and Darcy are just as well suited for each other as Jane and Bingley are, but they both have some major growing to do – they need to overcome their pride and prejudice, if you will – before they can be together. And then there’s Lydia and Wickham, whose relationship is based mainly on lust. Neither of them seems to have learned anything between the beginning and end of their story, and it’s hard to imagine them being happy together. I used to think of Lydia as a spoiled brat who got what she deserved, but now I feel really bad for her. She was a 15-year-old child who was preyed upon by a grown man, and the best-case scenario was for her to marry him. Her plight demonstrates just how awful the societal rules regarding sex were for women, although the story barely seems aware of it. Her elopement is used as a plot device for Darcy to redeem himself, and the focus is all on how her sisters’ chances of good marriages have been damaged. It’s kind of odd that so many social norms are condemned in this story, and yet Lydia is portrayed as deserving of life-long punishment for daring to break one rule. Jane Austen was progressive, but not that progressive. So that’s the one part of this that bothers me. If you too want justice for Lydia, I highly recommend The Lizzie Bennet Diaries on YouTube, which does an excellent job of humanizing and redeeming her.

Anyway, back to this version, I love that it includes another couple that many adaptations leave out – Mr. and Mrs. Hurst. Mrs. Hurst is Mr. Bingley’s sister Louisa, who, along with their sister Caroline, loves to make fun of and criticize the Bennets. Caroline is partly motivated in her criticism by jealousy, since she has her eye on Darcy and can tell that he’s interested in Elizabeth. But Louisa seems to be motivated by pure snobbery. Which is kind of hilarious because her husband is basically a loser. He doesn’t seem to have an estate or anything, since they’re always staying with her brother, and all he does is drink, hunt, play cards, and sleep. It’s just like, girl, you have no room to criticize anyone’s situation or decisions when you’re stuck with that guy. This just further helps demonstrate that nobody fits society’s ideal, so maybe we should all just live and let live. The characters who remain proud and prejudiced at the end of the story are mostly bitter and unhappy, while those who have learned to look at things from other people’s perspectives are the happiest. And I really like that message.

And aside from the fascinating social commentary, this series is a delightfully fun watch, full of great moments that I will never tire of revisiting. I love, or at least am intrigued by, all the characters, from the leads to the most obscure side characters. She’s barely in it, but one of my favorites is Mrs. Bennet’s sister, Mrs. Phillips, played by Lynn Farleigh. Between her interactions with Mr. Collins, who accidentally insults her and then frustrates her as a whist partner, and the way she consoles Mrs. Bennet after Lydia runs off with Wickham, her lines are some of my favorites to quote. And of course, there’s Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Collins’s benefactor and Mr. Darcy’s aunt, played by Barbara Leigh-Hunt, who is so impressed with herself that she can’t tell that she’s almost as ridiculous as Mrs. Bennet. I love Sir William Lucas’s “Capital, capital!” and Maria Lucas’s commitment to making haste. Even the characters I don’t like as people are interesting to watch. Wickham is the worst, but I’m almost impressed by his gall. Like, the fact that he can face the Bennets after seducing Lydia as if he’s done nothing wrong is astounding. That man truly has no shame.

While I enjoy pretty much every moment of this series, I have to say that my favorite episode is the fifth one. It really doesn’t seem like it should be, since that’s when the whole Wickham/Lydia stuff is going on and everybody is super stressed, but it has so many of my favorite moments. Like when Elizabeth is playing the pianoforte at Pemberley and a random servant feels the need to stand right in front of her, bow to no one in particular, and then walk offscreen. I don’t know who that bowing servant is or why he does that but I love him. And then there’s the part when Elizabeth returns home with her aunt and uncle, and her cousins are so excited to see their parents again that one of them tries to do a cartwheel and ends up just falling over. And in another wonderful deviation from the novel, Mr. Collins decides to visit the Bennets, ostensibly to console them, but really to gloat that their problems aren’t his problems because he didn’t marry one of them. In the book, he does this by writing a letter, but it’s way funnier to have him visit them, and get to see Mary be impressed with him again. But the best part of that scene is that when Kitty sees his carriage coming, she declares, “I’m not going to sit with him for anyone!” and runs off to hide in the yard. Later, when he’s talking to the other sisters, we can see Kitty peering through the window to see if he’s still there, and it makes me laugh every time.

This show is so good that I would still love watching and quoting it anyway, but I do think my enjoyment has been at least somewhat enhanced by having dogs named after two of the characters. The names really suited them, too – dog Darcy was standoffish toward strangers, but with the people he liked he could be very cuddly, whereas Bingley would pretty much follow anyone around to see what they were up to. Bingley absolutely loved to play fetch, while Darcy would just stare at him like, “What is wrong with you?” in the perfect dog version of how their namesakes felt about dancing. Sadly, Darcy got cancer and died in 2020. Bingley is still hanging in there, although at 16 years old he’s definitely declining, and his fetching days are long behind him. There are a lot of differences between me and Jane Bennet, as she is clearly not aroace, but since we share the same first name and are both the eldest sibling, I’ve always felt a kinship to her, and it makes me happy that presumably we each got to watch our own Mr. Bingley grow old. I think after he inevitably passes, watching this series will probably feel bittersweet for a while, although I don’t think that will make me love it any less. I anticipate continuing to watch it at least once a year on the 26th of November, in honor of the Netherfield Ball, while fondly reminiscing about fetching with Bingley and snuggling with Darcy.

I could go on and on about this movie for hours, but ultimately, what it all boils down to is I love the 1995 Pride and Prejudice because it is an excellent story told extraordinarily well, about characters who are exactly as ridiculous and flawed as real people. So if you’ve thought about watching this version but have been turned off by the length, I highly recommend giving it a chance anyway. Yes it’s almost six hours long, but it’s a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend almost six hours. I was suffering from depression when I first got into this series, and it was one of the few things that made me feel good about life. And if I had not already been in love with this version, I probably wouldn’t have watched The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and therefore might never have gotten into Shipwrecked Comedy, and that would be very sad. So I have a lot to thank this miniseries for.

Thank you for listening to me discuss another of my most frequently rewatched movies. It’s a little hard for even me to believe that I’ve rewatched Pride and Prejudice more than any other movie besides one in the last 20 years, but I think it really is my second favorite movie, so it’s fitting that it ended up here. Now I only have one movie left, and it’s number one by a lot, with 51 views compared to P&P’s 37. So stay tuned for what is clearly my favorite film. And now, for the last time, as always, I will leave you with a quote from that next movie: “My, she was yare.”

[epilepticwhore]

Pride and Prejudice

Somewhat unpopular opinion: The 1995 series with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth is WAY better than the 2005 Keira Knightly movie. Because it was a series, they were able to go way more in depth into the story, and it has the time to go into each little detail. For example, in the movie, you see Mr. Wickham once I believe, and then all of a sudden he’s eloped with Lydia. In the series, you really get to see how he was able to get Elizabeth on his side instead of Darcy’s, and it made much more sense. I also just think the cast was more fitting (not to say that the actors in the movie are bad). I especially loved Benjamin Whitrow as Mr. Bennet and Alison Steadman as Mrs. Bennet. They were a bit more humorous than the Mr. and Mrs. Bennet in the movie, which I found made it more entertaining. And of course we can’t forget Colin Firth!😍

This being said, I am not hating on the movie, nor am I trying to insult anyone who was involved. I am merely stating my opinion, and if anyone disagrees, that’s fine. I just feel like I had to express my feelings somewhere, considering that very few of my friends like Jane Austen, and those who do don’t give me the attention or time to say anything.

Anyway, to anyone who reads this, love and peace♡

[anghraine]

Hey, maybe you have spoken on this somewhere, and I just missed it, so if so my apologies, but I would love to know why exactly you dont like 1995 p and p, my family and I have always loved it

I've talked about it many times over the years, but only a little lately, which may be how you missed it since I can be fairly tedious on this point. There are so many different things I dislike about it that it can be difficult to summarize (though I particularly dislike its approach to Darcy).

To attempt it, though:

Taken on its own terms, the 1995 P&P is quite good TV and a good period drama. Taken as an adaptation of Austen's P&P, I think it combines a superficial appearance of fidelity with variously caricatured, over-simplified, or simply bad interpretations of the characters and relationships. This is so consistent across the entire production with the exception of Jennifer Ehle's Elizabeth—who I don't love as Elizabeth but who doesn't seem treated with quite so heavy a hand—that I don't see this as an acting issue, but more of the vision of the creators which is executed quite well by the actors, but which I dislike.

For instance, Benjamin Whitrow's Mr Bennet is well-acted in terms of what I think they wanted him to be, it's a good performance, but also, a lot of the bite of Austen's approach to him is minimized (all the more by contrast to the very OTT Mrs Bennet).

So when I say that I hate Colin Firth's Darcy in particular, it's not that I think CF does a bad job as an actor (though I do think he was miscast for other reasons), it's that I think the production's fundamental approach to the character is ill-conceived and that carries over into writing, direction, framing, all kinds of things. Even when I first watched it as a teenager and liked a lot of it, the presentation of Darcy always bugged me. I don't like the treatment of the Darcy-Elizabeth dynamic at Netherfield, I don't like how they handle his letter, I don't like the wet shirt scene, I don't like the general humorless oversexualized brooding.

On top of that, the fact that its very specific interpretations are often regarded so completely uncritically makes it difficult to be impartial. You get things like Elizabeth's lines about marrying for love and joking about ending up a spinster—a moment invented by the 1995 P&P and not necessarily true of Austen's character, but re-created over and over in subsequent adaptations because of the 1995's enormous influence on perception of what P&P is. As a consequence, it can be intensely frustrating for those of us who disagree with its interpretations and dislike the P&P 1995-inflected fanon that permeates Austen fandom, because we can't get away from it.

I got into Austen fandom just a couple of years before the 2005 came out and so many 1995 fans were so offended that anyone would ever make another version of P&P because most of the fandom took it as an article of faith that Austen's vision had been perfectly distilled and represented in the 1995, and that everyone agreed with them. Even before the 2005, that utterly uncritical perspective on the 1995 was so inescapable that it was deeply aggravating for me as a fan of the book who didn't much like Andrew Davies's whole deal and would only dislike it more with time.

So I'm not pretending to be unbiased, but I truly believe it is very flawed as an adaptation of the novel, that its portrayal of Darcy is especially flawed, and that the issues in Davies's approach to Austen, which would become more glaring in his later Austen adaptations, are already present in the 1995 P&P and it's far from the one true version of P&P that so many of its fans present it as.

[apwmagazine]

Celia Imrie Husband: Who Is Benjamin Whitrow? Is Celia Imrie Married To Him? Husband Kids And Net Worth

Celia Imrie Husband: Who Is Benjamin Whitrow? Is Celia Imrie Married To Him? Husband Kids And Net Worth

People are wondering who is Celia Imrie husband. She mentioned earlier that marriage has never been intriguing to her. Continue reading to learn if she wed Benjamin Whitrow, the Father of her son Angus. Author and Actress Celia Diana Savile Imrie are from England. She was referred to as one of Britain’s most successful actors in recent decades in 2003. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011),…