Viewing update(the non-anime stuff I've been watching)

[meganbmoore]

Uhm...yeah.  Forget the weekly thing, too hard to keep track of.  Anyway...

Clarissa is an early 90s BBC production that is extremely good despite the fact that the marketting department should be shot for the item description.  Why?  From the description, one would assume that one was sitting down to a good romance about the ruthless rake setting out to seduce the virtuous and strong willed maiden and getting caught in his own trap, and so I sat down, expecting a good period romance(and Sean Bean playing a good guy!)  Instead, what I got was an extremely good but dark tale with similarities to Dangerous Liaisons(though it makes DL look light and happy in comparison) about what a woman of the times faced and how few options she had without the protection of her family, especially if they wash their hands of her  for not marrying the guy they choose(who, incidentally, would be absurd beyond words even if he weren't an attempted rapist)  I still would have checked it out if I'd known what it really was, it just would have been nice to know that I was sitting down for it.

Lorna Doone is a much more recent BBC production, and it IS the big romance it portrays itself as.  It's about John Ridd, a young man whose father was murdered by the Doones, a clan of murderers, robbers and general outlaws who control the local courts, keeping them from ever coming to justice.  He falls in love with a girl named Lorna, only to learn that she's the granddaughter of the clan head and betrothed to the worst of the Doones, Carver(and to her credit, she's honest and tells him who she is instead of trying to keep it secret)  It's very good, both as a romance and a period piece(though, I'd kill for the earlier version starring Sean Bean and Clive Owen as John and Carver--I assume respectively, but the reverse is also fine)  My one complaint is that Lorna, by all accounts, is supposed to be a spitfire, but she wasn't.  It wasn't a case of her being written as a spitfire and the actress not following through on it, but of Lorna being written as strong, but in the quieter way of a woman struggling to hold on to what she can when life won't let her, and the actress did a very good job with that.  It's just that when I'm told I'm getting a spitfire, I expect a spitfire.  Still, this was very good, and highly recommended.

Doramas and I haven't been getting along lately...I've started several, thought they were awesome, then decided I wasn't in the mood and moved on.  Which is depressing, because really wanted to watch a couple of them.  I think it's just a case of subsburnout, though.  The exception to this is Tokyo Friends.  It's a short jdrama(5 episodes, an hour to and hour 15 min each) about Rie, a girl from a small town who goes to Tokyo not really knowing what she's looking for beyond "something more."  She gets a job in a bar where both the employees and the customers are, to say the least, eccentric.  One of the customers is Ryuji(played by Eita) who hears her singing and essentially abducts her to be the lead singer in his band.  The series is very good and is about Rie and her friends growing up, finding love and figuring out what they want to do with their lives.  I knew I was in love when, in the first episode, Ryoko(a customer and possibly my favorite character in the series) pretends to be sick Rie's first night in Tokyo, so that, between Ryuji and another guy in his band, one has to take care of her and the other has to take the obviously lost Rie home, and everyone but Rie knows she and the other guy are playing matchmaking with Rie and Ryuji.

I've also started(currently on ep 9) of season 3 of Smallville.  Sigh...Lana Lang has to be the most frustrating TV character ever.  I mean, I like Kristen Kreuk and think she's a good actress, but they give her some of the WORST whiny Mary Sue material ever.  I mean, what happened to the relatively cool Lana from season one?  It's like she was replaced with pod-Lana when she and Whitney broke up, and every once in a while KK gets a decent scene and I can see how cool Lana COULD be with good material.  As opposed to utterly useless and robbing the far superior Chloe of screentime.  Also?  Lana/Clark should have been over after season 2, as opposed to still being the same junk.  OTOH, she DOES keep Clark from being the prettiest thing in the show, so I guess she does serve a slight purpose.  Of course, I've been watching for Chloe, Lionel and Lex from the start, and that's not changing.  I think the most interesting relationship in the show is between Lionel and Lex...Lionel really does love Lex almost beyond the point of obsession, it's just not necessarily the good kind of obsession.  That said, there's been an appalling lack of Pete so far...

I also watched the first 2 episodes of the anime E'S Otherwise.  I liked the story(which reminds me a bit of both Witchhunter Robin and S-cry-ed) and the characters quite a bit, but I don't seem to be in the mood for it.  Still, definately worth checking out from the bit I watched.

Comments

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

"Clarissa" is brilliant. Though I did get all my feelings wrong and was in love with Sean Bean's Lovelace and wanted Clarissa to return his feeling. ** sigh ** He was so intense and the ending is just ** sigh **

I did knew the story becauseI read the book ages ago and Lovelace is a household name in Russia and it become and adjective "so and so is such a lovelace" (I am surprised that not as much here) but I never felt as much for book's Lovelace.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, it was brilliant, it just was NOT the story the description told me to expect. It's extremely impressive that they conveyed that he really was in love with her, obsessively so, he just couldn't let anything come before his need to conquer her, and that was his downfall. I got the feeling that Clarissa was always on the verge of returning his feelings, but her honor and sense of self were all she had left, and she couldn't give them up without reassurance that it would be worth her sacrifice. I think that, up until the rape, if he had just told her the truth when she asked, they could have ended up together. But he was too obsessed with trying to win to understand that, so he never had a chance with what he REALLY wanted, which was her, not just her body.

And here, it's all Darcy, Rochester and Heathcliff.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, Lorna Doone. So pretty and fun.

Re: Clarissa. I read the book because I am stubborn like that and by the end of it wanted to throttle the pious virtuous Clarissa myself.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Lorna Doone was very pretty and fun...but why oh why can't they release the Sean Bean/Clive Owen version on DVD? Do they not comprehend that fanpower that would fuel the sales...

I haven't read the book, so all I have to go on is the BBC production, and on the one hand, I agree. On the other, her virtue was all she had left and she wasn't giving it up without a fight, or at least, reassurance that an equal sacrifice would be made, and Lovelace was in conquer and control mode, not compromise.