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“The Favourite” is a period comedy about the palace connivings among the two rival best friends forever of Queen Anne of England (reigned 1702-1714): the domineering Sarah Churchill (played by Rachel Weisz), the first Duchess of Marlborough and ancestress of Winston Churchill and Princess Di, and Sarah’s impoverished cousin Abigail Hill (Emma Stone).
The movie starts up around 1707, which was after the most dramatic events in the Queen’s life, such as her 1688 decision to support her Protestant sister Mary and brother in law William, the Dutch King, in overthrowing her Catholic father, King James II. Then followed a cold war between Princess Anne and Queen Mary over Anne’s reliance upon the Churchills, Sarah and John, whom William and Mary distrusted as overly ambitious.
Sarah, interestingly, was not a flatterer. She told Anne exactly what she thought, which was usually intelligent, although also massively self-interested. The Churchills were adventurers, very minor aristocrats in a hurry to rise up in a system that rewarded successful servants of the crown with, by modern standards, the kind of lavishness seen rarely anymore outside of Russia or Arabia.
Anne’s 17 pregnancies failed to produce a surviving heir and left her obese and gout-ridden. Then after Anne succeeded William and Mary to the throne, with Sarah Churchill becoming a sort of power behind the throne, John Churchill won a famous victory over Louis XIV at Blenheim in 1704.
Sarah Churchill was an excellent business manager who built the colossal Blenheim Palace (300,000 square feet) that a grateful Anne bestowed upon the Churchills. Blenheim is perhaps the largest house in Europe constructed by anybody not a royal. Sarah had so much money left over that she found her daughters such prestigious matches that the Spencer-Churchill clan produced, centuries later, England’s most famous prime minister and most famous princess.
But Sarah got so wrapped up in overseeing the construction of Blenheim Palace that she didn’t have much time for the Queen anymore.
By about 1707, when Abigail Hill, who had been working as a palace servant, began to build a warm relationship with the Queen, England (or Great Britain as it became that year) was in good shape. The main political question in the movie is whether the Queen should continue to prosecute the Churchills’ so-far successful war with France to win even better terms, even at the cost of a land tax increase, or give in to Tory calls for peace.
That’s not uninteresting, but it’s one of the less dramatic periods in a tumultuous era that gave rise to modern Britain.
Spoiler alert: John Churchill kept winning battles over the French, but eventually diminishing returns set in in Parliament. Harley’s Tories came to power in 1711, with the behind the scenes help of Abigail (who was also Harley’s second cousin), who encouraged the Queen to follow her long-time Tory inclinations. The Whiggish Churchills were sent packing on a victory tour of Europe from which they didn’t return until the Queen’s death in 1714 and an orderly legislated succession to some boring Protestants from Hanover.
Nobody got their heads chopped off, or even overthrown, which makes the movie’s events less dramatic than all the Game of Thrones-style stuff that preceded the Glorious Revolution of 1688, after which British politics was less violent and less family-driven. For example, despite falling out of favor with the Queen, Sarah died decades later, immensely rich.
One interesting aspect is that as Britain matured politically, and developed its titanically influential parliamentary system, women stopped having much power. Back when queens chopped rival queens’ heads off, women were sometimes the supreme figures in England. But as the system matured, women were reduced to the occasional constitutional monarch. England became famous for its male supremacy, and London became the world leader in men’s fashion, while women looked to Paris. For example, the original Mary Poppins movie can be viewed as a power struggle between the male chauvinist father and the upstart feminist nanny whom he naively allows to enter his household:
But The Favourite is not very interested in this impressive evolution of political norms in England, instead focusing on the catfight amongst the three women.
I would have been tempted to fudge the timeline by a few years to combine the rivalry between the two women courtiers with the more dramatic events of 1688 to 1704. Watching the movie, I felt there might have been a power struggle between the screenwriters who wanted to be historically scrupulous and the Greek director who didn’t really give a damn about some of the finer points of English history.
Shows about English royalty have in recent years been dominated by writer Peter Morgan (“The Queen,” “The Crown”) who has gotten extremely adept at telling stories about female royals that fascinate women and keep their husbands entertained enough to stay watching.
The Favourite isn’t much like those, though. It’s not much of a feminist movie either, since the three powerful women, while well-acted, are treated with mild derision by the male director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster). In particular, the movie follows the scorned Duchess of Marlborough’s portrayal in her memoirs of the Queen as bloated and dim.
Recently, historians have noted that the kingdom seemed to thrive under the Queen’s fairly active rule (Anne was the last monarch to veto an act of parliament). For example, Anne promoted the 1707 merger with Scotland that turned England’s greatest strategic weakness, sharing an island with an independent kingdom with an independent foreign policy, into a strength as Scots became among the British Empire’s most energetic servants. So Queen Anne’s reputation has recovered somewhat from Sarah Churchill’s calumnies, but not in this movie.
The male characters aren’t impressive either. Only young Nicholas Hoult as Harley, leader of the Tory opposition to the Churchills’ Whigs, makes any impression. No attempt is made to give cameos to any of the famous cultural figures of the era, many of whom were active in politics, such as scientist Isaac Newton (the Queen’s mint master), political insider and satirist Jonathan Swift, pundit and novelist Daniel Defoe, or young Catholic poet Alexander Pope.
The Queen’s beloved husband, Prince George of Denmark, by whom she became pregnant 17 times (although without any heirs living past age 11), is written out of the picture. Moreover, Mrs. Churchill’s titanic husband John Churchill (whose life in war and peace was so eventful that Winston Churchill wrote a massive biography of his ancestor as a hero to make up for Thomas Babington Macaulay making John Churchill the chief villain of his History of England) is reduced to a kindly old duffer who, oddly enough, offscreen keeps defeating the mighty French army.
Both moves, which reduce male viewer’s interest in the film, are made to play up the idea of the Queen having lesbian affairs with her two Keepers of the Privy Purse.
Sarah Churchill is the source of the idea, in her memoirs, that her dismissal from court in favor of her younger cousin/enemy Abigail was due to the Queen’s sapphic attachment to her younger rival. In the movie, turnabout is fair play, so the script posits a previous lesbian relationship between fat Anne and Sarah, despite all the evidence that both were ardently attached to their husbands. Richard Dawkins coined the term “Duke of Marlborough Effect” for an entry in Mrs. Churchill’s diary: “His Grace returned from the wars today and pleasured me twice in his top-boots.”
Lanthimos has no interest in playing up the dubious lesbian stuff as tragic LGBTs battling societal oppression in today’s usual manner. He just seems to find it funny in kind of a sniggering fashion, like a 1970s director would have.
So then what’s the real story about why did Anne replace Sarah with Abigail? Probably because Abigail was nicer to the Queen than the imperious Sarah was.
The Favourite is a fairly good movie, but not all that funny (most of the jokes are in the trailer, which is a quite entertaining trailer) and not all that interesting either.
I have been to Blenheim a couple of times, it is impressive to look at but I cannot imagine living there. I see that Mary Poppins has been re-released and is still full of wypipo:
Sarah Churchill didn’t much like the heavy late baroque architecture of Blenheim Palace either. By the time it was finished a much lighter neoclassical style was coming into fashion: e.g., Robert Adam’s gorgeous blue rooms that make you want to discuss whether The Wealth of Nations or The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is the best book of 1776.
But true aristocrats don’t let themselves feel oppressed by living in The World’s Heaviest House. They’re doing it for the very long run, so that an American railroad millionaire, Mr. Vanderbilt, will someday pay to put a new roof on Blenheim because the 8th Duke (IIRC) of Marlborough will marry Consuela Vanderbilt, even though he’s the only guy in the world who doesn’t like her.
Always reminds me of Alistair Cooke's crack about how places like the Breakers in Newport could only count as cottages if Blenheim Palace were one's primary residence....
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/The_Breakers_Newport.jpg/1200px-The_Breakers_Newport.jpg
http://www.aboutbritain.com/images/attraction/big/blenheim-palace-south-lawn-view.jpgReplies: @SunBakedSuburb
http://gogmsite.net/_Media/1902-consuelo-vanderbilt-4.jpeg
https://www.christies.com/media-library/images/features/articles/2016/10/10/consuelo-vanderbilt/main-consuelo-vanderbilt.jpgReplies: @Alden, @Luke Lea
There was a major anti Churchill faction in England that considered the Churchill’s embezzlers looting the English government. Many historians claim that the anti Churchill faction prevailed upon Queen Anne to dump them.
I’m sure my English period movie loving friends will love it. Thanks for the review
“she became pregnant 17 times (although without any heirs living past age 11)”: thank God that feminism has put an end to that sort of thing.
She was the last monarch to withhold Royal Assent to a Bill passed by the Commons and Lords at Westminster. It was not an Act of Parliament without the assent of the Crown. The particular Bill was for the arming of the Scottish Militia, which at the time (1707) seemed like a good idea, given that the Scottish nobles had just agreed to union with England, but then someone claimed that France was sailing on Scotland and put two-and-two together to realise they might actually be creating the Scottish equivalent of ISIS, and Anne’s own Ministers rethought the Bill and advised her to withhold Assent, so it wasn’t actually much of an activism on her part.
There were in later years a numbers of Bills that passed through colonial Parliamentary houses that were refused assent by the Crown, and in fact it became one of the many grievances that Thomas Jefferson included in his laundry list in the Declaration of Independence, that George Guelph “has refused his Assent to Laws, most wholesome and necessary for the public Good” and forbade his Governours from passing laws of “immediate and pressing importance.”
Merry Christmas to you, Steve, and bless you for watching these movies so we don’t have to!
But true aristocrats don't let themselves feel oppressed by living in The World's Heaviest House. They're doing it for the very long run, so that an American railroad millionaire, Mr. Vanderbilt, will someday pay to put a new roof on Blenheim because the 8th Duke (IIRC) of Marlborough will marry Consuela Vanderbilt, even though he's the only guy in the world who doesn't like her.Replies: @The Alarmist, @syonredux, @syonredux, @syonredux, @Alden
Given the setting, one might take the view that the two were a single “boxed set” on how to get it and how to keep it.
“England became famous for its male supremacy, and London became the world leader in men’s fashion, while women looked to Paris.”
On a side note, Paul Fussell in Class who said that the English ‘gentleman’ was a world standard, as representing “the best of its kind” while the English female was considered “a disaster” and sensible people looked to the Continent for wives/lovers. An interesting detail in Proust’s Temps Perdu is that not only did the Parisians wear English clothes, there was a special express train that took their shirts to London and back overnight for a proper washing.
How would a London-Paris train have been possible?
OT:
Eric Kaufmann in the Spectator US on the myth of white exceptionalism:
https://spectator.us/myth-white-exceptionalism/
(The film sounds like yet another travesty of history, like The King's Speech)Replies: @Bill B.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzcaR1N0pTIReplies: @PiltdownMan, @Jack D
If you accept Lin Manuel Miranda as a Cockney.
I found The Lobster such an ordeal to sit through, most of it (I finally walked out), that I can’t imagine that the sensibility that concocted that thing could ever make a movie I’d find entertaining. That Sacred Deer movie thing, from the sounds of it, was another trial for people to sit through. So ixnay on this one, whatever any reviews might say.
And finally, in summation: "It definitely is a total piece of shit and an annoying waste of my time."
End.
The fact that people pretended to like it is just pathetic.
Brits still can’t get over Dick Van Dyke being cast as one in the original.
Frankie Vaughan maybe?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilo83LRCJrE
David Lee Roth could be his son.Replies: @Bubba
(There's a point where bad taste done well enough goes full circle and becomes good. I think the Vegas Strip is so tacky it's magnificent, for example).
Love period movies about the Brits and Great Britain. The uniforms, how many uniforms can one country have?
OT: I’ve finally found an article about sub-replacement fertility and an aging population that doesn’t mention immigration. It’s a Christmas miracle! Guess which country it’s about.
Link
A huge number of Brits were working as servants by the Edwardian era. I think what kept Britain stable was that it was able to export people to North America and Oz/NZ. Without this outlet, there probably would have been more domestic strife.
My mother spent her childhood in an early 18th century house in Hampstead (near the heath) and the family got by there with twelve indoor servants. In 1928 they returned to Long Island and got along just fine with two.
My sympathies are with the Americans; I've been in that Hampstead house, and the idea of twelve relative strangers (actually nine, as the nannies were well-beloved members of the family, at least to their wards) wandering around, however productively, gives me the willies.Replies: @Jack D
We once scoffed at having servants in the United States. It was the hearty thought that it was good for one's character to clean up your own messes in life.
That's changed. Thanks to feminism and massive immigration from the Third World, our modest neighborhood is now filled with Hispanic women racing about cleaning up people's houses. People further north living in McMansions and Palaces find life unbearable without their maids, cooks, gardeners, and nannies.
How did we ever live without them ... servants? At the time, we didn't realize how abused and underprivileged we were.
Anne may have been the last monarch to issue a veto but up until George IV Parliament was very sure to have the Royal Assent prior to passing legislation.
The movie was more unpleasant than amusing. I’m glad I wasn’t out with my wife as she had a girls’ party.
We had great luck in visiting Blenheim as they observed the 50th anniversary of Winston’s death with a military band and Spitfire flyover, plus parties and a conference we tourists weren’t invited to. An incredible estate in comparison to the milder affluence of American leaders like Washington and Jefferson.
Bill in Glendale
“His Grace returned from the wars today and pleasured me twice in his top-boots.”
Now that would have been part of a better movie!
Bill in Glendale
But true aristocrats don't let themselves feel oppressed by living in The World's Heaviest House. They're doing it for the very long run, so that an American railroad millionaire, Mr. Vanderbilt, will someday pay to put a new roof on Blenheim because the 8th Duke (IIRC) of Marlborough will marry Consuela Vanderbilt, even though he's the only guy in the world who doesn't like her.Replies: @The Alarmist, @syonredux, @syonredux, @syonredux, @Alden
RE: Blenheim Palace,
Always reminds me of Alistair Cooke’s crack about how places like the Breakers in Newport could only count as cottages if Blenheim Palace were one’s primary residence….
But true aristocrats don't let themselves feel oppressed by living in The World's Heaviest House. They're doing it for the very long run, so that an American railroad millionaire, Mr. Vanderbilt, will someday pay to put a new roof on Blenheim because the 8th Duke (IIRC) of Marlborough will marry Consuela Vanderbilt, even though he's the only guy in the world who doesn't like her.Replies: @The Alarmist, @syonredux, @syonredux, @syonredux, @Alden
But true aristocrats don't let themselves feel oppressed by living in The World's Heaviest House. They're doing it for the very long run, so that an American railroad millionaire, Mr. Vanderbilt, will someday pay to put a new roof on Blenheim because the 8th Duke (IIRC) of Marlborough will marry Consuela Vanderbilt, even though he's the only guy in the world who doesn't like her.Replies: @The Alarmist, @syonredux, @syonredux, @syonredux, @Alden
https://goo.gl/85TtBeReplies: @Old Palo Altan
Great, a British film about a queen scissoring with two muff marauding commoners. No thanks. Why do the Brits think any of this crap is interesting to anyone?
But true aristocrats don't let themselves feel oppressed by living in The World's Heaviest House. They're doing it for the very long run, so that an American railroad millionaire, Mr. Vanderbilt, will someday pay to put a new roof on Blenheim because the 8th Duke (IIRC) of Marlborough will marry Consuela Vanderbilt, even though he's the only guy in the world who doesn't like her.Replies: @The Alarmist, @syonredux, @syonredux, @syonredux, @Alden
Almost all the furniture rugs tapestries pictures statues and other things Blenheim is filled with was looted from castles churches and government buildings in N France and what’s now Belgium during John Churchill’s incessant campaigns against France.
There was a major anti Churchill faction in England that considered the Churchill’s embezzlers looting the English government. Many historians claim that the anti Churchill faction prevailed upon Queen Anne to dump them.
I’m sure my English period movie loving friends will love it. Thanks for the review
http://gogmsite.net/_Media/1902-consuelo-vanderbilt-4.jpeg
https://www.christies.com/media-library/images/features/articles/2016/10/10/consuelo-vanderbilt/main-consuelo-vanderbilt.jpgReplies: @Alden, @Luke Lea
Consuelo was so beautiful. Expand the picture and you can see how perfect her face was.
Slate had a long interview with the guy who handled sound design on it.
I gotta say, from your description, it sounds like the movie ranges from catty to cheerless — if not veering into skull-numbing boredom.
Were the sound effects any good?
There’s another period drama out now, Mary Queen of Scots. It appears to be very fashionably ahistorical, with black and chinese actors cast as 16th century english nobility. It also has the very pretty irish-american actress, Saoirse Ronan, playing Mary with a thick scottish brogue, despite the fact that the real May was raised in France. I didn’t imagine that this movie could be better than the 1972 movie with Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson cast as Mary and Elizabeth respectively, and the reviews indicate that it isn’t.
The most interesting aspect of this period is, in my eyes, that for the first time in European history, a victorious party (the Whigs) allowed an opposition party to grow and how that opposition party (the Tories) used their opportunity.
As Macauley is normally seen as the classical respresentant of Whig historiography I am somewhat surprised that he didn’t treat John Churchill better in his book.
With regard to the Tories, Southey wrote his anti-war poem “After Blenheim” at a time when he yet was deemed a Radical, but if the Tories were so disinterested in Churchill’s wars, “After Blenheim” might as well show that Southey was influenced by a Tory tradition even when young.
On a side note, Paul Fussell in Class who said that the English 'gentleman' was a world standard, as representing "the best of its kind" while the English female was considered "a disaster" and sensible people looked to the Continent for wives/lovers. An interesting detail in Proust's Temps Perdu is that not only did the Parisians wear English clothes, there was a special express train that took their shirts to London and back overnight for a proper washing.Replies: @Cloudbuster, @L Woods, @dvorak
An interesting detail in Proust’s Temps Perdu is that not only did the Parisians wear English clothes, there was a special express train that took their shirts to London and back overnight for a proper washing.
How would a London-Paris train have been possible?
Come on, weren’t all historical figures homosexuals? The show business industry wouldn’t lie to me, would they?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzcaR1N0pTIReplies: @PiltdownMan, @Jack D
I just saw the most recent Disney Christopher Robin movie. Part of it is set in an office in London in the 1940s, immediately after the war. There are all sorts of blacks and Indians working in the office. In reality, there were fewer that 20,000 non-whites in all of the UK in 1950 out of a population of 50M, so the odd of even 1 non-white working in an office were minuscule.
Elizabeth Cavendish (aka Elizabeth Hardwick/Bess of Hardwick)
http://www.maryqueenofscots.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Bess_of_Hardwick_as_Mistress_St_Lo.square.jpg
Is played by Gemma Chan
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500/4B3BgjSM6GqhAdfvP6AU0x68MbG.jpg
http://www.frockflicks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/MQoS-2018-Gemma_Chan-Bess-comparison.png
Then we've got this guy playing George Dalgleish
https://imagebox.cz.osobnosti.cz/foto/adrian-palmer-ii/adrian-palmer-ii.jpg
Lord Randolph is portrayed by this rather anthracitic fellow...
https://media.buzzle.com/media/images-en/gallery/editorials/actors/900-86050425-adrian-lester.jpg
16th century Scotland must have been a multi-racial wonderland...Replies: @Alfa158, @Rufio Panman Fan, @SunBakedSuburb
She had a ridiculously long neck, like a giraffe. When she was young she was forced to wear an iron rod to maintain her posture by her despotic mother – maybe this stretched her neck somehow.
There’s a very simple exercise for perfect posture but it hadn’t been discovered
Her neck wasn’t quite as long in photographs. Long necks were considered the perfection of beauty at the time just as long legs are considered perfection now days
There are other pictures you can find. Her face and big eyes are perfect
The fashion for English women was to cover themselves with lots of jewelry. Many necklaces could be wound around a long neck
She was beautiful and had a perfect faceReplies: @Anonymous
I’ve never understood what the point was of living in a 300,000 square foot house (other than bragging rights). How could you possibly make use of this much space in any meaningful way?
Many of those houses were boarding schools for the children of friends and family. The lords were the equivalent of an American county board of supervisors.
Many of the ancient European tribes lived communally, all in the headman’s hall. When things fell apart with the goth hun Viking and German invasions It was necessaryy to build big fortified buildings aka castles so all the locals could shelter them when the neighborhood was invaded
England had several civil
Wars so the fortified castles were necessary and they needed to be big to accommodate the soldiers local courts travelers conference to plot the lates war and to shelter the locals when war broke out
Those houses were the local equivalent of America’s White House and royal palaces, a combination family home and government administrative center
And a lot of it was bragging rights and social climbing. Some families had several of those huge houses. Even in 1890 it was cheaper to keep servants to clean oil lamps and take care of fireplaces that install furnaces and electricity.
Then, after you fill it up, you could put everything in storage and start all over again ... or you could just buy another house.
The politics of Bolingbroke engineering Marlborough’s public disgrace and the treaty with France, only to flee to the continent after the death of Anne, were actually pretty interesting and dramatic, at least in Churchill’s telling in his Marlborough biography.
Sounds like the Salic Law had its merits.
The phrase is “swan-like.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqiMASk5MIUReplies: @Old Palo Altan, @TheJester
Servants? Yes, the English seemed to need more per square foot than did the Americans.
My mother spent her childhood in an early 18th century house in Hampstead (near the heath) and the family got by there with twelve indoor servants. In 1928 they returned to Long Island and got along just fine with two.
My sympathies are with the Americans; I’ve been in that Hampstead house, and the idea of twelve relative strangers (actually nine, as the nannies were well-beloved members of the family, at least to their wards) wandering around, however productively, gives me the willies.
To be precise, William was a Dutch King of England, but never King of the Dutch. Since the Dutch left king Philips II of Spain they more or less left the position vacant and the function of head of state was taken care of by a substitute, a Stadhouder. Which became a hereditary function, so effectively there wasn’t much difference apart from the fact that every now and then the Staten-Generaal sent them away – and they were able to do so – because they became a nuisance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadtholder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_General_of_the_Netherlands
Then there’s the new Mary Queen of Scots flick ….
Elizabeth Cavendish (aka Elizabeth Hardwick/Bess of Hardwick)
Is played by Gemma Chan
Then we’ve got this guy playing George Dalgleish
Lord Randolph is portrayed by this rather anthracitic fellow…
16th century Scotland must have been a multi-racial wonderland…
How beautiful mankind is!
Oh, brave new world that has such people in it!”
Might as well get used to it.
A. The propaganda strategy is to claim that Britain always had all these non-Whites therefore those White scum have no basis to complain about their displacement, and eventual replacment with a population of Africans, Asians and mixed race people.
B. There are now a lot of non-Whites living in Britain, some of them are actors, and they want to work. If they don’t get jammed into historical pieces their employment prospects will be diminished. Therefore if Chiwetel Ejiofor wants to be cast as Richard the Lionhearted you’d damn well better suit him up.Replies: @Autochthon, @Anonymous
Consuelo didn’t much care for Blenheim:
https://www.thecrownchronicles.co.uk/history/history-posts/conseulo-vanderbilt-duchess-of-marlborough-dollar-princess-american-heiress/
My mother spent her childhood in an early 18th century house in Hampstead (near the heath) and the family got by there with twelve indoor servants. In 1928 they returned to Long Island and got along just fine with two.
My sympathies are with the Americans; I've been in that Hampstead house, and the idea of twelve relative strangers (actually nine, as the nannies were well-beloved members of the family, at least to their wards) wandering around, however productively, gives me the willies.Replies: @Jack D
Even today in India it is not unusual for a wealthy family (not necessarily super rich, just ordinary rich) to have a dozen servants. Part of it is that some of these people are old family retainers and in the absence of social security you have to keep them on the payroll so they don’t starve (and you have to hire at least one of their kids to do the job that they can’t really do anymore). Part of it was total lack of labor saving equipment – no dishwasher, no clothes washer, no vacuum cleaner, etc. Possibly not even plumbed in hot water to the bath. Probably a coal fired stove in the kitchen and maybe no central heating, so someone had to constantly be dealing with the coal ashes. Much less prepared food so that game and poultry might have been delivered still with the fur or feathers and entrails and your servants had to process it to an edible form. Americans got that stuff before anyone else, even the Brits. If you want to live an upper middle class lifestyle (frequent bathing, hot meals, clean clothes, etc.) that we take for granted nowadays, in those days you would have needed a lot of help just to achieve that.
On a side note, Paul Fussell in Class who said that the English 'gentleman' was a world standard, as representing "the best of its kind" while the English female was considered "a disaster" and sensible people looked to the Continent for wives/lovers. An interesting detail in Proust's Temps Perdu is that not only did the Parisians wear English clothes, there was a special express train that took their shirts to London and back overnight for a proper washing.Replies: @Cloudbuster, @L Woods, @dvorak
Extends to the English-speaking world generally. “Our” women are a truly special sort of awful.
Just think, a mere decade ago, this film would have been about Marlborough himself, and the greatest general of the age does deserve a movie.
Where did all the good war films, not to mention swords and sandal flicks go? Dunkirk sure, but it was more atmospheric…
I don’t think that even Vanderbilt wealth could have paid to heat 300,000 s.f.
Probably the largest non-royal palace built to a design, and within a relatively short time. This is actually one of the problems, socially, with Blenheim – the older families have never accepted it as a country house akin to their own, but rather as a Continental intrusion into their relaxed, higgledy-piggledy world of add-ons and “English” (i.e. informal) gardens. Blenheim, from the beginning, was seen as French, over-bearing, and, we would now say, nouveau-riche.
But other places on the Continent are larger. The largest, still run as a family concern, is Schloss Thurn und Taxis in Regensburg. This boasts 600,000 square feet. It is so large that no photograph (other than one from the air) can take it all in. I have been a guest there two or three times, and one memorable moment was my hostess showing me back to my room after the evening’s festivities. “You will get lost on your own” she trilled. How right she was: the stroll back took a good fifteen minutes, involving innumerable lofty and interminable corridors and at least two flights of stairs.
Of course those hundreds of thousands of square feet are far from given entirely over to the private life of the family members. There are two large churches, a more intimate family chapel, stables, kitchen wings, former work ranges now rented out as offices, even a soup kitchen for the poor. One of the last palaces in Europe which is still run on lines which would have been instantly recognisable to the head of the family in 1900, or even 1800.
Long necks are beautiful. The iron rod was just a posture thing.
There’s a very simple exercise for perfect posture but it hadn’t been discovered
Her neck wasn’t quite as long in photographs. Long necks were considered the perfection of beauty at the time just as long legs are considered perfection now days
There are other pictures you can find. Her face and big eyes are perfect
The fashion for English women was to cover themselves with lots of jewelry. Many necklaces could be wound around a long neck
She was beautiful and had a perfect face
You’re right. Even today the Brits can’t figure out how to get cold and hot water to mingle as it comes out of the tap (faucet).
The big places often employed as much as 200 people inside and on the grounds. They were like city hall, a big source of employment The lord the head of a private army as England didn’t ha e a standing army till the 1700s. The lord was often the local magistrate in charge of the local civil and criminal court
Many of those houses were boarding schools for the children of friends and family. The lords were the equivalent of an American county board of supervisors.
Many of the ancient European tribes lived communally, all in the headman’s hall. When things fell apart with the goth hun Viking and German invasions It was necessaryy to build big fortified buildings aka castles so all the locals could shelter them when the neighborhood was invaded
England had several civil
Wars so the fortified castles were necessary and they needed to be big to accommodate the soldiers local courts travelers conference to plot the lates war and to shelter the locals when war broke out
Those houses were the local equivalent of America’s White House and royal palaces, a combination family home and government administrative center
And a lot of it was bragging rights and social climbing. Some families had several of those huge houses. Even in 1890 it was cheaper to keep servants to clean oil lamps and take care of fireplaces that install furnaces and electricity.
Emma Stone did a great job in Netflix’s Maniac. It’s really not your typical Netflix production. In other words, it’s not squalid and anti-social. It’s out there on the torrents.
Elizabeth Cavendish (aka Elizabeth Hardwick/Bess of Hardwick)
http://www.maryqueenofscots.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Bess_of_Hardwick_as_Mistress_St_Lo.square.jpg
Is played by Gemma Chan
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500/4B3BgjSM6GqhAdfvP6AU0x68MbG.jpg
http://www.frockflicks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/MQoS-2018-Gemma_Chan-Bess-comparison.png
Then we've got this guy playing George Dalgleish
https://imagebox.cz.osobnosti.cz/foto/adrian-palmer-ii/adrian-palmer-ii.jpg
Lord Randolph is portrayed by this rather anthracitic fellow...
https://media.buzzle.com/media/images-en/gallery/editorials/actors/900-86050425-adrian-lester.jpg
16th century Scotland must have been a multi-racial wonderland...Replies: @Alfa158, @Rufio Panman Fan, @SunBakedSuburb
“What gracious creatures are there gathered here.
How beautiful mankind is!
Oh, brave new world that has such people in it!”
Might as well get used to it.
A. The propaganda strategy is to claim that Britain always had all these non-Whites therefore those White scum have no basis to complain about their displacement, and eventual replacment with a population of Africans, Asians and mixed race people.
B. There are now a lot of non-Whites living in Britain, some of them are actors, and they want to work. If they don’t get jammed into historical pieces their employment prospects will be diminished. Therefore if Chiwetel Ejiofor wants to be cast as Richard the Lionhearted you’d damn well better suit him up.
Over Christmas I saw a DVD of that Han Solo movie with my family. It looked like crap. Too dark. Colors washed out--it was almost black and white. Everybody was complaining about the image and we were constantly messing with the TV settings trying to fix it.
I later went and looked up the movie on the internet and - what a surprise - the cinematographer was black.Replies: @Bubba
Elizabeth Cavendish (aka Elizabeth Hardwick/Bess of Hardwick)
http://www.maryqueenofscots.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Bess_of_Hardwick_as_Mistress_St_Lo.square.jpg
Is played by Gemma Chan
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500/4B3BgjSM6GqhAdfvP6AU0x68MbG.jpg
http://www.frockflicks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/MQoS-2018-Gemma_Chan-Bess-comparison.png
Then we've got this guy playing George Dalgleish
https://imagebox.cz.osobnosti.cz/foto/adrian-palmer-ii/adrian-palmer-ii.jpg
Lord Randolph is portrayed by this rather anthracitic fellow...
https://media.buzzle.com/media/images-en/gallery/editorials/actors/900-86050425-adrian-lester.jpg
16th century Scotland must have been a multi-racial wonderland...Replies: @Alfa158, @Rufio Panman Fan, @SunBakedSuburb
If your film has no diversity it is ineligible for a BAFTA. This should prove interesting in the future.
Always reminds me of Alistair Cooke's crack about how places like the Breakers in Newport could only count as cottages if Blenheim Palace were one's primary residence....
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/The_Breakers_Newport.jpg/1200px-The_Breakers_Newport.jpg
http://www.aboutbritain.com/images/attraction/big/blenheim-palace-south-lawn-view.jpgReplies: @SunBakedSuburb
The one beneath the English sky is a holiday cottage for the Illuminati.
Elizabeth Cavendish (aka Elizabeth Hardwick/Bess of Hardwick)
http://www.maryqueenofscots.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Bess_of_Hardwick_as_Mistress_St_Lo.square.jpg
Is played by Gemma Chan
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500/4B3BgjSM6GqhAdfvP6AU0x68MbG.jpg
http://www.frockflicks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/MQoS-2018-Gemma_Chan-Bess-comparison.png
Then we've got this guy playing George Dalgleish
https://imagebox.cz.osobnosti.cz/foto/adrian-palmer-ii/adrian-palmer-ii.jpg
Lord Randolph is portrayed by this rather anthracitic fellow...
https://media.buzzle.com/media/images-en/gallery/editorials/actors/900-86050425-adrian-lester.jpg
16th century Scotland must have been a multi-racial wonderland...Replies: @Alfa158, @Rufio Panman Fan, @SunBakedSuburb
There seems to be a yearly rotation of Holocaust and British monarchy films. It’s almost as if there’s something like the Illuminati at work in the world.
T.L. was the sort of movie that constantly prods you with “Why, why, why?” and “What am I missing here?” and “the critics love this movie, why?”.
And finally, in summation: “It definitely is a total piece of shit and an annoying waste of my time.”
End.
He also played a Brit in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”. Who would they have preferred?
Frankie Vaughan maybe?
David Lee Roth could be his son.
On a side note, Paul Fussell in Class who said that the English 'gentleman' was a world standard, as representing "the best of its kind" while the English female was considered "a disaster" and sensible people looked to the Continent for wives/lovers. An interesting detail in Proust's Temps Perdu is that not only did the Parisians wear English clothes, there was a special express train that took their shirts to London and back overnight for a proper washing.Replies: @Cloudbuster, @L Woods, @dvorak
That train’s name? The Hogwarts Express.
You don’t become obese and gout-ridden from pregnancy. You become that way by eating like a hog at a trough. When you’re the ruling monarch, no one has the gall to tell you to knock it off.
Genetics rule. The Stuart’s were medium slimReplies: @Reg Cæsar
Someone by the name of Yorgos Lanthimos has no business directing movies about English history. What does he know about it? Practically nothing. Only a native Brit would have feel for a good period movie about Britain. I’m not surprised that Lanthimos made a botch at portraying the historical events and people of the time.
Loony histograms
Holy agronomists
'Tis nosy hologram.Soaring smoothly
Argosy's monolith
Rosy as moonlight
I, most horsy Anglo.A roomy slingshot
A grisly moonshot
A smooth, sly groin
Slosh in moat orgy.Gyro-ass monolith
Ms. hooligan story
Lashing-room toys.
Horny, lissom goat.Tory-shaming solo.
Roomy ol' Hastings.
Rosy moonlit shag.Oil my goat's horns.
Soil my shorn goat.
Ghosts lay in moor.
Shiny orgasm tool.
Royals might, soon.
The ubiquitous-in-America single faucet is called over there a “Mixer Tap” and is considered an exotic extravagance.
Now that would have been part of a better movie!
Bill in GlendaleReplies: @Anonymous
It’s been done, at least to the extent late 60’s BBC censorship allowed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Churchills
I saw this serial as a young teenager. It was the first Masterpiece Theater presentation, and it directly followed the American broadcast of the Forsyte Saga.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forsyte_Saga_(1967_TV_series)
While not as spectacularly entertaining as TFS (the first exposure most of us had to the best of British TV), the First Churchills kept my family entertained. It was quite frank, for the time, about the passion Sarah and John Churchill felt for each other, as well as the generally bawdy nature of the times. My parents were intrigued and amused by the sexiness of the series, which would have been taboo on American TV at the time. (IIRC, American movies were less censored than British films at the time, while the reverse was true on television.)
And I've just discovered it's available on DVD. Even in this distant outpost of Empire. I'm tempted. And it stars Susan Hampshire which makes it even more tempting.
You just keep adding a room for every task, such as clipping your toenails, etc.
Then you’d have been on the wrong side of both history and reality.
Really? that’s going to make shaving later on quite awkward, don’t you get bored of this nonsense?
Part of maintaining social order is indeed providing social security through some variant of pointless but useful labour, like having people cut grass with scissors (which I saw in a few places in Asia) or using old-age ladies as tea-ladies (we jad those in Singapore). It is only in places with minimum wage laws that you start to see things like leaf-blowers replace several guys with rakes, and that is not necessarily a good thing for all involved.
I knew almost nothing about the movie except that it received very good reviews when I walked into the theater a few days ago. I did not care for it. None of the characters were likeable and I had no idea about the politics of the period so I couldn’t engage intellectually with the material and I think the director probably wanted it that way. Trivial people engaged in a fairly trivial power struggles. A few funny lines but this is a long movie. I haven’t felt this alienated from the critical response to a movie in a long time(American Beauty).
Hey, isn't it kind of funny now Kevin Spacey is kind of persona non-grata in Hwood for semi-t9-non-consensual homosexual stuff, even down to being erased like some Stalin era out of favor flunkey... and then you remember this scene from AB?
https://youtu.be/s7U0roMnD5s
Maybe instead of revisiting his house of cards character he should revisit the AB one? Where the whole inappropriate gay behavior could be explained by something relatively innocent. House of cards character scene:
https://youtu.be/L3M_9EzryhQ
There is a scene from Serpico where Serpico is in the mens room with another guy supposedly for hetero voyeuristic purposes, but some higher up thinks it's gay. I can't find it on yt though.
This plausible but completely innocent homosexual tryst idea beloved by Hollywood was skewered to great effect here:
https://youtu.be/f0G7F81LTZw
completely ot:
The Apple IIe is still the best platform for K-8 students, but of course, they really do not need computers at all. They will pick that up on their own unless very, very dim, and then it’s academic anyway.
Queens scissoring with handmaidens is actually an example of the “Game of Thrones-style-stuff” Steve says the movie lacks.
Whether or not a new problem, with every current year seemingly intensifies the tsunami of eat-your-vegetables movie/TV depictions of proto-Feminists (i.e. queens; princesses; heiresses; lawyers, etc.) which attempt to smuggle anachronistic attitudes via historical or archetypal figures the average Jane has heard of:
* Mary, Queen of Scots
* Colette
* Katharine Graham
* Ruth Bader Ginsburg http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/12/25/on-the-basis-of-sex-review-rbg-223557
* Christine Blasey-Ford haha, jk
* Mary Magdalene
* the old Negro space program
* Queen Victoria
* pre-1970s Queen Elizabeth II
* Lizzie Borden yet again, because so much story remains untold
These are always bigger productions than actual up-to-date examples of women doing independent things, like that foreign-correspondent eye patch one, who certainly seemed to fit the bill but was of gentile-prole descent so I guess that’s why it flopped.
Obviously these movies will be outsold by “Bad Moms Spring Break” or “Crazy Asian Bimbos” but I can’t figure how the more prestigious of the chick genres keeps growing. I have known female viewers to claim they enjoy such sagas though I doubt it’s for the subject matter, probably more for the antique costumes. Is the secondary market of exhibition by organizations of campus feminists that lucrative
Was your hostess Princess Gloria?
Wwebd a.k.a. middle aged vet said: Almost all movies are bad, as in, not five in a thousand is worth watching from beginning to end (and I am being generous).
The Sturgeon law (90 percent of everything is worthless) was super lenient on bad art, and off by a couple orders of magnitude, I think.
Imagine you walk into a bookstore that only sells old Victorian novels.
Of which there were about 50,000 or so published (depending on how you count)..
Of which all but one or two hundred are unspeakably unreadable.
Life is short, and almost all movies are bad.
… I like American films, the few good ones anyway, but I like French films too, but except for Eric Rohmer, I can’t think of a single French director about whose films I would assume, without watching it, that one of his films I hadn’t watched was likely to be good.
That being said, EVERY SINGLE W.C. Fields movie is pure genius.
Even whisky is not reliable, I bought two bottles last year that were corked (contaminated by mold from the cork). That is out of only 20 or so bottles!!!!! Not a good year for our beloved Kentucky industry ….. (to be fair one of the bottles was from Scotland….)
Merry Boxing Day, and thanks to Steve for an interesting British item.
From Our Island Story, chapter 89, Anne – How the Union Jack was Made:
What on earth did They (Who? Look into it yourself, join the dots, it was an inside job , ask Them not me) find to do between 1688 and 1776? Were They just biding their time? Or can it be that the early eighteenth century is what the world looks like when They have achieved their aims?
This times 1,000. Schools are trying to keep those machines running. No internet. Just a computer.
https://apple2online.com/index.php?p=1_46_LinksReplies: @Jack D
http://gogmsite.net/_Media/1902-consuelo-vanderbilt-4.jpeg
https://www.christies.com/media-library/images/features/articles/2016/10/10/consuelo-vanderbilt/main-consuelo-vanderbilt.jpgReplies: @Alden, @Luke Lea
My former wife’s new boyfriend’s grandfather is the baby in the picture (taken in Newport RI I believe):
https://goo.gl/85TtBe
Your ex-wife's new "boy" friend must be quite an age, as the boy in the photo was born in 1903.Replies: @Luke Lea
* Colette
* Katharine Graham
* Ruth Bader Ginsburg http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/12/25/on-the-basis-of-sex-review-rbg-223557
* Christine Blasey-Ford haha, jk
* Mary Magdalene
* the old Negro space program
* Queen Victoria
* pre-1970s Queen Elizabeth II
* Lizzie Borden yet again, because so much story remains untoldThese are always bigger productions than actual up-to-date examples of women doing independent things, like that foreign-correspondent eye patch one, who certainly seemed to fit the bill but was of gentile-prole descent so I guess that's why it flopped.Obviously these movies will be outsold by "Bad Moms Spring Break" or "Crazy Asian Bimbos" but I can't figure how the more prestigious of the chick genres keeps growing. I have known female viewers to claim they enjoy such sagas though I doubt it's for the subject matter, probably more for the antique costumes. Is the secondary market of exhibition by organizations of campus feminists that lucrativeReplies: @S. Anonyia, @Rob McX
Wrong! Most intelligent upper middle class women like history (liking it is the female equivalent of men liking sci-fi, very common), and not just for the clothes, but for the manners, the scenery, the hierarchies, the drama of the figure’s lives, etc. Why wouldn’t women like it? It’s about PEOPLE. The anachronisms in these movies is sometimes annoying though.
Let me see if I can embed that image (not sure how it is done):
I give up.
The script is by English people, but I felt like the Greek director’s lack of interest in the history conflicted with the rather persnickety refusal of the writers to cut some corners in terms of timeline to make the events more interesting.
The 1970s Barry Lyndon was a good example
It worked
The old historical dramas usually had a voice over or titles explaining the historical background.
The 1970s Barry Lyndon was a good example
Hoarding! You could have one wing for food wrappers, another for used paper towels, another for magazines, another for books, another for newspapers, etc.
Then, after you fill it up, you could put everything in storage and start all over again … or you could just buy another house.
She got her obesity from her mother, Anne Hyde who probably was 250 pds
Genetics rule. The Stuart’s were medium slim
* Colette
* Katharine Graham
* Ruth Bader Ginsburg http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/12/25/on-the-basis-of-sex-review-rbg-223557
* Christine Blasey-Ford haha, jk
* Mary Magdalene
* the old Negro space program
* Queen Victoria
* pre-1970s Queen Elizabeth II
* Lizzie Borden yet again, because so much story remains untoldThese are always bigger productions than actual up-to-date examples of women doing independent things, like that foreign-correspondent eye patch one, who certainly seemed to fit the bill but was of gentile-prole descent so I guess that's why it flopped.Obviously these movies will be outsold by "Bad Moms Spring Break" or "Crazy Asian Bimbos" but I can't figure how the more prestigious of the chick genres keeps growing. I have known female viewers to claim they enjoy such sagas though I doubt it's for the subject matter, probably more for the antique costumes. Is the secondary market of exhibition by organizations of campus feminists that lucrativeReplies: @S. Anonyia, @Rob McX
Coming soon: Hereward the Woke?
The IIe can be emulated but the burgeoning retrocomputing field means that new cards are being made, PC supplies can be adapted or some original II supplies have docs and are repairable, and I expect that new II-compatible motherboards will be available within a couple of years. There were clone II boards available that ran the original pirate firmware (shipped with a blank socket or some bogus firmware) and they had the CP/M Intel cpu and connecting chips built right in to ru CP/M as well not that that is useful. Electronics hobby places had NOS Apple II clone parts available well into the 21st century.
https://apple2online.com/index.php?p=1_46_Links
I have dim memories of that series. From back in the days when the British still made superb television (hard to believe when you see the rubbish they make now).
And I’ve just discovered it’s available on DVD. Even in this distant outpost of Empire. I’m tempted. And it stars Susan Hampshire which makes it even more tempting.
off topic
Chicago nixes next Women’s March amid growing rift over anti-Semitism claims against national group
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-womens-march-chicago-global-march-womens-wave-20181225-story.html
I propose the word ‘diversity explosion’ (a la William Frey’s book) to describe clashes within the coalition of the fringes.
Far and away the most interesting thing most people will find about this movie is Emma Stone’s first topless scene. Emma’s closing in on 30 years old and needs to give people a reason to still pay attention to her.
If she wants more attention, her rack ain't the way to get it; its not up to the job.
Hell’s Bells: At least Van Dyke is white. A Dutch guy with a bad accent is more credible as a Briton than a mestizo with an impeccable one. Maybe the first has, say, a weird speech impediment. The second, what? A skin condition and facial deformities?
As for the Mary Poppins diversification today - which woke, tranny, LBGT, femi-nazi, POC, etc... markets will this sell to? It's a tale made by white people and that is one of diversity's cardinal sins.
I'm surprised the Twitter mob is not calling for heads of all the actors/actresses who appeared in the Mary Poppins remake.
LinkReplies: @Autochthon, @Thea
The place is so grossly overpopulated the phneomenon can only benefit them; Hell, it will benefit everyone else if it prompts them to recall all the invaders they’ve sent out to build beach-heads elsewhere. The Chinese in Cupertino, Russia, and Tibet could probably repopulate Manchuria following an epidemic of E. Bola at this point.
Genetics rule. The Stuart’s were medium slimReplies: @Reg Cæsar
Yes, Bobby Sands was destined to wither away at 27 regardless, just like all those rock stars. His diet at the time is irrelevant.
Funny, though, that his parents lived into their 90s. Must’ve skipped a generation.
“ Even if you weighed 100 pds by age 5 and 200 at age 11 and 265 at high school graduation just buy my book and soon you’ll be slim as Nicole Kidman.!!!!!!!
Yes.
I hear ya on American Beauty.
Hey, isn’t it kind of funny now Kevin Spacey is kind of persona non-grata in Hwood for semi-t9-non-consensual homosexual stuff, even down to being erased like some Stalin era out of favor flunkey… and then you remember this scene from AB?
Maybe instead of revisiting his house of cards character he should revisit the AB one? Where the whole inappropriate gay behavior could be explained by something relatively innocent. House of cards character scene:
There is a scene from Serpico where Serpico is in the mens room with another guy supposedly for hetero voyeuristic purposes, but some higher up thinks it’s gay. I can’t find it on yt though.
This plausible but completely innocent homosexual tryst idea beloved by Hollywood was skewered to great effect here:
How beautiful mankind is!
Oh, brave new world that has such people in it!”
Might as well get used to it.
A. The propaganda strategy is to claim that Britain always had all these non-Whites therefore those White scum have no basis to complain about their displacement, and eventual replacment with a population of Africans, Asians and mixed race people.
B. There are now a lot of non-Whites living in Britain, some of them are actors, and they want to work. If they don’t get jammed into historical pieces their employment prospects will be diminished. Therefore if Chiwetel Ejiofor wants to be cast as Richard the Lionhearted you’d damn well better suit him up.Replies: @Autochthon, @Anonymous
Adaptations of fantasy novels like Game of Thrones and Jackson’s take on Tolkien’s legendarium seem to handily avoid this garbage (pulpier, kitschier fare like movies about superheroes and Star Wars absolutely drip it). Why so? What’s the secret? Power? Whose? Did Jackson have the pull to veto Negress Galadriel and ching-chong Gandalf? Or did the Tolkien estate retain some veto of such profanity?* Does George Martin have similar influence? And how do the persons preventing globohomo in those scenarios avoid being unpersoned by Twitter-mobs? And why does only high fantasy seem to be a refuge?
Genuine questions I’d love thoughts upon.
Yes, I know, we still got metrosexual Elves, butt-kicking babes made by bastardising existing characters or inventing them from whole cloth, and the retarded propaganda for miscegenation via the made-up romance of an Elf and a Dwarf, but at least they used white people.
I cannot wait for an adaptation of Lieber’s work wherein Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser are homo lovers, and The Fall of Gondolin with Morgoth as a mustacio-twirling blonde guy and the besieged Elves noble, put upon LGBTCBY Persons of Colour led by a transsexual Turgon. Get woke aready, Hollywoo!
The rest of the movies care little about story or narrative. They're a vessel to push a message and market a product, often globally.
#anticlimactic
If she wants more attention, her rack ain’t the way to get it; its not up to the job.
As iSteve’s Anagrammic Champion of 2018, he’s an honorary Englishman:
Stormy hooligans
Loony histograms
Holy agronomists
‘Tis nosy hologram.
Soaring smoothly
Argosy’s monolith
Rosy as moonlight
I, most horsy Anglo.
A roomy slingshot
A grisly moonshot
A smooth, sly groin
Slosh in moat orgy.
Gyro-ass monolith
Ms. hooligan story
Lashing-room toys.
Horny, lissom goat.
Tory-shaming solo.
Roomy ol’ Hastings.
Rosy moonlit shag.
Oil my goat’s horns.
Soil my shorn goat.
Ghosts lay in moor.
Shiny orgasm tool.
Royals might, soon.
Paleo Left or perhaps old school ‘Trots’ take on the movie, to much Cult Marx:
Mary Queen of Scots and The Favourite: The unimpressive recent results of “women in film”
(Trigger warning: World Socialist Website.)
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/12/24/mary-d24.html
Um, … No!
Most Mary Poppins fans consider DvD to be so bad (as a Cockney) that he’s brilliant and wouldn’t change him for the world. It is meant to be fantasy, after all.
(There’s a point where bad taste done well enough goes full circle and becomes good. I think the Vegas Strip is so tacky it’s magnificent, for example).
Eric Kaufmann in the Spectator US on the myth of white exceptionalism:https://spectator.us/myth-white-exceptionalism/Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
Kaufmann is literally a rootless cosmopolitan.
“Eric Kaufmann was born in Hong Kong and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. His ancestry is mixed with a quarter Chinese and a quarter Latino. His father is of Jewish descent, the grandfather hailing from Prostejov in the modern Czech Republic. His mother is a lapsed Catholic; he himself attended Catholic school for only a year.”
He’s settling into the role (along with Matt Goodwin, who got his professorship by being “an ezxpert on the far-right”) of respectable commentator on “why white nationalism?“.
(The film sounds like yet another travesty of history, like The King’s Speech)
Same here. Walked out of that odious pretentious trash and will never watch a movie by that guy again.
The fact that people pretended to like it is just pathetic.
There’s a very simple exercise for perfect posture but it hadn’t been discovered
Her neck wasn’t quite as long in photographs. Long necks were considered the perfection of beauty at the time just as long legs are considered perfection now days
There are other pictures you can find. Her face and big eyes are perfect
The fashion for English women was to cover themselves with lots of jewelry. Many necklaces could be wound around a long neck
She was beautiful and had a perfect faceReplies: @Anonymous
Well don’t just leave us hanging (it’s bad posture).
Lift your arms to the shoulders. Bend your arms Push your arms behind your back try to bump the elbows together.
It strengthens some muscles in the upper back. Do it every day just 10 tuned and in a few months you ‘ll have perfect posture. Then do it a couple times a week. It really works.Replies: @anon
My guess is that guys like Martin desire that they’re giant fantasy worlds, mostly based on actual historical anecdotes all mashed into one giant narrative, actually make sense. So in GoT the steppe horse people are Asiatic or middle eastern. The southern kingdoms have a more Roman esqu flair, and the cold north kingdom’s are pale white folks with some redheads thrown in there.
The rest of the movies care little about story or narrative. They’re a vessel to push a message and market a product, often globally.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqiMASk5MIUReplies: @Old Palo Altan, @TheJester
My take on British period movies is that no matter how poor and financially desperate the main characters are purported to be, there is always a social class that is poorer and more financially desperate … and quite willing to survive as their live-in and socially invisible servants.
We once scoffed at having servants in the United States. It was the hearty thought that it was good for one’s character to clean up your own messes in life.
That’s changed. Thanks to feminism and massive immigration from the Third World, our modest neighborhood is now filled with Hispanic women racing about cleaning up people’s houses. People further north living in McMansions and Palaces find life unbearable without their maids, cooks, gardeners, and nannies.
How did we ever live without them … servants? At the time, we didn’t realize how abused and underprivileged we were.
Separate taps in the UK were not just a matter of stupidity – it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to design a tap where both hot and cold emerge from the same spout. Rather, there were technical reasons why this was considered a bad idea and was forbidden in the plumbing bylaws (codes). Hot water in the UK was traditionally provided by an UNpressurized tank that was open to the atmosphere and kept in the loft (attic). They feared pressurized heaters and not without reason – an exploding hot water heater is like a bomb. The water from this tank was not considered potable. (Since the water flowed only by gravity, there was also insufficient pressure to take a shower unless you installed a booster pump). In a mixer tap, there is a possibility of cross-contamination – the non-potable water from the hot water line may backflow into the cold water line and then people opening other taps might end up drinking it.
And the single taps are in dire need of a rocket scientist, because they fail to deliver a mixed stream of blended hot and cold, but two separate streams, one hot, one cold.
I promise you.Replies: @Jack D
The best part of that series was James Villiers’ drole portrayal of Charles II, as seen in this episode, beginning at 10:44:
https://apple2online.com/index.php?p=1_46_LinksReplies: @Jack D
I understand that hobbyists may want to produce replica IIe’s as part of their hobby, just as there are hot rodders who build complete replica ’57 Chevy’s. But it makes no sense for schools or anyone else who is not a dedicated Apple IIe fan. As you point out, if you really want to run IIe software, there are emulators than run on PCs. It probably costs 10x as much to put together an authentic IIe replica as it would to buy a low end PC and install an emulator.
No connection to the internet, no Pr0n on computers and the ensuing fuss.Replies: @Jack D, @Anonymous
Was? All of the absurdities you recount are things I live with every day.
And the single taps are in dire need of a rocket scientist, because they fail to deliver a mixed stream of blended hot and cold, but two separate streams, one hot, one cold.
I promise you.
We all live with all kinds of obsolete hardware, especially in houses which tend to stand for a long time and where updating may involve tearing open walls, etc. and is very expensive. I have a friend who replace the "knob and tube" wiring in his home (built in the 1920s) only last year. I have another friend who has an ancient 4 bolt toilet in his home that must consume 5 gallons each time it is flushed. One of the bathrooms in my house still has its original 1950's tile on the walls (by some miracle they chose an unobjectionable gray instead of then popular pink or lime green) and the ductwork is carelessly sealed as befitted an era where fuel oil was 15 cents/gallon. Someday I'll get around to fixing these things. Someday.Replies: @Old Palo Altan, @Johann Ricke, @JMcG
I’m with you 100%! At least in the original movie a somewhat credible cockney Van Dyke was cast for the lucrative American (and white) market.
As for the Mary Poppins diversification today – which woke, tranny, LBGT, femi-nazi, POC, etc… markets will this sell to? It’s a tale made by white people and that is one of diversity’s cardinal sins.
I’m surprised the Twitter mob is not calling for heads of all the actors/actresses who appeared in the Mary Poppins remake.
And the single taps are in dire need of a rocket scientist, because they fail to deliver a mixed stream of blended hot and cold, but two separate streams, one hot, one cold.
I promise you.Replies: @Jack D
I say was because I believe mixer taps are now permitted in the UK (and you can have an actual light switch in the bathroom instead of just a pull string) . But obviously changing the plumbing or electrical code does not automatically update everyone’s hardware.
We all live with all kinds of obsolete hardware, especially in houses which tend to stand for a long time and where updating may involve tearing open walls, etc. and is very expensive. I have a friend who replace the “knob and tube” wiring in his home (built in the 1920s) only last year. I have another friend who has an ancient 4 bolt toilet in his home that must consume 5 gallons each time it is flushed. One of the bathrooms in my house still has its original 1950’s tile on the walls (by some miracle they chose an unobjectionable gray instead of then popular pink or lime green) and the ductwork is carelessly sealed as befitted an era where fuel oil was 15 cents/gallon. Someday I’ll get around to fixing these things. Someday.
I'm about to replace the wiring in my place here, and have been told I'll have to move out while it is being done.
Frankie Vaughan maybe?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilo83LRCJrE
David Lee Roth could be his son.Replies: @Bubba
Maybe so and thanks for the video! But I doubt the American audiences would have paid to see Frankie Vaughan in either movie.
Uncredited short appearance by Dick Dale as Elvis Presley. Mr. Dale is the only rock and roller ever to appear in a Marilyn Monroe film.
Montand also had few English language film appearances because, like Brigette Bardot, he did not speak English very well until after his film career was effectively over. He did a turn in "Grand Prix" with James Garner and an all star cast including Francoise Hardy.
Phil Hill and Graham Hill, unrelated, were champion F1 drivers in real life, and had parts in the film. Phil Hill was an American and one of only two Americans to be F1 champions (Mario Andretti the other). Graham Hill was a Brit and had two F1 championships.Replies: @Bubba
Yes indeed. And his own ancestor too.
We all live with all kinds of obsolete hardware, especially in houses which tend to stand for a long time and where updating may involve tearing open walls, etc. and is very expensive. I have a friend who replace the "knob and tube" wiring in his home (built in the 1920s) only last year. I have another friend who has an ancient 4 bolt toilet in his home that must consume 5 gallons each time it is flushed. One of the bathrooms in my house still has its original 1950's tile on the walls (by some miracle they chose an unobjectionable gray instead of then popular pink or lime green) and the ductwork is carelessly sealed as befitted an era where fuel oil was 15 cents/gallon. Someday I'll get around to fixing these things. Someday.Replies: @Old Palo Altan, @Johann Ricke, @JMcG
Don’t remind me!
I’m about to replace the wiring in my place here, and have been told I’ll have to move out while it is being done.
https://goo.gl/85TtBeReplies: @Old Palo Altan
Henry Clews Jr and his first wife and children. The photo was probably taken at their restored castle in southern France, now a museum.
Your ex-wife’s new “boy” friend must be quite an age, as the boy in the photo was born in 1903.
With an authentic IIe there is literally no way to connect to the internet. None. Even the best firewalls are defeated by 12 year old determined boys looking for stuff on the internet.
No connection to the internet, no Pr0n on computers and the ensuing fuss.
Disabling all access is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Our schools are the next best thing to N. Korea. Your kids will be completely ignorant and cut off from the world, but at least they won't see Pron so it's OK. Too bad the kids all have phones and have access to the internet anyway.Replies: @Anonymous
The IIgs supports a TCP/IP stack and a primitive browser as I recall.
The IIe would be great though, with a SD reader card on which all possible software could be installed, they do exist. No floppy or HDD needed. A serial or parallel in classrom intranet of sorts would also be possible.
The whole shooting match could easily be put on a board with a FPGA on which the whole machine is emulated and the whole thing mounted in the keyboard. In production about the same price as a Ras Pi.
Of course the Ras Pi is a better machine-but not for K-8 kids. It has all the faults of the PC, except that it's cheaper. Its very networkability means porn, internet abuse, et al are all likely. Apple II has enough eduware released in the public domain to be good for decades.Replies: @Dissident
(The film sounds like yet another travesty of history, like The King's Speech)Replies: @Bill B.
Yes. Kaufman is becoming an explainer of white natives.
I am cautious. He is bruited about because he appears superficially realistic and sensible on white populism but on a close reading he seems to want to finesse this issue with the globalist equivalent of ethnic counseling, combined with going a bit slower.
In the end he will not, or cannot, grasp the nettle of nationhood and ordinary people’s desire to preserve their historic nations.
Indeed IIRC his big solution is race mixing – voluntary of course!
We all live with all kinds of obsolete hardware, especially in houses which tend to stand for a long time and where updating may involve tearing open walls, etc. and is very expensive. I have a friend who replace the "knob and tube" wiring in his home (built in the 1920s) only last year. I have another friend who has an ancient 4 bolt toilet in his home that must consume 5 gallons each time it is flushed. One of the bathrooms in my house still has its original 1950's tile on the walls (by some miracle they chose an unobjectionable gray instead of then popular pink or lime green) and the ductwork is carelessly sealed as befitted an era where fuel oil was 15 cents/gallon. Someday I'll get around to fixing these things. Someday.Replies: @Old Palo Altan, @Johann Ricke, @JMcG
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
The Relentless Misery of 1.6 Gallons
Your ex-wife's new "boy" friend must be quite an age, as the boy in the photo was born in 1903.Replies: @Luke Lea
That would be his father. The grandfather was a famous eccentric. The photo was taken at La Napoule, this ridiculous though impressive pile on the Riviera, which is full of larger-than-life bronze geriatric nudes: https://goo.gl/s6eoFu
Triggered a midlife crisis when I was there back in the 1980’s. I fled.
LinkReplies: @Autochthon, @Thea
Maybe they can just bring all their anchor babies from those California maternity hotels back home.
No connection to the internet, no Pr0n on computers and the ensuing fuss.Replies: @Jack D, @Anonymous
All you need to do is not put a wifi or network card in a modern desktop. Or not give out the wifi password.
Disabling all access is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Our schools are the next best thing to N. Korea. Your kids will be completely ignorant and cut off from the world, but at least they won’t see Pron so it’s OK. Too bad the kids all have phones and have access to the internet anyway.
If you really want to know here it is
Lift your arms to the shoulders. Bend your arms Push your arms behind your back try to bump the elbows together.
It strengthens some muscles in the upper back. Do it every day just 10 tuned and in a few months you ‘ll have perfect posture. Then do it a couple times a week. It really works.
Great exercise.Replies: @Alden
No connection to the internet, no Pr0n on computers and the ensuing fuss.Replies: @Jack D, @Anonymous
A few ISPs still offer dialup and you could use a serial modem but it would be a text only connection. Porn wouldn’t be very good even if you could get it, given the limited resolution.
The IIgs supports a TCP/IP stack and a primitive browser as I recall.
The IIe would be great though, with a SD reader card on which all possible software could be installed, they do exist. No floppy or HDD needed. A serial or parallel in classrom intranet of sorts would also be possible.
The whole shooting match could easily be put on a board with a FPGA on which the whole machine is emulated and the whole thing mounted in the keyboard. In production about the same price as a Ras Pi.
Of course the Ras Pi is a better machine-but not for K-8 kids. It has all the faults of the PC, except that it’s cheaper. Its very networkability means porn, internet abuse, et al are all likely. Apple II has enough eduware released in the public domain to be good for decades.
(Can anyone deny it has artistic merit?)
Disabling all access is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Our schools are the next best thing to N. Korea. Your kids will be completely ignorant and cut off from the world, but at least they won't see Pron so it's OK. Too bad the kids all have phones and have access to the internet anyway.Replies: @Anonymous
Yeah, but not in the classroom. That’s the difference.
Oh wow just wow !!!!
Frankie’s only significant movie appearance IIRC was “Let’s Make Love” with Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand.
Uncredited short appearance by Dick Dale as Elvis Presley. Mr. Dale is the only rock and roller ever to appear in a Marilyn Monroe film.
Montand also had few English language film appearances because, like Brigette Bardot, he did not speak English very well until after his film career was effectively over. He did a turn in “Grand Prix” with James Garner and an all star cast including Francoise Hardy.
Phil Hill and Graham Hill, unrelated, were champion F1 drivers in real life, and had parts in the film. Phil Hill was an American and one of only two Americans to be F1 champions (Mario Andretti the other). Graham Hill was a Brit and had two F1 championships.
Why?
Lift your arms to the shoulders. Bend your arms Push your arms behind your back try to bump the elbows together.
It strengthens some muscles in the upper back. Do it every day just 10 tuned and in a few months you ‘ll have perfect posture. Then do it a couple times a week. It really works.Replies: @anon
Thanks for that.
Great exercise.
Great exercise.Replies: @Alden
You’re welcome
What do you do? Write diet books??
“ Even if you weighed 100 pds by age 5 and 200 at age 11 and 265 at high school graduation just buy my book and soon you’ll be slim as Nicole Kidman.!!!!!!!
We all live with all kinds of obsolete hardware, especially in houses which tend to stand for a long time and where updating may involve tearing open walls, etc. and is very expensive. I have a friend who replace the "knob and tube" wiring in his home (built in the 1920s) only last year. I have another friend who has an ancient 4 bolt toilet in his home that must consume 5 gallons each time it is flushed. One of the bathrooms in my house still has its original 1950's tile on the walls (by some miracle they chose an unobjectionable gray instead of then popular pink or lime green) and the ductwork is carelessly sealed as befitted an era where fuel oil was 15 cents/gallon. Someday I'll get around to fixing these things. Someday.Replies: @Old Palo Altan, @Johann Ricke, @JMcG
You, Jack D, are a curious mixture of infuriating and supremely agreeable.
Yeah, what I would give to be able to go back to one of those old ‘water-guzzlers’…
The Relentless Misery of 1.6 Gallons
The IIgs supports a TCP/IP stack and a primitive browser as I recall.
The IIe would be great though, with a SD reader card on which all possible software could be installed, they do exist. No floppy or HDD needed. A serial or parallel in classrom intranet of sorts would also be possible.
The whole shooting match could easily be put on a board with a FPGA on which the whole machine is emulated and the whole thing mounted in the keyboard. In production about the same price as a Ras Pi.
Of course the Ras Pi is a better machine-but not for K-8 kids. It has all the faults of the PC, except that it's cheaper. Its very networkability means porn, internet abuse, et al are all likely. Apple II has enough eduware released in the public domain to be good for decades.Replies: @Dissident
What about ASCII porn?
(Can anyone deny it has artistic merit?)
How beautiful mankind is!
Oh, brave new world that has such people in it!”
Might as well get used to it.
A. The propaganda strategy is to claim that Britain always had all these non-Whites therefore those White scum have no basis to complain about their displacement, and eventual replacment with a population of Africans, Asians and mixed race people.
B. There are now a lot of non-Whites living in Britain, some of them are actors, and they want to work. If they don’t get jammed into historical pieces their employment prospects will be diminished. Therefore if Chiwetel Ejiofor wants to be cast as Richard the Lionhearted you’d damn well better suit him up.Replies: @Autochthon, @Anonymous
Better to have blacks in front of the camera than behind it.
Over Christmas I saw a DVD of that Han Solo movie with my family. It looked like crap. Too dark. Colors washed out–it was almost black and white. Everybody was complaining about the image and we were constantly messing with the TV settings trying to fix it.
I later went and looked up the movie on the internet and – what a surprise – the cinematographer was black.
The senseless slaughter of Alison Parker (white) and Adam Ward (white) was done by another one of the endless amount of black psychotics (yes, it's redundant) like ex-employee Vester Flanagan in 2015.
If you watch the video, I think it is the ultimate irony of a white woman calling for "sane tourism"just as the mass murder begins of 3 white people (1 failed) done by a feral U.S. black that belongs in Africa, not America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcZhppcbvTU
Uncredited short appearance by Dick Dale as Elvis Presley. Mr. Dale is the only rock and roller ever to appear in a Marilyn Monroe film.
Montand also had few English language film appearances because, like Brigette Bardot, he did not speak English very well until after his film career was effectively over. He did a turn in "Grand Prix" with James Garner and an all star cast including Francoise Hardy.
Phil Hill and Graham Hill, unrelated, were champion F1 drivers in real life, and had parts in the film. Phil Hill was an American and one of only two Americans to be F1 champions (Mario Andretti the other). Graham Hill was a Brit and had two F1 championships.Replies: @Bubba
My apologies for the delay – a big thank you for that information. I looked it all up and found your comment extremely interesting (which is a huge understatement)! These folks were bigger than life! Thank you – I thoroughly enjoyed looking up and reading about all of the people in your comment!
Over Christmas I saw a DVD of that Han Solo movie with my family. It looked like crap. Too dark. Colors washed out--it was almost black and white. Everybody was complaining about the image and we were constantly messing with the TV settings trying to fix it.
I later went and looked up the movie on the internet and - what a surprise - the cinematographer was black.Replies: @Bubba
I don’t know about that. Blacks can be viciously murderous behind the camera.
The senseless slaughter of Alison Parker (white) and Adam Ward (white) was done by another one of the endless amount of black psychotics (yes, it’s redundant) like ex-employee Vester Flanagan in 2015.
If you watch the video, I think it is the ultimate irony of a white woman calling for “sane tourism”just as the mass murder begins of 3 white people (1 failed) done by a feral U.S. black that belongs in Africa, not America.