Elizabeth, I hope you had a nice Christmas Day. I imagine you celebrated with your family, and once again I wish you a Merry Christmas. I went over to Pearl's for Christmas dinner, and we had a great meal and good conversation all around. We were joined by Pearl's neighbor Tommy, who is also a member of her church, and we got a call from my sister Vickie and her husband Nico, who are in Hawaii. So that was mostly my day. I saw a lot of Christmas lights on my way home, too, which always gives me a special feeling, not only because they are beautiful to look at but also because I think that the act of putting up the lights, and making the houses and the night look so pretty, are a way for people to participate in bringing some "joy to the world", so to speak, and I think that it makes people happy to look at the lights. I know it does for me. So it's a way of putting some beauty into the world, and nowdays you see people getting really creative and elaborate with the lights. I think it's a nice way to share the Christmas spirit, through colored light.
I haven't watched a movie for the past couple of days, but I did watch a great BBC Masterpiece production of a Dickens story, called "The Mystery Of Edwin Drood". I needed some Dickens for Christmas, and I had found that dvd in the library system about a week ago and had it sent to Northridge Libe, where it arrived just in time for my Christmas fix.
I've mentioned that I've been running out of fresh Dickens material, having seen every version of "A Christmas Carol" and most of his other works that have been filmed, or at least the ones that are in the library's extensive collection. "Drood" was the only one from my search that I had not seen, and it turned out to pack quite a wallop.
Now, I didn't know any of the details going in. I had never heard of this story before.
But : there is a choirmaster in a church, in London in the 1840s. So right from the start, I was hooked. A choirmaster is the main character!
Okay : so he has a prize pupil, a young lady who sings........but also plays piano.
I knew none of this going in, because I had not heard of the story.
But : the problem is that the choirmaster, though brilliant, is a creep. He's got a fix on the young lady, though she is engaged to his nephew. Now, the choirmaster has also been a mentor to the nephew, who he professes to love, and yet......he is jealous of because of the nephew's higher station in life. This is England of the Victorian era, and Dickens wrote about class differences. The nephew has been brought up in relative wealth, while his Uncle has toiled away directing a church choir. He must show deference to his somewhat spoiled younger relative, but more than that......he is secretly in love with his nephew's fiancee, the piano student.
What a plot, eh? :)
But that's not the half of it. Not even close. Because all of a sudden an impoverished brother and sister arrive from Ceylon. They are of half English parentage. They are adopted by the priest of the parish where the choirmaster is employed. And the brother starts asking questions about a man named Edwin Drood, whom he believes to be his English father, who abandoned him and his sister as children.
Can Charles Dickens write, or what? :)
I consider him to be the equal of Shakespeare, perhaps not in the use of language, but definitely in plot. And almost in language, too, doggonnit.
"Edwin Drood" turned out to be Dickens final novel, and it was never finished because he died while working on it. I only discovered that by Googling it after I had watched the movie. So I don't know how much of the movie was improvised by modern writers, and how much was Dickens. Wikipedia says that only the ending is unknown.
But boy could that Charles Dickens write. There are plot twists in "Edwin Drood" that come right out of the blue, and I'll say no more than that.
But for me, just to get the dvd because I was looking for previously unseen Dickens, and then to have it have that plot, and have a choirmaster and a piano student....
Well, it was just one of those things, you know. And it was one of the best BBC productions that I've seen.
I need more BBC! I'm hooked, I tell you. I have one more "George Gently" to watch, but after that, I'm gonna have to do something.
Buy more "Gently", search for more Masterpiece Theatre.......any other suggestions would be appreciated.
In closing, two grammatical details must be pointed out.
The first is that the word "Theater", when using it in an Anglo-Saxon connotation, must be spelled with the final "e" and "r" reversed, so that the word is written as "Theatre". If using it in an American context, the more familiar "Theater" is okay.
Far more important, however, is the second detail, and that is the pronunciation of both words : "Masterpiece", and "Theatre" (English spelling).
The word "Masterpiece" will only be pronounced as "Mahs-steh-peece", and "Theatre" will only be pronounced as "Thee-a-tah".
As long as we are on the same page on those two considerations, we can watch more BBC. :)
Sound good?
Okay, see you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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