No movie again tonight. My holds at the Libe are taking forever to arrive, but I did watch the first two episodes of a BBC series called "Dickensian". You may remember way back at the beginning of this year, when I first acquired the 3-dvd set of this ten hour miniseries, I tried to watch it then, in January, but I gave up after just one episode because, for me, anything involving Dickens must be watched at Christmastime. Christmas was a month past and the feeling just wasn't there, so I shelved "Dickensian" but kept it on the back burner for the next Christmas in 2018, now just two weeks away.
So far, just two episodes in (out of 20 total, each ep being 30 minutes long), the show looks to be a lot of fun, and will meet and exceed all of our established criteria for proper Christmas viewing under the Charles Dickens subheading. What it is, is a Dickens mashup. The writers and producers of "Dickensian" have taken all of the author's most famous stories and characters, and turned them all into a collective. Sounds sacrilegious, I know - you see Jacob Marley walking into The Old Curiosity Shop to collect a debt whist Fagin from "Oliver Twist" arranges a "date" for him later in the evening. The two sisters from "Bleak House" are living in the same section of London, feuding over family finances, while Scrooge walks the streets on Christmas Eve, headed for a bowl of slop at the local pub after harassing Bob Cratchit into submission. Humbug, indeed.
So you've got all of these "Dickensian" characters inhabiting the same neighborhood and interacting with one another, sometimes directly, sometimes only in passing. I wasn't sure if I was gonna like it, and the acting - while BBC Superb as always - is a tad more modern in style than is that of the traditional Dickens productions from the Beeb, so it's not quite Classic Dickens......but still, the production design recreates Victorian London to a tee and the whole thing begins on Christmas Eve, so right there all of our requirements are met.
"Dickensian" is a combined take on all of the stories with a small dose of modern acting punch. I won't be reviewing it episode by episode, but I will try to watch the entire series by Christmas and I imagine it will warrant two very big Thumbs Up when all is said and done.
I am about almost halfway through a book about the death of Dorothy Kilgallen, the famed newspaper columnist of the 1950s and 60s, who also doubled as a TV star on the game show "What's My Line". Her main talent, though, was for investigative reporting. She developed a reputation as a top crime writer, and she had an ability to sense corruption at some of the famous trials she attended, such as the Dr. Sam Sheppard murder case. After JFK was assassinated, she was one of the first reporters to question the "official" verdict of Lee Harvey Oswald being the lone gunman, and she was undoubtedly the most prominent reporter who would not let the subject drop. Kilgallen had a sharp, lawyer like mind, and she published column after column questioning the FBI's lack of interest in a real investigation into the assassination. She went after the CIA, too, and she was especially hard on the Mafia, excoriating all of these organisations as to their probable involvement in not only Kennedy's assassination, but Oswalds' as well. She was especially interested in the case of Jack Ruby, and was the only reporter to ever get an interview with him. She was determined to get to the truth of the assassination, but in November 1965, it cost her her life.
She was poisoned with a triple barbiturate overdose of Seconal, Tuinal and Nembutal, and of course her murder was called a suicide, a bunch of baloney of course.
The story of Dorothy Kilgallen's death is not household news, but it is gaining traction in the Kennedy Assassination encyclopedia. So many people were "bumped off" in the aftermath of the assassination, in order to keep them silent, but Dorothy Kilgallen was one of the first to go, because she was so brash and relentless.
She was in search of the truth about the cold-blooded murder of a United States President. The truth mattered to her. I did not know a lot about her life prior to reading this book, but now I think she is an American Hero, and someone that the press would do well to emulate in the age of Trump.
We now know that this man was in cahoots with a foreign adversary to steal the presidency of the United States of America. This is the kind of crime that used to be called Treason, and in the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who sold nuclear secrets to Russia, it got them executed.
I am not saying Trump deserves that penalty, but he sure as hell should be indicted and sent to prison.
And here we have the Democrats not even unanimous on mere impeachment.
Nancy Pelosi's performance in the Oval Office today notwithstanding, the Democrats need to grow a pair and kick this bastard out of office and put him in prison.
He has committed the types of espianoge crimes that people were once executed for.
He stole the American Presidency, with direct help from the adversarial Russian govenment, headed up by arch criminal Putin.
Hey, what are we waiting for? Impeachment? That's nothing, and the Democrats aren't even in agreement on that prospect.
Trump should be indicted, and as soon as possible. He belongs in prison because, hey folks!....
He tried to overthrow the democratic voting process of America.
This is something, if you had tried it in the 1950s and been caught, especially with Russian help, that you would have been executed for.
No joke.
So Trump needs to be not merely impeached, but put in prison. Hey Democrats, let's step up to the plate, eh? Because this is not funny anymore, and it hasn't been from Day One.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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