The Lyorn's Den

I haven't finished any books recently, mostly because I ran out of fiction at hand and started in on some nonfiction that is requiring a lot of brain (Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime by Sean Carroll), and so is going very slowly as I absorb it. However as is typical (I'm sure there's a Somebody's Law on this) all my library holds came in at once, so I have also started The Rook by Daniel O'Malley, which merit had recommended and sounded interesting - so far, it is indeed!

But we have watched a few things. First, we finally finished 1923, which is part of the Taylor Sheridan Cinematic Universe, i.e. Yellowstone and related spin-offs. We had watched the first four seasons of Yellowstone, at which point I decided I didn't enjoy watching characters I dislike doing obnoxious things. We then watched the prequel 1883, which was generally more to my taste (we typically only watch historical, SF, or fantasy shows) but a general downer as although there were more characters I actually liked, they mostly ended up dying. So I was not really excited about 1923, but hey, Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren as cranky old western ranchers was certainly a draw, and I let B convince me. (Also, Jerome Flynn, who was Bronn in Game of Thrones, plays an interestingly nuanced villain, and Timothy Dalton (Timothy Dalton!!) plays a boringly un-nuanced villain who fortunately didn't have a pencil mustache because if he did, he would have been twirling it.)

Not-really-spoiler alert: I have come to the conclusion that the Taylor Sheridan Cinematic Universe is not for me. There were three main storylines: the eeevil Irish sheepmen who want to take the ranch land, followed by the eeevil mining baron who wants to take the ranch land; the nephew, emotionally scarred by his WWI experience, who has become a hunter for the Crown in British Africa, and the British noblewoman who throws over her old life to be with him; and the Crow girl at an Indian boarding school run by basically eeevil priests and nuns, who suffers one beating too many and fights back and runs. These storylines were weirdly separate, with the only connection being that the old ranch lady played by Mirren writes letters to her nephew in Africa begging him to come back to help them save the Yellowstone - and much of his plot is the over-the-top trauma and drama involved in he and his new wife overcoming one ridiculous obstacle after another to get to Wyoming. I kept waiting for the runaway native girl plot to intertwine with the rest, but other than glancing very slightly off the nephew plotline, it never did; I guess it's intended to be prequel for another installment between 1923 and the present (one of the native actors was the son of one of the actors in Yellowstone, so I could see a possible connection being drawn), but I'm not going to watch it.

Also I would not believe I would ever say that a show has so much kinky sex it got boring, but. Yeah.

The ending was over-the-top and relentlessly emotional (yeah, I cried) and very on-brand for the TSCU. But I admit I was hoping

this is actually spoilery

that well, Elizabeth, Alex, and Teonna were all pregnant, and the sweethearts of two of them were killed, so I figured Spencer would get killed as well and then the three of them could set up together in the huge Yellowstone house!

Okay, I never actually believed that would possibly happen, but what we got just annoyed me by the pointlessness of all the dramatic struggle along the way. But I did like the cranky old ranch couple, and the theme of progress being good for some and bad for others.

The next thing we were planning to watch was Dark Winds S4, but B said, "You know, we just saw a lot of people shooting each other amid trauma and drama, and maybe something lighter would be a good palate cleanser?" He had recently watched (on his own) some movie about a golfer (?) played by Owen Wilson, and he was looking for other films Wilson had done and came up with Woody Allen's 2011 romantic comedy Midnight in Paris.

Which just proves how well he knows me, because this movie was absolutely up my alley: hack screenwriter hoping to become a novelist, on vacation in Paris with his fiancee and her parents, somehow accidentally travels back in time and meets famous historical literary and art figures! And it's hilarious and sparkling and the various historical characters are amazing. Tom Hiddleston as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein, Adrien Brody as Salvador Dalí. I didn't know Corey Stoll but his Ernest Hemingway was maybe my favorite. (I mean, all the dialogue was brilliant, it's Woody Allen through and through.) The ending is pretty obvious a mile off, but I found it satisfying.