ken_mayer

My wife and I have started watching period dramas in bulk since she fell into the Downton Abbey wormhole. We've now watched almost all of first season Poldark. Poldark at its best is almost as good as Downton Abbey at its worst, by which I mean that the dialog and plotting is so predictably bad that you can no longer pretend that you are not watching a soap opera with better costumes. That rarely happened in Downton, at least in the first few seasons.

In Poldark, the heroes are all good and the villains are cartoonishly bad/evil/slutty/weak. The heroes act like enlightened souls from the 21st century. One has to suspend one's disbelief every 5-10 minutes, not just from anachronisms but more because the characters would be unbelievable in any century. One of the joys of MadMen was seeing *everyone*, even the good characters, basing their actions on an outdated moral compass.

We have managed to get through so many episodes because the main actor is good looking enough to fascinate my wife and enough of an actor to convincingly spout the moody dreck he's given to say and do. We're looking for some other period drama, stat. Based on the reviews here, maybe we'll check out the 1970s Poldark.

It has been around 4-5 years since I saw this film, so that can tell you that it left a strong impression, but also that I will not be able to give my full, considered opinion. However, it is a fun and passionate musical, and capturing the stage performance in a simple, no-frills way makes it one of Spike Lee's greatest films. The music is great, the lyrics are touching. I particularly remember the stories of growing up in a church community, and the trip to Europe (Amsterdam) with the song "She Gave Me Her Key". This film deserves a wider audience. Parental concerns: there are brief discussions of homosexuality and sex (nothing explicit--it's a stage show), the use of marijuana and teenage drinking is a major subplot.

I saw this as "Love With Accent" on Amazon Instant Streaming. This film is light-hearted, fun, and silly. There are about seven different, intertwined love stories that involve Russians visiting the republic of Georgia. At times it can be tough to keep the characters and stories straight, since the editing switches from story to story w/o interruption. I get the sense it would be a stronger movie if one or two plots were pruned out.

One thing that makes it hard to keep characters straight is the East European dubbing technique. All dialog is subtitled in English, but for the Russian audience, all dialog that was originally in Georgian (and some French) is spoken in the original by the character in low volume, overlaid by a monotone high-volume narrator saying everything in Russian. So arguments and love declarations between two characters speaking Georgian have one monotone voice speaking both parts. You can't tell by ear who is saying what and what is going on. Get rid of the dubbing for international releases!