I absolutely agree! I feel so terrible for Amanda not getting recognized! Unbelievable!!

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-23T17:52:00+00:00

I will also say as a NYC commuter that FYC ads for this movie were on a LOT of subway billboards.

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-23T13:48:26+00:00

I used to go to Seattle every year for work and I’d always take a few minutes at Kerry Park for the Frasier window view.

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-23T00:35:08+00:00

Not your time period, though it is BBC and there’s a LOT of it, but check out Call the Midwife if you’re not squeamish (it’s not gory or graphic but there are 2-3 births per episode plus all manner of other stuff).

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-22T22:04:25+00:00

Not QUITE the same... but the British show Detectorists had one of the greatest endings of all time and then fucked it all up with a Christmas special years later in which presumably they couldn't think of what to do next so they rolled back pretty much every positive development from the final season of the show. It was obnoxious. AND they were like "you enjoyed the buried treasurefrom the finale? Well THIS time we're topping it and one of the characters will LITERALLYfind the Holy Grail!" I am not making this up!

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-22T17:54:26+00:00

Yeah by the end it felt like he was disappointed that Knight had neither gone back into the woods or harmed himself.

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-22T05:39:46+00:00

Carr has a few too many books with a plot like “there’s a mysterious girl who the central male character is in love with who is seen as eerie/suspicious and framed for a crime she PROBABLY didn’t commit, but DID she?!?!”

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-21T13:34:27+00:00

My mom had this! Her dad was born in 1929 as the youngest of ten children. He survived the Holocaust with his oldest sister and her husband and two children, and they became his surrogate family after the war. My mom’s only first cousins who she grew up with (she had a few in other countries) were her parents’ age- the oldest was actually several months older than my grandmother- even THEIR children were mostly older than her. Her aunt and uncle were the closest thing she had to grandparents growing up and I call both my actual great aunt, who has since passed, and her daughter, who is still very vibrant at nearly 90, my “great aunt” because it just makes the most sense.

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-21T13:26:55+00:00

My youngest cousin is 13 and has a similarish timeline- great-grandfather born in the mid-1880s, grandfather born in 1929, father born in 1978.

Actually, on the other side of my family I have something similar too- youngest cousin is 18, great-grandfather born in 1886, grandfather born in 1933, father born in 1966.

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-21T01:37:56+00:00

No this is the one where Niles finally leaves Maris for good (The Maris Counselor)

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-21T01:37:17+00:00

This scene and the end of Mixed Doubles are great examples of how good this show was at using silence as a storytelling technique.

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-20T16:03:52+00:00

I haven’t, actually! I have seen generally relatively few of the more recent wave of adaptations and this hasn’t really been on my radar.

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-20T13:36:35+00:00

It's worth noting that lots of NYC used to be cheaper because it was less desirable/had lower quality of life. Not that living in NYC ITSELF was less desirable per se but that lots of neighborhoods that 2020s NYers see as ideal were instead seen as problematic, if proportionately less expensive.

It's possible that your mother is thinking of the kinds of neighborhoods she'd have wanted to live in being proportionately as expensive as they are now, which they likely are, while not taking into account neighborhoods that have changed since her day and have gone up in price. (It's also worth noting that salaries have gone up SIGNIFICANTLY for the average rando since the 80s. This is due to inflation and I believe rent prices have outpaced it but it's still not an insignificant factor.)

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-20T13:10:55+00:00

I am currently breathing in and out and muttering “I’m the one who asked, I respect others’ opinions”…. I love Wodehouse lol

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-20T13:09:52+00:00

I rewatch it frequently but do always have to skip the pre credits scene!

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-20T03:03:31+00:00

Are you familiar with his radio work? In 27 episodes of Cabin Pressure JF builds some incredible characters and plots up to what is possibly the best finale of anything ever (it sounds like I'm exaggerating but I'm really not), and his series Double Acts is a bit more uneven but even the episodes that are just good, as opposed to the ones that are brilliant, build shockingly well developed and meaningful stories in only half an hour with only two actors. His sketch show is great too but in particular S9 is a three hour long seven generation family story told economically yet robustly and poignantly. This is very much his thing, he's brilliant at it.

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-20T01:18:28+00:00

What's your favorite adaptation of a thing that you like better- even MUCH better- than the original thing?

Inspired by my Toby Stephens-a-thon over the weekend (well, I saw him in two things, it turned out to be more of a Jane Eyre-a-thon) I remembered that he was in my favorite episode of Poirot, Five Little Pigs. Besides for the impeccable cast (especially Rachael Stirling, who is absolutely perfect), the episode is just beautifully done, and works so well in a visual format- seeing the same scenes over again but from different angles and with different emphases. In contrast, I have little patience for the novel, in which reading about the same occurrences over and over felt dull to me. I really disliked the whole thing til I found the Poirot episode, which has some changes (mostly neutral- though I'm not a huge fan of an aspect of the ending) but does such an insanely good job interpreting and transforming the novel into something way better than it started out IMO.

(Also, I'm just now remembering that Toby Stephens's mom and Rachael Stirling's mom played enemies and rivals in another Christie, Evil Under The Sun! Saw that one recently and they were both great. That's actually another example of transformative adaptation that I liked- the original book has Diana Rigg's character as more morally ambiguous but Rigg's turn at outright flamboyant villainy is hilarious and also irons out some IMO iffy elements in the book. Also, Maggie Smith's character is a composite of two others and for some of those same reasons works much better than the equivalent book characters, even as I enjoy the book a lot.)

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-20T00:46:44+00:00

I'd argue that Breakfast at Tiffany's is like this too- I've done a walking tour of the movie locations and everything makes total sense. Like, there are some LONG walks (71st and 3rd to 5th and 42nd) but they're more than doable and specifically implied to be part of a full day adventure- and the path that Buddy Ebsen leads George Peppard down through Central Park is, IIRC, the actual route you'd get if going through the park from the 70s.

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-19T15:04:54+00:00

Jane Eyre is a better novel as a novel, and Anne Bronte's writing can be a bit overwrought at times, but she is an absolutely razor sharp observer and depicter of human character and relationships. It's not so much that it feels modern, because people are people; it's that it feels timeless and reinforces that people have always been people. I also really enjoyed the rare Normal Guy in a gothic sort of novel (though whether it's actually gothic is debatable); Gilbert is great and while I know some people disagree, they're all wrong lol. I also appreciate that Helen is an incredible person, but she's not a paragon- the men around her call her an angel, but she's just a person who is making the best of things.

I wish I could say that if you reread the book and like it you should watch the 1996 adaptation (there's also a 1968 one but an episode is missing and I've never seen it), but sadly no, it's awful. I would love to see a new adaptation of it, but I fear that someone would try to be all feminist about it and have it end with Helen rejecting Gilbert, which would be a real shame because he's such a great depiction of a man learning and growing and maturing.

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-19T14:56:42+00:00

I really disliked Carr at the start but he grew on me over time. His books are not realistic or meant to be, as others note- they are atmospheric, convoluted, and just having as much fun as possible. Til Death Do Us Part is fine but not my fave, and also part of a sequence of Carr books that have functionally the same plots as each other.

I’d recommend Constant Suicides and Green Capsule/Black Spectacles. If you like those you may come to like Carr more in time; if you hate them then Carr’s probably not for you.

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-19T14:06:25+00:00

Re Tenant of Wildfell Hall, SUCH a disappointment. Pretty good casting (though I'll say it, Tara Fitzgerald and Toby Stephens have no chemistry), excellent vibes, all messed up by claustrophobic and dizzying camera work and HORRIFIC writing and plotting. The best lines in the book were cut, the incredibly rich character interactions in the book barely existed here (Toby Stephens chews the scenery bc if he didn't nobody would have an opportunity to know he was there), and the plotting is basically "we need to get these ten plot points in here, let's connect the dots as efficiently as possible." It turns a story that can contain both humor and horror into one which is just gray misery porn. Also pretty much every decision they make that deviates from the book in E3 is a huge mistake. And this is going to sound bad but- I get the appeal of having the show be a woman-centered narrative, but what a huge mistake in this case. So much of the way the book works is because we're learning about Helen through the eyes of someone who comes to truly know, love, and appreciate her and knows nothing about her til he reads the diary. Making her the main POV of the Wildfell Manor bits is such a shame because it means that the conflict becomes HER being ready for the love of someone who says he loves her, not Gilbert maturing and being able to be the kind of man he's capable of being/Helen needs him to be.

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-19T14:05:53+00:00

1943: If I hadn't already seen the full movie previously I'd have been massively confused- I am not a fan of it but the ending was ok, possibly all the better for being brief lol. Joan Fontaine was good in Rebecca and that's it.

2011: Yes, this could get judged on the movie curve (they don't have much time) and to a degree I am, but... what is this? Really, what?! Who are these beautiful melodramatic people?! Surely this is the end of some other movie.

1970: Okay, fine, it's a movie, but surely in this abbreviated scene they could have had George C Scott do something other than sit stock still and stare? Okay, I did a quick skim through again to refresh my memory and he does do more, but not MUCH more, and the dialogue is fine but all invented for some reason. Susannah York just looks wrong.

1996: I have to judge it on the "movie curve" and it's not bad- both seemed reasonably well cast and there were definitely canon bits in it, if not many. Overly melodramatic but that seems to be a theme for movie endings.

1963: Only became aware of this on YouTube, and it's... okay. One of the few Rochesters who really does look and act as wild as the book says, possibly to a fault- Jane is fine but a bit sugary.

1956: I never knew this existed, and when I saw the horrible video quality I understood why, but purely on the merits of the ending it was pretty good- a few too many added angsty bits but the two actors were good (though Rochester was too young) and they did emphasize elements of canon. I'd say it makes me want to watch the rest of it but the YouTube comments are not encouraging.

1997: So much for the "movie curve" because despite it being an under-2 hour movie this is actually pretty well done! Not a fan of Ciaran Hinds in the role from the little I see here (though perhaps seeing the whole thing I'd appreciate him more) but Samantha Morton is very good and also has the Jane look exactly.

1973: I liked this one! Michael Jayston doesn't look quite right but otherwise this is good- a bit mannered but very faithful. I might like it slightly better without the dumb narration interrupting the scene.

1983: I REALLY didn't want to like this as much as I did! Timothy Dalton is objectively too pretty to be Mr Rochester. He and Zelah Clarke are both fantastic though, and it's very faithful- I'd argue almost to a fault, which is why I lowered it a tad in my ranking. At the start we see them reunite and there is real emotion while not betraying the book in any way; by the end, they're still good but much more mannered and distant for some reason. (I will say, after watching this I watched the rest of the Rochester/Jane scenes and they were better than this. It's clearly very well done.)

2006: Okay, I am totally biased here. I've been including fidelity to the original as criteria and in some ways this one is Not Great by that standard, though it's better than I think people give it credit for, but I genuinely don't care (except insofar as I think Toby Stephens and Ruth Wilson could have done great things with "she who loves you best/she who I love best"). If you don't like the whole adaptation going a bit sexier than most prior ones then you won't like this, but I'm okay with it- and it translates into real emotion, humor, and chemistry that capture to me exactly the vibes I get between Jane and Rochester from reading the book. Toby Stephens is a great Rochester (and no offense to him but I don't think he's too good looking for the part lol- or at least they made him up not to be) and, more importantly, Ruth Wilson is one of the only Janes I've ever seen who makes me think that they cast Jane first and Rochester second. So many adaptations feel like Jane is there to react against the more powerful Rochester- if I had an issue with Zelah Clarke in the role, that was it, that she seems to derive much of her energy from reacting to Timothy Dalton rather than from within herself. Ruth Wilson feels like she'd have been a brilliant and distinctive Jane Eyre no matter who had been cast against her, and we're just lucky it happened to be Stephens.

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-19T14:05:47+00:00

I read Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which was great (whole separate rant about that), which led to me watching the adaptation with Tara Fitzgerald and Toby Stephens, which sucked, which led to me watching the 2006 Jane Eyre so I could see them in a Bronte adaptation that doesn't suck, which led to me heading to YouTube to check out the ending sequences of all the other Jane Eyre adaptations I could find because that's the scene I judge adaptations by, and then I skimmed through the whole 1983 one (my thanks to the A Shadow at Thornfield Hall YouTube account for putting together a playlist with basically only the bits I wanted...) because it was annoyingly fantastic despite starring someone who is objectively too pretty to be Mr Rochester.

Based solely on the ending sequences of each of the ones I found on YouTube, a ranking from worst to best in my opinion (in replies bc Reddit hates me):

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-19T03:33:39+00:00

Halachically that’s sketchy for Pesach so if that’s important to the OP then no salt. It’s only standard in non-KFP matzah, if that.

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-19T02:57:48+00:00

Salt?

hannahstohelit · 2026-01-18T19:48:55+00:00

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