The Queen's Gambit

I saw that this show featured chess and I was vaguely intrigued so I chose to pick it up. I fell in love with it pretty quickly, because even if it features chess as the one thing the protag's whole world revolves around, the show and story is about Beth Harmon; an angry little orphan who gets addicted to tranquilizers at a young age, discovers chess, goes on to wow the world all the while digging herself deeper into a hole of alcohol and destruction. 

It doesn't hurt that I like chess, though. I used to play chess as a child but I was never any good at it and I didn't have the motivation to study and practice and get better. Knowing the basics of chess probably helped to appreciate this show on a different level, but even if you know nothing about chess you'll like it if you enjoy stories about complicated people. 

And Anya Taylor-Joy is probably the prettiest person I've seen in ages. Damn, those eyes *w*

Anyway, this show's got so many layers and watching it I couldn't wait to see what Beth would do next. How would she get herself out of her next mess? Really rooting for her to come through this time. Groaning internally as she fell off the wagon again. Rinse and repeat. Even though it's just eight episodes.

The end was glorious. I was smiling like a fool.

 

If the trailer doesn't convince you then have a look at the Behind the Scenes. There may be some light spoilers, though, but it mostly concerns plotting, casting and wardrobe.

 

The Alienist season 2

I'm not okay.

This was not okay.

This season takes up where the last left off. Sara now has a detective agency of her own, employing only women, but as women detectives aren't really taken seriously in the 19th century she only gets small cases from eccentric rich women whose servants are "stealing" their silverware. That is until the case of a missing baby is given to her. John is now working at the Times and is engaged to the daughter of William Randolph Hearst even though everyone knows he's still in love with Sara. Laszlo carries on like usual with his Institute.

The case of the missing baby leads to a woman who's mentally deranged from having misfortune upon misfortune happen to her over the course of her life. Her mother didn't want a child but had one anyway because it was expected of her (this season delves very much into doing what society expects of you versus doing what you actually want) and her father killed himself when she was very young. Her father's suicide led to her and her mother losing the family estate and most of their money. She was sent to a mental institute and when she left it she had a baby. Her mother had that baby taken from her claiming that she had tried to kill her. The loss of the baby on top of everything else makes her kidnap other people's babies and take them for her own, but every time the baby acts out or doesn't behave like hers did she kills them for being "wrong". It's a very interesting psychological case and this season is a wild ride from start to finish. Several times you belive the case to be wrapped up and finished only for it to continue. 

Laszlo calls upon a female colleague to help with this case since he feels himself inadequate in formulating theories concerning women and children and/or motherhood. This woman later gets an invitation to come work with Dr Freud in Vienna and Laszlo spends the last few episodes trying to decide whether to stay in New York or go with her. 

I loved that this season forced the trio to work alongside Byrnes, which made them all bury the hatchet from the first season. I was very pleased with how that all turned out.

I still want Sara to end up with Laszlo, but any kind of spark they may have had in the first season was purposefully shut down in this season. In the end all three of the main characters seem set on doing what they want instead of doing what society wants from them, but at the last second it all goes awry and they end up going separate ways and I'm not okay. Why would you do this?!

Anyway, I got very invested in this show and I just bought the books.

Watch it.

Movies I watched in 2020

Let's clarify this title by saying that I mean modern movies. Because I watched a fair few of black-and-white old-timey horror movies as well.

Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
I watched this movie on my laptop during a pretty dead night shift and it was way better than I thought it would be. I'm not a fan of Jim Carrey; he tends to be too exaggerated imo, but he was pretty good as Dr Robotnik. I grew up watching the animated Sonic series and ofc I have played the Sonic games, so this was also a pretty neat nostalgia trip.

Birds of Prey (2020)
This is also a movie I watched on my laptop during a dead night shift. As always I really enjoyed the girl power in it. After everything bad I had heard about Suicide Squad I didn't have any expectations for this movie, which may be why I ended up liking it so much. But Harley has always been one of my favourite DC characters. 

Aquaman (2018)
We watched this for a date night and it was really good. Better than I thought it would be tbh. 

Detective Pikachu (2019)
Another date night movie. Both of us grew up with Pokémon and so we had a lot of fun with this movie. Best part was that Mewtwo didn't have to be the bad guy in this one.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)
Another one I watched on my phone during a pretty dead evening shift (there were lots of dead shifts in spring 2020). As a Eurovision geek this movie hit all the right targets. I especially loved that Edinburgh was the host city for the competition (as if the UK would win lol). I was a little bit wary of watching a movie with Will Ferrell in it since he's usually in movies I cringe at, but this movie was just the right level of funny. I loved the song along and all the known Eurovision faces/songs that showed up in that scene. It got all the glittery, gay, tacky, over-the-top bs about Eurovision right. I only recently learned that Graham Norton is the Eurovision host in the UK, but after watching this movie I wish I could tune in to watch Eurovision in the UK every year. I could definitely watch this again. PLAY  JA JA DING DONG!!

It: Chapter Two (2019)
We watched the first part at the cinema, but then life happened and we somehow missed that part two got released. So we watched this one on Netflix one night. The adaptation is really, really close to the book. And I'm still disappointed about It's actual appearance. 

Joker (2019)
This movie was amazing. I'm going to assume everybody has felt like they're going to go insane by society's expectations at some point, which is what makes this scarily relatable but also so so good. Probably movie of the year for me. 

Venom (2018)
We like superhero movies so it was a given that we would watch this at some point. We talked about seeing it at the cinema in 2018, and then talked about watching it all of 2019, and then we finally did in 2020. Good things come to those who wait? Meeeh. This movie was pretty meh. Entertaining but probably in the bottom tier of the movies we watched in 2020. 

Enola Holmes (2020)
I made us watch this. I was excited for this movie. I really liked this movie. It was upbeat and fun and just the right amount of girly. Toni felt it was very very meh. I want to watch it again. Sometimes we commit to the stereotypes. (Very rarely).

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)
For Halloween week we decided it was time to watch a scary movie for date night. I looked up a bunch of trailers on Netflix, pitched the ones I liked the most to Toni and then we decided on this one. Both of us are kind of wary when it comes to horror movies, because they usually follow the same pattern and end up being just thoroughly disappointing. This one was actually good. We both liked this one. First scary movie we've watched in years and we both enjoyed it. Thanks, Netflix.

Annihilation (2018)
With the previous success we decided to watch another horror movie. But this time we didn't do the research. The trailer for this looked good when we were scrolling through Netflix. It started with so much potential and ended up being really... dumb. And that's what we both dislike about horror movies. They start out so so promising and then they just fall flat on their face. Like this one did. Even with Natalie Portman in it.

Before I Wake (2016)
The last movie of the year continued the horror theme, but this time we did the research. Or rather I did. Same procedure as for Scary Stories. And this one was also really good. Not as good as Scary Stories, but it didn't fall flat and we both enjoyed it. The premise has been done before, but not to death, so that was a nice change. I loved the ending. Which was also a nice change for a horror movie. 

My last 4 books of 2020

1. Overwatch Anthology 1. I have a few friends who are reaaaaally into Overwatch and I was talked into joining them in a few games. Which I did. And had a bunch of fun. But I really lament the lack of a story mode in the game and so I started researching the characters, watched the Overwatch cinematics on Youtube and bought the comics anthology. I would've liked the comics to be a bit longer. They were all a bit on the short side. That said I did enjoy the comics starring Ana, Soldier and Reaper. The OG. I also had a lot of fun reading the comic about Torbjörn and Bastion, mainly because of the signs and headlines in Swedish (and actually grammatically correct Swedish unlike Brigitte's name and the fisherman outfit in the game). I'm a big fan of both Reaper and Tracer in the game and I also liked Tracer's comics in this anthology, especially her origin story. I hope there'll be a second anthology, but until that happens, I guess I have to read the rest of the comics on Blizzard's website. 

2. Whispers Under Ground, by Ben Aaronovitch. Really getting into this series now and it's starting to get interesting. Different kinds of magical folk, new kinds of magic and a sinister plot that we're only just beginning to uncover all dolled up as a common police procedural? I'm all for it! I love how Peter is basically just throwing his secret around and Nightingale is wincing at every turn over his lack of respect for the secrecy. The dynamic between the characters is half the fun of this series, along with all the references to Harry Potter, Doctor Who and Lord of the Rings. Just like the last book was all about jazz, this one was all about art and specifically pottery, but I enjoyed this subject a lot more than the jazz. Especially so since it offered a deep-dive into London history. In this book we have a proper murder investigation going and the victim is American so the FBI gets brought into the mix. I had a lot of fun reading this book and I'm tempted to get the rest of the series in one go and read them all in succession. But my reading backlog would hate me if I did. 

3. King of Scars, by Leigh Bardugo. I love, love, love the Grishaverse! The majority of this book was bittersweet nostalgia from the Shadow & Bone trilogy, but it was also peppered with references to Six of Crows. This book is probably the first time I've enjoyed reading about Nina. I loved Nikolai already in the first Grisha trilogy and I loved him when he showed up in Crooked Kingdom and I still loved him in this book. After five books in the Grishaverse, as a reader you feel pretty confident that you know how it works with the powers and the Saints and everything, but in the second half of this book Bardugo turns it all upside down and makes the reader reevaluate everything they think they know. I really appreciate when authors do that and when they do it so that the reader's preconceptions have to be reevaluated at the same pace that the characters' do. I really didn't see the end coming and Rule of Wolves promises to be very interesting. The ending had me actually filled with dread and anticipation of what's to come, and at the same time I'm super excited because Rule of Wolves promises the return of one of my favourite characters from Shadow & Bone. I'm stoked!

4. Ninth House, by Leigh Bardugo. At this point I'm willing to read anything Leigh Bardugo puts her name on. This book was way different than the Grishaverse books she has written before, for one it's an adult novel; not YA, and for another it's urban fantasy. It did take a while to get into and the timing of the plot was a little bit confusing to begin with, but once I got to around 70-100 pages the rules of this new world had settled and things started to make sense. The most profound (and also feminist) quote of the book is: "Did she seem depressed? She was distant. She didn't make many friends. She was struggling in her classes. All true. But would it have mattered if she'd been someone else? If she'd been a social butterfly, they would have said she liked to drink away her pain. If she'd been a straight-A student, they would have said she'd been eaten alive by perfectionism. There were always excuses for why girls died." There were always excuses for why girls died. This one sentence is the basis for the whole book and it matters in ways I couldn't even imagine in the first half of the book. Heck, those words' meaning for the plot didn't become obvious until the last fifteen pages. The way the pieces of the puzzle come together is beautiful. The story is compelling. I loved this book.

Game discovery of the year: Overwatch

I'm probably the last person to the party when it comes to this game. But I've never been one to keep up on trends quickly. 

I have a few online friends who are really into this game and have been for years. I met two of them for the first time in September 2019 and after that I bought the game, although I didn't play until May 2020. 

It's not a game that I pick up to play alone, but playing it with friends it's great fun. I like how quick a match is and how fast and intense the gameplay is. Although that was a challenge for my first few games because I didn't know the maps and everyone was just so much quicker than I was.

I'm not great at shooters, any kind of shooter, be it single-player or multiplayer. But when a match is so quick it doesn't really matter as long as you're not playing comp and I doubt I'll ever set my foot in comp. 

This far I've played the game five evenings of 2020 and mostly I've had a lot of fun. I've experimented with Soldier, Tracer, McCree, Genji, and Ashe, but I always come back to Reaper. Anybody surprised that my fave is the edgyboi? No? Me neither =D

I won't say that I'll never sit down to play this game on my own, but it seems like a game that's better suited to play in good company. Too much salt otherwise. 

I got my first Play of the Game for this stunt:

Reading spurt before 2020 ends

I've been falling behind on my reading challenge on Goodreads this year so figured I'd do a spurt consisting mostly of comics to finish the year on top. Here's what I've read:

1. The DC Universe by Neil Gaiman. This is a compilation of the DC comics written by Gaiman. I am a Marvel girl at heart, but I've always had a soft spot for Batman simply because his universe is so damned detailed. I love it. So out of the stories in this compilation my favourite has to be the final one Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader, but I also really enjoyed the Penguin origin story and the little tidbit called A Black and White World where they pretend that the Batman and the Joker are just characters played by people and they're complaining about the daily grind while acting out their scenes. That was a pretty neat spin that I really liked.

2. Cinnamon, by Neil Gaiman. One of his most recent teeny tiny children's books. I rarely read children's books for small children, save for when Gaiman writes them, because I love his ability to fit lots of story into small spaces. My favourite is still The Wolves in the Walls, but Cinnamon was very sweet. I just wish there was more to her story so I'm hoping we'll get more Cinnamon at some point. Like we got more Chu. Pretty pictures, sweet story. Definitely a thumbs up. 

3. Odd and the Frost Giants, by Neil Gaiman. I've been putting off reading this for so long and I don't know why. Guess the cover didn't really call to me or something. But I finally did and I loved it. I loved the spin on the Norse mythology and I loved how Chris Riddell almost certainly was inspired by John Bauer's trolls for the Frost Giants. It's also very fitting reading this now when I only recently finished playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla and my head is stuffed full of Viking stuff. This story was just really my speed at the moment. It's a classic fairytale of talking animals and gods and magic and happy endings, but it also has all the adult hints that children's stories usually do about love and alcohol and wanting things you can't have even though you're old enough. I could definitely read this over and over again.

4. A Study in Emerald, by Neil Gaiman. Sherlock Holmes meets Lovecraftian horror and it's brilliantly done. It starts out as the first Sherlock Holmes story; A Study in Red, but soon turns Lovecraftian as it becomes obvious that it's common knowledge that all the royals of the world have green blood. A few pages more and it's obvious that the ones they call the royals are in fact the Old Ones who returned from the deep 700 years earlier. This is absolutely brilliant and incredibly well done. And that twist at the end? Wonderful.

And I still didn't manage to complete my reading challenge for 2020. I fell short on three books. 

2020 recap

This whole year has been so strange. I remember we welcomed 2020 with Year Zero as the first song played after midnight. It seemed fitting. And in January this year seemed to be like any other year. I got my only international trip done in January and it was a success! In February I went to visit my parents and to celebrate my grandmother's birthday as I usually do. 

Then corona came. At first it seemed like it would be something happening all the way over there. In Asia. Far away from here. Then it broke out in Italy, and when all the Swedes came back from their Alpine skiing trips it broke out here in early March. It was so strange. March is usually a very busy month at the hotel where I work and this year was no exception. We literally watched the hotel go from fully booked to almost empty in less than a week, and for the following weeks all we did were cancellations. Getting a reservation, any reservation, was a cause for celebration. My two following trips to visit my parents were cancelled, the music festival we go to every year was cancelled, and any planes of going abroad again this summer were cancelled. Along with everything that happened came the fear of losing our jobs, and there were a lot of people being let go (with the promise to be reinstated should things return to normal) and most of the people that weren't let go were put on furlough. But even with all the restrictions and all the things happening there was a hope that this would just be a quick thing and by September we would be up and running as normal again. We were basically at war with a virus. An enemy that seemed to have all the advantages no matter what we did. But I dreamed of the day I'd be able to proclaim that we did it! And happily go to work facing a fully booked hotel and 120 arrival rooms on a Monday. Raise Your Horns became my soundtrack for the entire spring of 2020.

The summer came and the amount of new cases went down. People relaxed and with the summer holidays came the summer guests and things almost seemed normal again. July to October was incredibly busy for the amount of staff we had left. The whole summer disappeared in a daze and somewhere around September it started to feel like five years had passed since March. With numbers slowly starting to climb back up to normal and still with the diminished staff caused by corona we all had to work so very hard to keep the place running as smoothly as possible. Head Above Water became my soundtrack for this period. It was the perfect song to make me feel strong enough to face more. 

Then came the second wave in the beginning of November and any hope of us beating this thing within the year dimmed and died. Around the same time I grew sick of all the stupid platitudes people in charge kept feeding us. All the "stay strong"s and "hold on"s made me sigh and roll my eyes. I don't need platitudes anymore, or reassurances. I don't think any of us do. We've been holding on the entire year. We know we have to just bite down and keep on going. What else can we do? Telling us to do so is just a pat on the head, as if we didn't already know. I'm sick of hearing about it, I'm sick of thinking about it, I'm sick of wondering whether I'll get it again. I'm just sick of it all. 

This recap somehow became a fuck 2020 post. But I'll go with it.

There's nothing anyone can do. There's nothing anyone can say. There's little can be done right now to make this go away. Clichéd simple platitudes do naught to quell the dread and the breadth of gravity just send me crawling back to bed. It's useless in this moment to say we'll get through this somehow. There's time enough for action but that time isn't now. Soon we can stop planning for what may come to be, but what I could really use right now is a bacon roll and a cup of tea. I don't need positive affirmations, I need to scream and bawl. The unrealistic expectations won't help with this at all. This is shit. Well, this is shit. I'm not expecting answers, because they're out of your remit. I'm not looking for solutions just someone to admit that this is shit, this is shit, this is shit. You're trying to be helpful and that is always nice. But right now your logic only grates so don't try to give advice. I need someone to rant at who'll not judge or take offense of my incessant fucking swearing and my unfiltered sentiment. So stop the pragmatic intervention just nod and say you'll understand. Pretend I'm not being an unreasonable arsehole and hold on to my hand. This is shit. Oh, this is shit. I'm not expecting answers, because they're out of your remit. I'm not looking for solutions just someone to admit that this is shit, this is shit, this is shit. So let's just sit and quietly get pissed and drunkenly attempt to overanalyze all of this. We may now be bidding the old times goodbye so let's not feel too embarrassed to have a bloody good cry. This is shit. Well, this is shit. I'm not expecting answers, because they're out of your remit. I'm not looking for solutions just someone to admit that this is shit, this is shit, this is shit. 

Game completed: Assassin's Creed Valhalla

I loved this game. It took me 132 hours to complete. I wasn't planning on getting this game. I was going to keep working on my backlog until Cybperunk dropped and then dive straight into that. But then I figured why not and bought Valhalla and started playing. And it was amazing.

The game starts right away and I thought I had been an idiot and missed the point where I could change whether Eivor was male or female. But I figured I could try to play as a man since that's where the game starts; with a boy. But after just a few minutes I realised it would be way too jarring for me to have a man with a grandmother's name. But just as I was about to restart and try to figure out where to decide on Eivor's gender the cutscenes ended and I was able to choose. Phew!

Female Eivor has recieved a lot of criticism for being too manly, too try-hard, too butch, but I loved her. She was rough, sure, but she had to grow up rough. She played with the boys and she grew up a warrior, which wasn't all that unusual for the time. 

The story intrigued me from the start and I wanted to keep it going, but I can't move on to a new zone until I have completely covered the zone I'm in and getting every single collectable, every single side quest, and explored every inch of the map. So it was over 10 hours before I actually completed the prologue and left Norway for England.

Once we got to England the story really kicked off. The whole Order layout reminded me of Shadow of Mordor and I really enjoyed working my way through it. I did not expect that part of the game to end as it did.

The first time I travelled to Asgard I thought it was so cool! And it was after that first trip that I started to suspect where the story was headed. Except I absolutely did not figure out Basim's role in the whole thing and so was pleasantly surprised at how the story unfurled. In hindsight I really should've seen that coming smh. 

The side things to be done in each zone consisted of wealth (ingots for equipment improvement, skill books, equipment and materials for upgrading your settlement), mysteries (cairns, flyting, offering altars, legendary animals, treasures of britain, daughters of lerion, lost drengr, fly agarics, world events, standing stones and animus anomalies), and artifacts (flying papers, rigosogur fragments, treasure hoard maps, roman artifacts and cursed symbols). The wealth and artifacts were mostly just go here and figure out how to pick up the thing. Mysteries were usually either battles or tiny side quests. I ended up hating cairns, offering altars, animus anomalies and flying papers. Still, I did them all. Cairns is always at a place with a great view requiring you to stack stones into cairns the way RL Vikings did, and I hated it because it always took too much damn time and they always fell over :@ Offering altars weren't that many, but some of them asked for fish and I despise fishing in any game. Flying papers required you to chase after a flying paper over the rooftops of towns and I suck at jumping puzzles, which is also why I hated the animus anomalies because they were jumping puzzles deluxe. 

The game broke my heart so many times as so many characters grew close to you just to be taken away, and it always made me so sad. But I also got to sleep with a bunch of people and that always made me giggle :3 Eivor's conquests in my game became Randvi, Broder, Petra, Vili and Tarben. I really wanted a relationship with either Vili or Ubba, but I had to make do with Tarben. 

Towards the end I made sure to pick up both Excalibur and Mjölnir (Thor's Hammer) so I ended the game wielding Excalibur in one hand and Mjölnir in the other. So badass! :3

I finished pretty much everything, but Uplay says my completion is at 91%. The only things I haven't done are the fishing deliveries (because I hate fishing), the hunting deliveries (because I couldn't be bothered), the dice games and the drinking games (because again I couldn't be bothered). Maybe when the DLCs drop and I have a reason to play it again I'll work on completing those as well. 

When the game ended I both felt like I was happy that it was done and like I needed way more. Can't wait for the DLCs!!!

I haven't played all of the previous AC, but I've read up on them enough to know the protag's names and their general roles in the grand scheme of things. I really appreciated all of the nods to Altaïr, Edward Kenway, Desmond, Bayek and Kassandra :3

The Final Table

I love cooking shows. But not the Jamie Oliver or Kitchen Nightmares kind. I love the skilled chefs are competing against each other shows and I used to watch multiple reruns of all the different MasterChef shows when we still had a TV box and channels. 

One day I really wanted to watch something like MasterChef and so I turned to Netflix to see what was there that could be similar. I found The Final Table. A cooking show where experienced chefs pair up to cook national dishes from around the world in a competition to earn a seat at the final table alongside legendary chefs from all over the world. One team has to leave at the end of every episode until the finale where the remaining two teams are split up and the four contestants compete against each other.

I had a lot of fun watching this show and I wish they'd do more seasons of this.

I absolutely did not agree with the winner, but what do I know :P Charles was my favourite, but I also really liked the Australian guys. 

The Rain

I've been curious about this show for a while. It's something as rare as a Danish post-apoc show and it's really good. Especially in 2020.

It starts as a post-apoc story which turns into an origin story which in turn transforms into a redemption story. It's really something. 

So the plot for season one is that a deadly virus is transmitted in the rain and any and all water is deadly unless boiled first. The story follows siblings Simone and Rasmus as they're thrust into a bunker by their dad and Simone is quietly (and in confidence) told that Rasmus is the key and she needs to protect him and not let anybody know. She diligently follows her dad's orders for six years, but then they run out of food and they have to venture outside. And from there the secret comes out. 

How do you combat a virus that is almost sentient?

Being a Danish show of course there are both Danish and Swedish actors in it and they both speak their native languages and mostly understand each other. I had no issue understanding any of the Danish except when they talked really fast or mumbled or used slang that I don't know. But usually I could keep up. Toni didn't understand anything :P And they did poke fun of that in the show. Like mostly they understand each other, but some of them were constantly "what's she/he saying?"

The show takes place on both sides of the border, and interestingly 99% of all the Swedes they meet are bad guys. It makes me wonder if that's a trope or stereotype in Denmark? Because the trope/stereotype here is usually that the Danes are the drunken/fun/stupid people xD 

Anyway, I enjoyed the show overall, but in the last season they seemed to have forgotten about the rain and the water, and there's no explanation as to why the rain suddenly isn't lethal anymore. Or why Rasmus suddenly starts getting sick in the last season when he's been impervious to sickness before. Those are probably the only complaints I have about an otherwise excellent show.

The Crown season 4

I was wary for this season, because with the introduction of Diana we're heading into modern territory and although it's now more than 20 years since she passed what happened is still embedded in people's memories and it still seems so fresh. I was six years old when she passed and, as a child living in a different country not yet old enough to pay attention to news, I didn't even notice. I learned about what had happened many years later and I didn't think anything of it other than that it was sad. My interest in royals came several years later.

But I found that they had handled it perfectly. They didn't skim the fact that Diana was way too young and thrust into a situation way out of her comfort zone. The royals behaved as they were brought up to believe they were supposed to, but nobody bothered to tell Diana why. The whole situation was a mess. 

A lot of things that maybe should've been in the season got pushed out for the whole Diana and Charles thing. Like the IRA bombing in the first episode... Shouldn't there have been more Ireland stuff in the season if they start out like that? And the whole thing with the wounded stag seemed extremely exaggerated. 

I only noticed in this season that they completely skipped anything Anne related in the previous seasons. In this season she's suddenly married with kids and the marriage isn't going well, but nowhere in the previous seasons did they mention marriage or even dating or her having kids. I knew it had happened, but even so it seemed pulled out of the blue when Anne briefly discussed her marriage with the Queen. I really enjoyed the episode where the Queen had invidvidual lunches with all four of her children. 

I loved everything related to Thatcher. She tried so hard and fought for what she believed in and really thought she could improve the country. And the country went against her every move. I was teary-eyed when the Queen awarded her the medal at the end of the season. 

This is still one of my favourite shows.

Watching old, old movies part 13

I'm going through this list, and here are my previous entries.

37. Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
Based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe starring Vincent Price. I don't even know what to say about this movie except that I really liked it. It's the classic Poe story of love, despair and madness and how one can lead to the other. My modern ass immediately starts to pick through the mental aspects of the characters. How Nicholas probably suffered from PTSD from experiencing what he did as a child and how that affects him as an adult. And how his experiences with his wife and her death makes his mind split on itself and create a dual personality. It's all really interesting stuff and the storytelling is superb. On a silly note; I really don't mind seeing Vincent Price run around in tights. In hindsight I would've loved a haunted house that was actually haunted or if it turned out there were vampires, but the way this story unfolded was so intimitely Poe that I can't be anything but pleased with it. One of the better movies on the list.

38. The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
This movie was a b**** to find online and it was so not worth it. It makes no sense storywise and it even made me laugh out loud several times because of pure ridiculousness. The continuity is a mess and the characters make no sense and the acting is stale and stiff. I'm hoping that this movie only has the rating it has on IMDB because it helped shape the zombie genre and not because people think there's anything good about it. Because if there is I thoroughly missed it. So an old doctor and his daughter receives a letter from a previous pupil and they go down to Cornwall to visit him and his wife. The pupil writes the doctor because a lot of people have died lately from an unknown illness and he'd like his previous teacher's insight. As soon as the doctor and his daughter gets to the town the whole story is a mess. There's a pack of fox hunters who for some reason rides right through a funeral procession because the daughter told them she saw the fox run that way, without any regard for the funeral. Wut? They arrive at the house and it's immediately frickin obvious that something's wrong with the wife, but nobody notices. Wut? The wife then decides to go wandering in the night and is killed by a zombie, who turns out to be the guy that got buried in the beginning. So the doctor and his pupil decides to do a little gravedigging only to find the grave is empty. Surprise! Suspicion somehow falls on the rich guy and his pack of fox hunters who abduct and attack the doctor's daughter and then lets her go for no reason, only to have the rich guy visit her later and get hold of her blood. And she lets him in just like that. Wut? The doctor somehow draws the conclusion that it's due to black magic and conveniently finds that the vicar has a book about voodoo. Wut? He reads that one book and decides that it's all due to voodoo and that the rich guy is to blame because he has *gasp* travelled. Wut? The wife awakens and threatens to kill the pupil and the doctor, but the doctor swiftly cuts off her head with a spade. Wut? The zombies awake en masse and the doctor breaks into the rich guy's home to find evidence, which he does and then sets the whole place on fire. Wut, why? They then find out that the rich guy uses the zombies as workers in his mine, because apparantly they aren't dangerous to him. Wut? The fire then somehow spreads into the mine and the zombies start to attack the rich guy once their coffins catch fire. Wut, weren't the coffins still in the earth on the graveyard? As the mine collapses in the fire all is well and the movie ends. Wut? I was in disbelief for most of this movie. 

39. The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
Another Poe story adaptation starring Vincent Price. While I have really enjoyed the other Poe story adaptations on the list so far; this one kept disappointing me until the last 30 minutes. It was unusual to see Vincent Price playing the obviously and outright bad guy, since in every other film I've seen him he's played a gentle but twisted person who the world takes for a very bad ride resulting in destroying his morality. But in this one he was just a depraved person from the start. The heroine is so very pretty but awfully dumb. The original Poe story tells of a prince who is really into extravaganza and likes to flaunt his wealth, but for some reason the movie makers involved a Satanist plot that adds absolutely nothing and that there's literally no point of having. Both the story and the movie are morality plays, but it's a version that's been done to death in everything from fairytales and Disney to modern thrillers. The Poe story is good, but the movie doesn't own it. The Red Death comes to the nearby village and kills everyone within days, The remaining villagers go to the castle to beg prince Prospero for aid, who naturally tells the guards to shoot the remaining villages but the Red Death has already spread to the castle. As the illness spreads Prospero gets a visit from literal Death and has a conversation with him about gods and faith, which ends in Prospero trying to outrun his fate and yet he, too, falls victim to the Red Death. 

It's Price. It's Poe. And I was hoping for greatness. Instead I got disappointment. Or this movie just hits a bit too close to home this year.

I'm thirty

So there we go. I'm thirty years old and I can't believe it. I've left my twenties behind, although I still feel like I haven't changed since I was twenty-five. 

Turning thirty in 2020 absolutely sucked. I managed to get two weeks off from work which I had originally planned to use to celebrate. One weekend with friends, one weekend with family and maybe a staycation of two days in a city close by that I haven't really visited before. None of that happened because just as November started the second wave of covid kicked off for real and everything shut down again and multiple new restrictions and rules were put in place. I should've had my birthday in August or something when things were almost normal. 

Instead we celebrated at home. We watched a movie, had some snacks and cake and a fancy dinner, and then we played some games. I also got to celebrate a little bit with Toni's family since his older sister and one of his nieces have their birthdays in the same week as I do. 

I've heard a lot of talk from friends that your 30s are pretty much like your 20s. Time to find out if that's true. I enjoyed my 20s and I'm hoping I'll get to enjoy my 30s as well even if the start was crappy and unlike any other year I've seen. 

I made a Spotify playlist in the honour of my big day :P

The Haunting of Bly Manor

After the absolute amazing thing that was the first season I was really looking forward to the second season. Or should I say second anthology? 

As soon as the first episode started with the nanny's interview with the uncle I thought it all seemed very familiar. And that feeling lingered until I got to the scene where the nanny asks to get out of the car to walk the last part up to the house and she meets Flora by the lake. That's when it clicked. The novel that this anthology is based on is also the base for one of the old-timey movies I've watched: The Innocents from 1961. With that out of the way I could sit back and enjoy what was to come.

Except this anthology proved thoroughly underwhelming. Hill House had creepier ghosts, creepier house, and was overall a lot creepier. Bly Manor had the creepy kids that soon stopped being creepy and ended up being repetitive. The ghosts weren't creepy, just sad, and the characters had pretty boring backstories.

I was pretty intrigued by the ghost that followed the nanny around to begin with, but then he just up and left when she asked him to? Hadn't she tried that before?!?!?

The conclusion of the series was pretty neat and clever and I enjoyed seeing all the pieces come together, but the road to get there was... tiresome.