Tuesday, March 2, 2010

A Few Recommendations

I'm sorry it has been so long since I last posted. It's been since last month in fact!
These past few days have been filled with storms both spiritually and then physical storms in my northern climate which left me without power for 60+ hours. It was very interesting trying to celebrate my father's birthday with no electricity - it's rather hard to bake cakes and watch new movies. But my family and I made it through and mostly enjoyed our time "camping" and seeing the joy in simple things. Now that I have electricity again it makes me appreciate my modern conveniences such as hot water, lights and washing and cooking appliances. But I've also re-discovered the fun of playing board games and card games with my family and watching the snowflakes fall outside our windows.

Now as promised here are some recommendations of items I have recently purchased and have been enjoying:


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My family and I had been trying to watch BBC's new production of Emma on Masterpiece Theatre but for whatever reason our local station never did air the final episode! I also found PBS' airing Emma in 3 episodes to be very disappointing as I noticed a few scenes from the original were cut rather short for time's sake. So Emma was purchased from Amazon.com for a very low price (my local department store is selling it for 5 dollars more) and a re-viewing of Emma commenced. What a delight to find this 2 disc set does indeed contain all original scenes in their entirety! Also there are four lovely special features on the DVD set which include an interview with actor Michael Gambon, and discussions about Emma's Locations, Emma's Costumes and Emma's Music. These beautifully done behind-the-scenes videos show how much thought was put into every detail of the miniseries. How lovely when you can see actors and movie makers really understanding Jane Austen's novel! They just totally get it!
I am really loving this adaptation of Emma, it is so thoughtfully done and has many lovely moments.


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Along with my collection of Jane Austen movie adaptations is my much smaller Jane Austen soundtrack collection. I love the music from the new Emma miniseries and truly coveted this soundtrack to add to my collection. I must have been feeling rich because I went ahead and bought it along with the Emma DVD. And I was not disappointed! This is an excellent recording of some very beautiful period music. There are 28 tracks and just about 45 minutes of musical delights! It contains two of the dance numbers from the film and each moment of excitement, sadness and joy are bottled up in this wonderful CD. Highly recommended!


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When purchasing the Emma Soundtrack Amazon ads brought up another interesting item none other than The Music of Cranford soundtrack! I didn't even know there was such a thing! And come to find out the music was composed by none other than Carl Davis who also composed the wonderful scores for Pride & Prejudice 1996. This CD has 30 tracks and just about 1 hour of listening time! I was also extremely pleased by the cover art and accompanying booklet which not only has notes about and by the composer but also includes detailed info on each track of music and what is happening during each piece of music! It is altogether a lovely item and I am totally enjoying it!

So there are three items that if you don't have them you absolutely should! I just love period drama and music and these are some of the finest!

Hope you're having a simply delightful day! God bless! :)

1 comment:

Amy DeTrempe said...

Sorry you were without power for so long, but glad you rediscovered some fun stuff. Thanks for the tip on Emma.

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