IMDb - Fun, informative and kinda addictive!

The Internet Movie Database

IMDb. I can't believe there are people out there who don't know about it. Whether you are a movie lover looking for a review or information on a film or just a middle aged person wracking your brains for the name of some movie star ("You know...the actress with the big mouth...she was in that film from the 80s...the one about the high class prostitute...Julia Roberts!") this website is the go to spot for movies and TV.

My son loses hours on YouTube. I lose hours on IMDb. I blame my sister for this, as she introduced me to the site! Launched in 1990 and bought by the evil Amazon (who suck money out of my pockets monthly!) in 1998, it is supposedly accessed by 44 million registered users, and many more unregistered ones.

So let me demonstrate how I lose these hours! Take a recently viewed film, the adaptation of EM Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread, which of course I had purchased a while ago from said evil Amazon corporation (probably one of those "suggestions" which always seem to be spot on. I am not hard to read).

I go to IMDb to find out when it was made (1991), how well it was rated (6.6- not so bad for an obscure period drama) and the names of all the actors.

Rupert Graves. Ooooh, I love him. What else has he been in? Click on his name. Hmmmm. Lots of stuff there for him to be my next Actor of the Week!

A Room With a View- Freddy Honeychurch
The Madness of King George- Robert Fulke Greville
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall- Huntingdon
Sweet Revenge (The Revenger's Comedies)- Oliver Knightly
The Forsyte Saga- Jolyon Forsyte Jr.
Death at a Funeral- Robert
Made in Dagenham- Peter Hopkins
Garrow's Law- Sir Arthur Hill
Sherlock- DI Lestrade

The White Queen as Lord Thomas Stanley...this is new...just filming?...what is this about? CLICK!

Tagline "Women caught up in the conflict for the throne of England". Well, that grabs my interest. A BBC television series? Who else does it star? Rebecca Ferguson as Queen Elizabeth? Never heard of her but she is very pretty. Swedish. Hmm. Her mother Rosemary is related to Sarah Ferguson? Mildly interesting.

Who else? Amanda Hale...she sounds familiar. Oh yes, Mary Musgrove from the latest Persuasion adaptation with Sally Hawkins and Rupert Penry-Jones.

Who else? Backclick, backclick...Janet McTeer! I love her too! She was so awesome as Mrs. Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility 2008, but I have seen her somewhere else recently.

Oh yes, she was Mrs. Satterthwaite in Parade's End, and Mrs. Daily in The Woman in Black and Hubert Page in Albert Nobbs. She has been busy lately! Oh, she also played Vita Sackville-West in Portrait of a Marriage. May have to check that one out. And she was in Into the Storm, playing the wife of Winston Churchill played by Brendan Gleeson.

So you see, a whole day can be spent in this manner. I hesitate to say wasted, as I always enjoy myself and usually find another topic for my blog. Look out for my next two Actors of the Week!

So that's my tribute to IMDb. I had better turn the computer off now before I fall down the rabbit hole again and disappear for hours.

Cheers!

Remains of the Day, Where Angels Fear to Tread, and other stuff

Remains of the Day is one of those films I thought I had seen, but I think I had only seen snippets of it on television. It's much better when you see the beginning and the end of it!

Based on the 1989 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro who is a Japanese born but English raised author, this Merchant Ivory film ends up being a fascinating look at English sensibility through the eyes of an outsider. Nuanced and yet intense it is a very riveting film, but I can't say it is one of my faves.

Fabulous performances from Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson along with some pretty gorgeous period locations certainly make this one stand out. Great supporting performances from Hugh Grant, Christopher Reeve, Tim Piggott-Smith and James Fox are absolutely worth mentioning.

The only question remains, why did it take me so long to see this film?

Where Angels Fear to Tread was one I had never heard of. I am afraid my science background didn't give me a good grounding in E.M. Forster. I certainly knew about A Room with a View, Howard's End and A Passage to India, but this, his first novel, was not on my radar.

Again, with a cast that includes Helen Mirren, Helena Bonham-Carter, Judy Davis and Rupert Graves it is certainly worth watching. And again, the setting of Italy a century ago (and the gorgeous Italian actor Giovanni Guidelli) makes it a pleasure to watch.

And yet again, this one is down in my book as well worth seeing, but not one of my faves. I think my faves all have happy endings, so perhaps this reflects more on me, than on these films.

Sweet Revenge is a silly little farce, adapted from an Alan Ayckbourn play called The Revengers' Comedies. If you like dark comedies and tongue in cheek farce then this is for you. If you don't like the idea of the two main characters plotting revenge on each others' nemeses, not stopping far short of murder (played for laughs the whole way) then give this one a pass.

Personally, this one gave me more than a few belly laughs. I was in the mood for something silly and this hit the spot. By the way, keep IMDb handy for this film as every single one of the actors save one was well known to me from other British gems. Helena Bonham Carter, Kristin Scott Thomas and Sam Neill are only the beginning of the star studded cast.

Speaking of silly comedies, Family Tree is one of the oddest and most hilarious things I have seen on TV in a while. A Christopher Guest mockumentary, it follows in the footsteps of This is Spinal Tap and Best in Show but this time he takes on genealogy, an unlikely target for comedy. Apparently the idea came from Guest himself tracing his ancestors and thinking there may be some fodder for laughs. And it works.

It is a bit twisted and bear in mind that it airs on HBO, so not appropriate for children or sensitive types. But again, if you are in the mood for some quirky British comedy starring adorable Irish actor Chris O'Dowd this is your show. I am looking forward to a new episode tonight. The sister's ventriloquist dummy monkey really cracks me up. Try to see the first show if you can, as it really explains the crazy story line. You might be lost otherwise.

Cheers and happy viewing!