The Squeee

I'm a little bit late with this (sorry!), mainly due to having had a busy Xmas and having a less than charming cold at the same time. :( Hope you've all had a lovely time, celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, Kwanzaa, or whatever religious denomination floats your boat. I quite like the term "Xmas" because it's nicely unspecific, even though technically the X comes from the Greek letter pronounced "chi" or something, which is used when you start to spell "Christ", but still. Big letter X:es are good, they remind me of The X-Files . ;) Anyway. It's that time of year, and I'd like to wish everyone a splendidly Merry Xmas (retroactively) and a fantastically Happy New Year :D The little fella on the top was found somewhere online a number of years back and used to come out around this time of year at my old Thomas Anders fansite, Weidungs Welt! ... and I went and got him out again, along with this old photo manip: 'Tis t

Thought it was time for one of these again. Fourth in the series, points 301-400 on signs you're obsessed with Modern Talking. Last updated: 4 September 2000, and I haven't updated spelling and grammar mistakes since then. Again, this is a fairly insane list, mainly played for laughs, and no, I didn't get all points back then. :P Like the previous ones, a lot of things are obscure references to song lyrics, music videos, pictures and interviews. This is the 4th fun little test you can take, and check out exactly how obsessed you are with Modern Talking... :c) Instructions: Check all that apply.

So here's the deal. Imagine an incredibly gorgeous bloke, all tall, dark and handsome, and who you can just picture next to you on a wedding photo, because he's just that droolworthy... Then add on the fact that he's intelligent, well-read, educated, into meditation and Buddhism and seems to be a pretty decent guy all around... but then there's the clincher: He's gay. D'oh!

Sixth and final series of LOST is set to start broadcasting some time in the new year, and I thought I'd brighten up the wait by an exceedingly catchy little tune. :)

If it wasn't for Nat at Richard Armitage Fan Blog , I wouldn't have looked up the cast list for upcoming TV series Strike Back , which is starring Richard Armitage. As she points out , it will also feature some people RA has worked with before, such as Ewen Bremner ( Spooks 8.6), David Harewood (Friar Tuck), and - here's the clincher! - Toby Stephens (Prince John)! Hooray! It will have some other famous faces from costume dramas: Andrew Lincoln (Edgar Linton in WH '09), Jodhi May (Anne Taylor/Weston in Emma '09), and Orla Brady (Cathy in WH '98). Some other people as well, of course, but those are the highlights for me personally. It'll be fun to see Toby Stephens on screen again, and in the same show as Richard Armitage... squee! He's only going to be in two (of six) episodes, mind, and we don't know if they have any scenes together (unless you've read the book the show is based on), but still, same show! As far as I know, Strike Back w

Over at Laura's Reviews , there's a challenge for 2010: read/watch anything by or about the Brontë sisters between January and June. Between three and six things. Sounds easy enough! For more info, and to officially sign up to the challenge, see All About the Brontes Challenge 2010 . I have eight Jane Eyre adaptations that can be watched (and obsessed over, naturally), two to listen to (have started one of them already, i.e. the one from '91 with Ciarán Hinds as Rochester), and then there's Tenant of Wildfell Hall that I could re-watch, and three Wuthering Heights adaptations. Two I've recently written about, so maybe I'll skip those, just like I'd probably skip Jane Eyre '34 and '83 for the same reason. I've not written about Wuthering Heights the book yet, and I have Agnes Grey still to read... maybe give Jane Eyre another read as well... maybe.

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!! I knew they were making a new Jane Eyre adaptation, and it's been known for some time that Ellen Page ( Juno ) had been cast as Jane. No word on Rochester. Also, there was no info on IMDb, unless you had a pro account, as it was in pre-production. Apparently, there are developments!

Third in the series, points 201-300 on signs you're obsessed with Modern Talking. Last updated: 4 September 2000, and I haven't updated spelling and grammar mistakes since then. Again, this is a fairly insane list, mainly played for laughs, and no, I didn't get all points back then. :P Like the previous ones, a lot of things are obscure references to song lyrics, music videos, pictures and interviews. This is the 3rd fun little test you can take, and check out exactly how obsessed you are with Modern Talking... :c) Instructions: Check all that apply.

Second in the series, points 101-200 on signs you're obsessed with Modern Talking. Last updated: 4 September 2000, and I haven't updated spelling and grammar mistakes since then. Again, this is a fairly insane list, mainly played for laughs, and no, I didn't get all points back then. :P Some points I really haven't got a clue what they mean, eg. the spaghetti throwing. WTH? (It might be a reference to something in a piece of fanfic for all I know.) Like the last one, a lot of things are obscure references to song lyrics, music videos, pictures and interviews. This is the 2nd fun little test you can take, and check out exactly how obsessed you are with Modern Talking... :c) Instructions: Check all that apply.

For old times sakes... a list of "You know you're a Modern Talking fan when" type thing which I begun some time in 2000, and managed to get up to about 750 points. I thought I'd make a serial of it! ;) I'll let the grammar and spelling errors stand uncorrected. Let's leave it as a legacy of good times gone by and let's travel back in time... and in case you were wondering, most of the points are obscure references to TV interviews, pictures, song lyrics or music videos, and the vast majority of them are played for laughs as opposed to being something someone would actually really do. I just thought I'd point that out, because the list goes more and more insane the longer it gets... This is the 1st fun little test you can take, and check out exactly how obsessed you are with Modern Talking... :c) Instructions: Check all that apply...

This is a general hommage to my favourite baddies from films and TV! :D The deliciously malicious people who you might love to hate, or hate to love... or just outright fancy. Whatever floats your boat. Most, if not all, of my favourite baddies are either Magnificent Bastards or Smug Snakes according to the TV Tropes Wiki. The two personality types being quite similar. What would Freud say? If I could make out in which order I prefer them, I would list them like that, but since I can't, I'll just go with an A-Z. So to speak. The links are to YouTube clips for the most part. Last revised: 3 June 2011.

Speaking of Heat magazine, I did find something else that seemed interesting. I thought it was a top list of hottest torsos but it wasn't. It's a reader competition: The Heat Readers' Torso 2009 . Send in a piccy of (as they say in this country) a well fit bloke with his top off. He has to be holding a copy of the magazine in question... and of course, you have to have his permission. ;) I wonder if they'll accept a photoshopped piccy of Lucas North or Guy of Gisborne... EDIT: Here are the finalists...

I was trying to find out the list of "Weird Crush of the Year" on the Heat magazine website , but didn't find it. According to the Top Gear website, the Stig is #3 this year . Last year, it was won by Jeremy Clarkson (#9 this year), 2007 by James May (#6) and 2006 by Richard Hammond (#4). Can't really argue with the Stig being a stranger choice of a crush than the other Top Gear boys, all things considered... I couldn't find the list on the Heat website itself, but I did manage to track down the top 10 eventually somewhere else , so here goes: 10. Christopher Dean , ice skater and one half of Torville & Dean 9. Jeremy Clarkson , famous petrol head and TV presenter of Top Gear 8. Russell Howard , stand-up comedian 7. Michael McIntyre , also a stand-up comedian 6. James May , geeky TV-presenter and Top Gear 's "Captain Slow" 5. Simon Cowell , of music business fame and famous for being mean on shows like The X Factor , American Idol and

About 50 pages left of the book now, and have been re-watching Wuthering Heights '09 ... and formed a new opinion. WH'78, frightfully dull as it was, must be the one version closest to the book. Well, except that the book fails to be be dull. The book is rather engaging and not as tedious to read as, oh, Jane Eyre . Emily is more to-the-point than her sister, doesn't go off rambling in purple-tinted prose about stuff that doesn't have an impact on the story or characters. She also doesn't show off her French skills time and time again, although instead, she writes in dialect, which is only marginally easier to understand than the French. WH'98, what I remember of it, is also at least semi-true to the book, but not quite to the same extent.

Just saw a trailer on the SciFi Channel here in the UK. It's got dragons and monsters and... it's called Beyond Sherwood Forest . Yeah, that's right. As in Robin Hood getting another makeover, this time, in a fantasy monster-slayer type way. Its production company, Front Street Pictures , has this plot description for us: A reimagining of the classic Robin Hood tale merges the elements of magic and medieval romance. The Sheriff of Nottingham has targeted Robin and his band of heroes dwelling within Sherwood Forest. To destroy his enemies, the Sheriff unleashes an unstoppable creature that transforms at night into Alina, a striking woman. Robin must find a cure for Alina before her terror spreads, all the while keeping his childhood love Maid Marion out of harm's way. Or, as the Squeeze so eloquently put it: "If you didn't think Merlin went far enough... well, there you go." (That's BBC's Merlin , btw, and it went so far the only reason you'

I thought there should be a list like this. Maybe there already is, I've just not seen it yet. It's not a massive list by the time of posting this (25 points), but I'm hoping you'll help me come up with more so that one day it will be. :) Last updated: 14 June 2012, the list so far: You know you're a Richard Armitage fan when ...

Any suggestions for movies that'd go well with the season? Perhaps an X-Files or Poltergeist: The Legacy marathon? Maybe it's time to watch Possession (Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani, not the one with Jeremy Northam, Jennifer Ehle, Toby Stephens and all - two very different movies indeed). Weeeell, we shall see if there is time to watch a film over the weekend. Got other plans. Oh crud, I just remembered - we went to both Tesco and Asda earlier and we didn't pick up any pumpkins! :/ (Watching the Jonathan Ross Show on BBC1... Mamma Mia! was a truly awful movie. I rarely seriously dislike a film, but good grief, that's one of them. *shudders* An Education looks really interesting though, and I love Carey Mulligan!)

Still no sign of a trailer, but hey, if we are to believe the BBC press release, series 8 of Spooks is heading to our screens next Wednesday, November 4! :D I like the fact it'll be on Wednesdays. There's bugger all else on that day! EDIT 29/10: And here it is, finally! :D Was going to embed it, but it didn't work with the layout (*groan*) so here's the link instead: Spooks Series 8 Trailer 1

While I was cat-sitting the other day (her owned ones are on their honeymoon) and waiting for li'l miss puddytat to come back in, I decided to read some "Jane Eyre" aloud to myself. It was the chapter when she first meets Rochester at Thornfield, i.e. the "yes, you do play a little " bit. And from there, I think it's fair to say that the project of recording Jane Eyre as an audio book has been shelved. I got some great and very detailed feedback from a friend through Facebook, which I'll definitely use in future attempts, but I think it'll have to be something a bit easier than JE. The book is incredibly long, uses a lot of words which are difficult even for native English speakers (and I'm not one of those, as it happens) not just to understand, but for me, they're difficult to pronounce. That's okay, though, but the drawn-out prose does bore me... and, which is a very big contributing factor, I'd have to be speaking French .

These days, I'm a little bit cautious when it comes to new TV shows, just because I know I have a tendency to go a little overboard with them if I happen to like them. I was trying to not get sucked in by Stargate: Atlantis , but it was a good show, with some very attractive casting. There have been a number of new shows out that I've sampled, and the only one I'm currently setting reminders for to watch is Warehouse 13 . Last year, or if it was earlier this year, Fringe started showing on Sky1. Fringe was hailed as a new X-Files , and being about an FBI agent looking into the paranormal... well, you have my attention! The problem with Fringe is that it's sort of trying to be X-Files without actually being X-Files , so it's a bit disappointing. Not a bad show, it's just that... it's not Mulder and Scully. Series 2 starts off with Luke Goss as a guest star, however... so I'll give it another chance. (Oh yeah, there'll be a post aaaaall about that

By googling Spooks 8 in trying to find when it's going to be shown, I came across a Spooks forum which linked to an article in today's Daily Mail, entitled Me, a sex god? Spooks star Richard Armitage on his army of female fans ... When done swooning and squeeing, my reactions are thus: 1. He's no longer living with that previously mentioned lady, so a part of me is sad for his sake, while the other one wants to jump on a train to London. *cough* 2. It also says he can lay laminate flooring. We might want laminate in the new house we're moving to, Richard... fancy popping 'round and givin' us a hand? ;) (OMG, he's good at DIY as well! This guy is starting to sound too good to be true!) 3. He uses words like "frugal". That to me shows that he's well-read. People who are generally have a pretty decent vocabulary. Oh, and he has a "fast mind" (squeee!!) and a "fast metabolism": Richard, we love you already, don't rub it in.

Picking up a curry at the local takeaway tonight, I spotted a headline on the Daily Mail on the table: Taking the pill for past 40 years 'has put women off masculine men' . If ever there was a headline to catch my eye...! It basically says that there might be a correlation between using contraceptive pills and finding more feminine-looking guys attractive. To proove a point, the article is illustrated with pics from different eras. Kirk (not Kurt) Douglas in the 50s, for instance - now, with regards to him and Donald Sutherland, I've always thought their sons were way better-looking, to be honest. It then moves on to Sean Connery and ends with Zac Efron now in the "naughties". If the Pill would make me fancy Zac Efron... I ain't taking it! (Which I'm not and have no plans to, so there you go! The hormones in my body are all my own.)

I actually went to see the Robin Hood exhibition at Nottingham Castle last year, as I was showing someone around town and we decided to pop to the castle for a visit. (Brought the camera and all, should've taken photos, but I didn't. Someone slap me, please, I deserve it.) Now, going to a pretty small exhibition for a show you aren't all that interested in... well, you walk around fairly quickly. If I had been a fan of the show back then, things would've been different. There were clothes on display - one of the outlaws had a pair of Converse on... I'm pretty sure they weren't invented back then. :P There wasn't much to it. Some weapons, some pictures, some clothes, some info on characters, some video footage. Still plenty enough to take pictures of. And yet I didn't. There was also really big pictures of the characters, and I did go slightly weak at the knees seeing Guy towering over me. My reaction was thinking "woah, he's a bit attrac

I've been re-watching BBC's Robin Hood recently. I might decide to write something about that another day, but right now, I just feel like talking about one character in particular. No, not Robin Hood. Jonas Armstrong plays him very well, but Robin is really not a very likable character. Start of series one, he's snogging a random girl, so he must've really missed Marian, right? And the way he treats Much is dispicable. Much is a really sweet character, albeit on the terribly naive side, but he's the sort of friend that sticks with you in thick and thin. His reward? Being bullied! Seriously, it isn't right. Then we have the whole peeping tom thing Robin does ever so often, especially when Marian's with Guy. Now, what would those scenes have been like if she didn't know Robin was there, eh? Anyway, that brings me on to the whole point of this post: Guy of Gisborne.

Last Sunday, saw the trailer for Emma on BBC. It's airing this Sunday at 9pm / 21:00 on BBC One. Starring Angel/Mary Bryant, Eli Stone, Dumbledore, Fran from Black Books and David from Cold Feet . :D More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n7pk1

Amazing video! How can you not just LOVE that man?

Well, apparently... What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm   You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane. Dedicated Reader   Literate Good Citizen   Book Snob   Fad Reader   Non-Reader   What Kind of Reader Are You? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz Yup, sounds about right. ;)

Please consider a donation to your national cancer research society today. Here is a selection of them around the world: American Association for Cancer Research Australian Cancer Research Foundation Canadian Cancer Society Cancer Association of South Africa Cancer Research UK Cancer Society of New Zealand Cancerfonden Sverige Deutsche Krebsforschungszentrum

When I was growing up and TV was showing re-runs of How the West Was Won , my sisters would swoon over Luke Macahan. I'm not sure I quite agreed with them, because by the time I was about 9, I already preferred MacGyver over Brendan Walsh, and besides, the only Western thing I ever really got into was the Lucky Luke comic books. Some years later, I happened upon Babylon 5 . To my surprise, handsome starship captain John Sheridan was in fact Luke Macahan, 15 years later! Now what is it they say about fine wine? They get better with age. If so, is he a red, a white or a rosé? Save me a crate of each just to make sure! IMDb tells me he was about 29 when he played Luke and mid- to late 40s as Sheridan. The whole uniform thing probably played a part as well, because handsome men in uniforms... squee! Last thing I saw him in was probably Heroes , and I really don't object to seeing him there again, because even though he'll be 60 next year, he's still one heck of a handsome

Had Sci-Fi Channel on during the weekend. Saw parts of a film about some sort of rip in time and space that threatened to end the whole universe. Termination Point (2007) . It took me quite some time before I suddenly realised I had seen one of the guys before. Turning to my Squeeze (the husband), I said, flabbergasted, "is that Jason Priestley?!" Indeed it was. The guy turned 40 less than a fortnight ago, and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. Didn't care much for him in Beverly Hills 90210 , which I never saw that much of anyway back in the day, or even Teen Angel , which I DID see, so I must say, he's looking decidedly more appealing to me at 40 than he did at 20. Verdict: Time has been kind indeed! But that's just me. Or is it?

Looked through the cast list for Wuthering Heights '09 and the only names/faces I recognised were Andrew Lincoln as Edgar Linton - who used to be in Afterlife - and Caribbean pirate Kevin McNally. The rest I'm completely in the dark as to who they are. The script writer did Desperate Romantics , which I didn't get around to seeing (any good?), and some medical dramas and other more modern-day shows. I dunno, I'm just not really taken with it. Maybe watching it will change my mind... on the other hand, there's still the problem of it being Wuthering Heights and not, oh, Pride & Prejudice , Jane Eyre or North & South ... so we'll see. Put the timer on, but the freeview signal on ITV normally isn't too great, unfortunately, but right now we're not at home, so it will have to do. ITV's catchup service on the website might work otherwise. Can't miss a classic story turned into a TV costume drama, after all!

Might I suggest you have a listen below, where you'll find Chapter 1 of Jane Eyre as a downloadable podcast. It's just something I'm trying out. Please give me feedback on what you think of it and how I can improve it. It's just a beta test, so depending on the comments I get, I might re-record the whole thing. No point in recording all 39 (?) chapters if I'm doing the first one completely wrong! ;) Powered by Podbean.com EDIT 30/8: Thank you to everyone who has given me feedback on the above. Much appreciated! Will be re-recording it as per the feedback I've received. :)

"BBC has already announced that they're cutting back on costume drama and this will be the last 19th century project for a long time" someone wrote on the IMDb boards, and I think that's a great shame. We all love a good costume drama! But at least we have this one, the upcoming adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma to keep us keen! The script has been done by the great Sandy Welch. Don't know who she is? She wrote the scripts for North &; South (BBC 2004) and Jane Eyre (2006)... and they were absolutely marvellous, so I've high hopes for this one as well. Sandy Welch is like the new Andrew Davies. :)

It's that time again - a remake of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights , about a raving psychopath Heathcliff and his confused love affair with his foster sister Cathy. I honestly don't get the appeal of Heathcliff just because he's a proper psycho. I've not yet read the book (I have it, though) and I've only seen one adaptation so far ( 1998 TV version with Robert Cavanah and Orla Brady - and Matthew Macfadyen!) but I wasn't impressed. Still, have the harddrive recorder set for Sunday and Monday to see if this does a better job or if it's still just... dark and weird. Well, if it's not good, I've also set the timer for " Frozen " on BBC2 night to Monday. :D

Did I create this blog in order to go nuts with what I do best, i.e. fangirling? Kind of. I didn't want to clog up my usual blog too much by just rambling on and on and on and on and on about whatever it is that is my squee of the month, so I thought, hey, I'd have a special place for that. This is it. If what makes me squee makes you squee, let's squee together. I'd love to see links to pictures, video clips, music and such that will help alleviate the boredom of rainy days or when you feel a bit down. If we do not share squee:s, maybe you can win me over. It takes very little to get me going when I find something I like. First thing's first. What the hell is squee anyway? (Yes, it should be with two and not three E:s but "thesquee" was taken as a domain, 'k?) The Urban Dictionary defines the word as "A noise primarily made by an over-excited fangirl, however it has spread rapidly and is now widely spread among the web community." I wil

This is a response to a discussion about a celebrity worship scale which was discussed at the C19 forum, which I happened to sign up to today. They've got all sorts of goodies there, like book and history discussions and Jane Eyre fanfic - squee! I was thinking... there is a condition called "erotomania", which is essentially, crazy stalker syndrome. They're the ones who are infatuated with someone (celebrity or not), and truly believes their love is reciprocated. Saw a documentary about it, it was rather unsettling. But that's a specific thing, and everyone's a fan of something to a certain degree, and most of us can tell the difference between fantasy and reality, and most of us (I hope) know how to behave toward the person we are a fan of. I mean, while we might think that we would get along pretty darn well as a couple with certain celebs, as we seem quite similar in many ways, we know it's never going to be, and we would never do anything stupid

Like I mentioned earlier, season 3 of BBC's Robin Hood seemed watchable - and it was! Some new characters, and as it turned out, series 3 was the last of the show. It was a relief to hear they'd cancelled it because with the season finale the way it was... it would make no sense to continue with a series 4. Anyhoo, here's a quick run-down of what I thought of the third and final series - spoilers ahead : Kate: Crikey, how annoying was she? Didn't mind the actress, but the character just got on my nerves a wee bit. If she didn't get captured, she tried winning Robin's heart (who, of course, had only just missed his beloved Marian end of season 2, so c'mon) and being a bitch. Kh! Archer: Only just came in at the end and could probably be a fun character if he was allowed some space to develop, but as he only made a short visit, he was mainly just annoying as well. Shouldn't he feel some sort of loyalty toward his half brothers? Eh, didn't get hi

We saw season one when it came out. Had to see if it was any good. It wasn't all that great, but at least it's a heck of a lot better than the atrociousness known as Merlin (the BBC series, not the awesome American miniseries with Sam Neill from 1998, which I love dearly). Didn't see much of season two, but saw bits of it. Season three... wouldn't have been very interested in it if it wasn't for the fact that I found out that not only would Prince John make appearances, he would (more importantly) be played by Toby Stephens. Two sides to this coin. Or actually, I list about five, so that's a well freaky coin as it happens, but I've had some Sheridan's liqueur so I'm excused.