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 ...