Doc Martin (TV Series 2004-)

Doc Martin, now shooting its sixth charming series, is popular in more than 30 countries around the world, including Slovenia and Saudi Arabia. Foreign-language adaptations have aired in Germany, France, Spain, The Netherlands, and Greece -- and Russia may be next.



Martin Clunes and Caroline Catz.

Martin Clunes is Martin Ellingham (his surname’s an anagram for the name of creator Dominic Minghella), a London surgeon who develops a phobia to blood and who relocates to the picturesque Cornish village of Port Wenn, becoming the area’s general practitioner. He is gruff, intolerant, and rude to people, but over time he develops a relationship with and has a child with local headmistress Louisa Glasson (Caroline Catz).

The community is full of quirky, amusing characters, including a plumber-turned-restaurateur (Ian McNeice), his son (Joe Absolom), Martin’s aunts (Stephanie Cole, followed by Dame Eileen Atkins), local cops, and a series of three dippy receptionists, among others.



This series is lovely, funny and set in a beautiful Cornish village called Port Isaac which I visited in July and fell in love with it. I highly recommend Doc Martin to everyone! :)

 

 

 

 

 

 





Desperate Housewives (2004-2012)

Desperate Housewives is an American television comedy-drama mystery series.  The main setting of the show is Wisteria Lane, a street in the fictional American town of Fairview in the fictional Eagle State. The show follows the lives of a group of women, seen through the eyes of their dead neighbor. They work through domestic struggles and family life, while facing the secrets, crimes and mysteries hidden behind the doors of their — at the surface — beautiful and seemingly perfect suburban neighborhood.

 

 

The show features an ensemble cast, headed by Teri Hatcher as Susan Mayer, Felicity Huffman as Lynette Scavo, Marcia Cross as Bree Van de Kamp and Eva Longoria as Gabrielle Solis.   Brenda Strong narrates the show as the deceased Mary Alice Young, appearing sporadically in flashbacks or dreams. 

 

 

 

Desperate Housewives is great!  Life behind closed doors is about to be revealed as suburban life takes a funny and dark turn.  :) xx



Adam's Rib (1949)

 

 

 Doris Attinger (Judy Holliday) follows her husband (Tom Ewell) with a gun one day and sees that he is having an affair with another woman (Jean Hagen). In her rage, she fires at the couple multiple times. One of the bullets hits her husband in the arm.

 
The following morning, married lawyers, Adam and Amanda Bonner (Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn) read about the incident in the newspaper. The two argue over the case; Amanda sympathizes with the girl, particularly noting the double standard that exists for men and women regarding adultery, while Adam thinks she is guilty of attempted murder. When Adam arrives at work, he finds that he has been assigned the case (on the side of the prosecution). When Amanda hears this, she seeks out Doris and, to Adam's dismay, becomes her defense lawyer.

 

 

 

Amanda bases her case on the belief that women and men are equal, and that Doris had been forced into the situation through her husband's poor treatment. Adam feels she is showing a disregard for the law as there should never be an excuse for such behavior. Tension increasingly builds at home as the couple battle each other in court. The situation comes to a head when Amanda humiliates Adam during the trial, having her female witness pick him up, and Adam later storms out of their house. When the verdict for the trial comes in, Amanda's plea to the jury to "judge this case as you would if the sexes were reversed" proves successful, and Doris is found not guilty.

 

 

 

That night, Adam sees Amanda and their neighbor Kip (David Wayne), who has shown a clear interest in Amanda, together through the window. He breaks into the apartment, pointing a gun at the pair. Amanda is horrified, and says to Adam "You've no right to do this, nobody does!", which satisfies Adam as he feels he has proven his point about the injustice of Amanda's line of defense. He then puts the gun in his mouth, to which Amanda and Kip scream, but Adam merely bites down on it—the gun was made of liquorice.  Amanda is furious with this prank, and a three-way fight ensues.

 

The couple is reluctantly reunited for a meeting with their accountant, where they talk about their relationship in the past tense. They soon become sad when talking about the farm they own, and realize how they love each other. They go to the farm, where Adam announces that he has been selected as the Republican nominee for County Court Judge. Amanda jokes about running for the role as the Democratic candidate.

 

 

 

I love this comedy.  Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey are brilliant together! :) xx

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)

Jim Blandings (Grant), a bright account executive in the advertising business, lives with his wife Muriel (Loy) and two daughters in a cramped New York apartment. Muriel secretly plans to remodel their apartment. After rejecting this idea, Jim Blandings comes across an ad for new homes in Connecticut and they get excited about moving.

Planning to purchase and "fix up" an old home, the couple contact a real estate agent, who uses them to unload "The Old Hackett Place" in fictional Lansdale County, Connecticut. It is a dilapidated, two hundred-year-old farmhouse. Blandings purchases the property for more than the going rate for land in the area, provoking his friend/lawyer Bill Cole (Douglas) to chastise him for following his heart rather than his head.

The old house, dating from the Revolutionary War-era, turns out to be structurally unsound and has to be torn down. The Blandings hire architect Simms (Reginald Denny) to design and supervise the construction of the new home. From the original purchase to the new house's completion, a long litany of unforeseen troubles and setbacks beset the hapless Blandings and delay their moving-in date.

 

 

On top of all this, at work Jim is assigned the task of coming up with a slogan for "WHAM"-brand ham, an advertising account that has destroyed the careers of previous account executives assigned to it.

Jim also suspects that Muriel is cheating on him with Bill Cole after Bill slept at the Blandings' alone in the house with Muriel one night due to a violent thunderstorm.

With mounting pressure, skyrocketing expenses, and his new assignment, Jim starts to wonder why he wanted to live in the country. The Blandings' maid Gussie provides Blandings with the perfect WHAM slogan, and he saves his job. As the film ends, Bill Cole says that he realizes that some things "you do buy with your heart."

 

 

A funny and charming film! xx

Top Hat on Stage ('11/'12'/13'/'14)

The film has been adapted into a stage musical that began touring the UK during late 2011. The Show opened at Milton Keynes Theatre on 19 August 2011 before touring to other UK regional theatres including Leeds, Birmingham and Edinburgh. The production is also scheduled to transfer to the West End's Aldwych Theatre on April 19, 2012 with an opening on May 9, 2012 and bookings ended on 26th October 2013. 

On Thursday 1st December 2011 I went to the Leeds Grand Theatre with my Mum to see Irving Berlin's Top Hat which is based on RKO's Motion Picture. It is Fred and Ginger's greatest Hollywood dance musical - live on stage for the very first time in 76 years!

 

Tom Chambers ('Strictly Come Dancing' winner and 'Holby City' heartthrob) plays Jerry Travers, the famous American tap dancer who arrives in London to appear in his first West End Show. Travers meets the irresistible Dale Tremont, the girl of him dreams, played by Summer Strallen (triple Olivier Award nominee and star of 'Love Never Dies', 'The Sound of Music' and Hollyoaks') and follows her across Europe in an attempt to win her heart with his wonderful song and dance routines.

Irving Berlin's celebrated score features such classics as 'Cheek to Cheek', 'Let's Face The Music and Dance', 'Isn't it a Lovely day to be caught in the Rain' and 'Top Hat, White Tie and Tails.'  It was also Black Tie and Tiara Night for one night only on the 1st December so I wore my ballgown and felt very special in it!   Top Hat was brilliant at the Leeds Grand Theatre! Tom Chambers and Summer Strallen are fantastic as Jerry Travers and Dale Tremont! The rest of the cast are great too. They sang some of Irving Berlin’s greatest hits, such as, 'Cheek to Cheek' and 'Top Hat', 'White Tie and Tails', 'The Piccolino', 'No Strings' (I'm Fancy Free) and 'Isn't This A Lovely Day To Be Caught In The Rain?' which are all in the film 'Top Hat.' They also sang 'Let’s Face the Music and Dance' and 'I'm Putting All My Eggs In One Basket' which are from the film 'Follow The Fleet.'

The costumes, sets and dance routines were all wonderful and I loved every minute of it! I want to see it all over again! I had a lovely time!

 

 

If you are a fan of Fred and Ginger, you should definitely watch the film and then go see the show in the West End, you will love it!! :D xx  

 

Top Hat (1935)

The movie opens beautifully with Jerry Travers (Astaire) trying to silently fold his paper in a "silent" club while waiting for Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton), the producer of a show in which he's about to star. Horace sets Jerry up staying with him in his hotel and then tells Jerry that he wants Jerry to fly to Italy with him after the show to meet up with his wife Madge (Helen Broderick) and some girl Madge wants to fix Jerry up with. Jerry doesn't really want to go.
Jerry: "Is she expecting me for a weekend or a wedding?"
Horace: "You know how wives are...
Jerry: "No I don't. How are they?"

Horace: "...always have a scheme... It's time you found out for yourself."

 

 

 

Jerry especially doesn't want to go anywhere after he meets the beautiful Dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers), another hotel guest. Jerry meets Dale when he tap dances in the room above her while she's trying to sleep, and she has to come upstairs and give him a piece of her mind. Jerry tells Dale that she can help cure him of the dancing with a good hug, to which she replies, "Well I'll call the house detective and tell him to put his arms around you." I'm choosing to think of the whole thing as a meet cute... Jerry woos Dale with flowers and then by paying off a handsome cab driver to give him the cab so that Jerry can drive Dale to the stables the next day. Dale discovers Jerry is her driver only when he starts to tap dance above her.

 

Dale starts to fall for Jerry at the stables when he dances with her in the rain.

Jerry: "May I rescue you?"

Dale: "...I prefer being in distress."

The thunder drives Dale to seek out Jerry for comfort in the gazebo in which they are both waiting out the storm, and pretty soon they are dancing and in love.

 

 

 

Happiness leads to mistaken identity and anger, though, when it turns out that Dale is Madge's friend. And Dale, never having met Madge's husband, thinks that Jerry is really Horace. She is suddenly horrified by his advances, slaps him, and gives him the motivation he needs to fly off to Italy to continue to woo her. He has no idea what he did to make her so mad.

The rest of the movie is all about mistaken identity and is, in my opinion, hilarious.

Dale tells Madge that Madge's husband is chasing her:

"Really, I didn't know he was capable of that much activity... Did he catch you?"

Jerry wants to propose to the still confused Dale:

"Alright, you go find all about her past, and I'll go find out about her future."

Jerry and Dale dance with a crazy dress Dale is being payed to model:

And Dale receives nutty advice from Madge about how to protect herself from further advances:"Here or there, as long as you remain a spinster you're fair game for any philandering male... You know um, what you really should have is a husband you can call your own."

I love 'Cheek to Cheek' and 'Isn't It A Lovely Day To Be Caught In The Rain.' I also love the style of the costumes and sets and the era that the film is set in. :) xx