Things to look forward to in 2019

It’s time either for a retrospect of or speculations and thoughts about the years to come. Last year at around this time, I promised myself to get more into book reading again. The resolution was, overall, a success, although my Jane Austen Rereading Project stalled when only Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey (my least favourite Austen novel) remained. It’s not that long ago I read Mansfield Park… Anyway, I will get around to them next year. I did try out some fantasy as well and enjoyed Caraval and Legendary hugely, so I will keep experimenting cautiously.

Maybe 2019 will be the year I rediscover my love of costume dramas? What with Once Upon A Time ending and no more Rumple (sob) to gladden my heart, I will need something to console me. Luckily, the year ahead looks like it’s going to be the year when Julian Fellowes delivers on two counts. Here, then, are some of the possible cultural-consumption highlights (from my perspective) of 2019:

Downton Abbey the film/movie: They’re finally doing it! Better late than never, I suppose, though having moved on on the villain-loving front, I’m not as mad with anticipation as I would once have been. The lateness of the project does worry me, as I’m afraid the Downton audience has had too much time to get over their obsession/healthy interest in the Crawley family saga. On the other hand, internet reactions seem enthusiastic enough, and perhaps many other Downton fans are, like me, using the time before September to rewatch the entire series, the better to be able to speculate on what plot lines may be picked up again and finally reach a conclusion. I mean, though they kept us waiting for the film, it’s not as if we’re going to refrain from watching it, are we? Watch this space for the usual hit-and-miss predictions…

The Gilded Age: For supposedly being a project close to Fellowes’s heart, he has taken his own sweet time about this TV series, which will air on American telly this year and is set in the USA in the late 19^th century. The heroine of the drama is described  as a “wide-eyed scion of a conservative family” who will infiltrate a family of noveaux riches (or more correctly, even more nouveaux riches) which includes a “ruthless railway tycoon” and his “rakish and available son”. The son will probably be a zero, but I have some hopes of the tycoon. I wonder who will play him?

Les Misérables: In his usual undiplomatic way, Andrew Davies has been scathing about the musical based on Victor Hugo’s classic, which happens to be my favourite musical and what got me interested in the novel in the first place. Nevertheless, Davies will be Davies, and I will not let his bad boy antics cloud my judgement of his own Les Mis project based squarely on the book. Davies is just the guy to trim off all Hugo’s endless diversions and get to the story, and the first trailer seems promising. I’m glad we get to see Fantine’s back story this time around. Also, I’m certain Olivia Colman will be a great Madame Thénardier. Which leads me almost seamlessly to:

The Crown season three: I’ve not been as devoted a fan of this show as many other period drama lovers, but I will admit that it’s an ambitious, high-quality series with superb acting. It certainly knocks spots off, say, Poldark or Victoria. The bad news is that Claire Foy, who was such a spectacular Queen in the first two seasons, won’t be around in this one. The good news is that her replacement is the above-mentioned Olivia Colman, who’s been reliably excellent in every part I’ve seen her in (even as the crusading agent in The Night Manager, who should have been unbearable but somehow wasn’t). Also appearing is Tobias Menzies – whom I rather like, maybe because he’s a little shifty-looking – as Prince Philip and Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret. This could be fun, in a high-brow kind of way.

Finally getting to see Doctor Who series 11: Right… Not sure I’ll be wild about this. Doctor Who doesn’t air in Sweden, so I have to wait for the DVDs. I did see one episode of the newest series of Doctor Who in Australia – “Arachnids in the UK” – and hated it. Judging from reviews, though, this was the absolute low point of  the series, and one thing I did not hate was Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor; she put in a likeable performance in the Matt Smith era-Doctor vein. I am looking forward to being able to form my own opinion of what’s happening in Wholand. If I don’t like it, at least I’ll have the satisfaction of being right to have doubts about Chris Chibnall.

Frozen 2, I guess? It’s another sequel instead of an original idea, but at least it’s animated and not a pointless live-action remake, and it is Disney. I will be hoping that there’ll be one or two references to the Frozen arc in Once Upon A Time for us fans to detect. (I didn’t much like the Frozen arc – not surprisingly considering how it ended – but Once is Once.) There won’t be, mind.

More films I'm glad I saw in-flight

It's December, and Christmas will be here soon: surely a good enough excuse to follow the road of least resistance blogging-wise? Anyway, here are my thoughts on two further films I saw in-flight on my trip Down Under (and back), which were both suited for this kind of watching for different reasons: one because it was complicated, one because it was simple.

Inception All right, not one to watch at the end of a long-haul flight when your brain is fried. At the beginning of a trip lasting hours on end it's a good choice though, because it's pretty long. If you were watching it at home sitting on the sofa, you'd probably be tempted to fidget, wander off to make a cup of tea etc. On a plane, there are few distractions, and as the hours go by you can concentrate on getting your head around the plot.

Briefly, its troubled anti-hero Cobb, played by a glum Leonardo di Caprio, and his small team of helpers make their living by gate-crashing people's dreams and extracting secret information from them. One hard-headed businessman is on to them, though, and makes them an interesting offer: if they manage to plant an idea in the head of a business rival, a young sprig who has just taken over his father's huge empire, they will be amply rewarded. They accept the challenge, but planting an idea (the inception of the title) is a tricky business, and Cobb and co. end up struggling to get free from the young sprig's dream world.

Clearly, you have to be geek to enjoy this film. Happily, I am. I have a great fondness for "dream or reality?" plots; I'm fascinated by things like how you can tell if what you're experiencing is real, all the details that are off in dreams compared to real life and which mechanisms are at play when we're still convinced that what we're experiencing in dreams is really happening. I vaguely remember a reviewer commenting that Inception isn't half as clever as it thinks it is, but for my part I thought it had some nifty concepts. One trick to check if you're dreaming, Cobb claims, is to try to remember how you came to be in a certain situation, because dreams always start in the middle of an event (though the exception appears to be the dream-within-a-dream which does have a clear beginning: when you think you wake up). Dream time moves differently than real time, which would explain those epic dreams you have where you seem to live a whole parallel life before waking up after only a few hours. I also liked the idea of the people in the dream, the dreamer's "projections", attacking intruders like antibodies once they realise there's something amiss. If, like me, you were truly interested in the "Am I mad, in a coma or back in time?" set-up of the TV series Life on Mars and didn't view it as simply a faux-profound excuse to team a policeman with modern-day sensibilities with a tough Seventies-style copper, then this could be the film for you. The ending really isn't very clever, though.

Sing Your opinion of Illumination Studios, and the likely quality of their animated films, tends to depend on what you think of the minions, the comic sidekicks first introduced in Despicable Me. I am not a fan. It bugs me that the word "minions", such a lovely appellation for a villain's devoted followers, is now connected with small, yellow, annoyingly babbling creatures that look like the useless rubber tips of pencils. However, a lot of people find them funny, and they even got their own film, which must have done pretty well considering that Illuminations had the funds to buy up Disney's angriest rival DreamWorks. As a Disney fan I have mixed feelings about DreamWorks, but they have produced some high-quality stuff. Whereas Illumination, if Sing is any indication, isn't really in the same league, and certainly not in the same league as Disney.

To be fair, I've only watched two of Illumination's animated films, and Sing is a lot more slick and effective than the uneven Despicable Me. The plot is fairly straightforward. Buster Moon, the koala owner of a failing theatre, tries to save it by arranging a singing competition. Because of a printing error, though, the prize announced for the winner is huge and way beyond his budget. Meanwhile, hopeful contenders queue up to take part, and Buster has to find a way to come up with the prize money and make sure his nervy contestants - who all face different problems which could come between them and stardom - perform on the day.

Cue a number of contestants who are sweet and likeable, one who is a bastard (but a first-class crooner) and the hustler Buster himself who is scheduled to be taken down a peg or two while his love of the theatre is validated. It's a predictable film when it comes to the main thrust of the story, though the plot takes one or two surprising detours along the way. The contestants are stereotypes, if enjoyable ones, and there are too many of them to give them much personality beyond about one characteristic each. The animation is pretty good, as is the singing, but this feels much more like a kids' film than, say, Disney's Moana/Vaiana (which isn't even one of my favourite Disney flicks). In other words, it works well for the fried-brain part of a long flight.

With Illumination in charge of DreamWorks, it's unlikely to produce a new Prince of Egypt any time soon. On the other hand, it's a long time since DreamWorks itself produced something in the Prince of Egypt vein. Maybe Illumination is the logical owner of the company who released The Boss Baby and Captain Underpants, films whose very titles repel grown-up animation lovers. And now the creators of the minions are getting their mitts on the Shrek franchise. Not to gloat or anything, but... that's what you get for blowing up people's pet geese, ogre scum.