Review: The Mill on the Floss (1997)

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And now I'm back to reviewing! And for my returning review: The Mill on the Floss. I had seen the 1978 miniseries of it a long time ago, but wasn't very impressed with it. Due to the sad ending, I couldn't really bring my self to like it all that much. I still wanted to see the newer version to see how it would compare, but I didn't have any great expectations for it. But I watched it and I think I did enjoy it at times.

Synopsis
Taken from my review of The Mill on the Floss (1978)
Mill on the Floss follows the story of Maggie and Tom Tulliver, two siblings who live at a mill by a river. When their father, Mr. Tulliver, loses the mill to Mr. Wakem, a lawyer, he suffers a stoke. Mr. Tulliver stays at the mill as Mr. Waken's manager until his death, though he despises working for Mr. Wakem. Meanwhile, Maggie grows fond of Phillip Waken, Mr. Wakem's hunchbacked son.

Thursday: Movie Costume Highlight - Daniel Deronda - Period Drama Fashion Week

Today's Movie Costume Highlight is Daniel Deronda.

Let me just say this before I go into the costume details: Daniel Deronda isn't my favorite period drama. The plot was okay at best, but nothing very great. The characters were okay at best, and some were a little annoying (I'm looking at you, Gwendolen!). However, the costuming for Daniel Deronda is great! If I were to rewatch this period drama (which is probably unlikely), I would probably be watching it for the costumes. Okay, saying that, let's go on with the Movie Costume Highlight.

The book Daniel Deronda takes place sometime in the 1860s, but the miniseries takes place in the 1870s. So, instead of using crinolines for the costumes, bustles were used instead. Now, normally for a period drama, if they get the fashion wrong for the era (like use older or later fashions than it's supposed to be), I get annoyed, but since the miniseries states that it takes place in the 1870s, I'm not irritated at it.

Now, I said that the character, Gwendolen Harleth irritated me, but she has some great fashion sense! Her cream/red archery dress is one of my favorite dresses in the entire miniseries. The jacket goes very well with the red contrasting color, and the hat is perfect for the dress!

You can see with the red archery dress that there is a small bustle in the back of her dress.

Now, I tend to not be the biggest fan of riding habits, but Gwendolen has a very nice riding habit.

Now, we come to the point where I didn't like a dress of her's. This purple dress. I felt like the color of the dress didn't flatter her well.

This shade of purple was not her color!

Plus, the skirt cloth doesn't match the bodice fabric? At least from this picture, it doesn't appear to match...

Besides Gwendolen, the rest of the female cast does have some nice dresses. However, the weakest dresses belonged to the character Mirah Lapidoth. But since she was poorer, it's understandable why she doesn't have fancy dresses.

But while Mirah doesn't have the best clothes, her personality is very nice and much less annoying than Gwendolen's. But as far as costuming goes, Mirah's dresses weren't very much. 

So that is my movie highlight for the day. Have you seen Daniel Deronda? What were some of your favorite costumes?

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 God Bless,

Review: Middlemarch

Lastly in The George Eliot Collection, my mom and I watched Middlemarch (I will have reviewed all the movies in The George Eliot Collection except for one, Silas Marner). I never heard about it until I started watching period dramas.

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Synopsis
There are two main storylines to Middlemarch. The first one is about a woman, Dorothea Brooke (Juliet Aubrey), who marries the middle-aged Casaubon. She wishes to help him with his research, but he gets irriated when she tries to help him. She meets Casaubon's young cousin, Will Ladislaw, and the two quickly become close. The second is about a doctor named Tertius Lydgate, who comes to Middlemarch. He soon afterwards, marries the beautiful Rosamond Vincy and then deals with financial problems.

Characters
Fans of Colin Firth (Pride and Prejudice) might be interested to know that his brother, Jonathan Firth, was in this movie. Other than that, there weren't any actors or actresses that I recognized.

I had a really hard time telling the characters apart for a good majority of the movie. Most of the men looked too much alike. This made it difficult to follow certain parts of the story. They should have dressed them differently from each other or give the characters different hair colors, something to tell them apart. It's wasier to tell woman characters apart, since they all wear their hair differently and dress differently. With the men, it was difficult, indeed!

Casaubon, Dorothea, and Landislaw.

Since the plot is divided into two storylines, it would be inevitable to compare them with each other. The whole storyline with Dorothea was a bit uninteresting: Spoilers she marries an older man hoping to help him on his research, but he doesn't want her to help him, she starts to love his cousin (who looked shifty, if you ask me), and then her husband dies and his will prevents her from marrying his cousin. End of Spoilers There really wasn't anything very interesting going on in that plot. It was all a bit dull.

The Lydgate story fared a little bit better than the Dorothea story. It was a little bit more interesting, but even throughout most of that story, it was one bad thing happening after another. If you're looking for something to cheer you up, this isn't the right storyline for you...

Scenery
Kind of disappointing. Usually for BBC miniseries, there is such lovely scenery and bright, beautiful colors. I don't know if they used an inferior camera or the technology wasn't great, but the colors did not look that good. There was also a brief screen or two towards the end where the picture was very poor, but after a few shots, it went back to normal. Scenes took place in Middlemarch and a couple in Rome, both inside and outside.

Costuming

Rosamond and Lydgate on their wedding day.

Nothing really spactacular as far as costuming was in this miniseries. Since Dorothea has a plain personality, she was dressed in very plain clothing. I will say that Rosamond had very pretty dresses; her dresses had a very nice color on them and they were in very pretty styles. Her dresses were probably the best throughout the entire miniseries.

Like I said before, they should have varied the men's costumes, since it was difficult to tell them apart.

Overall: 1/5
Not very good. The whole miniseries was dull, uninteresting, and hard to follow. I didn't like it very much. There was one adult scene, but it didn't last too long. It was hard to pay attention what was going on throughout the miniseries. I probably wouldn't watch it again. I know there are a lot of people who love this miniseries, but I did not like it. Although, Rosamond's costumes were very nice: if you are looking for costume ideas, you might want to take a look at her dresses.

Middlemarch is available on DVD through The George Eliot Collection or you can purchase it on it's own. It runs for 375 minutes. It has six episodes with varying lengths.

Review: Adam Bede

Another movie in The George Eliot Collection, my mom and I saw this a while ago. We were going through the collection and wanted something short to watch before we went out for lunch. We saw that this was only 102 minutes long, so we decided to watch it. We were also interested in it because Susannah Harker, who played Jane Bennet in the 1995 miniseries of Pride and Prejudice, was in it.

Synopsis

The story starts in a court room with a woman named Hetty Sorrel (Patsy Kinsit) is on trial for murder. She is found guilty and sentenced to death, at which she faints.

The story flashes back to the countryside and we are introduced to our characters. Adam Bede (Iain Glen) is a hardworking farmer and has fallen in love with Hetty Sorrel, who lives on her uncle's (Mr. Poyser) property. Hetty's cousin, Dinah Morris (Susannah Harker), also lives with them and is a lay Methodist preacher. Hetty falls in love with Captain Arthur Donnithorne. The story revolves around this love rectangle between these four characters.

Characters
There are a couple of actors/actresses that you might recognize in Adam Bede. Iain Glen (who plays Adam Bede) was Mr. Preston in Wives and Daughters, Susannah Harker (who plays Dinah) was Jane Bennet in the 1995 miniseries of Pride and Prejudice, Julia Mckenzie (who plays Mrs. Poyser) was Mrs. Forrester in Cranford, and Patsy Kensit (who plays Hetty) was Eppie in Silas Marner.

Adam Bede (Iain Glen) and Dinah
(Susannah Harker)

The whole time I was watching this movie, I thought there seemed something wrong with Hetty. The way she acted throughout just seemed really strange to me. You could say that she almost acted childlike, but she even acted strangely for being childlike. Something just didn't seem right with her.

This next part is a Spoiler. I thought the whole Adam/Dinah relationship thing came on rather suddenly. The whole movie, they seemed like they were friends... only friends. Then all of a sudden at the end, they're going to get married? Adam really got over Hetty really quickly after being engaged to her and then once Hetty is sentenced to Australia and the engagement is over, all of a sudden he's engaged to Dinah? It just seemed too sudden. End of Spoiler

Costumes
The costuming wasn't too bad. The story takes place in 1799, which would be during the early Regency Era, but the clothes seemed to resemble some earlier clothing. Considering that the characters are farmers, it would be understandable that they don't have the latest fashions.

Hetty (Patsy Kensit) with
Arthur Donnithorne (James
Wilby)

Dinah is very plainly dressed; she always wears the same black dress with a white kerchief and a white cap. This goes with her humble attitude. Since she is a lay preacher, she is trying to live her life simply. You can compared Dinah's attire to Hetty's, which had much more color. There was a red dress paired with a white kerchief that Hetty wore that I thought looked nice. Considering that Hetty is not as humble as Dinah, her clothes being more colorful would go with her personality.


Music
The music didn't really stand out to me. There are some miniseries/films which you hear the music and it immediately stands out in your memory for a long time. In the case of Adam Bede, I can't remember there being any outstanding scores.

Overall: 2/5
I didn't care for this movie. It seemed like the movie was more about Hetty than about Adam. There was a bit of a mature scene, so if you do watch this movie, be warned. Susannah Harker did do a nice job of acting, so she is a plus to this movie. I probably wouldn't watch it a second time...

Adam Bede is available on DVD in The George Eliot Collection or sold separately. It runs for about 102 minutes on one disk.

Review: Mill on the Floss

Haven't watch movies from The George Eliot Collection in a while. My mom and I had some time this weekend to watch Mill on the Floss, which neither of us had heard of before we got The George Eliot Collection. We were able to watch it in one evening, even though it was a miniseries.

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Synopsis

Mill on the Floss follows the story of Maggie and Tom Tulliver, two siblings who live at a mill by a river. When their father, Mr. Tulliver, loses the mill to Mr. Wakem, a lawyer, he suffers a stoke. Mr. Tulliver stays at the mill as Mr. Waken's manager until his death, though he despises working for Mr. Waken. Meanwhile, Maggie grows fond of Phillip Waken, Mr. Wakem's hunchbacked son.

Characters

Watchers of Keeping Up Appearances will notice that Judy Cornwell, who was Daisy in Keeping Up Appearances, is much seen as Mrs. Tulliver, Maggie and Tom's mother. Other than her, I didn't see anyone else that I would have recognized. But, on to the characters...

What was up with young Maggie? The girl was positively nuts! Between randomly cutting her hair and abusing her doll, this girl was crazy. She also would change moods very quickly: she would go from being glad to see her cousin, Lucy, and asking her to stay with them for a while to pushing her into the mud. Thankfully, she does grow out of this very wild behavior; if she was going to be like that the whole miniseries, it would have been less enjoyable.


Adult Maggy reading outside.

Adult Maggie really mellowed out. She seemed much more likable than she was when she was younger - she was less... crazed. She still would have her tiffs with Tom, but they didn't seem to last as long as the one when they were younger. What bothered me a little was that her and Tom seemed to fight a lot, but then it seemed like they were best friends only a short while later. There was no period after the fights where they wouldn't talk to each other a while. I'm not saying that they shouldn't talk to each other, but it's natural to not talk to someone you were fighting with for a while.

Tom always seemed to want to starts fights all the time. I would understand this if he was always a boy, but even when he grows up, he always seems to start fights with Maggie. It got a little annoying after a while.

Scenery
Some of the outdoor scenes were nice, but since this was made in the late 70's, the miniseries comes across as more like a play (which seems to be common for BBC adaptations prior to the 90's probably due to the lack of technology that we have today in filming). Obviously, the colors aren't going to be as striking as some of the more recent period dramas. There were a couple of nice outdoor scenes, though. Scenes took place outside along the river or in the forest or indoors in country houses, barns, or a warehouse. There was one scene in a conservatory in a fancy house, which was nice to see.

Costumes

Lucy and Tom seated while Maggie looks under the sheets
in the background.

Some of the costumes were nice. The dresses looked like they were from the 1830's or 1840's. Some did include the big sleeves popular during the 1830's period, so those dresses I did not particularly like, but some of the others I did.



Adult Maggie had a couple of nice dresses. One dress in particular was a blue dress that she wore when Phillip Wakem was drawing her portrait. I thought the color was a nice blue.

Young Lucy looked so sweet. She seemed to wear a lot of white dresses, and her hair was always very nicely arranged. It was a shame that young Maggie pushed her into the mud and ruined her lovely dress!

Maggie's aunts' dresses I did not like very much. They had the big sleeves of the 1830's period, which I never really cared for. I suppose because they had money, they could afford the latest fashions, but 1830's fashions never really impressed me too much.

Music

Not much music to speak of. The only significant song was the theme song. It can be a little piercing if you have the volume up on your TV too much. Other than that, there wasn't much music.

Overall: 3.5/5 3/5
Overall, I didn't hate it, but it's not my favorite. Spoiler This could have something to do with the fact that this story has a sad ending, and I always preferred happy endings to sad endings. Spoiler It was okay to watch once, but I don't know if I would watch it again, not because I disliked it, but rather because I have already seen it.

Mill on the Floss is available on DVD either as a part of The George Eliot Collection or can be bought on it's own. It is made up of eight half-hour episodes and runs for about 212 minutes.

Review: Daniel Deronda

Hey everyone. Here is this week's review, however I might take a little break from reviews for a week or two: I have a couple of last papers due and finals are coming up. Hopefully once Christmas break starts, things will calm down and I'll start up on the reviews again. I'll try to post in the upcoming couple of weeks, but it depends on how busy I am. In the meanwhile, enjoy the review!

I have seen the preview for Daniel Deronda in a couple of DVDs. It was the third my mom and I watched in The George Eliot Collection. We were interested in seeing it because Romola Garai (who was Emma Woodhouse in Emma) was in it. Here are some of my thoughts.

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Synopsis

At a casino in Germany, Gwendolyn Harleth (Romola Garai), as she is gambling away her money, notices a man. This man, she finds out, is Daniel Deronda (Hugh Dancy), the supposed illegitimate son of the rich Sir Hugo Mallinger.

The story flashes back to when Gwendolen's family moved to a new neighborhood. She meets Mr. Grandcourt (Hugh Bonneville), who proposes marriage to her shortly after meeting her. Gwendolen accepts, but upon finding out that he has a mistress and children with her, she leaves for Germany and goes to the casino where she meets Daniel Deronda.

Daniel Deronda, meanwhile, doesn't know what to do with his life yet. One day, as he was boating, he saves a Jewish girl from drowning; her name is Mirah Lapidoth (Johdi May). Mirah has recently come back to England after being taken away by her father to look for her mother and brother. Daniel is determined to help her.

Characters

Daniel Deronda (Hugh Dancy), Gwendolen (Romola Garai),
and Mr. Grandcourt (Hugh Bonneville).

There are some actors that can be recognized that are in Daniel Deronda: Romola Garai (Emma) as Gwendolen, Hugh Dancy (Ella Enchanted) as Daniel Deronda, Amanda Root (Persuasion) as Mrs. Davilow, David Bamber (Pride and Prejudice (1995)) as Lush, even Anna Popplewell (Chronicles of Narnia) as a brief speaking role as Fanny Davilow.

The characters are a mixed bag. On the one hand, you have likable characters like Daniel and Mirah, but on the other hand, characters like Gwendolen are irritating and characters like Mr. Grandcourt are to be hated.

Gwendolen is pretty irritating throughout the whole miniseries: she acts arrogant, and Spoiler marries Mr. Grandcourt because he is rich and because she doesn't want to be a governess. End of Spoiler  I'm sorry, but she pretty much walked into all of her troubles. It was pretty much her fault: she tried to control a situation and she never had control at all

It was interesting to see the Jewish society in Daniel Deronda. You usually don't see that perspective in other period dramas. With characters like Mordecai and Mirah, you get a perspective of the Jewish people in 1870's England.



Gwendolen and Mr. Grandcourt talking
at an archery contest.



Scenery

There are some very nice country scenes, and some of the Italy scenes look quite nice too. Some of the overtones to certain scenes were a little darker and drearier than others due to certain aspects of the story being more serious than others. Scenes ranged from country houses and the surrounding areas, manor houses, the Jewish neighborhood in London, and a sea resort town in Italy.

Costuming

There are some very nice costumes in Daniel Deronda. What is interesting is that the book, from what I've read (as I have never read the book), is supposed to take place in the 1860's; during the 1860's, the crinoline (or hoop skirt) was the fashionable thing to wear. However, in this miniseries, the story takes place in the 1870's when the bustle was the fashionable thing to wear. So, the costumes here utilized the bustle rather than the crinoline.

Gwendolen dressed very nicely, but considering that her family had some money, she could afford it. Her archery dress is very striking: the creamy white and red colors seemed to work very well. However, I didn't really like the dark purple one that she wears later in the miniseries; the color did not complement her skin. Excepting the purple dress, her other outfits were pretty and elegant.

Mirah's dresses were not as striking as Gwendolen's, but considering she is not as rich as Gwendolen, it is understandable. Her dresses were plainer and had darker colors. They were made out of much simpler material than Gwendolen's dresses.


Mirah Lapidoth (Johdi May), the singer.



Music



There is quite a bit of singing, considering Mirah is a singer; she sings opera music in foreign languages, and they sounded nice. Gwendolen also sings, and as a part of the story she later wants to become a singer, but she was told that she was too old to start singing; because of that, she couldn't become a singer. Her voice wasn't bad at all, but compared to Mirah's voice, it was small in comparison.

Overall: 3/5
While not the worst period drama that I've seen, Daniel Deronda isn't the best. There are some positives such as the likeable characters (Daniel, Mirah, etc.) that keep you hoping throughout the story that everything will turn out well for them, lovely scenery to look at, and some of the singing is nice. However, there are some negatives. Gwendolen's character is quite irritating, and though you feel sorry for her at times, you still feel that she had some hand in her suffering. There are some adult scenes and implications, so this is probably not the best thing to show to children. There is a little violence, and a couple of people die (though not through the violence).

Daniel Deronda is available on DVD either in The George Eliot Collection, or just on it's own. It runs for 210 minutes. There are three episodes on one disk.