4 October 2019

I finally got to see Downton Abbey yesterday. 

Hearing all the reports of full theaters, we went to the first show of  the day and got there 20 minutes early.  By the time the movie started there were fewer than 20 people in the theater!  So much for crowds.

I have to admit that while I was enjoying it, I was disappointed for about the first third of the movie.  I had a difficult time getting back into the characters again.  There was something "off" and I was sure that the actor playing Thomas Barrow (the footman turned butler) was different.  Just not nearly as evil or snooty as the original.  (I was surprised at the end of the movie to discover that it was, indeed, the same actor.)

But by the time I had settled into the movie, I found I was loving it.  I have read some reviews which complained about all the "grandeur" that was added for the big screen, but I was loving it.  The sweeping views showing Downton (Highclere castle) surrounded by lots of green acreage, the wonderful parade through town as the king and queen arrive for a visit, the wonderful ball at the end, complete with a full orchestra.  It's obviously these scenes were added because they could be.  And it added so much to the "bigness" of the story.

And of course I loved that my favorite character, Anna, was the one who saved the day.  I won't say more than that.

Walt went with me and I was curious about how someone who knew nothing of the tv series would think of it.  I explained a bit about backgrounds of a couple of the characters and he said he enjoyed it.  He did watch last night's rerun on PBS, but I don't think he's become a fan.

I doubt if there will be another movie, but if there is, I was amused to see how Maggie Smith managed to give herself a logical out in case she doesn't want to do another one.

The nicest thing about going to an afternoon matinee, which let out at 5:15 was that I didn't have to come home and cook dinner.  Ned made dinner and it was almost ready for the table when we arrived home.  This sharing cooking deal is really great.

I also realize that having Ned around is going to be much healthier for me.  He's very conscious of health related meals and always makes sure we have something green and occasionally his famous smoothies (the breakfast ones are better than the dinner ones...with banana and peanut butter you can't even taste the spinach)

And look at what he found!

I wondered if this had been lost or discarded a long time ago, but it hadn't.

This is the only craft thing that I ever made that I'm proud of.  I was taking a quilting class and decided to make a Superman quilt for Ned, whose hero at the time was Superman.

I copied a big poster of Superman that Ned had and worked from that and the quilting instructor was so excited about my project until I did something wrong and I had to cut off material on either side of Superman.  Then she kind if gave up on me, but I was happy with the results.  Ned said last night it was his favorite Christmas present.

I actually made quilts for each of the kids that year, but didn't have time to do anything this original for the others, so just made individually done squares, with pictures that each of them had drawn, on them.  I remember Tom's was a Star Trek quilt, but I don't remember what the others were.

But I was very happy to see this quilt last night.  It warmed the cockles of my heart.

HTML Guestbook is loading comments...