Wednesdays = my favourite day for TV!

The Simpsons, Season 20, Episode 13: Gone Maggie Gone.

The Solar Eclipse hits the world, and, as Kent Brockman declares, "A solar eclipse is like a woman breast-feeding in a restaurant - it's free, it's beautiful, but in no circumstances should you look at it." Springfrield residents are recommended to look at it through a Camera Obscura, but Homer being Homer, breaks his before they can get started and Marge being Marge, donates her to him to keep him happy. Unfortunately, she decides straight away that she wants to look at the Solar Eclipse, and in erroneously looking straight at it, goes blind. Without her sight, Homer is assigned all the housely chores, all of which he neglects, leading to their home to be infested by rats. On his way back from buying poison, Homer crashes their car and in rowing back across the water, he abandons Maggie, who gets taken in by the local nunnery, who refuse to give her back to her incompetent father. It's up to Lisa to get her little sister back by infiltrating the nunnery and solving a stage of convoluted clues to unearth a Da Vinci Code-style secret.



I deeply enjoyed this episode of The Simpsons. Although there were no real belly-laughs, you could tell quite a bit of thought had gone into the The Da Vinci Code parodying. There were nods to other films too - Ratatouille and The Seven Year Itch, namely, as well as witty one liners - "if you're happy and you know it that's a sin." The funniest part was easily when an Ed Begley solar powered car stopped right in front of a solar powered train... which also stopped. Heehee.

Summing my life up in six words.

I just want to be me.

or

Confused about everything except the cinema.

or

Too many aspirations, too little talent.

or

Why can't I just be content?

or

Let the sun shine and smile.

or, perhaps...

I'm finally starting to feel alive.

/ pondering.

The Simpsons, 20: 14 - In the Name of the Grandfather.

I'm now making slow progress through all the The Simpsons episodes I didn't see, going back from the one I watched on Tuesday.



This episode, made in time for St. Patrick's Day two weeks ago, revolves around the Simpson family following Abe to Ireland, wherein he goes to a pub, buys a pub, gets the liscence revoked when they allow people to smoke in their pub, and then get released. It's quite a bitty episode, but there are some amusing moments - Bart sticks his backside in a hole which people usually kiss, only to have it backfire hilariously on him, and there's a funny-albeit-predictable camea from the duo of Once, where their rendition of "Falling Slowly" gets turned on its head.



Shall continue with the Simpsons watching tomorrow!

LOL.

lol #1


lol #2


OK, I'm done.

Girl with a Pearl Earring score (Alexandre Desplat)

I can't get enough of Alexandre Desplat, me. If you'd like a track or two, just say and your wish is my command!

01. The Master's House (wonderfully atmospheric)
02. Colours in the Clouds - Strings (a delicious piece of chamber music)
03. Griet's Theme (the dancing of the tune between string and woodwind is absolute musical heaven)
04. Griet's Theme - Reprise
05. Cornelia (the bitch of the film gets an appropriately strong piece)
06. Girl with a Pearl Earring (not the most creative theme Desplat's thought up, but still a haunting one)
07. Colours in the Clouds (sexy)
08. Vermeer's Studio
09. Silence and Light (captures the tone of the film in a stunningly elegiac piano solo)
10. Camera Obscura (beautiful, but too tense for its own good)
11. Van Ruijvan (appropriately sneaky piece)
12. By the Canal with Pieter (romantic music)
13. Griet Remembers
14. Girl with a Pearl Earring - Reprise (samey)
15. The Master is painting (I got bored of the tremolo after a while)
16. Catharina's Pearls (one of the more cinematic tracks of the OST)
17. A New Life
18. Home (the oboe sounds a bit boring, clarinet's good though)
19. The Birth Feast
20. Winter Nights (meh, just a replay of the main theme)