Make Me a Match: Austentatious (2015)

So I have been seeing everywhere, “use this time to do things you have put off.” “I’ve done so many things I have been putting off.” Etc. So I have decided it is time to take care of something I have been putting off…

OH NO!

So if you have been following me you know that I hate this show.  I really, really do not like this show or how they portray the characters. But I started it, so I’ve got to finish it.

So Austentatious is the story of Elinor, Marianne, Emma, Elizabeth, and Mr. Knightley being friends in modern times. But they don’t involve ANY Austen plots or subplots. In fact besides names they hardly share anything with the original source material.

 

Elinor and Edward were working together (she works for an accounting firm he is IRS) and get a flat then they bleh-IRS, Accountant, IRS, accountant, IRS, accountant, statistics, bills, blah blah blah blah blah.

Collin, their creepy neighbor, is trying to get with Elizabeth-even pretending he is looking for a house. Meanwhile, Darcy is absolutely horrible to Elizabeth-like there is no coming back from him.

Marianne did not that much, she worked at the smoothie shop-Emma didn’t really do much than be a friend.

Here we go…

At Marianne’s smoothie shop, the gang is all gathered together. Elizabeth has just gotten acrylics and can’t type or call. So complains how heavy they make her feel- like her knuckles drag on ground. What even is this plot?

Emma is bored and upset that they won’t let her set them up on a date. Where does she even know all these men, I never see her interact with anyone?

Hmmm…

Elizabeth, Elinor, and Grant (Mr. Knightley) want to set Emma up on a date as they want payback for all the awful dates she set them on.

Marianne is called over and they all exclaim that she is blue-I think she is a bit more purple, but she does look like Violet in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Knightley decides to call a doctor friend to check on Marianne, and I can’t believe she can’t see how purple she is with how much they say she spends in front of the mirror.

What the heck?

They agree to do Elizabeth’s match first, than Elinor, and then Grant (Knightley). After her date, Emma mets up with Elizabeth angry as her date was awful. She went on a date with a guy who dressed up like the genie and wants to boogie, taking her on a bicycle built for two.

Where did Elizabeth even meet this guy?

What is this?

It took three hours to get there, and all I can think is he must be in really good physical shape to bike the two of them 3 hours.

Wow!

Marianne makes cinnamon rolls, but she is still purple. Like this the dumbest thing ever-how can she not see that she is PURPLE!!!!

Elinor goes to see Emma after her set up date and they went to a drive-in movie and the truck has an emergency bunker. Too be honest-he doesn’t seem that bad to be super prepared as he would be doing really well right now. He went on about Jenny his ex-girlfriend which is a major no. But on a whole, he’s not that bad.

Emma is harshing on him for not liking the movie, but I’m with him. The romantic lead does not sound good, in fact this movie sounds bad to me.

Grant (Knightley) goes to the smoothie shop to see a still-purple Marianne, and brings Brandon [Colonel Brandon] a nurse. Why do they always put him in the medical field? And if they are going to do that, why not give him the background of a soldier?

Grant brings Brandon in, his basketball buddy. Brandon quizzes Marianne in public and right in front of Grant (Knightly) which to me I think is kinda rude.

Grant bows out and gets a call from Emma. She goes out on an ice fishing date, although the guy is wearing shorts in the snow? What? He goes by Stinky as that is how he smells. So all I can think is, where do they live? What state? What city?

Like, where did her friends find these guys? Seriously, Collin would be a better choice.

Back at the smoothie shop they are quizzing Brandon about being a nurse over doctor and he said he didn’t want to continue school as he wanted to help people now. You know guys, he also might not have had the money and or the grades. Like be respectful of the man’s feelings don’t embarrass him.

So meanwhile, Liz’s whole storyline is “I can’t handle acrylic nails.” Really?

Seriously…?

Ugh.

Ugh, not again…

This show is so dumb.

Brandon likes Marianne and asks about her, and Grant is like I don’t know more about her symptoms. Haha, an actually funny joke.

Emma is still on the date from hell, ice fishing with the stinky guy trying to feel her up and has a gun to shoot fish. Like who would really do that, and a grenade?-seriously you wouldn’t catch anything.

Grant comes in to apologize and gives Emma a massage…hmmm. Well gee Emma giant clues in your face.

Emma swears off set ups unless asked, yea right-we will see how long that lasts.

Marianne is no longer blue, and it turns out she never washed her new midnight blue sheets-that’s why she has been so blue.

And that’s the end. What the heck is this show.

Like, every time I watch this show I regret my review of The Jane Austen Academy as after watching an episode of this-all I can think is that book was immensely astronomically better at putting the stories of Jane Austen all together in a modern setting. I know it isn’t easy but seriously what does any of this that I just watched have to do with Jane Austen??!!!

Thank goodness I’m almost done. This only lasted for one season and it is easy to see why.

For more Austentatious, go to Drive Me Crazy: Austentatious (2015)

For more Jane Austen film retellings, go to The Jane Austen Book Club (2007)

For more Sense & Sensibility, go to Rational Creatures: Elinor & Marianne Dashwood

For more Pride & Prejudice, go to Pride & Prejudice: A New Musical

For more Emma, go to Rational Creatures: Emma Woodhouse, Miss Bates, & Harriet Smith

Tea Chocolate

Chocolate, you know how I feel about that.

And Tea, you know what I think about that:

So when I found a tea chocolate

Yes, you heard me. TEA CHOCOLATE!

I had to buy it.

I was so excited, I felt like Charlie Bucket opening his chocolate.

And then it came the time to eat it, would it be good? Could it be?

OMG—it was AAAAAAAAMAAAAAAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was so good, I didn’t want to stop eating.

If you get your hands on some-buy as many as you can and enjoy!

For more tea posts, go to My Niece Wanted a Tea Party

For more on chocolate and candy, go to Candy Girls

 

Come With Me and You’ll Be in a World of Pure Imagination: Happy 100th Birthday Roald Dahl

So today marks the 100th Birthday of Roald Dahl.

Yay!

He was such a big part of my childhood. I mean…how do I explain?

I mean Matilda was the anthem for kids everywhere who loved to read a lot, and were misunderstood by others

.

Then there was the wonderful magic and adventure of Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. I mean who didn’t want to visit Wonka’s and get a glimpse at all the wonder inside?

And you might think it weird that I did a pic from the film, but Roald Dahl actually wrote the script for most of it. The parts were rewritten later as the director thought that it was too much like the book, but the heart of the piece is him.

The sequel, Charlie & the Great Glass Elevator wasn’t as good as The Chocolate Factory, but still extremely fun. They go into outer space, save astronauts, and have to fight Vermicious Knids.

The B.F.G. was such a great book about finding a family, as orphan and outcast Sophie finds a kindred soul in the runt of the litter and always picked on, B.F.G. (Big Friendly Giant).

In James & the Giant Peach; dreamer James finds himself the owner of a gigantic peach and sets off to New York City with a crew of insects that range from a spider, to a grasshopper, to a centipede, and more. They have to fight countless obstacles and outwit his cruel aunts.

In Fantastic Mr. Fox, a hardworking father tries to care for his family and the forest creatures; all the while trying to outwit the farmers of their wares.

Sometimes he’s “got this” and other times he really doesn’t.

In George’s Marvelous Medicine, George is constantly tired of his grandmother’s abusive remarks. So he cooks her up a “special medicine” to release his anger, one that she actually drinks! It causes her to grow 20 times her size! Will George be able to change her back? And will he be able to remake the recipe to be sold?

Boy: Tales of Childhood is a memoir and a great read. Dahl sure was a little scallion when he was growing up. These tales are extremely entertaining, especially the rat story.

Happy Birthday Dahl and thank you for all the wonderful memories and moments you gave me.

Such an amazing imagination was an inspiration to us all.

Read a Dahl book today!

For more on Roald Dahl, go to A Book Only a Reader Could Write

For more book-filled posts, go to It’s Always Tea Time

A Family Affair

So I already did a post on the opening line of Sense and Sensibility, you should go here if you want to check that out. So Sense and Sensibility is far different from Pride & Prejudice. In Pride & Prejudice we have a basic introduction to the family-5 daughters, and their mother’s need to marry them off.

Sense and Sensibility is a little different.

We get a big family entanglement of who’s who in the family and who’s inheriting. It can be a bit much.

It’s not as bad as Love Actually or He’s Just NOT Into You, but it is pretty knotted. But lucky for you all, that’s what I’m here for. I shall untangle it for you.

So it’s always about the property and land right?

And in this case it’s the same. But the one in question here is Norland Park, belonging to Mr. Dashwood.

Now Mr. Dashwood was a confirmed bachleor, and shared his house with his sister who managed everything for him. Both of them grew older, and Miss Dashwood died. Mr. Dashwood found himself alone and didn’t enjoy it. So he decided to invite his nephew, Mr. Henry Dashwood.

Now Henry is where things become a bit more complicated. Henry has two families.

Now I don’t mean that he was married to two women at the same time, this isn’t Sister Wives. And he wasn’t a conman either. He was a widower who remarried. This might not sound too complicated right now (I mean with how high the divorce rates are today, things are far more complicated,) but it does cause some legal issues I’ll get into later.)

So we have Mr. Dashwood’s first family. This includes his son John, horrible daughter-in-law Fanny,

and awful grandson.

I hate these people. Absolutely HATE THEM.

But more on that later.

And his second family consists of the new Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret.

So here we are.

John being older and married was the one that didn’t move into the family homestead. But he and his family visited all the time. The three girls however, joined Old Mr. Dashwood. They take good care of him and greatly amuse him in his old age.

Only one problem.

Ugh

One thing my drama director always told us:

“Never work with kids or animals. They’ll steal the show.”

It’s true. Kids and animals are too cute, and they don’t even try. They’ll do something that will cause all others to be overlooked.

And here it’s no different.

Yes, the little spoiled brat steals away all the love of his grandfather.

“…this child, who, in occasional visits with his father and mother at Norland, had so far gained the affections of his uncle. by such attractions as are by no means unusual in children of two or three years old, an imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise, as to outweigh all the value of all the attention which, for years, he had received from his niece and her daughters.”

Duh!

 

Yep, just another case of those who slaved and cared being pushed aside for something “cuter”.

Ugh

So the old Mr. Dashwood dies. And leaves things unpleasant. He entails all his money and estate to his grandnephew.

Entailment!

Replace Rothbart with entailment

Entailment sucks!!!!!!!

Entailment was something that was done a lot in the 18th-20th centuries. All the money, property, the whole shebang was entailed to the next male heir. So this is good and bad. It means that Henry will have everything, but only for as long as he is alive. When he dies it will be passed on to John, and then to the kid. This means that the female Dashwoods will receive nothing. The old Mr. Dashwood gave them £1000, but that won’t be near enough for them to marry well.

So I’m sure you are wondering about Mr. Henry Dashwood. I mean he doesn’t have to entail his personal money. Or Mrs. Dashwood’s money. Right?

 Well you’re half-right. He wouldn’t have to if he had any. Yep, you see Mr. Dashwood has no money.

He had status and married wealthy. His first wife had a fortune!

Unfortunately, she died.

And left all her money to her only child, John.

When he remarries it’s for love and his second wife is poor. They have only £7000. (I’m not sure if that’s a year or what, but it’s not enough for taking care of his family long-term).

And then he hopes to get the inheritance, but winds up with basically nothing.

To rub salt further in the wound, John doesn’t even need the money. You see John not only has all that dough from his mom, but when he married he increased his net worth tenfold.

Yep, he’s rolling in dough.

So the Dashwoods got the shaft.

But then Henry decides maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all. He is not an old man, he’s still has plenty of years left in him and he could start setting money aside to take care of his family. After all it’s not like he is going to die any day.

For more on Sense and Sensibility, go to A Sense of Sense and Sensibility

For more on the Dashwood family, go to Opening With…

For more on how entailment sucks, go to Fantastic Fantasies

For more on Gone With the Wind, go to At the End of the Rainbow

A Trip to the Mall Turns into the Twilight Zone

So if you’ve been around since the very, very beginning of the creation of this blog, then you will remember that this isn’t my first blog. You see, I read this book Considering Lily, and the main character in there reminded me of myself and made me want to create a blog like she does. My friend Elaine also encouraged me after we had a particularly strange encounter at the mall. That blog was called My Life is a Movie. However, I stupidly forgot to bookmark the page and when I tried to go back to write more on that blog I could not find it at all. I also discovered that there are many, many, many, many blogs who share that name or a variation of it. I gave up and decided blogging wasn’t for me. That is until six months later, after I had finished reading Emma. I loved the book and saw so many similarities that I decided to create a blog, and that dear readers is how Jane Austen Runs My Life was born.

And, that in case you were all wondering, is why it is not only about Jane Austen. That’s how this blog started out, but it quickly expanded into other films and books. However, my Austiniteness will always be the core of these blogs.

Anyways, so what about this Twilight Zone title? Well, I was cleaning through some files and I found two pics I had created and saved from that orginal blog and story. I decided to treat you all with this time capsule as I try and relate this adventure that happened two years ago. I’m so sorry of I leave anything out. So now we shall take a seat in my time machine Delorean and  go back to February 10 or 11 2012 (I know it was before V-Day)

Since this is a past memory, it must be written in italics. You know, kinda like an old-fashioned diary or something.

So the other day my friend Elaine and I decided that we would go to the mall. She wanted to go to Bed, Bath, and Beyond for something and I wanted to pick something up from Bare Escentuals. She decided to put on her GPS, but there was just one problem. GPSs HATE ME! Every time I get in a car with one we end up in the middle of nowhere, we go in the opposite direction, the GPS malfunctions, takes us through the creepiest areas, etc. I’m not kidding, it is literally every time. I mean once my friend went to the Super Target in the next town, and the next week was going to give me and two of our other friends a ride. Even though she had saved the route from the week before, this next time because I was in the car it took us as far away as possible, even though it said it was saving the exact route.

So we are driving around, when the GPS tells us it has to recalculate. We both look at each other:

Like what the heck GPS you had nooo reason to recalculate. We didn’t make any wrong turns, or do anything to screw you up. What are you doing? And the little evil thing decided that it was  going to keep doing that to us.

It just kept doing that nonstop! Recalculate, recalculate, recalculate, again and again and again!!! It made both of annoyed, but I just wanted to take that thing and toss it out the window.

ARRRRGH!!!!!!!!!!!

You know I really didn’t like that movie, but I use this screenshot a loooot. It really expresses my emotions sometimes.

So, of course I didn’t toss the GPS, it belonged to my friend. Instead we had to use a mixture of her phone GPS and our memory of where we thought the mall was. We ended up getting there and thought, well everything will be fine and normal now, right? WRONG!!!!

So we park the car and head into Forever 21 so that we could get into the mall and get the items we needed. As we enter Forever 21 we look around the store, and look, and look, and look; and can’t find a way out!

AHHHHHHH!!!!

I am serious there is NO WAY OUT!  We can’t even find the way we entered. I’m like I”M STUCK IN HERE FOREVER!!!!!!! THAT’S WHY IT’S CALLED FOREVER 21, I WILL BE IN HERE FOR 21 YEARS!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, so let’s get serious. I felt like I was going to be stuck in there, but not for years. Just hours. So the reason we couldn’t find a way out was that it turns out that they had all these mirrors hanging strategically in front of the doors, so unless you looked at the doors from an angle you would only see the clothes reflected back, therefore leaving one to think the store extended farther than it did, and that there was no way out.

Whoever designed that store was like Jigsaw level of sadistic and psychotic.

I’m serious, those designers and planners were just plan mean and cruel. Who does that?

So after we had survived the dastardly Forever 21, we continued to our destination, when Elaine says she has to use the bathroom. So we decide that we are not going back into Forever 21, but look through the place for other bathrooms. We found them, but you had to walk down this hallway with black and white checkerboards. We walk and walk and walk and walk  and walk and walk…. Yeah it just seems to go on forever. And those white and black checkerboard tiles, give the hall an appearance of shrinking that we start to feel as if we are in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or something! 

Except sadly there was no chocolate or Gene Wilder in this adventure.

So we finally reach the bathroom, and go in. But when we come out it feels so weird. It feels like we have been in the mall for hours and hours, or even days. We both started joking around that when we finally got back to the mall we would be entering the 1960s or something. I have expected Rod Serling to pop out at any moment and say “What started out as just an average day for those two girls, turned out to be a shortcut…into…THE TWILIGHT ZONE.”

To be perfectly honest, I love him so much I wouldn’t care if he did pop up like that.

So the rest of the trip was pretty normal. We were both freaked out, that we got what we wanted and got outta there. We were able to get past the Forever 21 gauntlet/maze

I can do this….just have to wait for the right time

We get out to the parking lot and when we do we CAN’T FIND THE CAR!

And NO we were not high. So we are walking up rows looking for it. Joking, and half-believing, that we will find out that it is parked in a completely different area or back on campus. We finally find it and head home. 

Yep what an adventure right? You might not believe me but its true.

I swear. And I have never been back to that Forever 21 because it is tooo creepy to do that again. Stick to the Disney store, its safe. 🙂