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Hello internet! I hope you all haven't decamped for some other journal site as I have a couple of random bits and pieces to share.

For the Austen fans, here is the first picture of Elinor and Marianne from the BBC's new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.



I'm sure you're capable of guessing which is which.

I'm cautiously optimistic for this new production. The script was written by Andrew Davies, who did the 95 Pride and Prejudice and the recent Northanger Abbey, so 'yay' there. However, I really love Emma Thompson's film version with ALAN RICKMAN and Hugh Laurie and Greg Wise and Kate Winslet and Ang Lee's gorgeous direction. I'm not really sure that this new version is necessary, just like the new film version of Pride and Prejudice wasn't necessary (or good, for that matter).

And while I like David Morrissey very much as an actor (I recently watched Our Mutual Friend with my mum and she was blown away by his performance in that), he doesn't have Alan Rickman's middle-aged hotness or Alan Rickman's voice of hotness...in short, Alan Rickman owns that role for me and David Morrissey just isn't going to cut it.

Anyway.

For the fans of Friday Night Lights, the season 1 DVD cover has been released and well...it's fugly.

( Check it )

I get that the Panthers' colours are blue and yellow but did they have to make all the photos so horribly yellow? Against the blue background, it's terrible. I also really dislike the photos they've chosen. They do very little to show what the show is all about. And while I applaud their decision to make Kyle Chandler look like the Jesus, where is Connie Britton's matching halo?

So yeah. Change the cover NBC.

For fans of Kenneth Branagh I have...well a story about Kenneth Branagh.

I was working on Sunday (for those not in the know, I am a waitress at a very fancy French restaurant) and at one of my tables was this really lovely couple. They asked me my name (this has happened exactly once before) and what I was studying and I mentioned I'd done a unit on Shakespeare last semester. This lead them to tell me that their daughter basically wrote to Kenneth Branagh asking for help on how to get into the business of show (on the technical side) and he wrote back and she wound up working with him on Othello in Italy! Her parents have even had dinner with him and say he's just lovely.

*waits for everyone to get back from writing letters, either 'Ken, please let me learn from your wisdom' or 'Ken, please let me have your babies!'*

Finally, another picture, one that is just plain adorable. One of my favourite things about Alias was the relationship between Sydney Bristow, and her father, Jack. Well, the actors playing Sydeny and Jack, Jennifer Garner and Victor Garber, became really close (he was at her wedding to Ben Affleck and Matt Damon wasn't! ZOMG!!1!) and it's nice to see that they still are in a friendly, not creepy at all kind of way.

( Spy family reunites! )

How cute is that? And that stroller looks a bit too small for her daughter so it's obviously a present which makes the whole thing even more adorable. Still, even holding a tiny pink stroller, he totally looks like he would torture you in the most painful way imaginable for just saying Sydney's name.

Because Jack Bristow is a badass. *nods*

When the new shows started last year, I completely ignored Friday Night Lights. I thought, like many, that it was all about American football.

But this show is so not about football. It's certainly not about football as an inspirational, all-healing, magical force where everyone is a winner.

Nope, in this show there are definitely losers and it is realistic and fantastic and I'm enjoying it so much.

The characters are excellent, the dialog is realistic, the acting is generally pretty darn great and the actors are generally darn pretty. There is even a married couple who love each other and have a healthy relationship and yet are totally awesome and not boring!!! (Because yes, functional people can be entertaining on TV. We're just not used to it.)

Ok, it's a little about football. However, I've actually come to respect the intricacies of the game and I hate sports, especially American football. It does deals with the glory that comes from playing and winning but it also the pressure that comes from losing and just how unprepared the players are for the real world where won't be a career in the game for most of them.

And I was happy to discover that it deals with a disability very close to my heart. In the first episode, one of the characters is paralysed from the waist down. My aunt died in 2000; prior to that she had been in a wheel chair for 15 years (though her paralysis was not the result of an accident, rather a tumor in her spinal column). It's good to see this disability and how it affects peoples lives getting attention on a TV show.

So yeah, I'm really recommending this one for people who like character dramas. Don't be put off by the football.