You asked for it, so here’s an occasional open thread to bitch about anything tangentially related to history, costume, movies, or TV shows! Or whatever else is on your mind right now. Note that URLs are automatically held for moderation, but most anything else goes as long as you’re not bitchier than we are!
Summertime and frock-flicking is easy — because who wants to go outside in the heat when you can sit in the cool, dark and watch costume dramas!
How are you keeping comfortable?
AC is keeping me cool. And lots of iced tea. I spend my time rewatching TOBS and other period dramas. I’m also raging with my fist in the air over the new S&S trailer and the costumes and dark visuals. Good times!
I just watched that trailer and I am filled with rage! Hair hanging down, etc. Now I have to watch the 1995 version to calm down.
What annoyed me the most was Elienor’s hair. I get that in some cases while not historically acurate, it fits a character and symbolically works. But for Elienor, it doesn’t make any sense, and actually goes against her character.
The production sacrificed its hairpin and lighting budget to buy extra mud dye.
S&S — they all look like it’s 3am and they’ve been startled out of bed!
Rewatching the John Adams miniseries, in tandem with Ken Burns The American Revolution.
I just recently finished Ken Burns The American Revolution! I love his documentaries!
Oh god the Burns American Revolution doc was ALL WIG PORN for me!!
Enola Holmes 3: Beachy waves, acrylic nails and lip liner, Oh My!
Anyone planning on watching the new Little House on the Prarie? Between the hairstyles, omitting Carrie, and likely leaving out all the problematic elements of westward expansion, I’m avoiding it.
Just coming here to post that. OMG it’s godawful
OH yes! Trystan is working on a review, and ALL of our friends are having Feelings about it (and not great ones)!
I thank Trystan for taking one for the team.
Probably not. I have mixed feelings about not sticking to the story (as in adding non-white characters in an attempt to make the Ingalls family more relatable or whatever). Charles and Caroline were people of their time, for better, for worse.
O.T. for LIW fans: The book “Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder” by Caroline Fraser is very worthwhile. Among other insights, poor Pa was hoodwinked by the U.S. government’s attempts to move settlers into the new territories with promises of great wheat-growing land, etc. (Guess where the Dust Bowl originated?) If settlers had made peace with the indigenous peoples there, they would have gotten better advice about what worked on the prairie. I hope this was folded into the new series.
I decided to give it a try. I liked the idea of addition of the Osage family and getting to hear some of their thoughts about the incoming settlers. but I don’t know how accurate their depiction is (Laura’s gungho-ness about trying to be their friends and talk to them seems like a stretch). I also like that the show is addressing that the land they are on is Osage land from the beginning and that there is not a guarantee that the settlers will get to remain on it. We read the book when I was in the 3rd grade and my teacher spent some time talking about this at a 3rd grade level of course.
I know Dr. Tan was a real person and was in the books and I like that he’s in it but I feel like they are romanticizing him? I don’t know much about him irl besides that he was a doctor and I think he learned from the Osage, and that he had a wife and children that he separated from/abandoned. The Ingalls all seemed surprised to be treated by a Black doctor in the books and they just seem to be brushing over it in the series. I guess we’ll see how it goes.
Other than the sad attempt at the sun bonnets (they seem more like a sun bonnet fan fic) and, the frequent loose hair, I think one of the things that pulls me out the most is how well built up the town is and how many people live there. It doesn’t really feel like Little House on the Prairie. More like, Little House Right Outside of Town. Also irl the Ingalls were very poor and they seem semi comfortable buying luxuries in the series.
I have been trying to find the claimed historical references for the bonnets. I haven’t yet. I am sorry, but they look like someone stapled one of those wicker paper plate holders to the back of their head and it grates my nerves.
Not after reading the Guardian review of it, but I never really expected much from it. I like the 70s tv show as its own thing, but it’s always going to be tricky trying to adapt this series.
Watching Spider-Noir ( with Nicholas Cage) and enjoying it. Better in color to watch the outfits.
Saw a suggested post on Instagram from I believe the director of an independently produced film about female Pre-Raphaelite artists. Might be interesting for Frock Flicks to talk to the director about what it’s like to produce a historical costume film on a small budget. It’s called The Three Graces.
I want to watch the new Little House on the Prairie show but I’m on the fence about whether or not to start. Bc who knows if Netflix will even finish it. I don’t want to get attached to a show they don’t care about. But then again I never liked any of the Little House adaptations I’ve watched (they weren’t necessarily bad shows/movies but they weren’t great adaptations of the book series). I read the books as a kid and loved them so when my grandma had me watch the show I was really disappointed. It did prepare me to not expect movies based on books to be anything like the book tho!
I found some of the Little House book spinoff series (the Caroline years) on the Internet Archives. As a kid I read quite a few of those but no longer have them so it’s been fun reading-reading them. I still have my dress up sun bonnet (I wore it just like Laura did and would sometimes use it to put beanie babies or acorns in) which reminds me, does anyone else think the straw bonnets for the new show look odd? Maybe they were just in show stills?
They were not just in the stills. Caroline, Mary, and Laura all wear them. It’s my one nitpick, but I am trying to not let that deter me from finishing the series.
Oh dear, little sunburn and weird tan on the prairie.
Little House is currently filming the next season in my city, so I know there’s more to come. I haven’t watched any of it yet, but it can be interesting to watch local productions to see if you recognize any locations. One fun costume fact is that they had local knitters create pieces from vintage patterns for the wardrobes. Otherwise, I recently watched PBS’s The Count of Monte Cristo. The first two escape-from-prison episodes were a bit slow, but there were a few interesting women’s costumes after that.
I saw Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day (featured in your roundup of trailers for upcoming films a while back. This was my Letterboxd review:
This loose adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel seems to have dropped into the summer movie season with little to no fanfare. I had to add it to MovieLens in order to rate it there, and I suspect one of my local cinemas was only showing it because some scenes take place nearby. I heard about it only because of said cinema showing it and because of the FrockFlicks blog featuring the trailer ( link snipped ).
I thought the film was a decent “Edwardian girl power”/”woman in a man’s world”/”bigotry…bad!” story, but would perhaps have benefited from more focus on that and maybe keeping even less of the romantic polygon shenanigans from the book. The book is an ensemble story about 4 characters, whereas the film focuses on Katherine, as the poster shows, and on her desire to be an astronomer. However, the film keeps pushing the romantic angle (trying to get the viewer invested in her getting with the Right Guy even though they don’t share many scenes after they first meet), and vestiges of the novel’s multiple viewpoints stick around (e.g. there is one scene involving two of the others where Katherine isn’t present which seems like it breaks the narrative structure simply in order to hastily establish why they turn up where her family are having Christmas…except they then barely interact with her there).
I was disappointed not to like this more, because I feel like it explores themes and a period in changes in equality/attitudes which are very timely – being set in 1910-11, it shows a period where women could theoretically do a lot of things they couldn’t before (like go to university), but it was very difficult and there was pushback. I think this mirrors some things today, for women and for LGBT+ people and others (the exchange about women’s lavatories at Cambridge felt very timely, probably deliberately so), but unfortunately I think the film doesn’t explore this enough, instead hiving off into themes about love vs. science (yawn).
Wow, thanks for the lengthy review!
Sadly I have no insights on the costumes, but I’ll be interested to see what any FrockFlickers have to say about that aspect of the movie. There are certainly some nice suits (Katherine disguises herself as a man to get into an astronomical society meeting at one point).
I saw Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day (mentioned on your round-up of trailers for upcoming films) at the cinema recently. I thought it was…OK. (I had a longer comment duplicating my Letterboxd review but it doesn’t seem to have made it through the spam filter.
Oh wait, there it is above, never mind.
Just found a very enjoyable little Gem, a 1934 Suspense filled Drama named “Double Door” set in 1910 New York, about An Evil Embittered Spinster Who will stop at nothing to keep her Power over Family, it’s worth a watch if not for the the costumes (some are good some not so much), For the Story and the very solid and chilling performance by Stage Actress Mary Morris in her only movie
My living room a.c., fridge, and TV all decided to turn on me, so I can’t say I’m enjoying this summer so far. I hate having to watch stuff on my tablet, so I’ve mostly been watching silent films on YouTube and reading Peyton Place (something I would love to see get adapted again, but much less like a soap opera this time)
Sad to learn of Sam Neill’s passing. I think I will need to re-watch Reilly Ace of Spies.
And now we’ve lost Brenda Fricker! I took a peek at her filmography, quite an impressive collection of historical flicks in her portfolio.
I rewatched Daisy Miller (1974) and was amazed by the costume design by John Furniss. So often costume dramas don’t have decent shots of the costumes but not in this case, they are so many shots in which you get to see the whole costume.