Absence

I hope the old adage, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" is true. I have been ill, but I am hopefully on the road to recovery and while my gluten-free blondies are baking, I thought I'd share a post.

I believe I have mentioned before that I love most period dramas. And I love how so many of my favorite British actors and actresses are recycled, for lack of a better term, throughout these films.

While Keira Knightley is not my first choice of Elizabeths, I absolutely adore her in almost every one of her films. The Duchess is one of my favorite films- a go to movie for when I want to escape. I know just about every word by heart. My favorite scene has some of the snappiest dialog I've come across. Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, stands in the foyer with her two good friends, Richard Sheridan, the playwright, and Charles Fox, then Leader of the Opposition. The Duchess is heavily pregnant and Mr. Fox says, "A huge belly was never more becoming on anyone." Sheridan replies, "And Fox here offers an expert opinion as he does a giant belly every time he passes a mirror. If your belly were on a woman," he says to Fox, "well, we'd all know what to think." Fox, never to be outdone replies, "My dear Sheridan, an hour ago my belly was on a woman. Now what do you think?"

Simon McBurney, who plays Fox, is such a great actor, with such piercing eyes. It usually happens that when I start researching an actor, I find he or she has been in many other films that I have seen and loved, and perhaps I didn't recognize them or wasn't yet a fan at the time. In this case, I found that Simon McBurney did the voice of Kreacher, the house elf at Number Four Grimmauld Place, in Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows, Part I. Kreacher first appeared in Order of the Phoenix, but a different actor did the voice in that film. McBurney also played the evil Mr. Brocklehurst in the most recent Jane Eyre.

Back to Ms. Knightley. Has anyone seen A Dangerous Method? She gives an amazing performance alongside Michael Fassbinder and Viggo Mortensen, who was almost unrecognizable as Sigmund Freud. It's worth a watch if you haven't seen it already. Don't watch it in front of the kids. It wouldn't be a movie about the birth of psychoanalysis without a bunch of sexual innuendo.

Time to go have a gluten-free blondie.