New HBO Miniseries of Brideshead Revisited Starring Joe Alwyn as Sebastian

I predict dongs-a-plenty.

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Poor Taylor Swift - always dating gay men. Andrew Garfield's gonna snatch her man

r4 So does that mean that hottie DJ Calvin Harris is gay??? If only...

Lovely.

Taylor is straight and loves herself some English or Scottish dick. Harry Styles set the standard back in 2021 and she never returned to dating her countrymen after that.

Trust the dumbass He Pings to High Heaven Troll to jump into the thread.

Why do they redo this every couple of decades or so? The original series was beautiful. I even enjoyed the film version, in some ways more than the series version. Fiennes and Blanchett would be great, and Alwyn is beautiful.

*back in 2012

I love the novel and enjoyed the first miniseries and, in its own way, the feature film, but do we really need another go? There are so many other Waugh’s worth doing.

Here's Joe Alywn.

He would make a good Malone in Dancer from the Dance. Those big blue Princess Diana eyes.

Joe has a girthy penis.

Joe is 6ft 1. I was desperate for him to play Malone, but it didn't happen.

Again?

Rooney Mara? It will be awful, unwatchable.

Who will play the bride?

Wasn’t this already remade after the Irons/Andrews one?

OP is trolling. See how there's no link?

yeah there was movie a few years ago r16

R17, see R2.

Blasphemy! Lies & Corruption! Anthony Andrews and Jeremy Irons own these roles.

Who will play the Teddy Bear? That obscene one from that Marky Mark movie I take it? I’m sure they will make him talking and perhaps have a few songs this time around?

[quote] Who will play the bride?

And who will the bride give head to?

How many non-whites are they intent on cramming into this shitfest?

Viola could probably play a maid. She usually gets a nomination for that.

Will he set it on Bologna instead of Oxford? Perhaps they are studying abroad?

Another remake. Another Luca project. How about something and somebody new? I'm OK with Alwyn though. He's at least a fresh face.

R26 His face maybe fresh, but I’d imagine his hole is blown out from all his time on the couch.

Another remake?

I know, R14, she's such a nothing actress.

Why?

Evelyn Waugh came and visited George Cukor and they sat around smoking cigars in Cukor's playpen. Two weeks later they agreed his broken-backed story made an EXCELLENT book and would make a good mini-series but it needs to be cut and strengthened to make a film.

They said Ronald Colman was too old and Deborah Kerr was too young. Tyrone Power was too expensive to hire from Fox and Peter Lawford was equally pretty but inept.

George Cukor said Charles Ryder was too weak to sustain a two hour movie and all that effeminacy would have to be toned down so much that the audience wouldn't know what was happening. And he wasn't interested in the Sebastian Flyte's redemption and that other Catholic theme which mean almost nothing outside Waugh's small circle of fellow-religionists.

Waugh went home but got enough material for a quite different but equally BRILLIANT story called 'The Loved One'!

Luca is a loser.

How many adaptations of this need to be made?

I'm getting tired of Cate Blankett. She has worn out her welcome playing snooty bitches..

No doubt the costume designer will bedeck Blankett with a parade of fabulous costumes to mark the passage of time. But her character is actually a monastic mono-toned colourless person who eschews glamour because Jesus Christ demands it.

R6. American women who fetishize British dong are always fucked in the head and usually classist and racist.

I've never heard of this Joe Alwyn person. He's too tall.

He's got a face like Oliver Twist.

He's got a face like a smashed pie.

I loved the first mini-series (anyone have a link to stream, no Netflix or Hulu).

But Ben Whishaw in the film was the best I can imagine.

I don't think straight actors, no matter how skilled or talented, can play complicated gay characters very successfully.

The current generation will perceive this story as anti-gay. Sebastian supplies some temporary adolescent glamour but the shiftless hero flings him aside.

Sebastian is flung away and crumples into an emotionally-crippled, hopeless alcoholic (because he doesn't follow the teachings of Jesus Christ).

[quote] How many non-whites are they intent on cramming into this shitfest?

It’s going to be like Hamilton. The entire cast will be trans sex workers of color.

What a bad idea.

Up there when they thought it a good idea to remake Ben Hur a few years ago.

Some things you just don't remake.

R39 Brideshead has been remade 4000 times by now.

I think Ryan Murphy and the cast of Boys in the Band should remake it it playing all the roles, Monty Python Style.

BR is becoming like Gatsby, the appetite to revamp posh porn never quite fades.

As always, it will be a condemnation of the Catholic church.

[QUOTE] I've never heard of this Joe Alwyn person. He's too tall

6 ft 1 is too tall? Begone, dwarf

Talk about things the world does not need.

[quote][R17], see [R2].

I stand corrected, R19. But you can see how this remake would sound like a terrible idea cooked up in the mind of one of our trolls with too much time on his hands.

[quote]Sebastian supplies some temporary adolescent glamour but the shiftless hero flings him aside.

So right up Guadagnino's alley then. Lots of opportunity to refrain from showing anything too gay.

I w-w-wonder who they will g-g-get to enact the d-d-d-divine Anthony B-B-Blanche.

Lord Marchmain’s mistress (was it Carla?) knew the drill. Those boys were fucking.

R48 It was Cara, and yes, she knew. I love that character and she’s underused.

Why is this remake necessary? The 1981 miniseries will forever be the end-all for me. It was perfectly cast and Anthony Andrews is mesmerizingly beautiful as Sebastian. Jeremy Irons doesn’t do a thing for me personally but he’s an impeccable Charles.

At least Luca isn’t trying to shove two actors who rhyme with Spammer and Balamet down our throats. With Dakota J. as Julia.

Isn't Andrew Garfield too old? Ditto Rooney Mara.

Rooney Mara? Noooo, she ruins everything! Why can't she just star in Sias' new film about an autistic girl? It's the only role she's perfect for.

Joe Alwyn is sexy. This is another reason to hate Taylor Swift even though she got political and helped Biden and HArris.

[quote]Isn't Andrew Garfield too old?

Yes. Jeremy Irons was in his early 30s, and even that was borderline given that Charles is something like 19 when he meets Sebastian.

And Rooney Mara as Julia!? That character needs to ooze sex appeal and Rooney has none. Zero. Awful choice.

I always loan out my DVD's of the original mini-series as a test to whether I'm going to like someone or not. My boss only watched a few episodes and said it was "too 80's" (crossed her off). I'm surprised that I liked the film version - it was a different, more explicit, take, which was interesting.

[quote]He's got a face like Oliver Twist.

Oliver Twist was a fictional character. How do we know what he looks like?

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful."

Honestly, I assumed Rooney would be playing the asexual Cordelia.

The Marchmain family is presented uncritically.

It’s not so much that they get away with behaving badly, as they get away with behaving very boringly.

Every time I read it I say to myself surely there must be more to Sebastian Flyte than he is rich, aristocratic and Roman catholic, but there isn’t.

The last part of the book is dull, and focused on issues of moral dilemma, etc., and pretty well unfilmable, which is why screen adaptions of the book never work.

Always found it interesting that the two outsiders to society, the homosexual Anthony Blanche and whore/mistress Cara saw everything so clearly.

Antony Blanche had the numbers for both Sebastian and Charles at once. He tried in vain (but in great detail and expressly) to warn Charles Ryder, but it didn't take. Cara of course soon as clapping eyes upon Sebastian and his "friend" knew what time it was; but she also saw how things would go. The kind of "love" Sebastian wanted and needed would come from rough trade like Kurt. Charles Ryder was a conflicted but equally lonely young man.

Cannot see any point in redoing Brideshead Revisited again on either small or large screen. It has been done to death at this point with really nothing surpassing original BBC television production.

Jeremy Irons may not be the most masculine man in world, but that voice! There was something about him in Brideshead, you couldn't take your eyes off the man. Again however it was Irons giving narration that drew people in... Uncle Charlies in Village showed BR on big screen television every week, and not only was place packed, but you could hear a pin drop. For balance of 1980's and through 1990's Jeremy Irons was sex on a stick far as many women and men world over were concerned. One would even be willing to overlook his chain smoking.....

There was something about British television series of 1970's and 1980's with perhaps a bit of early 1990's that they just don't have any longer.

Cannot put my finger on exactly what has changed or when, but things just feel different.

Maybe it's because so much is blatantly spelled out nowadays; people aren't deemed sophisticated enough to put things together on their own.

Is Anthony Blanche seducing Charles Ryder? Does Charles Ryder even know what time it is?

[quote] Charles Ryder was a conflicted but … … Yes, he was but we all hoped that he might found a more substantial lover than silly Sebastian but Evelyn broke in and placed his own issues on our imagined rosy plot.

"Waugh shifts his attention from a study of the peccadilloes of the aristocracy into an examination of Catholic guilt, or, as the penultimate section of the book is entitled, ‘A Twitch Upon The Thread’. The narrative evolves in such a way that it seems as if Charles will marry Julia and, through her, become the owner of Brideshead itself, but fate, and God, have other ideas"

R62 Anthony Blanche is a wondrous character but I can't hear what he says about striking some kind of attitude at 2.38.

R63

Few understand that it wasn't either Sebastian nor perhaps even Julia Charles Ryder wanted, but Brideshead.

First salvo was going against Lady Marchmain's express and explicit orders not to give her dipsomaniac son money (which he will spend on booze). Charles Ryder says "fuck you" to Lady M. pretty much after the family had been so gracious.

Next CR begins an adulterous affair with Julia which seems to put him closer to his goal after Lord Marchmain changes his will leaving pretty much everything to his daughters. Oh Charles Ryder does protest how it's "monstrous for Bridey", but never the less he is greatly pleased by that turn of events.

Charles Ryder flirts with Catholicism, sometimes entranced, others almost repulsed. He inserts himself into the domestic business of Marchmain family as Julia, Bridey and Cordelia wrestle with issue of their father receiving last sacraments . Charles pretty much dismisses it all as a bunch of mumbo-jumbo and protest that elderly dying man should have a priest and the rest of it forced upon him on his deathbed. Poor Charles just didn't have a clue, not a single one.

Lord Marchmain's dramatic reconciliation with God was a bit of victory on a few fronts. It gave Bridey some of his own back if he did but know it, since it prompted Julia to reconsider her life and decision to marry Charles. No marriage, no Brideshead estate and now Charles Ryder is left to ponder how it all went wrong and why. That is usually when people turn to faith and God in some form; and Charles Ryder alone in the world embraces Catholicism.

I don't know why they don't just fuck off Waugh, and film the real story it was based on. Earl Beauchamp's story and that of his son is far more interesting.

Yes, but Earl Beauchamp's story dragged 30 years. He wasn't psychologically attractive and his house was smaller.

R64

"so I got to the fountain, there it was rather fetching, so I spotted there and struck some attitudes. "

Anthony Blanche uses word "attitudes" as in art, to mean a posture or gesture.

Not many outside of certain circles would use such language today or even get the analogy; but members of British upper classes of early 1900's surely would have understood.

Modern equivalent today I suppose would be Madonna's Vogue "strike a pose..."

Quite honestly am still waiting for a damn good remake of Maurice!!!!!!

[quote]He wasn't psychologically attractive

Yes he was! A very sympathetic character. Although very spoilt.

Joe Alwyn is so hot in Boy Erased.

[quote] …very spoilt…

Beauchamp was also physically unattractive. And a sissie.

He didn't use speech-writers and he always 'put his foot in his mouth'.

The Mara sisters have a reputation of transforming gold into shit. This miniseries is doomed.

[quote]Beauchamp was also physically unattractive. And a sissie.

A really stupid, know-nothing comment. As a young man he was strikingly attractive. Byronic. And absolutely not a sissie. Immensely educated, highly aesthetic, and very charming. During his Governorship of New South Wales he was adopted by the bohemians of Sydney, the poets, writers, and artists, because he opened up Government House to them like had never been done.

You can hardly say these bohemians 'adopted' him, R74.

They were poor and he was rich. They lived in garrets and he lived in a palace.

They didn't adopt him. That's like saying 'the mudlark' adopted Queen Victoria.

Yes I can. If you read the New South Wales newspapers of the time, and twenty years later, you'll find he was very, very fondly recalled by them. To give a single example of his kindness and generosity: he paid for the poor, under-recognised poet Henry Lawson to travel to England to open up his experience and contacts. Victor Daley, another poet, poor Irish, and possibly gay, was just one of the many utterly charmed by him. As a young man he'd come under the influence of a (gay) minister who did welfare in London's East End. And this influenced him greatly. Everything written about him to date (i.e by two women who've written books on Waugh and the family) has been very superficial and shallow.

Are you saying, R76, that the two women who've written books on Waugh and the family have been 'very superficial and shallow' because they don't hold the same view as yourself?

No, I'm saying it because I've gone through the sources that were available but they clearly never examined.

[quote]Every time I read it I say to myself surely there must be more to Sebastian Flyte than he is rich, aristocratic and Roman catholic, but there isn’t.

[quote]Kingsley Amis

Well, Sir Kingsley, that was quite enough for Charles Ryder from the London suburbs - on top of the instantaneous homoerotic attraction. A coup de foudre indeed. Charles fell hook line and sinker for the charm, and Sebastian loved exercising his charm. A limitingly heterosexual reading, Kingsley old chap.

Yes, I suspect Kingsley Amis was annoyed that 'Brideshead Revisited' included a superficial, sentimental and homosexual alcoholic in Sebastian instead of a charming, witty and randy heterosexual alcoholic like himself.

[quote] Quite honestly am still waiting for a damn good remake of Maurice!!!!!!

But could one improve on the earlier version?

The plot is as thin and fragmentary as tissue paper. There's no psychological depth to humanise that character that Hugh Grant played. The plot is as thin and fragmentary as that Timothy Chalamet movie.

OMG this is the first time I’m reading about this. Luca Guadagnino is such a publicity whore, he announces a new project every month. He has already committed to a Scarface remake, a Lord of the Flies remake, an adaptation of the Scotty Bowers story, and a sequel to Call Me By Your Name. IMO none of these will ever get made.

OMG it's being produced by the wanker named Piers Wenger.

Right now I'm watching A Christmas Carol from 2019. Joe plays Bob Cratchit and he is oddly affecting in the role. I want to cuddle him. But this version is certainly an adult version with Guy Pearce as Ebenezer Scrooge.

[quote]Right now I'm watching A Christmas Carol from 2019. Joe plays Bob Cratchit and he is oddly affecting in the role. I want to cuddle him. But this version is certainly an adult version with Guy Pearce as Ebenezer Scrooge.

I enjoyed that adaptation. Alwyn was a welcomed presence in the mini. Of course when it aired all people seemed to do was whine about Cratchit's wife being Black versus the merits of the production. It was produced by Tom Hardy hence his wife having a role and close friend Stephen Graham being in it.

[quote] Cratchit's wife being Black

What kind of Black, R85? Nigerian Black, Jamaican Black, Notting Hill Black?

LISA HARTMAN Black!