Teevee

As I would have predicted, I have been spending a lot more time that usual watching TV.

In between badly made 'documentaries' about identical triplets, more of that fabulously formulaic detective drama and morning re-runs of Will & Grace, I have actually caught some good TV.

First up yesterday was an attempt to bring together revision and relaxation when I picked up a French DVD without even looking at the synopsis. You will notice that this is a technique I have employed in the past before. With that post in mind, you can imagine my delight to discover that Gaspard Ulliel in fact has a central role in yesterday's random pick: A Very Long Engagement.

The warped and inaccurate subtitles did annoy me; a central motif of the letters MMM were explained with the false translation of 'Manech Marries Mathilde'; as if we foreign viewers were too unintelligent to realise that the middle M in some way or another comes from 'Manech loves Mathilde' (FYI, 'love' in French is 'aime' which is pronounced like the letter 'M'). Nevertheless, it was cute touches like that which made Me 'M' the Movie.

Sorry, how incredibly cheesy was that last sentence?!?

Moving swiftly onwards was a snippet of satirical news commentary show Have I Got News For You. It is not to my usual TV taste, but I do appreciate BBC for its lack of ads and so I flicked over during a break. Again, I was met with advertisements but this time of a very different kind, as a series of sexist vintage ads flashed across the screen.

With an all-male panel, this could have veered onto the side of tasteless, but Have I Got News For You is basically charming in its tastelessness, and British TV is so liberal anyway that I was able to just laugh.

A quick Google search dug up a pretty amazing flickr account filled with vintage advertisements, where I found two of the ones featured on TV (actually - they were probably sourced from the flickr site). Hopefully you'll find them amusing too, so that I can justify my excessive TV watching just a little bit more.