BBC's The Three Musketeers (1966) - Jeremy Brett makes it worth seeing

Last year I read Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers for the first time, as best I remember, which got me interested in seeing the best film version(s). After checking various online sources I concluded the best two were the 1966 ten-part BBC television series starring Jeremy Brett as D'Artagnan (available on Netflix), and the two-movie version released as The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers. 

I finished watching the BBC series tonight, and despite being in black and white with rather low production values and some suspect casting, it is nevertheless quite enjoyable. Jeremy Brett dominates the production. I've always thought he was the best Sherlock Holmes, so I was interested to see what he looked like at the age of 33. He is dashing, passionate, and a credible D'Artagnan. YouTube has a nice clip of Brett as D'Artagnan.

The other actors are competent but unfortunately rather forgettable, except for Pauline Collins as Kitty, who was deliciously memorable in a lesser role, and perhaps Mary Peach as the deliciously nasty femme fatale, Milady de Winter. But Peach, while appropriately psychotic, isn't as believable as a femme fatale. It may be that a 16th century French or English male would find her attractive, but besides oozing evil she didn't do much for me.

I read on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) that this production was filmed live with no special effects, which does indeed add to the stature of this version, and I must agree with a reviewer on IMDb that character development is one of its strong points.

Let's hope Milady is better cast in Richard Lester's 1973 version I will watch next. 

Buying an iPod on eBay

eBay is the greatest. I've bought a number of things on eBay, especially things I've really wanted but couldn't afford to buy new, like upgrades to the Mac OS and Microsoft Office, a Palm Pilot, and today, at long last, an iPod Video. Lingling has had one for some time, and I just got word that Ouwen now has one as well (he and Lingling are currently in China for part of the summer), so I thought it's about time I had one too.

My justification is that there are times on my 100-mile-a-day commute that I could use one (like for my Chinese lessons, which I currently listen to on my CD player) as well as when exercising in the fitness room of our building.

I figured out a long time ago that it doesn't pay to bid until the last minute. I can't figure out why people bother to place bids several hours or even several minutes before the end of an auction. The only strategy that makes any sense is to (1) decide how much you are willing to bid, (2) set up the bid ahead of time by entering your maximum, (3) wait until about one minute left (this requires a bit of timing and a couple of open browser sessions), and (4) with one minute to go, place your bid. eBay will immediately bid you against anyone else waiting in the wings with a last-minute bid. If you're lucky, no one else is willing to exceed your minimum bid, or they underestimated and don't have time to place a new bid before the auction ends. 

Today I missed my first attempt, which ended higher than I wanted to go. I was willing to bid up to about $125 (new 30GB iPod Videos sell for about $250). On my second attempt I got it for $112 plus $5 shipping, for a total of $117. Pretty good deal.

Update: (Sat, 2Aug) my iPod arrived yesterday in perfect shape, a gorgeous glossy black. While charging it I synched it up with the playlists Lingling and I have created in iTunes. We reportedly have 2,675 songs occupying 10.68GB, which is pretty astounding. I did a rough count of albums, which totals about 163 (for 2- or 3-disk sets I only counted 1 each). This is why I needed a 30GB iPod Video, not a 4- or 8GB Nano. I wandered around listening through earphones and was totally blown away by the sound quality. It's fun also having the album cover art for about half of the albums, which is easily downloaded through iTunes.