And most wickedly I did as I sailed

[sovay]

Just got back from seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest with my family. I realize that I am building up a positive backlog of posts that must be made about this, that, or the other, but I must here take a moment to say:

DAVY JONES' SAILORS.

DUDE.

Whatever the flaws of the overall film, that entire thread just made me smile. Stellan Skarsgård's Bootstrap Bill plays right into one of my favorite character obsessions, and if someone was going to fuse the legends of Davy Jones and the Flying Dutchman (not to mention Koschei the Deathless), this was actually quite a good way. It's the combination of metamorphosis—so long under sea that the sea has changed them into itself, like something out of Patricia McKillip or Caitlín R. Kiernan—and moral compromise, tarnish and sea-change. As matociquala might say: kicked me right in the squid.

Er. So to speak.

Comments

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Mmm...squid.

I am really stupidly in love with that Davey Jones.

[sovay]

Yeah. I love how when he buries his heart, it's not only the physical artifact but all the letters and jewelry and trinkets that would remind him of her; except for the music box, that chimes the same tune he plays over and over. (Tip of the hat to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, I think.) Someone who really can handle folklore is writing these scripts. This pleases me. Also, I like your icon.

(I need a paid account so I can have more icons. This is all the fault of movies and television. Since I picked up Black Books, I've wanted an icon with Bernard Black; and I want one with Bootstrap, now. It's the starfish and the barnacles and the stranded seaweed hair, and all the compromises. To pick up a relationship with your son after more than ten years, and him thinking all this time that you'd died after abandoning your family to run off to sea, by giving him five lashes so that someone else won't have to—that is deeply fucked up, and exactly the sort of thing that catches my interest in a character. But the starfish and the barnacles might have done it, too.)

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Someone who really can handle folklore is writing these scripts.

Yes. When Dalma says that all the stories are true, I nearly applauded.

[sovay]

all the stories are true

And I have my suspicions about her involvement in them.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. I have to write my tragic squid love story before our suspicians are confirmed in the third movie. :)

Maybe one day I'll get a deep one story that doesn't end tragically. Fish need love too.

[sovay]

I have to write my tragic squid love story before our suspicians are confirmed in the third movie.

If you write it first, it's not thinly-disguised slashfic!

Oh, and icon love.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Tia Dalma, I did like, I will give the film that.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

I suspect you like (at least parts of) Sean Stewart's Galveston.

[sovay]

. . . Yes. I hadn't considered that book in years; I read it when it came out in 2000 and not since. But from what I remember of the plot, Josh's gambling father was my favorite character. Heh. I am obvious.