The world has a way of looking at people
Tonight at the Brattle I saw Angela Carter and Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves (1984) with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rushthatspeaks; it was brilliant and I don't know why I haven't seen more criticism constellating it with Dennis Potter's Dreamchild (1985) and Jim Henson's Labyrinth (1986). Terence Stamp is perfectly cast as the Devil in a white touring car, whose headlights through the forest gloom are the double flash of a beast's eyes. Stephen Rea should play more werewolves. So should Danielle Dax. I wish Carter and Jordan had gotten to make the film of Vampirella/"The Lady of the House of Love" they were discussing when she died; I did not actually expect how closely his visuals would translate her prose style, elaborately artificial and bluntly homespun at once. I'd had dinner earlier with spatch at Sapporo Ramen, where I got tantan-men with three kinds of extra seaweed; Rush and I went to Rosebud American Kitchen & Bar after the movie and I got the apple pie I had been wanting all this week of cold and rain. I came home to discover thisbluespirit had made, as part of their gorgeous series of original and other Elements, fanart for Curium from my story "Assignment 96." I'm still not sure about recovery from Arisia, but I've had a really nice evening.
rushthatspeaks; it was brilliant and I don't know why I haven't seen more criticism constellating it with Dennis Potter's Dreamchild (1985) and Jim Henson's Labyrinth (1986). Terence Stamp is perfectly cast as the Devil in a white touring car, whose headlights through the forest gloom are the double flash of a beast's eyes. Stephen Rea should play more werewolves. So should Danielle Dax. I wish Carter and Jordan had gotten to make the film of Vampirella/"The Lady of the House of Love" they were discussing when she died; I did not actually expect how closely his visuals would translate her prose style, elaborately artificial and bluntly homespun at once. I'd had dinner earlier with spatch at Sapporo Ramen, where I got tantan-men with three kinds of extra seaweed; Rush and I went to Rosebud American Kitchen & Bar after the movie and I got the apple pie I had been wanting all this week of cold and rain. I came home to discover thisbluespirit had made, as part of their gorgeous series of original and other Elements, fanart for Curium from my story "Assignment 96." I'm still not sure about recovery from Arisia, but I've had a really nice evening.
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I'm glad he finally got rid of that rusty truck with only twenty mile.
Okay, now that I've got that out of my system, fine, I have to add another thing to my list that is all your fault. (In the best possible way.)
P.
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I take it as an honor!
I really liked The Company of Wolves. I have in fact liked everything I've seen by Neil Jordan, but because I knew so little about this one, I was prepared for it to be an interesting failed experiment; Carter's prose is such a strong component of her fiction that I thought of her as essentially unadaptable. She did a beautiful job adapting herself and she was working with someone who absolutely got her play with registers, with structure, with sexuality and tone and the layering of genres within the same story: the script is built out of and fleshed around three of Carter's stories, "The Werewolf," "The Company of Wolves," and "Wolf-Alice," and all three of them are variations on a theme and the film adds more. It is as feminist as Carter's own fiction. There are horror elements in it I found actually horrifying. I truly wish she and Jordan had made more films together. It is interesting to me now that his Byzantium (2012) looks so much like a thematic sequel to The Company of Wolves; it came from a play by Moira Buffini.
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I can never recommend against reading Angela Carter. I really want to track down her screenplay.
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I would consider this a healthy life decision!
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P.
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She was really good at adapting her own work! I'm always impressed when that's true of authors. It's not a given.
I'm a little alarmed about the horror elements, which I find much worse in a visual medium than in prose, but forewarned is forearmed, I hope.
There are some impressive practical effects in the transformations. They are not the lingering note of the film for me, however, if that helps.
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Thank you! I try to keep track of when things go well.
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Nine
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Have you seen it? We thought you would love it.
I approve of these very nice evenings you've been having.
Thank you! I am enjoying them. (I am behind on so many movies, including one I didn't expect to want to write about.) Tomorrow will probably be quiet and that will also be nice.
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Alas, no.
We thought you would love it.
Bless you. I think I would.
Nine
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To my very great surprise, it looks as though it's available on Blu-Ray and DVD, possibly even in Region 1. Which means we could show it to you.
Do you own Dreamchild?
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I'd love that!
Do you own Dreamchild?
I believe I do. Would you like a screening?
Nine
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We were talking about it afterward. I haven't seen it since
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Nine
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Sounds like your food evening was equally good. (And the colors in that fanart are delicious.)
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Yes! We talked about it for like two hours afterward. It's so rich. And Rosaleen's cloak is the brightest thing in it.
Sounds like your food evening was equally good.
I have been wanting nothing but different kinds of soup all week based on the weather and it's been working out beautifully.
(And the colors in that fanart are delicious.)
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Agreed! They're all very expressive.
So this series Sapphire and Steel [quickly Googles to avoid asking questions about a thing that's eminently google-able...] ... okay, cool! Got the premise!
I wrote about the first three episodes last summer and then totally failed to write about the other three even though I loved them also. It's just as well no one employs me for a regular column.
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After reading your story, yes: I would say that the the artist's version of Curium is a little sweeter and more open than the one you describe, but the alchemy of other people's vision is wonderful. I also really like the notion of fanart for fanfic--appreciation of an appreciation.
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Enjoy!
After reading your story, yes: I would say that the the artist's version of Curium is a little sweeter and more open than the one you describe, but the alchemy of other people's vision is wonderful.
Yes. And someone else might see her differently again. Even just as a photoset, though, I really do like it.
I also really like the notion of fanart for fanfic--appreciation of an appreciation.
It's kind of ridiculous and also I love it.
(I mean, I won't stop you trying to draw any of my characters. You do occasionally and it's lovely every time.)
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I'm amused at this conversation, but very pleased at anything that leads anyone into checking out S&S!
I made the photoset last thing last night & probably should have waited to post so I could explain properly, but I get impatient when I made a thing! Anyway, the images I've chosen don't really quite match with the image in my head either - because I had no starting point with casting other than the description, I just tried Googling for images that matched that description. I found one that was a bit sharper, which I liked, but not any others that matched it so well. (The images are three random shots of three random people, but two of them were reasonably similar enough for a mood board thingy.) So it's not quite how I saw Curium, either, although no doubt how I saw them wasn't how you did, not exactly anwyay! It was very hard to find images in that general wheelhouse that weren't much cuter/neater than I wanted. I quite liked the middle image, though, so then just tried to pick out two others that would go with it - and one wearing a long coat! Although the neatness then came into play again. (You need to get a suitable actor to agree to cosplay it! ;-p)
(Out of my sets, I think I really like Jet and Cerium the best so far, but I'm quite pleased with them all and how they look combined - and I'll do a combined Curium version later today, but I literally got to bedtime with it last night.)
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Well, tragically, I loved it and told everyone about it!
I found one that was a bit sharper, which I liked, but not any others that matched it so well.
Do you still have a link to it?
I quite liked the middle image, though, so then just tried to pick out two others that would go with it - and one wearing a long coat!
The middle one is very good for expression. And if you weren't starting from any actor in mind, I'm impressed at how seamlessly you got the Google-casting to turn out.
(Out of my sets, I think I really like Jet and Cerium the best so far, but I'm quite pleased with them all and how they look combined - and I'll do a combined Curium version later today, but I literally got to bedtime with it last night.)
(Don't wreck yourself! I'm enjoying this series and am honored to have contributed to it.)
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:-D <3
Do you still have a link to it?
No, I'm super tidy about deleting images off my drive. It can frequently get very annoying. It wasn't right for the hair (too short, too styled) anyway. But it was the one shot that had a sharpness too it, so I was a bit regretful about losing it. If you search generic stuff like that, you get a lot of fashion/beauty images, so it's hard to get at something that's got the bit of edge needed for a Transuranic! So I just decided to work from the middle image and match to that.
Google has a lot of images like that, though - I once signed up to do art (a book cover and banner) for a Big Bang and the author had no description of her OC and when I asked was just, "Oh, whatever you think!" And that was when I discovered that putting things like "x female long/short hair" or whatever in Google brings up masses of shots to choose from.
Don't wreck yourself! I'm enjoying this series and am honored to have contributed to it.
Oh, I won't! It's very calming to do, actually. I just started later than I should yesterday and then wanted to finish it before I shut down for the night.
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Thank you so much!
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Oh, I'm thinking about it with this one, and where the difference would lie. I love the photoset a whole, love the violet-tinged eyes of the model she chose a whole lot. But I'd play with the archaic-mask part, the looking-like-a-student under the coat part, the glow around her, and this:
Her eyes were bright coin and burnt violets and she stepped as if she were dancing with him and she had not tried to kill him yet.
(Mind you, I'm not likely to be able to achieve my vision. There's what you imagine and what you have the power to create.)
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Ah, man - this has been on my to-watch list for way too long, and I need to do something about that. Consider this comment a vote for you to write about it more fully.
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I'd like to! I may have to get a couple of things out of my head first.
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I never actually saw it, but I remember watching and reading reviews at the time.
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I can't remember when I became aware of it as a movie—I suspect around the time I discovered Carter as a writer, but I wasn't watching a lot of movies then. It is worth your time.