What will it take? A flood over Europe, a fist in the face, or what?

[sovay]

I don't know what I am supposed to feel about the new national low of three mass shootings in seven days. I don't mean that facetiously or disingenuously; I know two people who didn't get shot in different cities by sheer chance of timing and it doesn't feel very different than knowing friends who work at synagogues or kids who go to school, but it also feels as though it should: the circle is tightening. It is not normal; it's already normal, it keeps happening. It serves a purpose. And it's not exactly a shock to me that the rest of the planet seems to be imploding to keep time, but I find the news out of Kashmir terrifying. I spent almost all of today working, not even looking at the news. Have some unrelated links.

1. gwynnega linked me to a clip of John Hurt as the Fool in a 1983 Granada King Lear. He's marvelous: dark, quick, nervous, shape-changing. I see the production also contains people like Diana Rigg, David Threlfall, and Laurence Olivier, but I want to watch the rest of it just for Hurt. I am still not reconciled to his loss.

2. It fits with awkward neatness into the conversation I was just having with asakiyume about the tilt toward Confederate narratives in movies of the American Civil War, but I am dearly hoping this movie is good, because there is still not exactly a surfeit of f/f (or nb/f) historical romances on film: Union (2019). Also I might as well re-read selkie's The Covert Captain (2018) because "Sweet Polly Oliver" is not getting out of my head any time soon.

3. I am trying to keep the message of this sampler in mind; it's true.

P.S. Courtesy of spatch: elephant's toothpaste. I was not expecting it to achieve liftoff.

Comments

[gwynnega]

That production of King Lear is well worth seeing, especially for John Hurt (though the whole cast is pretty great). I still miss John Hurt a lot.

That sampler is excellent.

[sovay]

That production of King Lear is well worth seeing, especially for John Hurt (though the whole cast is pretty great).

I'll see if the library has it.

I still miss John Hurt a lot.

I don't see how you couldn't. He was irreplaceable. *hugs*

That sampler is excellent.

And I like poison dart frogs, so I actually find it cheering!

[rosefox]

Four. Today, five. Both of those are walking distance from me. They're "gang-related" so they don't get the attention that the white supremacist misogynist shootings do, but it's not like those elements of culture can really be disentangled.

I don't know what to do except keep living my life, and teach my child to pay attention to what's around them.

[sovay]

Four. Today, five. Both of those are walking distance from me.

Thank you for telling me; I hadn't seen. No mass shooting has an acceptable location, but a vigil, like a nightclub, seems especially sacrilegious.

I don't know what to do except keep living my life, and teach my child to pay attention to what's around them.

Those are not bad things to do.

*hugs*

[poliphilo]

I should watch that Lear again. It was Olivier's last Shakespeare film. He was too fragile to play Lear on stage but television was another matter. I didn't altogether rate it at the time but I've never forgotten it.

[choco_frosh]

Also, I believe that's Olivier's "I'm slowly dying so I don't give $%^&* about anything, except for doing a good production" swan song.

[sovay]

Also, I believe that's Olivier's "I'm slowly dying so I don't give $%^&* about anything, except for doing a good production" swan song.

That also makes me want to watch it; I bounced off a lot of Olivier's famous Shakespeare on screen.

[sovay]

I didn't altogether rate it at the time but I've never forgotten it.

I hope you can find it again!

[wpadmirer]

India is suffering with a religious-majority leadership that is totally fucking up their universe. It's tragic.

[dewline]

I see the sharks circling 'round Canada. Five or six provinces already in the hands of the sharks. But not the feds, yet.

[sovay]

Five or six provinces already in the hands of the sharks. But not the feds, yet.

Good luck warding off your metaphorical sharks; real sharks are much nicer.

[sovay]

India is suffering with a religious-majority leadership that is totally fucking up their universe.

That matches what I have been hearing from friends in the country. It's not all right just because it's not Gilead.

[dewline]

And as for Narendra Modi and the BJP?

Yeah, that's not good for Bharat/India right now. At all.

[selkie]

Awww. It makes up for the almost croaking, it does.

[sovay]

Awww. It makes up for the almost croaking, it does.

KEEP UP THE NOT CROAKING.

[swan_tower]

I might have viewed the trailer for Union more charitably if I hadn't watched it immediately after the trailer for Harriet, which as near as I can tell is the first biopic of Tubman and very nearly the first screen adaptation of her story. It didn't help that the Union trailer was just abysmal as an example of the genre; I more or less stopped paying attention to it because although I loves me some "disguise yourself as a man" plots and a f/f or nb/f romance, historical or otherwise, is the kind of thing I would normally want, I was bored stiff by the actual footage onscreen and also turned off by the Confederate angle. I have a hard time feeling like what we need right now is a story about how Union soldiers murdered a child and a Confederate woman joined up in a war that didn't seem to involve black people at all. (Though admittedly there may have been some in the trailer and I just missed them because I had tuned out.)

[sovay]

Harriet, which as near as I can tell is the first biopic of Tubman and very nearly the first screen adaptation of her story.

I've heard about that! I'm really looking forward. Tubman is one of the earliest historical figures I can remember seeing dramatized, in a production by the Underground Railway Theater when I was in elementary school that I still have vivid memories of.

I have a hard time feeling like what we need right now is a story about how Union soldiers murdered a child and a Confederate woman joined up in a war that didn't seem to involve black people at all.

That's much of what I mean about hoping it's good: historically-narratively as well as representationally. The alternative would be illuminating in terms of Maslow's hierarchy of acceptable American narratives, but I would be much more sad.

(I did not watch the trailer; I really don't like trailers. I try to avoid them unless they are actively recomended to me—cf. recently The Lighthouse. Captain America remains an outlier and should not be counted.)

[lauradi7dw]

I stopped trying to watch the trailer when one of the soldiers said "sir, we have a situation." (or something quite similar). I am not an experienced n-gram searcher, but it seems to agree with me that such a sentence was not current in Civil War times.
I am also looking forward to Harriet.

[asakiyume]

Not like we need to have it said, but: Our country is rotten right now.

The trailer for Union looks pretty intense.

[sovay]

Not like we need to have it said, but: Our country is rotten right now.

It has so many nice people and things in it. I wish they were more in the ascendant.

The trailer for Union looks pretty intense.

I guess I should watch it, since everyone is commenting on it!

[asakiyume]

I watched it with the sound off, so I didn't get any of the details mentioned upthread, but even with the sound off it looked a little more exteriorly overwrought than ideally I'd enjoy.

[batdina]

The Granada King Lear is only so-so. Olivier waited too long to do Lear, more's the pity. But John Hurt and Diana Rigg are definitely the highlights. I look forward to hearing what you think.

[sovay]

But John Hurt and Diana Rigg are definitely the highlights. I look forward to hearing what you think.

I'm waiting for a library DVD to come in as we speak!

[nodrog]

Please excuse a total stranger’s comment, but you reminded me here of a young couple I spoke to who were also co-workers, and one Tuesday morning they overslept!  Frantically rushing about, they flipped on the TV from habit… and thus they became aware that they needn’t hurry after all, because their workplace didn’t exist any more.  A hijacked airliner had slammed into it, that September morning in 2001.

They were late in getting there - so when there went away, they were still here.  As you may imagine, they thought long on the meaning of this - if any.