A solar eclipse, a payphone call
I have moved on to taking the cloud cover very personally, especially since last night when I had access to binoculars but not the telescope the sky was clear in all the right places; my hands are not as steady as a tripod. I am also annoyed that I have regained sufficient stamina for walks of several miles, but if I spend ten minutes behind the wheel of a car, I am useless for the rest of the day. Have some links-ish.
1. It feels disingenuous to say that my antisemitism tolerance really has dropped in the last few years, but I decided last night to watch the first episode of Callan (1967–72) because my mother and I have been talking about it—she's not confident she saw much if any of it, but she has always been the most media-oriented person in this family and she really likes Edward Woodward—and it was handily on YouTube in all its 405-line telerecorded crunchiness and it turned out that the plot revolves around the identification and capture of a Nazi war criminal in hiding. This was not in itself a dealbreaker, cf. my missing no chance to champion Emeric Pressburger's The Glass Pearls (1966). But the particulars of Callan's assignment require him to work with the Israelis who want the one-time Obersturmbannführer for an Eichmann-style trial; we meet two of the team. One is a traumatized survivor, introduced praying and still terrified of the man who coldly broke his ribs after he was taken from the camps for forced labor at the Mittelwerk. The other is a kibbutz-bred young agent, vengeance-bent and humorless; his inflexible pursuit of a man whose worst crimes were committed before he was born is regarded by Callan with jaundice at best. "Twenty-three years ago . . ." Leaned on by an impatient Avram to follow his orders, he throws the Jew a mocking Hitler salute. I watched another scene or two and just sort of tapped out on the episode. There was other plot going on, but![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selkie had just been talking about how not to teach the Holocaust and it felt uncomfortably close to a primer: the old generation of pathetic victims, the new generation of self-righteous perpetrators, how very Old Testament to cling to a grudge a quarter-century on. I didn't even get to find out if the title—"The Good Ones Are All Dead"—was some sort of riff on Viktor Frankl. I may try waiting a little and then skipping to the next unburninated episode on the theory that they can't all be topically about ex-Nazis. Tragically, now that I've seen him out from behind a beard, I seem to think that Russell Hunter had a really interesting face.
2. Speaking of interesting faces, because I have been futzing around with a telescope, I wondered what Burn Gorman had been up to lately. The answer seems to be playing the creep in a male-gaze thriller. Which I may yet try to track down because it looks like a contemporary variation on a kind of disbelieved woman's picture that I have mostly seen in noir or proto-giallo, but now this feels even more like the classic Hollywood character actor problem where two or three times—if lucky—you get to see them in a role as versatile and adorable as they deserve and otherwise it's all third psychopath from the left.
3. Speaking of classic Hollywood, I don't want to see Andrew Dominik's Blonde (2022). I am especially disappointed because I loved the same director's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007): I could describe it best and most accurately by comparing it to the historical fantasias of Angela Carter. I didn't expect him to fuck up catastrophically trying to get inside another American myth.
I am seriously honored to be a column favorite at Reading the Weird.
1. It feels disingenuous to say that my antisemitism tolerance really has dropped in the last few years, but I decided last night to watch the first episode of Callan (1967–72) because my mother and I have been talking about it—she's not confident she saw much if any of it, but she has always been the most media-oriented person in this family and she really likes Edward Woodward—and it was handily on YouTube in all its 405-line telerecorded crunchiness and it turned out that the plot revolves around the identification and capture of a Nazi war criminal in hiding. This was not in itself a dealbreaker, cf. my missing no chance to champion Emeric Pressburger's The Glass Pearls (1966). But the particulars of Callan's assignment require him to work with the Israelis who want the one-time Obersturmbannführer for an Eichmann-style trial; we meet two of the team. One is a traumatized survivor, introduced praying and still terrified of the man who coldly broke his ribs after he was taken from the camps for forced labor at the Mittelwerk. The other is a kibbutz-bred young agent, vengeance-bent and humorless; his inflexible pursuit of a man whose worst crimes were committed before he was born is regarded by Callan with jaundice at best. "Twenty-three years ago . . ." Leaned on by an impatient Avram to follow his orders, he throws the Jew a mocking Hitler salute. I watched another scene or two and just sort of tapped out on the episode. There was other plot going on, but
selkie had just been talking about how not to teach the Holocaust and it felt uncomfortably close to a primer: the old generation of pathetic victims, the new generation of self-righteous perpetrators, how very Old Testament to cling to a grudge a quarter-century on. I didn't even get to find out if the title—"The Good Ones Are All Dead"—was some sort of riff on Viktor Frankl. I may try waiting a little and then skipping to the next unburninated episode on the theory that they can't all be topically about ex-Nazis. Tragically, now that I've seen him out from behind a beard, I seem to think that Russell Hunter had a really interesting face.2. Speaking of interesting faces, because I have been futzing around with a telescope, I wondered what Burn Gorman had been up to lately. The answer seems to be playing the creep in a male-gaze thriller. Which I may yet try to track down because it looks like a contemporary variation on a kind of disbelieved woman's picture that I have mostly seen in noir or proto-giallo, but now this feels even more like the classic Hollywood character actor problem where two or three times—if lucky—you get to see them in a role as versatile and adorable as they deserve and otherwise it's all third psychopath from the left.
3. Speaking of classic Hollywood, I don't want to see Andrew Dominik's Blonde (2022). I am especially disappointed because I loved the same director's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007): I could describe it best and most accurately by comparing it to the historical fantasias of Angela Carter. I didn't expect him to fuck up catastrophically trying to get inside another American myth.
I am seriously honored to be a column favorite at Reading the Weird.
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Also your posts are always so rich and fascinating.
*blows at the sky to clear it*
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That is allergenic and yet still so culturally popular. Do some teshuvah, then we can talk!
*blows at the sky to clear it*
*hugs*
(Ourania, muse of astronomers, evidently needs propitiation.)
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I love your posts too!
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A column with great taste! <3
but I decided last night to watch the first episode of Callan (1967–72) because my mother and I have been talking about it
I've been trying to watch the surviving 60s Callan eps over the summer, funnily enough. I have managed to get beyond that, but started with A Magnum For Schneider, which sort of has the same plot but a different scenario (Schneider is an arms dealer, I think). I'm trying to remember what happened after for you: I don't think you'd have enjoyed it much more, even if Callan can ever be described as enjoyable! (I think Callan wanted to be sure his target was the right person before he acted and got more compelling evidence that he was, so was prepared to go through with it, but at the end Frankl was, ok, take me, I deserve everything and Callan let him have his cyanide pill, because he couldn't be responsible for torture as well as killing, and then hates himself for that as well? So, yeah.) I mean, having watched more, Callan hates and mistrusts everyone who asks him to kill someone whoever they are, (because who asks you to kill people, I suppose?) and that's the whole series, but unfortunately anti-semitism is still among the many hazards of watching TV of this era, much as I wish I could say otherwise. (It's no good hoping for women to do anything other than die in Callan either, not as yet, but it is at least still better on that front than The Professionals's S1 a decade later.) It is a compelling but grim show, and Edward Woodward is very good in it, the way everybody said, and the whole Callan-Lonely and Callan-Meres relationships are genuinely interesting.
But, in short, if you did want to jump to the others to try a less offensive one, while my head was very blurry, there weren't any more holocaust or Israeli intelligence-related plots as far as I've got (the start of "Heir Apparent"), just British Intelligence being shady and the Cold War, and Callan hating everything and everyone except Lonely.
if lucky—you get to see them in a role as versatile and adorable as they deserve and otherwise it's all third psychopath from the left.
LOL, that really is Burn Gorman, I think! I keep only seeing him being a creep! XD
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*hugs*
I've been trying to watch the surviving 60s Callan eps over the summer, funnily enough. I have managed to get beyond that, but started with A Magnum For Schneider, which sort of has the same plot but a different scenario (Schneider is an arms dealer, I think).
I gather in this case I would have done better to start with the pilot. I can see the skepticism about the target going over better without the Holocaust.
I mean, having watched more, Callan hates and mistrusts everyone who asks him to kill someone whoever they are, (because who asks you to kill people, I suppose?) and that's the whole series, but unfortunately anti-semitism is still among the many hazards of watching TV of this era, much as I wish I could say otherwise.
No, I am very aware of it as an occupational hazard; it just made for a bad introduction to the show. I appreciate the précis of the rest of the episode! I do not feel especially compelled to go back for it.
It is a compelling but grim show, and Edward Woodward is very good in it, the way everybody said, and the whole Callan-Lonely and Callan-Meres relationships are genuinely interesting.
I actually went ahead and skipped to the second surviving episode and whoever requested Lonely whump for Yuletide that year must have been delighted. (I enjoyed it much more. The relationship dynamics are immediately interesting in a way that actually didn't pop out in the first episode—I can't tell if they developed over the intervening, missing episodes or if the show just didn't hit the ground running on that front—and Woodward is fantastically intense. Russell Hunter's face continues great.)
just British Intelligence being shady and the Cold War, and Callan hating everything and everyone except Lonely.
Fortunately, someone who isn't me will have taxonomized British spy fiction so that I don't have to stay up thinking about the ways in which it obviously differs from something like Mr. Palfrey while obviously also descending from le Carré.
LOL, that really is Burn Gorman, I think! I keep only seeing him being a creep!
I saw him first as an adorable nerd! I saw him second as an adorable nerd doing his best in an espionage narrative! I was multiply warned about the first few episodes of Torchwood and my fondness for him remained undamaged! I quickly figured out it was a deeply uncharacteristic experience.
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He does have a remarkable face! I know
I've only been slowly watching bits but it has been, despite in many ways not really being so much my thing, worth it so far in other ways, so yes - v good core cast. I'm glad wisely skipping on seems to have worked for you too. (Luckily Talking Pictures are showing the colour eps, so once I finish painfully getting through the online ones, I should be able to move a bit faster. Ish. It's not something I want to binge too much because I think, unlike my other supposedly-depressing beige shows, it's a lot. You need a pick me up in between, and I just don't drink the tea I'm supposed to have to counter this stuff.)
I saw him first as an adorable nerd! I saw him second as an adorable nerd doing his best in an espionage narrative!
Aww. I saw him first in Bleak House and then in Torchwood and I think those were actually less bad than the few times I've seen him since. BUt he was very striking in Bleak House! If Torchwood hadn't been next, I'd have been keen to seek him out as well. But. It was. heh. Poor Burn Gorman! Who were the adorable nerds? It would be nice to see him in other contexts one day, if he can - he really was so good in BH! Actor to watch, I thought, and then Owen Harper walked in, as written by Chris Chibnall, and I walked out.
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Oh, good! It may actually be more of my thing, but it's a lot of television to contemplate taking on, even with most of the first two series missing. I'm really not still back to regular movies, although the fact that I am talking as much as I am about Callan and Mr. Palfrey feels like a cautiously good sign.
(Luckily Talking Pictures are showing the colour eps, so once I finish painfully getting through the online ones, I should be able to move a bit faster. Ish. It's not something I want to binge too much because I think, unlike my other supposedly-depressing beige shows, it's a lot. You need a pick me up in between, and I just don't drink the tea I'm supposed to have to counter this stuff.)
Heh. What are you using to recover with?
Who were the adorable nerds?
Hermann Gottlieb in Pacific Rim (2013) could have been focus-grouped for me to find hopelessly endearing: a persnickety boffin who does his mathematics longhand in chalk in a future of giant mecha and holographic screens, witheringly acerbic and deadlocked in a childish cold war with his equally brilliant chaos muppet of a kaiju-obsessed labmate and then he says without a trace of his customary crankiness, "Numbers are as close as we can get to the handwriting of God." Everything about his personal style seems to have astral-traveled from 1942 except for the enormous parka which he obviously wears because he has the natural insulation of a wet cat and generally looks about as dapper as one. In keeping with the film's theme of collaborative heroism, a key part of the action rests on him doing something foolhardy and inspired with the person he hasn't been able to say two civil words to and he does it with a nervous swallow, an awkward handshake, and the splendidly, dorkily game "By Jove, we are going to own this thing for sure." I loved him at once.
Major Edmund Hewlett of AMC's Turn: Washington's Spies (2014–17) took a little longer because the show spends most of its first season finding its feet, but he is the commanding officer of the British garrison at Setauket in the early years of the American Revolutionary War; he looks at first like a standard-issue ice-blooded martinet whom I could not entirely hate because he kept sounding as though he would be so much happier at a university instead of an occupied town and indeed events eventually reveal him as an essentially sweet-natured amateur astronomer desperately unsuited for soldiering and even less equipped for espionage, since his decency, his vulnerability, and his slightly stiff but sincere faith in reason and order fit him perfectly for the part of the prize gull of the Colonies, not helped by his social skills initially maxing out at people he can cap quotations with. At one point he attempts to declare himself romantically and ends up synopsizing the Symposium. (It won my heart.) Like everyone else in the cast, he gets short-circuited by the slingshot of the fourth season—it's word of God that the showrunners wanted a fifth season and couldn't get the network to give them one, so everything happens very fast with no B- or heaven forfend C-plots—but nonetheless comes through with a satisfying arc of disillusion and regeneration and makes a strong case in the second and third seasons that Burn Gorman should be seriously considered for leading parts in period romances. This gifset by
[edit] I am slightly not rational on the subject of Turn, because at its best it was spy fiction of the kind I really like—concerned with the costs, with the limits, with the changes it makes in the people who engage in it—set in a historical period that more commonly supports costume pictures and as necessarily messy as a serious rather than flag-waving exploration of the politics of the time should be. I said with delight that it had achieved full le Carré by season three. Once it got out of its initial remit of patriotism (early in the first season, I complained to
And then I came out of Torchwood—minus the second season finale—and I looked around at the rest of Gorman's filmography and I'd had this problem before, but usually in the '40's with the Hollywood studio system! Nothing that I have ever read about him suggests that he's a jerk in real life, so I'm not sure what gives.
It would be nice to see him in other contexts one day, if he can - he really was so good in BH! Actor to watch, I thought, and then Owen Harper walked in, as written by Chris Chibnall, and I walked out.
Your nemesis! I'm so sorry.
(I did finally get hold of the 2005 Bleak House, by the way, and while a lot of the 1985 Bleak House still works better for me, Burn Gorman was an impeccable Guppy.)
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Aw, well, I hope so! <3 I can attest to the weird healing power of old Brit TV of this nature but I very much you get back beyond it soon. Although obv I am delighted to be talking Mr Palfrey with you in the meantime!
Heh. What are you using to recover with?
Well, that's the trouble with summer; for reasons it becomes more viable to watch some stuff online, but I'm also generally worse, so if I felt too bad I couldn't do another bit of Callan because it wasn't helping terribly with preventing the "I just lie here and feel miserable" part. (Although that is very unfair of me; I thoroughly appreciating crying my way through pretty much the whole of Enemy at the Door the first time round. BUt there we are,
Thank you for the recs! I missed Pacific Rim while being far too ill to watch any films and as a thing that fandom was tiresome[TM] about in the meantime, I ignored Pacific Rim! Turn does sound in my line; I might have to see if I can get hold of it sometime. (It takes me far longer to get through some modern tv still; in that line I am currently watching Jamestown by which I mean I've been intending to move onto s2 for about four months. But then it was summer!)
"the script sang eighteen choruses of 'Yankee Doodle,' drank one last rum for the road, and threw up"
LOL! *applauds you*
Your nemesis! I'm so sorry.
I know! He gets all over the place! *shakes fist at mr mediocre dialogue monkey's paw chibnall* I didn't actually hate Owen or anything, I just got fed up before his character got all the improvements and then I saw some of it where he was inconveniently dead and I actually don't like that kind of undead. (I am ok with vampires and that's my line.) (But I do appreciate that TW was so ridiculous and terrible that that is a line I can type. XD)
Btw appropos of nothing, but I seem to recall ages ago giving you a large recs post of largely unheard of 30s/40s UK films and mentioning the whole Patricia Roc/Margaret Lockwood vibe in Love Story (1944). I finally had a rewatch and giffed them the other day, and while their screentime together is much less than I had disproportionately remembered, ahem, it is very nice and visually very shippy, and it probably was about time I giffed something that wasn't Martin Jarvis. Just for a night...:
The bit I really liked is the dramatic march into the bedroom here:
[Some slapping coming up, sorry]
(Also forgive all the typos, I'm too tired to reply but I wanted to too anyhow. <3<3<3 (For nice reasons: I went into a charity shop and looked at books and things for a bit this morning, but now I can't type without doing all my usual weird tics.)
ETA2: Because I forgot! Burn Gorman was being a rotter in Jamestown as well! XD (An enoyably superior, sneery and slippery type of bastard in this case.)
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Thank you. It has not been the best summer.
Although obv I am delighted to be talking Mr Palfrey with you in the meantime!
I'm enjoying it!
(My father reports that he wanted to hear John Shrapnel's entire lecture, not just the plot-relevant, suspenseful excerpts. I report that I went back for "Once Your Card Is Marked" before finishing the series and that's the second guest appearance I haven't seen David Buck survive; also I agree with you that it feels different from the rest of the series, almost like a second run at a pilot. My mother reports that she is sorry that there are only two seasons of it, which makes me want to request casefic for it so that I can pass it on to her.)
BUt there we are, liadtbunny can watch Callan and be okay, but draws the line at EatD and I find Callan a little much for summer.
Under normal circumstances, I watch film noir as a comfort genre, even though it's full of existential uncertainty, which may be why it works. Everyone differs!
Thank you for the recs! I missed Pacific Rim while being far too ill to watch any films and as a thing that fandom was tiresome[TM] about in the meantime, I ignored Pacific Rim!
Welcome! Pacific Rim is actually one of the *checks AO3* nine fandoms I have writen for, but I am sorry it was wearing on you.
Turn does sound in my line; I might have to see if I can get hold of it sometime.
It's on DVD, which is faintly surprising in this age of transiently streaming media. I figured it had just gone inaccessibly to AMC+ which I object to on general principle.
LOL! *applauds you*
*bows*
(I am ok with vampires and that's my line.)
It's a pretty good line.
Btw appropos of nothing, but I seem to recall ages ago giving you a large recs post of largely unheard of 30s/40s UK films and mentioning the whole Patricia Roc/Margaret Lockwood vibe in Love Story (1944).
I remember! The dramatic march into the bedroom is excellent. I appreciate also how much of an absolute third wheel Stewart Granger looks in that last gif there.
ETA2: Because I forgot! Burn Gorman was being a rotter in Jamestown as well! XD (An enoyably superior, sneery and slippery type of bastard in this case.)
All right, that's funny. I hope he had a splendid time twirling his mustache if he has one.
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Ha, I wanted to hear more of the lecture too! I said it fully got away with having quite a lot of a lecture in it. John Shrapnel's generally good, though; he was also excellent in Elizabeth R, that I've seen. (He has a son who now acts and goes under the name of Lex Shrapnel which definitely sounds too fictional to be true, lol.)
And, aww, you can tell your mother that I agree there is too little of it! It's not even really two whole seasons even.
also I agree with you that it feels different from the rest of the series, almost like a second run at a pilot.
I stand here, happily validated! <3
Welcome! Pacific Rim is actually one of the *checks AO3* nine fandoms I have writen for, but I am sorry it was wearing on you.
Oh, only in passing, in the way that is when fandom has suddenly leapt onto some random thing that I can't access and probably wouldn't be able to watch and almost certainly wouldn't ship the correct slash ship, but it does mean that by the time the tide recedes and the thing becomes available, I'm... I should watch it! It's probably good! And then just: ... or nah. For no real reason. Maybe I'll snaffle it next time it comes round on TV and I'll know what a PR fusion means and can read your fic.
I remember! The dramatic march into the bedroom is excellent. I appreciate also how much of an absolute third wheel Stewart Granger looks in that last gif there.
He does try to suggest that he might get a say in who he marries, but they're not having it. He doesn't understand! XD
I've just also now rewatched The Wicked Lady and while the romances in that are a lot more convincing than poor old Stewart Granger above, now Patricia Roc is having her turn to enter Margaret Lockwood's bedroom dramatically. Twice. XD
All right, that's funny. I hope he had a splendid time twirling his mustache if he has one.
You may rest assure that he has a moustache, although it's a bit short for twirling, but he is doing his level best to Ruin Everything [TM] even if often nobody needs his help in that direction.
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It does have quite a lot of lecture! It was just a much better grade of lecture than you usually get in television shows.
John Shrapnel's generally good, though; he was also excellent in Elizabeth R, that I've seen.
I enjoyed him here. He spent the entire episode looking familiar to me and it seems to be on account of Dennis Potter's Blackeyes.
(I enjoyed most of the guest stars, but I think Richard Johnson, Martin Jarvis, John Shrapnel, and Jim Norton were my favorites, with honorable mention for Julian Glover because I am always glad to see him and Leslie Phillips if "enjoy" can be filed under "really, had that acid bath coming." My parents both became very attached to Clive Francis on the strength of Baliev and I realized I'd seen him in a ton of things and just never actually fixed a name to him, so points for being a chameleon with a reasonably distinctive face.)
(He has a son who now acts and goes under the name of Lex Shrapnel which definitely sounds too fictional to be true, lol.)
(Seriously; hardboiled fiction, too.)
And, aww, you can tell your mother that I agree there is too little of it! It's not even really two whole seasons even.
Did something happen to it? We have now all watched the final episode and are officially desolate.
I stand here, happily validated!
I didn't dislike it, but it seemed to be pointing toward a much more plot-driven show, where power plays among the different factions and levels of the intelligence services (not letting Palfrey in on the disinformation gambit, Palfrey having no jurisdiction over the assassin because she belongs to a section that has no name) are more front-and-center than the emotional effects on the players and I am just as happy that that was not the show we got.
Maybe I'll snaffle it next time it comes round on TV and I'll know what a PR fusion means and can read your fic.
Heh. It's post-canon, pre-slash, got totally jossed by the sequel but the canonicity of the sequel is a matter for heated fix-it as far as I can tell: "Whatever You Want to Call It." It fell out of my head at an odd hour of the night and does not resemble most of my other fic, but I have never figured out what garners attention on AO3 or not: the thing of mine with the most kudos belongs to a megafandom and the thing of mine with the next most kudos belongs to a fandom I had been under the impression was the size of a postage stamp.
I've just also now rewatched The Wicked Lady and while the romances in that are a lot more convincing than poor old Stewart Granger above, now Patricia Roc is having her turn to enter Margaret Lockwood's bedroom dramatically. Twice.
Well, Lockwood's was such a very strong entrance, it requires twice as much making up for.
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0_o I had forgotten all the details of how they were going to do away with Leslie Phillips but now you say that, I'm now realising that I have seriously recced you two things in a row that both contain Martin Jarvis and death by acid bath and I'm not sure how I feel about that. lol
Those are all great favourites! Clive Francis is a good one, too. I knew him already from Poldark (He's the best Francis Poldark; the script did the new one dirty by giving his agency for his terrible life decisions all to George Warleggan, no offence to the actor or anything.)
Did something happen to it? We have now all watched the final episode and are officially desolate.
I have no idea! I've always assumed, since no one seems to ever have heard of it, that it flew too far under the radar at the time for whatever reason and got cancelled as per usual.
But also: my commiserations; I felt the same! Not enough, Thames, not enough! <3<3<3
I didn't dislike it, but it seemed to be pointing toward a much more plot-driven show,
Yep, indeed; that's very much what I thought, and as I had come specifically seeking Mr Chapman, I'm glad his style prevailed the most. (I mean, afaik, the two had worked together a lot over 20 years, but their approaches are quite different.)
Btw, it is also not quite like the series, but I did find someone had the Storyboard Pilot "The Traitor" up here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbSah088Yic
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If we find a third, we have a genre!
But also: my commiserations; I felt the same! Not enough, Thames, not enough! <3<3<3
I am not used to feeling so protective on behalf of a TV series rather than a movie, so, thanks, I guess.
Btw, it is also not quite like the series, but I did find someone had the Storyboard Pilot "The Traitor" up here
Thank you! I may check that out. I recall you anti-recommending the semi-sequel Blair-centric play.
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LOL, although, even better: in the Martin Jarvis rewatch I am even more unconvincingly currently not having, I reached his episode of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, "Five Hundred Carats," and I was definitely not going to rewatch that because all I remembered was that it was bad and he was a rotter with a horrible moustache. But it turned out (because, yes, I DID rewatch it anyway) that I had wronged the episode entirely and must just have been very tired or burned out by 1970s TV adaptations of 19th C stories being offensive and didn't give it a chance as soon as I saw the setting. (The moustache, however, was tragically as bad as I remembered.)
The thing is, I'd forgotten what it was he actually stole and I was deeply amused to find that it was a diamond in a 19th C imperial situation, just like in The Moonstone - so Martin Jarvis stole no less than two fabulous diamonds in two years in the 70s, and deservedly failed to profit from either. No wonder that Inspector suspected him immediately! XD
(My winner in this category, of weirdly specific repeat incidents, is Peter Jeffrey, who managed to be burned to death twice in one year by the BBC in 1972.)
Anyway, he was a completely appalling person in it, and that was a ride and a half. That I apparently just... forgot. /o\
(If I had a time machine I would burn all fake facial hair instead of the TV episodes, excepting only the sacred Brigly moustache and the Eyebrows of Adam Adamant, of course.)
I am not used to feeling so protective on behalf of a TV series rather than a movie, so, thanks, I guess.
Awww. <3 I am a terrible person and very happy to have enabled this! (I mean, if I'm going to go around being attached to these things, company is lovely. <3)
Thank you! I may check that out. I recall you anti-recommending the semi-sequel Blair-centric play.
Yes. It wasn't awful on it's own or anything, but it just took away a bit from the series taken as part of it, whereas Mr Palfrey ended on at least a nice note.
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At least if he only did it twice, he realized he couldn't make a career of it and stopped?
(My winner in this category, of weirdly specific repeat incidents, is Peter Jeffrey, who managed to be burned to death twice in one year by the BBC in 1972.)
Doing the same sort of thing? Or did immolation just follow him wherever he was trying to go?
(If I had a time machine I would burn all fake facial hair instead of the TV episodes, excepting only the sacred Brigly moustache and the Eyebrows of Adam Adamant, of course.)
It's amazing how many people were not designed by nature for mustaches and yet art stuck them right on anyway.
but it just took away a bit from the series taken as part of it, whereas Mr Palfrey ended on at least a nice note.
I thought so. And I appreciated it, because the last episode was obviously not in any sense a planned finale (there is some arguable bookending with the first episode, but also some threads that look as though they could have been picked up later), but everyone gets to be human and it's probably true that their job isn't good for any of them, but for the foreseeable it's going to be all right, which is sometimes the best you can ask for.
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Well, he did also die twice in consequence, which I can imagine might put a blight on that sort of career.
Doing the same sort of thing? Or did immolation just follow him wherever he was trying to go?
It was just the year for setting Peter Jeffrey alight at the BBC! One time he was a terrible 19th C slaver in the antipodes and got burned to death by his victims; the other time he was a Lollard in the 15th C on his second heresy charge and therefore to burn at the stake whether he recanted or not. (Er. James Maxwell way have therefore been responsible for setting him alight that time, even if not personally.)
It's amazing how many people were not designed by nature for mustaches and yet art stuck them right on anyway.
Tragically. *nods*
and it's probably true that their job isn't good for any of them, but for the foreseeable it's going to be all right, which is sometimes the best you can ask for.
Yes. And for once Caroline doesn't have to cook dinner herself! <3
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Thank you! It should either have the decency to be clear or, since we are still in a drought, to rain.
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Burn Gorman does play Bad Guys well but he ALSO plays non-bad guys well and I wish he was cast as them more often!!! (Speaking of which-- Pacific Rim was the first time I actually saw him in something where I recognized him, but I've realized retrospectively that he'd been in a bunch of movies I'd seen before that, including Penelope, where he has a small role as a journalist and an American accent???)
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Exactly! I'm not morally opposed if he wants to play creeps, but he's so good when he doesn't that I want him to have more scope for it. Also I keep feeling that most directors don't notice he's beautiful.
(Speaking of which-- Pacific Rim was the first time I actually saw him in something where I recognized him, but I've realized retrospectively that he'd been in a bunch of movies I'd seen before that, including Penelope, where he has a small role as a journalist and an American accent???)
Same, actually: I don't remember him in it at all, but I would technically have seen him first in Layer Cake (2004). Oh, my God, that American accent.
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*Hugs* re: Callan. I suppose it's too much to hope that someone called him out on it. (Hang on, is that Russell Hunter as in "The Robots of Death"?)
Everything I've read about Blonde puts me off watching it. I heard an interview with Dominik the other evening and putting it bluntly he came across as utterly fucking clueless.
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You got Turner! That's not chopped liver!
*Hugs* re: Callan. I suppose it's too much to hope that someone called him out on it.
*hugs* I can't even remember! I really just disengaged. I had better luck with the next unburninated episode, "You Should Have Got Here Sooner," which was indeed notably lacking in any effort to engage with historical atrocity, just the normal radioactively high levels of cynicism. The show is in obvious descent from John le Carré, but also Len Deighton, but I would say so far actually bleaker than either in its absolute mistrust of government machinations and their casual collateral harm. Have not yet gone back for the pilot described by
(Hang on, is that Russell Hunter as in "The Robots of Death"?)
The same! Which means that I am still adjusting to him in the one-eighty part of Lonely, a not unskilled but small-time thief who sweats like a goat when he's nervous, which is just about constantly; he has an impressively nuanced range of expressions between apprehension and mortal terror, although also a wary bit of a smile which is very appealing. Brighter than he looks but a +10 shlimazl if ever I've seen one, canonically the one person to whom Callan has any emotional attachment or loyalty and even that's complicated by Callan's damage as a black ops assassin who may not be functional for anything other than the work he loathes. I am informed their relationship is one of the structuring principles of the show and I can already see it. In any case, sans beard as Lonely, he has one of those haunted, whittled faces that flicker from second to second, and in light of the gulf between Lonely and Uvanov, it is now my assumption until proven otherwise that Russell Hunter could do just about anything.
Everything I've read about Blonde puts me off watching it. I heard an interview with Dominik the other evening and putting it bluntly he came across as utterly fucking clueless.
Aaaaaaargh. I did not see his last two projects, but they were well-regarded documentary collaborations with Nick Cave. I just sort of assumed he knew what he was doing.
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OK, I would never have guessed those two were the same actor.
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I figure sometime I'll see him in a third role and he'll have changed shape again.
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My brain initially parsed that as "an impatient Aryan", which read rather differently to what you meant. Though I guess not far off from what the writers meant :-(
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Yes, sorry: Avram is the young (presumably, although not named as such in the portion of the episode I watched, Mossad) agent. Played by Tom Kempinski, who has a nice face, for all the good it does his character.
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(ETA: if this article is accurate, the 2001 one sounds more interesting)
Congrats!
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Agreed! And reminds me of Mary Harron's's The Notorious Bettie Page (2005), which I have seen.
Congrats!
Thank you!