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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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.
no subject
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