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.
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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