A place could not be thinner for such an undertaking

[sovay]

I did not approve of concluding our break-fast to discover that David McCallum had died. I saw him first in The Great Escape (1963), which always seemed to be playing somewhere in my childhood. My brother was almost named Ilya until my father remonstrated with my mother that their children would sound like a Russian vaudeville act. Every headline I've seen mentions The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964–68) and NCIS (2003–), but he will always look to me like something even more enigmatic than a slim, blond-mopped Russian agent, because at least Kuryakin was human. In the same way that Sapphire & Steel (1979–82) left its final assignment suspended in stars and narrative, I imagine McCallum like Steel disappearing out of time like a video cut, itself the kind of ghost that would have fit seamlessly into his medium atomic weight's store of exasperation with the human carelessness of time and its traces, our deliberate preservation of lost moments that opens up cracks in the world as flimsy as a filmstrip and as engulfing as centuries, but these deaths twenty-four times a second are the only way I have ever known him, even when he was alive, like every actor trailing roles behind him like freeze-frames. I will find a new one for his memory. I assume the integrity of time is pretty much a dead loss in our TV.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

I believe it contained some important early character beats for the main cast and was otherwise pretty awkward.

I mean, that is a lot of s1, but it's generally all perfectly okay, apart from that bit where they have way too many eps without G'kar all in a row. (I'm always: "oh, I like everyone in B5." B5 s1: "have 5-7 eps without G'kar!" Me: *implodes entirely*)

it should be uncontroversial and indeed to be expected that different people should have different favorite characters and favorite actors and people who behave otherwise confuse me.

They were very nice! I think it had just been a bit of mass David McCallum group for so long, they had trouble adjusting for a moment or two. XD And, tbf, I am contrary like that. It's why I can't follow many people on tumblr - if I see too many posts on one thing/the same post repeated too many times, I start automatically disliking whatever/whoever it is, even if actually it/they are my fave.

Btw, on a more random note, I did finally write a bit (or blather some more, might be more accurate in this case) about the films I watched over the summer that I enjoyed. I know I did already blather to you about some of them, and that you've been both very ill and occupied, so just in case you missed it. If you hadn't, that's fine, obviously. I just know that you do like to be made aware of things that are usually heading in the direction of your interests if you may have not seen. (like, er, film! *waves hand grandly*)

The above brought to you by me getting around to watching the commmentary on the 1999 Winslow Boy this week, and I thought I should say, that obv while I still can't talk about the play and 1948 film I have not seen, it does sound as if they are both very much adaptations that lean in opposite directions from the play in the middle - David Mamet was evidently determined to make it even more low-key and intimate and cut out bits and pieces and muted more dramatic things, and downplayed stage-comedy elements. One of the things that they talked about, that they ended up keeping was that when Arthur Winslow asks Ronnie twice if he did it, David Mamet cut out part of the line, but also originally the whole second question, but Nigel Hawthorne insisted on keeping it (David Mamet agrees with him it was right, it was too important). They also talked about similar things in the scene where Sir Robert questions Ronnie, in that Jeremy Northam, having gone and read the play, was using the stage directions in it (anger, sarcasm), but David Mamet was all, no, no, and they tone it done to a very chilly calm line of questioning. It all works really well, with this quiet confidence that the audience will find the family's growth and dynamics compelling and in the cast's performances, but, yeah, very much its own take, I sounds like - in a good way!

(They had almost a full house for the main cast on the commentary, saving only that Gemma Jones hadn't made it over from the UK.)

On a more amusing note, Jeremy Northam also said that he made the Winslow Boy first, then went back to do An Ideal Husband, and it turned out that they bought the House of Commons set off the Winslow Boy, took him to the same location, put him on the same set, and sat him in the exact same seat and asked him to play another Sir Robert, and he was left being... which Sir Robert, please send help. XD

ETA: And the other thing, I said it used a lot of contemporary cartoons and articles and it does (and apparently some of the articles have the Archer-Shee name in), but it turns out that the cartoons weren't based on the originals - they actually got an artist in and made them up from all kinds of places. They looked utterly plausible, though!