sovay: (Claude Rains)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2025-04-09 07:52 pm

DVDs weren't out yet, so please ignore my box set

The hundred movies meme was even harder to assemble because I spent far more of my childhood and adolescence immersed in books than in movies and therefore many of the films on this list were not so much formative as illuminating once I finally started paying attention to cinema as an art form, and/or they wired themselves instantly into my brain and are quoted regularly to this day. A list of favorites might overlap significantly but not identically, I imagine tilting more heavily toward sff and noir. I feel it may be a much more mainstream list than my formative books, although still full of meaningful absences. (I sacrificed a number of classics as well as movies whose circumstances were potentially more important than their content, but just glitched on The Medium (1951) and Katerina Izmailova (1966), both of which I even own.) I find it very difficult to try to winnow accurately. I may just not be designed for this format of meme.
thisbluespirit: (spooks - ruth/tom)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2025-04-17 09:19 am (UTC)(link)
I need a month to do nothing but sleep and write about movies and I just don't see one in my future.

*hugs* You should have one! Even if, yeah, reality does not seem likely to oblige.

Well, the internet immediately tried to recommend me Stephen Poliakoff's Shooting the Past (1999), which doesn't sound at all like it, but I like Lindsay Duncan and Timothy Spall.

No, it definitely isn't, but that sounds amazing! *adds it to list* I've been looking at the BBC Poliakoff collection for ages but I didn't know if I'd get on with him, but now I've seen and loved Glorious 39, I should see if it's still affordable, even if it doesn't include The Tribe. (The one BBC Poliakoff you can't get this side of the ocean for reasons that afaict have more to do with ridiculous tabloid excitement over Anna Friel's nude scene than anything else; it's v annoying as it's my most significant omission from Jeremy Northam's CV at the mo.)
thisbluespirit: (jeremy northam)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2025-04-17 07:54 pm (UTC)(link)
It does! I look forward to hearing your librarian's verdict on it.

I will let you know if I do!

Btw, googling has at least informed me that the style that I can't cope with is called Tableaux Vivant, which is a snappier way to complain about it when I need to. XD (Although not all Tableaux Vivant etc etc.)

I assume this partitioned version on YouTube will not play in your region? I can immediately see it's got a Jeremy Northam.

Oh, thanks! It still has Pt 5 missing in this region, but there's a lot more of it there and visible than I've seen on any previous searches. I think only a few bits of that were visible last time. (I'm protesting to the BBC by sulking silently until they osmose my need for a dvd. I should probably find out what it's called in German. They might have one. Or the Dutch or the Italians; that's usually the trick, but sometimes you do need to know the actual title in different languages to find it, which isn't always easy, especially with TV.)
thisbluespirit: (shadow of the tower)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2025-04-17 08:55 pm (UTC)(link)
You're welcome! I'm sorry about Part 5! This upload should be the full film, although it makes you sign in for it.

Oh, thanks! <3 I have obviously not been searching for it lately. Or last time I did, I was still holding out for a DVD maybe. Oh, and, look, this one doesn't even have that YT commenter who seems dedicated to registering their anger over Jeremy Northam not doing full frontal nudity in this all over the site. (It cracks me up because if they were that exercised about it, there are other things they could have watched, ahem ahem, even if only very briefly and in a low light. The man takes off his clothes a lot. Me, I'm petitioning for more full period dress and a hat, preferably, to be worn at all times, but absolutely no fake hair. Maybe I should run round YT going BAD ACTOR, NO CLOTHES!! XD)

It is the week for random YT discoveries, because just before my family arrived, I chanced on a channel that had the 1955 BBC locked-in-the-archives-only Othello starring Gordon Heath here. It also features a wee James Maxwell as Roderigo, who will, I gather, courtesy of the BNA accidentally injure Patrick Wymark for real during the recording. This is the youngest I have ever seen him in action. He has a terrible fake beard, of course. (I poked around a bit further and it seems to have been originally posted 2 years ago by some sort of Preservation of Media channel, but I had just followed this one for having other old TV on it and thing I had never even dreamed of looking for just appeared!)

Every time you mention this necesssity, it seems an extraordinary runaround to get hold of a television production in its own country, but good luck!

It feels like something that would have a release somewhere!

The Dutch in particular are very helpfully fond of Brit TV. I'd never have even seen Shadow of the Tower without them! But I've had quite a few things from various countries when the UK hasn't done a release. R2 is much more divided by nation and language than R1, so it's not quite as weird as it sounds, but it can be frustrating to work out how to find if there is one, because of course, titles, are not always straightforward translations, and I have to double check it's the original English soundtrack and not dubbed over, but most things are.