Champagne before you go?

Michael Gough. The way these last few months have gone, I have sort of been waiting for some artistic figure I cared about to die, but I just saw him in Wittgenstein (1993). He was ninety-four. Kuala Lumpur was still in Malaya when he was born there. Still.

He wasn't a childhood favorite: I don't know, actually, when he became an actor I paid attention to. Maybe in the fall of 2008, when I remarked on his "lovely strange face" as Captain Stuart in The Small Back Room (1949), or a few months later when TCM showed The Man in the White Suit (1951). He was one of my impetus for tracking down Jonathan Miller's Alice in Wonderland (1966), but I still mistook him initially for Robert Stephens in The Horse's Mouth (1958). I think he was even more of a character actor than my usual run—I never saw him in anything I would consider a defining role, although I am close to counting his Cardinal del Monte and Bertrand Russell for Derek Jarman. But he kept turning up in films by Jarman or the Archers, alongside Alec Guinness or Peter Cushing, with that slightly gritty, warmly pitched voice and his long-lipped cat's mouth that lent itself so well to ironies and ambiguities (and in later years, some truly impressive eyebrows, same), and without once playing a leading role or a character I loved, between one cast list and the next I found he'd turned into someone I'd watch for. There are some astonishingly terrible-sounding horror films I was contemplating simply for his name in the credits. I might still watch them in his honor, although probably Dennis Potter's Blackeyes (1989) is a better idea. But last month I had Olivier's star-studded Richard III (1955) playing on TCM as I worked and there he was as a genuinely tough First Murderer, with a long-legged swagger: he could turn up anywhere. I was glad whenever he did.

I am sorry he was never filmed as Dillwyn Knox in Breaking the Code, or Ernest in Bedroom Farce. I liked to know he was out there, and I'm sorry he's not. But he was here, and at least there are the movies to remind us. And I'll take that for immortality, whatever else comes along.

Something aesthetic, something frenetic

I can't remember last night's dreams, except for something about empty offices and real-life people I know. I didn't really sleep enough. The night before, I dreamed I was investigating a Roman mystery somewhere on the outskirts of contemporary Boston, a neighborhood with a lot of pine trees and porches with slatted screens. Claudius was in the supporting cast, but he wasn't played by Derek Jacobi; I considered him a good omen, but I still woke up before I found or solved whatever had been going on. Tonight I am going with fleurdelis28 and sharhaun to see Handel's Agrippina at the Boston Lyric Opera, though, so maybe I'll figure out what it was.

You may have seen this already over at rushthatspeaks', but I got it from strange_selkie: the Roman Patriot Collection. If I were ever to remodel another kitchen (that didn't belong to my parents), I totally would put the countertops in Cicero Whisper, too.

I am off to run errands before the opera. I am afraid none of them will involve Latin unless I make them.