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Like a god or a good-luck charm or a vice
I got up early this morning for a dentist's appointment and just got back from the eye doctor this afternoon. Outcome in both cases was positive. I am being responsible about my health. It's tiring!
(I stopped by Goodwill on the way home. I now own CDs of John Parish and PJ Harvey's Dance Hall at Louse Point (1996) and the soundtrack to Wim Wenders' The Million Dollar Hotel (2000). The former was the only album of Harvey's I didn't have already; I'd heard one track from the latter and was curious about the rest. All of my CDs prior to October 2013, like all of my DVDs ditto, are still in boxes. Someday I will have enough shelves for everything, even the books. I wish I knew when that would happen.)
As I attempt to catch up on the world outside of Readercon—
1. Roger Rees has died. I am sorry. He was an actor I really liked and never wrote about as he deserved. He got my attention in 2006 with a walk-on part in The Prestige because he had such an interesting face, much more creased and vivid than his rather explanatory role as solicitor and go-between; I hurt myself slightly when I realized I'd seen him years ago as the spoonerism-prone Sheriff of Rottingham in Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993). I missed his best-known TV work because I never watched Cheers (1982–1993) or The West Wing (1999–2006), but he guest-starred in the single episode of My So-Called Life (1994)—"The Substitute"—that I can recount from memory. Listening to the original cast recording of A Man of No Importance (2002) was the closest I got to seeing him in a leading role for years. Now, like everyone else, I associate him first and foremost and most fondly with his performance as the title character in the RSC's Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1982). It was a monumental piece of theater and he was onstage for all eight and a half hours of it, a headstrong, true-hearted young hero not getting acted off the stage by the gallery of Dickensian grotesques around him; I only gave him a footnote when I saw the taped version in 2010, because I had fallen in love with Edward Petherbridge, but I should have gone back for Rees. (Petherbridge did.) I wish I had seen him onstage. Thanks to Rees immigrating to the U.S. in the 1980's, for once I was in the right country for it. In memory he looks most like Nicholas Nickleby, intensely black-haired and pale-faced as a pen-and-ink sketch, although pictures tell me he aged into a wiry, silvery woodcarving. He is survived by his husband and partner of the last thirty-three years, Rick Elice. The lights will be dimmed for him on Broadway tomorrow.
2. Pluto! The other red planet. I didn't know until![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel told me that Clyde Tombaugh's ashes made the flyby with New Horizons and are headed into the Kuiper belt and then deep space. I wonder if Venetia Burney would have liked the same thing. The Romans' Pluto was always under her feet.
3. "Most of the nudity in this movie is Tom Hiddleston": Guillermo del Toro on Crimson Peak (2015). I am truly looking forward to this movie. On top of the fact that I like all of the principal cast (and if Hiddleston isn't the true inheritor of Peter Cushing's cheekbones, I don't know who is), I find it very promising when a director I already like cites James Whale and Terence Fisher as his heroes. I mean, that's just sensible.
4. I've mentioned Tanglefoot before, right? In-progress webcomic starring the inimitable Izzy Perizene, tin-nosed shlimazl of a theatrical manager, part-time taxi dancer, perpetual dodger of creditors, and embodiment of some of the funniest physical comedy I've seen on a page. I've had my fingers crossed for an actual launch since 2013 and it hasn't happened yet, but that's all right, because the concept sketches alone are already generating cosplay. Bravo that person. Holy blap.
5. Apparently sharks can live in active volcanoes. Please don't tell the SyFy Channel.
Autolycus just started trying to chew the watch off my wrist. I believe this is a subtle indication that I have spent too much time on the internet and not enough on the cat. Excuse me.
(I stopped by Goodwill on the way home. I now own CDs of John Parish and PJ Harvey's Dance Hall at Louse Point (1996) and the soundtrack to Wim Wenders' The Million Dollar Hotel (2000). The former was the only album of Harvey's I didn't have already; I'd heard one track from the latter and was curious about the rest. All of my CDs prior to October 2013, like all of my DVDs ditto, are still in boxes. Someday I will have enough shelves for everything, even the books. I wish I knew when that would happen.)
As I attempt to catch up on the world outside of Readercon—
1. Roger Rees has died. I am sorry. He was an actor I really liked and never wrote about as he deserved. He got my attention in 2006 with a walk-on part in The Prestige because he had such an interesting face, much more creased and vivid than his rather explanatory role as solicitor and go-between; I hurt myself slightly when I realized I'd seen him years ago as the spoonerism-prone Sheriff of Rottingham in Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993). I missed his best-known TV work because I never watched Cheers (1982–1993) or The West Wing (1999–2006), but he guest-starred in the single episode of My So-Called Life (1994)—"The Substitute"—that I can recount from memory. Listening to the original cast recording of A Man of No Importance (2002) was the closest I got to seeing him in a leading role for years. Now, like everyone else, I associate him first and foremost and most fondly with his performance as the title character in the RSC's Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1982). It was a monumental piece of theater and he was onstage for all eight and a half hours of it, a headstrong, true-hearted young hero not getting acted off the stage by the gallery of Dickensian grotesques around him; I only gave him a footnote when I saw the taped version in 2010, because I had fallen in love with Edward Petherbridge, but I should have gone back for Rees. (Petherbridge did.) I wish I had seen him onstage. Thanks to Rees immigrating to the U.S. in the 1980's, for once I was in the right country for it. In memory he looks most like Nicholas Nickleby, intensely black-haired and pale-faced as a pen-and-ink sketch, although pictures tell me he aged into a wiry, silvery woodcarving. He is survived by his husband and partner of the last thirty-three years, Rick Elice. The lights will be dimmed for him on Broadway tomorrow.
2. Pluto! The other red planet. I didn't know until
derspatchel told me that Clyde Tombaugh's ashes made the flyby with New Horizons and are headed into the Kuiper belt and then deep space. I wonder if Venetia Burney would have liked the same thing. The Romans' Pluto was always under her feet.3. "Most of the nudity in this movie is Tom Hiddleston": Guillermo del Toro on Crimson Peak (2015). I am truly looking forward to this movie. On top of the fact that I like all of the principal cast (and if Hiddleston isn't the true inheritor of Peter Cushing's cheekbones, I don't know who is), I find it very promising when a director I already like cites James Whale and Terence Fisher as his heroes. I mean, that's just sensible.
4. I've mentioned Tanglefoot before, right? In-progress webcomic starring the inimitable Izzy Perizene, tin-nosed shlimazl of a theatrical manager, part-time taxi dancer, perpetual dodger of creditors, and embodiment of some of the funniest physical comedy I've seen on a page. I've had my fingers crossed for an actual launch since 2013 and it hasn't happened yet, but that's all right, because the concept sketches alone are already generating cosplay. Bravo that person. Holy blap.
5. Apparently sharks can live in active volcanoes. Please don't tell the SyFy Channel.
Autolycus just started trying to chew the watch off my wrist. I believe this is a subtle indication that I have spent too much time on the internet and not enough on the cat. Excuse me.
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And he mentions Jacques Tourneur! This movie sounds incredible.
Hiddleston's cheekbones do indeed look strikingly like Peter Cushing's.
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Have you seen Mama? It's another wonderful horror film with Jessica Chastain, produced by Del Toro (but directed by another South American director).
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I know! I've got my fingers crossed. The visibility of ghosts in the trailer is not especially in the style of Val Lewton, but most trailers feel the need to show more than the audience really needs to know, so, look, I had no expectations whatsoever for Pacific Rim and it was amazing. Do not disappoint me this time, del Toro.
Hiddleston's cheekbones do indeed look strikingly like Peter Cushing's.
There's at least one picture of him in Victorian shirtsleeves where the resemblance is really pronounced, but I can't find it now that I need it, so you'll have to settle for moments from the trailer.
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Sharkano is THE BEST.
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I am very curious about the prospect of a contemporary take on Gothic horror that isn't a pastiche or a parody. I am also interested by del Toro's statement that "[t]he house in Crimson Peak is just basically a killing jar for butterflies: It has no intention to suffocate the butterfly, but it will. It doesn't enjoy life, but it's not an evil place. It's just a place where sorrow and loss and pain and many, many dark things have happened," differentiating it from haunted house stories where the house takes an active role in events. I'm not entirely sure I agree with him—I've read any number of hauntings where sentience is not required for a place to be scarred so badly that it becomes dangerous—but the fact that he's discussing the story in these terms appeals to me.
Plus, Tom Hiddleston.
I really like him. It's such a pleasure. Fandom favorites very often do not speak to me, but I just enjoy watching him.
Have you seen Mama?
No!
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The benevolent supercats of the future! It's a temporal loop.
Sharkano is THE BEST.
Truly, no movie is necessary. I love nature.
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Sharknado 2: Volcano Sharknado
or
Sharknado 2: Birth By Eruption
or
Sharknado 2: Mantle of Power
or
Sharknado 2: The Floor is Lava
This is going absolutely nowhere good, is it?
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I didn't start following you on LJ until after your review of Nicholas Nickleby -- I remember liking Newman Noggs, but I never realized I was watching Edward Petherbridge. He's remarkably chameleon-like for someone with that distinctive a face.
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Oh, I like that one. If it were about something completely different, I'd give it points for style!
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Cool. I have seen none of the recent Mummy films; the first one looked so terrible at the time that I gave it a miss and that apathy has persisted even after years of recommendations to the contrary (and the development of a bizarre, at-a-distance attachment to John Hannah's Jonathan Carnahan from seeing him quoted in gifsets on Tumblr. I may well decide to see it for him, because that is how character actors and movies and I work). I have seen both the 1932 Mummy with Boris Karloff and the 1959 remake-of-sequels with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, of course.
I remember liking Newman Noggs, but I never realized I was watching Edward Petherbridge. He's remarkably chameleon-like for someone with that distinctive a face.
Yes! His face is very distinctive and so, honestly, are his height and his build, but he can wrap his voice and his body language around a character and that makes all the difference: Newman Noggs doesn't sound like Peter Wimsey doesn't sound like Sir Matthew Fell, or move like any of them. (Petherbridge did train as a mime. I love being able to see that sort of thing.) He turned up last month in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2015) and I was so happy he was still working. Nothing better happen to him any time soon.