Sing holly, go whistle and ivy
I had been going to start this post by acknowledging that I'm not writing much about politics lately because I worry it would be nothing but an unending pour of vitriol and there is enough of that in the world without my adding to it, although I don't know what kind of person doesn't feel like pouring vitriol on the thoughts and prayers of yet another, another school shooting or half of Congress confirming that it views disabled bodies, like the ones that belong to so many of the people I love, as defective and disposable, not worth the protection of law; then ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch told me that Mueller had indicted thirteen Russian nationals on charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S., including the very same paid protesting of campaign rallies of which 45 accused Clinton's supporters, and I don't think it's true that history recurs first as tragedy and then as farce, I think it can recur in any order it feels like and sometimes that includes Dada.
I feel like time is doing nothing but getting away from me. I'm in the kinds of pain that make me feel dogged and foggy. I'm sleeping badly. I dreamed of watching a sequel-remake-reboot of a very famous and totally nonexistent Merchant Ivory-ish television production of the '80's or '90's, in which the actor who played my favorite character in the original was reappearing as his older self, still shy and sad and not really vague, fortunately no longer caught in an idiotic love triangle. I don't think my brain was very clear on the setting, which seemed to be incorporating aspects of the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries at the same time, but the production values were great.
1. Last night I was talking to Fiona Maeve Geist about Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) and its old, folkloric, fruitfully uncanny association between Fairy and the dead, which mostly fell out of fashion in the twentieth century until Susanna Clarke revived it, and she linked me to Francis Stevens' "The Elf-Trap" (1919), which lands its ending on the strength of the same blurring of worlds: "And a man who has been with them once is caught—caught in the real elf-trap, which the smiths' work only symbolized. He may escape, but he can't forget nor be joined again with his own race, while to return among them, he must walk the dark road that Tademus had taken when she called." The bonny road that winds about the ferny brae, not the thorny road to heaven or the lily road to hell. The broad road. The Milky Way.
2. I am delighted to hear that Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts (2015) is being adapted for film by Oz Perkins. I still haven't seen I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016), but I loved The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015) and have been wondering off and on what he was doing next.
3. I saw the title of Alessandra Stanley's "In Praise of Alistair MacLean and the Male Romance" and agreed instantly with this way of categorizing his books, until it turned out she meant something very different by it than I did. I have that same edition of H.M.S. Ulysses (1955), though.
4. I meant to link this track days ago: PJ Harvey and Harry Escott's "An Acre of Land." I don't know what the film it belongs to will be like, but I find the song haunting.
5. I disagree with this film series on the most basic grounds of definition—if you come away from Gilda (1946) believing Rita Hayworth was playing a femme fatale, you have never read Richard Dyer or paid any attention to the movie at all—but on the other hand I've never seen Dishonored (1931), Under the Skin (2013), or A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), so I'm conflicted.
I had noticed from the number of ash-crosses on the street that Valentine's Day this year was also Ash Wednesday, but I hadn't realized untillesser_celery mentioned it that Easter is also going to be April Fool's Day. This feels like a setup: "Χριστός ἀνέστη!" "Get out of here!" The Apostle Thomas is going to hate it.
spatch told me that Mueller had indicted thirteen Russian nationals on charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S., including the very same paid protesting of campaign rallies of which 45 accused Clinton's supporters, and I don't think it's true that history recurs first as tragedy and then as farce, I think it can recur in any order it feels like and sometimes that includes Dada.I feel like time is doing nothing but getting away from me. I'm in the kinds of pain that make me feel dogged and foggy. I'm sleeping badly. I dreamed of watching a sequel-remake-reboot of a very famous and totally nonexistent Merchant Ivory-ish television production of the '80's or '90's, in which the actor who played my favorite character in the original was reappearing as his older self, still shy and sad and not really vague, fortunately no longer caught in an idiotic love triangle. I don't think my brain was very clear on the setting, which seemed to be incorporating aspects of the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries at the same time, but the production values were great.
1. Last night I was talking to Fiona Maeve Geist about Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) and its old, folkloric, fruitfully uncanny association between Fairy and the dead, which mostly fell out of fashion in the twentieth century until Susanna Clarke revived it, and she linked me to Francis Stevens' "The Elf-Trap" (1919), which lands its ending on the strength of the same blurring of worlds: "And a man who has been with them once is caught—caught in the real elf-trap, which the smiths' work only symbolized. He may escape, but he can't forget nor be joined again with his own race, while to return among them, he must walk the dark road that Tademus had taken when she called." The bonny road that winds about the ferny brae, not the thorny road to heaven or the lily road to hell. The broad road. The Milky Way.
2. I am delighted to hear that Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts (2015) is being adapted for film by Oz Perkins. I still haven't seen I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016), but I loved The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015) and have been wondering off and on what he was doing next.
3. I saw the title of Alessandra Stanley's "In Praise of Alistair MacLean and the Male Romance" and agreed instantly with this way of categorizing his books, until it turned out she meant something very different by it than I did. I have that same edition of H.M.S. Ulysses (1955), though.
4. I meant to link this track days ago: PJ Harvey and Harry Escott's "An Acre of Land." I don't know what the film it belongs to will be like, but I find the song haunting.
5. I disagree with this film series on the most basic grounds of definition—if you come away from Gilda (1946) believing Rita Hayworth was playing a femme fatale, you have never read Richard Dyer or paid any attention to the movie at all—but on the other hand I've never seen Dishonored (1931), Under the Skin (2013), or A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), so I'm conflicted.
I had noticed from the number of ash-crosses on the street that Valentine's Day this year was also Ash Wednesday, but I hadn't realized until
lesser_celery mentioned it that Easter is also going to be April Fool's Day. This feels like a setup: "Χριστός ἀνέστη!" "Get out of here!" The Apostle Thomas is going to hate it.
no subject
Aw yiss. I’ve often wondered how much that had to do with Mirrilees being in a relationship* with an archeologist.
Easter is also going to be April Fool's Day.
Someone noted this back in January and commented “It’s going to be a very weird year to be Catholic.”
* of one kind or another — it was one of those Bloomsbury things where according to their letters to each other, they identified as the two wives of a teddy bear named Ursa Major.
no subject
I did not know that detail and that's wonderful. Brings new meaning to the bear for Artemis.
Jane Ellen Harrison was one of the Cambridge Ritualists, who were collectively—Harrison and her interest in year-kings especially—kind of responsible for folk horror as we know it. I cannot imagine that didn't get into Mirrlees' work.
no subject
no subject
Right?! "My Keith."
In fact I'm not entirely convinced she's read it, since "one of the partisans is a girl" is only true of the movie, not the book.
It is my hope that the "starter kit" was added by her editor, since I didn't think I'd mixed up that detail, either, and it's a fairly memorable one.
no subject
no subject
Want to plan on it, then? There are three showings and I've got a membership.
no subject
no subject
Let's plan over e-mail, since I won't know for certain until we get closer?
Yay!
no subject
no subject
I'd never heard of that one! Should I see it?
no subject
no subject
I'll try to make it!
no subject
no subject
I think I was very poorly served by seeing Nicole Kidman first in Moulin Rouge! (2001), where her voice did not impress me. I started to notice her when I watched Bangkok Hilton (1989) during my initial Denholm Elliott period. That miniseries has problems, but Kidman (along with Elliott, and a Hugo Weaving so young he's got lots of hair) is not one.
no subject
no subject
I will try to make one of the showings. I've been hearing nothing but good things about it for years.
no subject
no subject
I mean, I thought it was pretty straight-up vampires.
no subject
no subject
You got the superior edition. Also the one I think comments are in favor of.
no subject
Indeed. :-/
I don't think my brain was very clear on the setting, which seemed to be incorporating aspects of the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries at the same time, but the production values were great.
Well, that sounds like something.
The Apostle Thomas is going to hate it.
LOL, yes.
4. Yes, I like that too.
no subject
It was a very enjoyable thing to watch in a dream! Just difficult to recommend to people outside of it.
no subject
There aren't enough stories like that (and I'll read "The Elf-Trap" later, ta for that). If you ever feel up to it, could you write something along those lines? You've always been good with ghosts. This though:
The bonny road that winds about the ferny brae, not the thorny road to heaven or the lily road to hell. The broad road. The Milky Way.
is wonderful.
Thank you again for the Harvey song!
no subject
Welcome!
If you ever feel up to it, could you write something along those lines? You've always been good with ghosts.
I will try. I am not writing much fiction lately for reasons that seem to be nothing more exciting than time and exhaustion, but I like writing things for you.
Thank you again for the Harvey song!
She could do an entire album like that! I'd buy it!
no subject
I DID NOT KNOW THIS THAT'S AMAZING :D
no subject
It makes me strangely happy.
no subject
....huh, I wouldn't personally classify the women in La Femme Nikita or Under the Skin as femme fatales either. No Louise Brooks? No Last Seduction?? Bound, Lady from Shanghai, Dead Reckoning, Scarlet Street? The Grifters? (That features an older femme fatale, too.) (Does nobody but me love Body Heat? Yeah it's kinda cheezy, but Kathleen Turner's delivery of "You're not too smart, are you? I like that in a man," OMG.)
no subject
I am hoping the Senate kills it, but I really don't like that it cleared the House. I want these people gone.
....huh, I wouldn't personally classify the women in La Femme Nikita or Under the Skin as femme fatales either. No Louise Brooks? No Last Seduction?? Bound, Lady from Shanghai, Dead Reckoning, Scarlet Street? The Grifters?
Yeah, if I were going to plan a series of femme fatales (rather than just women in noir) it would look extremely different. This one seems to have taken such a diffuse definition that I suspect it was really an excuse for a programmer to show some of their favorite movies, which is a completely legitimate ambition, I just don't think it hangs together as an examination of the femme fatale.
(Does nobody but me love Body Heat? Yeah it's kinda cheezy, but Kathleen Turner's delivery of "You're not too smart, are you? I like that in a man," OMG.)
Some of the contributors to E. Ann Kaplan's Women in Film Noir (1978/1998) agreed with you!
I've seen almost none of the '90's neo-noir cycle with the exception of Bound (1996), which I loved and still need to write about, partly because of the deconstruction it performs on the trope of the femme fatale. I have the impression the others are a lot more het.