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Thursday, January 2nd, 2020
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10:18 pm - Collected Fanfiction Post
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| Thursday, November 5th, 2009
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8:51 am - Yuletide!
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Yuletide sign-ups have begun! I took the plunge and joined this year. Found out there were some more fandoms I could offer without having to refresh my memory by research because I had watched/read the source material only recently. (And even written meta about them!)
On the other hand, I discovered that there are several German fandoms on the offering this year - Karl May's Winnetou novels, Michael Ende's Momo and Perry Rhodan (aka our longest running pulp Sci Fi series), and I felt a bit bad for not signing up for any of them, considering that Karl May was literally the first writer I ever read (Dad & my grandfather were fans and told me tales, so the first year in school, once I could read, I grabbed Winnetou I) and I still have a nostalgic fondness for those books, I do love Michael Ende and PR is a case of childhood & teenage nostalgia again. But the thing is, a) I'd have to reread because it's been so many years, and I just don't have the time, real life strikes again, and b) it would feel weird to me to write in English for these fandoms. Because I do hear the narrative voice and the characters in German in my head, you know? It's not so much that I first encountered them in German - I saw all Star Trek shows dubbed before I saw them in the English original, for example, and these characters do have their English-language voices in my head - it's probably that I can't imagine how they would sound in English at all. Especially Karl May's earnest Wilhelminian prose. Wie der Westman zu sagen pflegt. But if someone else were to try, that would be awesome.
Anyway. The list of requested and offered fandoms so far is here, and if even half of this gets written, it should be fantastic reading for the holidays. As for my own requests, this is as good a place as any to write the obligatory letter to the gracious soul who'll fulfill one of them.
Dear Yuletide Writer,
first of all, thank you! I hope you'll find one of the prompts to your liking. If you want to go in another direction with the characters, by all means, as long as nobody gets bashed and those I indicated show up in a prominent fashion. As for the shipping level, I leave that to your discretion - gen, het or slash is all fine by me. (Mind you, if, say, you pick the B5 prompt and come up with an X-Rated Bester/G'Kar/Londo threesome instead of a gen encounter I would be... surprised, but if that's what tickles your fancy and you can pull it off in character, go you!)
Generally speaking, I'm an ensemble fan; listing some characters but not others doesn't mean I dislike the rest in the respective fandom, it's just an indication of focus preference. I also appreciate when something of the world buliding makes it into the fanfic - for example, Rome was really good at getting the different belief systems and cultural backgrounds across, and A place of greater safety really manages to be about the French Revolution as well as about individual participants. (Considering that as a writer I'm far better at dialogue and character exploration than at a decent plot or atmospheric descriptions, I'm all the more in awe of people who excell at the later two.) Which doesn't mean that if you choose to write a sonnet instead of a 2000 words long adventure, I wouldn't be thrilled as well.
Again, thanks so much for signing up!
current mood:  jubilant
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| Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
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12:14 pm - Brush up your Byron: featuring satire, politics and Lucifer/Michael slash
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So here I was, reading something looking back on the Bush years, when a quote from Byron about George III. nagged in my mind, which I always thought to be the best summary of W. I looked up The Vision of Judgment, and there indeed it was. It also reminded me of something else, namely, how immensely readable much of Byron's work is still today, and what a shame it is most people, if they think of him at all, think "brooding, woe is me poet" (meaning they think of what's usually described as the Byronic hero), without having read much of him. Not that he couldn't also write "woe is me" stuff, but the majority of his work is quite different.
So: some reasons why Byron is still worth reading, by ways of quote to prove my point. I'll start with The Vision of Judgment, which is one of those few political satires that survive their immediate application. (The problem with contemporary political satires being that if you read them a hundred, two hundred, or even only fifty years later, you often go "huh? Who? What?" and don't get the jokes because you're lacking the context.) In this case, the context was that George III (he of "The madness of", he of the American Revolution) finally died in his old age, after having lost reason and power years ago, and the Prince Regent became George IV. The Poet Laureate of the time, Robert Southey, did the Laureate thing and wrote a poem called "The Vision of Judgment" in which good old George is rushed to heaven and his virtues are praised to the extreme. This proved a welcome opportunity for Byron, who despised a) Southey and b) the monarchy, to let rip, and write a poem bearing the same title and the same plot - old George dies, shows up in front of the pearly gates, etc. - and use it for some acidly funny verses. Which, as mentioned before, can be applied to certain contemporary presidents very well indeed. Which brings me to the reasons for reading Byron, as demonstrated by one particular work of his.
I. He's sharp and to the point without being cheap when dealing with politics
This is from Lucifer making his case, and as I said, might as well serve as the epitaph of a current day George:
"'Tis true, he was a tool from first to last
(I have the workmen safe); but as a tool
So let him be consumed. (...)
Whose
History was ever stained as his will be
With national and individual woes?
I grant his household abstinence; I grant
His neutral virtues, which most monarchs want
I know he was a constant consort; own
He was a decent sire, and middling lord.
All this is much, and most upon a throne;
As temperance, if at Apicius' board,
Is more than at an anchorite's supper shown.
I grant him all the kindest can accord;
And this was well for him, but not for those
Millions who found him what Oppression chose.
The New World shook him off; the Old yet groans
Beneath what he and his prepared, if not
Completed (...)
II. He's witty when he's mean
Satan's not the only one voicing Byron's dislike for the monarchy. So does St. Peter, remembering the last king who showed up, the beheaded Louis XVI.
"No," quoth the Cherub: "George the Third is dead."
"And who is George the Third?" replied the apostle:
"What George? what Third?" "The King of England," said
The angel. "Well! he won't find kings to jostle
Him on his way; but does he wear his head?
Because the last we saw here had a tustle,
And ne'er would have got into Heaven's good graces,
Had he not flung his head in all our faces.
"He was — if I remember — King of France;
That head of his, which could not keep a crown
On earth, yet ventured in my face to advance
A claim to those of martyrs — like my own:
If I had had my sword, as I had once
When I cut ears off, I had cut him down;
But having but my keys, and not my brand,
I only knocked his head from out his hand.
"And then he set up such a headless howl,
That all the Saints came out and took him in;
And there he sits by Saint Paul, cheek by jowl;
That fellow Paul — the parven—! The skin
Of Saint Bartholomew, which makes his cowl
In heaven, and upon earth redeemed his sin,
So as to make a martyr, never sped
Better than did this weak and wooden head.
III. He's subversive with relationships and expectations
My favourite example of this is actually Don Juan, wherein the titular hero isn't a manly man and macho seducer but an androgynous-looking 18 years old who becomes everyone's boy toy. When this Juan ends up in a harem - that old heterosexual fantasy - it's because he's in disguise as a woman and gets fancied as a woman not just by the Sultan but by several of the harem girls. But The Vision of Judgment also has a great example, because Byron ships Michael/Lucifer as if he was Mike Carey and instead of letting them be enemies emphasizes their mutual affection and regret about their current political differences all over the place. Also he's witty about it:
And therefore Michael and the other wore
A civil aspect: though they did not kiss,
Yet still between his Darkness and his Brightness
There passed a mutual glance of great politeness.
IV. He has a genuine dislike against jingoism and war
Mind you, Byron wasn't immune to the occasional heroic posturing. But during the Napoleonic Wars, he had the deeply unfashionable view that it was a senseless butchery from both sides. And for all his fondness for satire, those verses are deeply serious, underlining something that continues to appeal about Byron, as opposed to the clichés about him - for all his egocentricity, he had a deep respect for human life:
So many Conquerors' cars were daily driven,
So many kingdoms fitted up anew;
Each day, too, slew its thousands six or seven,
Till at the crowning carnage, Waterloo,
They threw their pens down in divine disgust—
The page was so besmeared with blood and dust.
This by the way; 'tis not mine to record
What Angels shrink from: even the very Devil
On this occasion his own work abhorred,
So surfeited with the infernal revel:
Though he himself had sharpened every sword,
It almost quenched his innate thirst of evil.
(Here Satan's sole good work deserves insertion—
'Tis, that he has both Generals in reversion.)
V. He's immensely entertaining when being bitchy about the competition.
Robert Southey was in his time as famous as the other two of the early romantics, Wordsworth and Coleridge, but today is remembered for mainly two things - writing a patronizing letter to the young Charlotte Bronte that poetry wasn't really for women, and being mercilessly skewered by Byron in The Vision of Judgment. Which ends with Southey himself ending up as a witness, trying to read his poetry to everyone and causing such boredom and abhorrence in the listeners that George III manages to slip into heaven in everyone's hasty departure unnoticed. So here's Byron describing the reading:
Now the bard, glad to get an audience, which
By no means often was his case below,
Began to cough, and hawk, and hem, and pitch
His voice into that awful note of woe
To all unhappy hearers within reach
Of poets when the tide of rhyme's in flow;
But stuck fast with his first hexameter,
Not one of all whose gouty feet would stir.
But ere the spavined dactyls could be spurred
Into recitative, in great dismay
Both Cherubim and Seraphim were heard
To murmur loudly through their long array;
And Michael rose ere he could get a word
Of all his foundered verses under way,
And cried, "For God's sake stop, my friend! 'twere best—
'Non Di, non homines' — you know the rest."
current mood:  nerdy
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| Monday, November 2nd, 2009
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5:52 pm - Dexter 4.06 If I had a hammer
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9:30 am
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I, Claudius:
Mater Familias: to put it as unspoilery as possible for people not familiar with either the book, tv series or the detailed history of the Julio-Claudian dynasty: Antonia deals with her children. It's a brilliant and emotionally devastating look at one decision Antonia makes, and manages to get the core of her.
Sarah Jane Adventures:
The boy who touched time: Clyde Langer dreams, and these are not his dreams. Lovely Clyde portrait in the wake of the most recent episode. I hoped the crossover would inspire fanfic, and this is a splendid example.
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| Saturday, October 31st, 2009
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4:44 pm - The Sarah Jane Adventures 3.05+3.06
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| Thursday, October 29th, 2009
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10:53 pm - Battlestar Galactica: The Plan
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Short version: if you liked No Exit and Downloaded, you'll probably like this one as well. (Which means I did, btw.) Timeframe wise, it covers the first two seasons of the show; it is, as advertised, a Cylon pov movie. It also struck me as closely modelled on Richard III, structure-wise. Oh, and of course it's a missing scenes type of story; which means no, it's not necessary for this to exist in order to understand the canon, but on the other hand most of the missing scenes are pretty nifty.
( Let's get this genocide started )
current mood:  mellow
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| Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
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3:48 pm - Babylon 5 and Crusade in Yuletide!
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I've been an enthusiastic reader of the Yuletide ficathon for years, but I never participated for various reasons, mostly having to do with time limitations pre-Christmas and the fact that rare fandoms mean brushing up on my canon before writing in same. But but this year, both Babylon 5 and Crusade have just become eligible and I'm pretty firm there, what with ![[info]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) b5_revisited and brushing up on my canon for two other ficathons earlier this year anyway. Plus I'm probably able to swing one of the usual Yuletide fandoms - Greek mythology or Sandman as a third option. (Or one of jo_graham's novels.)
On the cautionary side: if I do get a B5 assignment, I could get requests for Sheridan/Delenn or Marcus/Ivanova. (What with them still being the most popular pairings.) Or bloody Galen if someone actually asks for Crusade fic. It's not that I'm not willing to go outside of my Centauri comfort zone with characters - writing the B5/BSG crossover this year with Garibaldi as a pov character and the Matrithon entry about Lochley was very enjoyable - but complete indifference is the one obstacle impossibly to overcome, and the two pairings in question leave me utterly cold. Hm...
(My idea of fannish hell: being locked up with nothing but shipper fic for the most popular pairings of most of my fandoms to read and being forced to write same. If you ever need to torture me, skip the waterboarding and have the Jack/Ianto, Kara/Lee, Roslin/Adama, Sheridan/Delenn, Marcus/Ivanova, Doctor/Rose, Jack/Kate/Sawyer fic ready.)
current mood:  confused
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| Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
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2:05 pm - Halloween readings: Poe edition
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It's Halloween week; as a tribute to this very successfully exported American tradition and since I already made my favourite what to watch list
last year, this year I'm going for a "what I like to listen to/read" angle. (And posting it now, because I'll be on the road from tomorrow till Saturday evening and that usually means only brief online time.) I still remember the fascination and terrified delight I felt when first reading Edgar Allan Poe's short stories; and again when I discovered audio books because Poe is meant to be listened to, poems and short stories alike.
Now, some of my favourite recitations aren't online, but YouTube offers some genuine treasures anyway. Among them Vincent Price (who of course starred in Roger Corman's films of the 60s that usually bore little resemblance to Poe's texts beyond the title) reading, or rather reciting, two of the scariest Poe tales. And he does it awesomely well.
The Tell-Tale Heart was the first Poe story I ever read, and I blame it completely for my penchant to write the occasional story from very disturbed characters pov's, yes, indeed. I was just knocked sideways and completely distracted from class when reading it and decades later, it's still my favourite Poe tale. Here's what Vincent Price makes of it:
( Edgar Allan Poe & Vincent Price: The Tell-Tale Heart )
Next there's that gleeful story of revenge, The Cask of Amontillado (or, why I can never take up someone's offer to vist a wine cellar). My favourite pop culture allusion to that one comes in the Babylon 5 episode Ship of Tears, when Bester randomly quotes from it while being interrogated by Ivanova. (She's not a fan.) Vincent Price, enjoying himself mightily in that scary Poe-esque way:
( Edgar A. Poe & Vincent Price: The Cask of Amontillado )
While I was hunting Poe recitations on YouTube, I inevitably came across the poetry as well. Now strictly speaking these aren't suitable for Halloween, as they're not meant to be scary, but I loved what I unearthed enough to share:
( Contrast and compare: Christopher Walken, James Earl Jones and Vincent Price reciting The Raven )
( Basil Rathbone reciting The Bells and Annabel Lee )
current mood:  scared
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| Monday, October 26th, 2009
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1:26 pm - Dexter 4.05 Dirty Harry
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In which the show manages to pull of one of those twists I didn't see coming yet totally should have.
( You have a choice )
current mood:  impressed
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| Saturday, October 24th, 2009
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1:44 pm - SJA 3.03 +3.04, Invincible Iron Man #19, Astonishing X-Men 31
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8:17 am - Fannish5: Who are your 5 favorite non-humanoid characters?
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Trickier to answer then you'd think, because presumably the phrasing excludes all roughly human-shaped aliens and robots. I wonder about John Henry from The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It would probably be cheating to include him, for despite him being actually in the form of several boxes, it's the human-shaped extension and the actor of same who sells us on John Henry as someone to care for.) Similarly, someone like Chewbacca from Star Wars or Novice Hame or Brannigan from Doctor Who would be out because despite being covered by fur from head to foot, they come in human size and shape. So, let's see, beloved characters who really don't appear in human form.
1) Pilot from Farscape. Aka the one everyone is thinking of when they tell Farscape sceptics "the muppets will make you cry". Gentle, occasionally snarky, with as much tragedy in his life as any of the human-shaped characters. Pilot is immensely huggable (complicated by the fact he has a lot of limbs), and that's a fact.
2) Rygel from Farscape. As if I'd leave my beloved Dominar out. Rygel is Pilot's opposite, starting with the fact he's probably the oldest character on the show until Noranti in s4 (and Pilot is very much a teenager for his species, though we don't have confirmation of that fact until s2). He's greedy, eternally hungry, very shrewd, great at negotiations, actually very dangerous if you underestimate him due to size, and over the course of the show finds himself starting to care for certain people despite himself.
3) Matthew from Sandman. A borderline case as he used to be human before dying and becoming a raven in the Dreaming, but that's his Swamp Thing backstory before Sandman starts, and we never see Matthew as anything but a raven in Sandman (and wouldn't know he once was human if not for two or three lines of dialogue in ten volumes), plus the saga makes the point that his form is also his nature now when he finds himself feasting raven-style. Hence I say he counts. Matthew is one of my all time favourite sidekicks as well, no-nonsense, loyal but asking questions anyway if he doesn't understand something, and putting up with a lot from having to yell driving instructions at Delirium to being sent out in tandem with a serial killer with teeth for eyes.
4) The cat from Coraline. It's very evident from his works - both comics and novels - that Neil Gaiman likes cats (and cat godesses), and my favourite of his cats is the one from Coraline. The cat - who refuses to be called by a human name ("I know who I am") - is the one ally Coraline has (in the novel; the fact this is changed for the film makes for a somewhat different story), and so very, very feline both when silent and when speaking. No one's sidekick, I'd call it Coraline's occasional companion - when it chooses to be.
5) Fuchur the luck dragon from The Never-Ending Story (again, book, not film; the design for Fuchur was one of the many things Michael Ende disliked about the movie, because the description for Fuchur in the novel is pretty definite - think Chinese style dragon). Fuchur was the first friendly dragon I encountered in fiction as a child, and no less impressive or awesome for this; when Atreyu finds Fuchur escaped Ygrammul's net along with himself I was so relieved like you wouldn't believe. Fuchur is still my favourite dragon, come to think of it.
current mood: mellow
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| Friday, October 23rd, 2009
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9:18 pm - Film review: The Cove
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One of the most stirring, heartbreaking documentaries I've ever seen, and not about a past era, but something going on right now in the present. As a red thread, it uses the efforts of dolphin trainer turned animals rights activist Ric O'Barry to stop the dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan. O'Barry, who captured and trained the five dolphins who collectively played Flipper in the 1960s show - which sparked the craze for performing sea mammals - had his Damascus moments when one of them, Kathy, died in his arms, and since 35 years tries to atone by fighting to free dolphins.
Most of the animals in today's amusement parks, aquariums, sea worlds and what are captured and sold in Taiji (for up to 150 000,- dollars) but their fate, sad as it is, isn't actually the aim of the film's main thrust. (Though the film makes its point regarding them quickly and efficiently when demonstrating dolphin sound sensitivity and fastness when at liberty versus being locked in a relatively small pool surrounded by screaming people.) That is what happens to the dolphins who don't get sold; they're not set free but slaughtered, about 23.000 a year in Taiji alone, their meat often mislabelled so it can be sold easier.
Mid-way, the film takes its cue from heist movies as director Louie Psihoyos and the Oceanic Preservation Society compile a team so they can obtain evidence for this: free divers, tech experts, camera men, and one guy from George Lucas' ILM who provides fake rocks to hide the cameras in which the team eventually manages to place in the cove in question. The footage they obtain starts with an eerie moment of quietness, when we see and hear Japanese fishermen reminisce about past days when there were blue-whale pods as dense as “a clump of bamboo”, and then it becomes absolutely gut wrenching when the dolphin butchering begins and the sea turns red.
It's obvious why this footage is placed at the end; it's hard to take anything in afterwards because you're so shattered watching. Psihoyos knows his cinematic craft, and before that, the film isn't "just" a J'Accuse but also a love declaration to dolphins, providing footage of the animals at liberty, and introducing memorable human characters, not just O'Barry and the team but also people like the two brave councilmen of Taiji who speak out against the Mayor's plans to distribute dolphin meat (which in additional twist is also highly toxic with mercury) country-wide to schools. There was also briefly a familiar face, Heroes actress Hayden Panetierre who took part in an earlier attempt to draw attention to the dolphins in Taiji. And of course the audience isn't left of the hook. There is a reason why the marine-park industry flourishes world-wide. We pay to see the dolphins. And thus we pay for Taiji.
current mood:  shocked
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| Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
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9:52 am - Meme from Tartanshell: Whose fandom is it anyway?
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Choose ten characters. What fandoms would they participate in, and in what ways?
1.) I already did a post on clearly both movieverse Magneto and Xavier being Doctor Who fans, complete with highly scientific poll as to which Doctors and which Companions they like best. Expanding on that, I'd say Erik Lehnsherr to this day argues Genesis of the Daleks with Charles online and and has dispatched Mystique to Simbabe to investigate those rumours that there are copies of the lost Second Doctor episodes there. He could only sell her on this by telling her she might as well kill Mugabe while she was in the country, but by all means had to retrieve the tapes.
2.) Severus Snape, growing up with a Muggle father as he did, had off course access to 70s and early 80s tv. You know what this means, don't you? Young Severus was a Blake's 7 fan. Only Lily knew, of course, because he'd never have confessed it to his Slytherin friends; he just used Avon's one liners to great effect without them recognizing the origin. He used to write Avon/Cally fanfic under a pseudonym for fanzines and then broke it off. During his time as a Death Eater, he was severely tempted to go after Chris Boucher for Gauda Prime, but the thought of Voldemort figuring out the reason held him back. Later, at Hogwarts, he came around to regarding Blake as a great finale. At least Avon didn't have to teach kids as a punishment.
3.) Arvin Sloane's secret vice, as opposed to the more obvious ones, are Andrew Llyod Webber musicals, especially The Phantom of the Opera. He has all kinds of recordings, went to see it every time he was in London for an Alliance meeting and when really depressed finds reading Erik/Christine OTP fanfic complete with Raoul bashing cheers him up to no end. He'd never write it, though. On the other hand, he nearly got into a flame war on the subject why older manipulative mentor types with a killing record might not be the ideal partner for young talented ingenues. The other person just couldn't see Erik did it all for Christine's own good and that she'd never become such a stellar soprano without him; and why should the occasional posing as her father be a bad thing?
4.) Darla was really into Wilkie Collins novels back in the 19th century and had a bet running with Angelus as to what the nature of Sir Percy's secret was, though her favourite of his novels wasn't The Woman in White, it was Armadale. In the 20th century, she discovered the film Theatre of Blood and thought it was a marvellous idea, very inspirational. Only instead of killing off critics by staging Shakespearean deaths, she celebrated her ongoing Collins fannishness by killing off critics who insisted that he just wrote cheap potboilers by staging Collins murders. Also prevented murders which really should have been allowed to succeed for everyone's good, like the death of blond Alan in Armadale, oh yes. Wilkie Collins' reputation with literature professors improved; his critics literally died away. Clearly, fandom is not powerless.
5.) Alex Drake was a big Professionals fan as a girl, read Bodie/Doyle slashfic though she didn't write it, and made character and relationship soundmixes. She also catches Martin Shaw on stage when she can. Well, she did when she was living in the present, that is. Since her trip to the past, she found she couldn't stand watching The Professionals on screen anymore, for some reason, and instead distracts herself by watching Dallas, annoying her teammates by predicting plot twists and reconciling them by inventing drinking games.
6.) Toshiko Sato was a big Battlestar Galactica (new) fan, creating some of the best vids in fandom and writing lengthy, thoughtful meta. She was secretly a Kara/Leoben shipper (secretely because she knew how screwed up that was, and so used another handle when talking about that ship), but her vids were either Roslin-centric or ensemble. She was tempted to ask Jack about the Final Five and how it all ended but in the end didn't, and died not knowing.
7.) Abigail Brand is familiar enough with Star Wars to get Hank's references and respond accordingly, but she's really a fan of the Alien franchise. Ripley was and is her idol. She has all editions of all four movies on dvd and Sigourney Weaver's autograph, though she claimed her geeky boyfriend wanted it. In her non-existant spare time, she writes furious posts in online forums as to why there shouldn't be a fifth one.
8.) John Connor actually tries to stay away from sci fi, but one day caught a BSG episode, and, well, it all ended with him arguing in Television Without Pity why Cylons were completely implausible but Boomer was screwed over as a character anyway and should have gotten a redemption arc. He'd never tell his mother but has a feeling Cameron knows.
9.) Martha Jones stays away from medical shows except House; she and Tom regularly mock the medicine during episodes, but they never miss one, and though Hugh Laurie's American accent still occasionally weirds her out - after all, she watched Blackadder as a girl - she has a huge crush on him. Sometimes she checks the internet for Shakespeare fanfic and never knows whether she's dissapointed or relieved that there don't appear any Shakespeare/Dark Lady stories available.
10.) Vince Matsuka is a big Star Trek fan, which isn't a secret, and mods a Kira/Odo shipping community, which is, since he always tells everyone he's just in it for the chance to get naked photos of the female actors. He also gets into regular flame wars with Kira/Dukat shippers and with someone with a goverment computer IP who wants the discussion to get back to whether the Enterprise could beat the Death Star, with the online handle of LemonLymon.
current mood: nerdy
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| Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
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8:51 pm - Orsoniana
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Some weeks ago ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rozk linked to a trailer for a new movie called Me and Orson Welles, which from the looks of it is about Zac Efron's character having a romance with Claire Dane during the legendary Mercury production of Julius Caesar (which they appear to be recreating very faithfully going by the glimpses in the trailer). Christian McKay is Orson Welles, looking slightly too old for Welles in his early twenties (this was long pre-Kane) but otherwise very much like the original did. Which is as good a reason as any to give you my opinion on movie recreations of Welles, and a choice collection of favourite descriptions by contemporaries who had interestingly ambivalent relationships with him.
So: as far as cameo appearances are concerned, Vincent D'Onofrio as Orson Welles in Ed Wood is great, and the one scene in which Our Hero, about to gain immortality as the declared worst director of all times, meets his idol in a bar and bonds with Orson about money men and actors, is just fun. Welles also shows up, sort of, cameo-ish in Heavenly Creatures where the two teenage heroines regard him as "the most hideous creature alive" and have sexual fantasies about him in which he chases and ravishes them in Harry Lime get-up (and in black-and-white); you can tell Peter Jackson had fun with that as well.
Then there are the movies in which Welles is an actual main character, and which deal with his productions. For example, Tim Robbins' Cradle will Rock is a good ensemble movie set around the story of the Federal Theatre Project in the 30s and the production of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle will Rock (produced by John Houseman, directed by Orson Welles), and it captures a lot of the spirit of time, but the presentations of Welles and Houseman both are disappointingly one dimensional. This Welles has all of the temper tantrums and none of the charm and talent that made people put up with said tantrums to begin with, not to mention the genuine passion he had for the theatre.
And then there's my favourite, RKO 281, about the production of Citizen Kane. It takes some liberties with history - the biggest one is inventing a meeting between Welles and Hearst early in the movie in order to give Welles some animosity towards Hearst, when in fact as far as we know they never met until after the film was shot. (And for that post-Kane meeting we have only Welles' account, which is in fact used for the film's next-to-last scene, down to Orson saying "Kane would have taken the tickets"; if it didn't happen, it's a good story and a downright irresistable one if you want to shoot a picture about Citizen Kane.) But it still gets everyone and everything involved - Welles, Hearst, Mankiewicz, Marion Davies, Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, the Hollywood of that era - and manages to work both if you're familiar with the story it tells, and the film it's told about (in which case you can play "spot the famous Citizen Kane shot this scene pays homage to"), and if you're not. The characters are three dimensional; if you think Hearst comes along as too harmless, bang comes along a scene where he casually threatens and humiliates L.B. Mayer by invoking the antisemitism of the time. And here, Welles' outbursts, when they occur, serve another purpose than fulfilling the "temperamental director" cliché; you can tell scriptwriter John Logan has read Simon Callow's The Road to Xanadu, because the movie relationship with Hermann Mankiewiczs encapsules the pattern Callow sees in young Orson forming intense emotional bonds with and then destroying reprobate father figures while also flirting with them, the fearlessness married to a self destructive streak a mile wide, and the ongoing question "what if I'm really a fraud?" Liev Schreiber has more regularly handsome features then Welles (who described his face once as that of a "depraved baby"), but the resemblance is still remarkable, and he has the mannerisms down as well as the charm, the unrelenting drive to create, the intensity and the capacity for cruelty. Lastly, given that Mankiewiczs, much like his younger brother Joe, was one of the wittiest scriptwriters of 30s and 40s Hollywood, it's good to know Logan's script delivers the quick repartee as well. And of course the film as a dream cast - in addition to Schreiber as Welles, there's James Cromwell as Hearst, John Malkovich as Hermann Mankiewiczs, Roy Scheider as RKO studio executive George Schaefer and Melanie Griffith as Marion Davies. (An especially tricky job because with her you have both Davies' own films and Dorothy Cunningham's performance as Susan Alexander in Citizen Kane to compare.) All of which makes RKO 281 my favourite filmic recreation of Orson Welles so far.
Now, about those quotes, which are from Run-through by John Houseman</i>, and All for Hecuba and Put Money In Thy Purse by Micheál MacLiammóir.
( In which there is barbed fascination and lots of subtext )
current mood: geeky
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1:31 pm - Marvel recs
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| Monday, October 19th, 2009
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3:12 pm - Dexter 4.04 Dex takes a holiday
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9:42 am - The Sarah Jane Adventures 3.01 and 3.02 Prisoner of the Judoon
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First of all, the entire last week I didn't get my email notifications from lj about comments on my journal. Though curiously enough I did get them for my comments on other people's journals. This is still the case. Does that happen to anyone else right now or am I the only one whom lj has it in for?
Secondly, hooray for the return of Sarah Jane and friends!
( The female of the species is more intelligent )
A really enjoyable season start.
current mood: pleased
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| Sunday, October 18th, 2009
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6:15 pm - Frankfurt Book Fair: The End
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Word to the wise: do by all means book a seat instead of just buying a ticket without reservation if you're travelling by train from Frankfurt to Munich. I did, and was very glad about it, as the train is currently crowded like hell with people standing in the aisles.
Which makes it look quite like the book fair itself on the weekend. I don't actually look much for books during the last two days of the fair, the public days, because it's that packed with people. Sometimes you can hardly move. So the weekend is when you meet friends at the fair, go to readings and debates, and wish other people good luck when they try to actually glimpse into a book or two.
One of the book presentations I attended was of a non-fiction book I had read some time ago, Rüdiger Safranski's book about Goethe & Schiller. One question he got was to account for the paradox of Schiller being the more socially progressive of the two (poet of freedom, some of the most famous speeches in German dramatic history, etc.) yet married into the nobility, whereas Goethe was the more conservative yet openly lived with and ultimately married a working-class woman, Christiane Vulpius, who was horribly snubbed by Schiller. (Goethe in his letters to Schiller always includes regards to the wife. Schiller in all his letters to Goethe never once mentions Christiane, not even in thank-you-I-had-a-great-time letters when he had been staying for two weeks in Goethe's house where she would have been his hostess.) Safranski not being wise to the ways of fandom did not bother to bring up the slash explanation but boringly and truthfully pointed out Schiller's wife was the goddaughter of Goethe's ex, the Baroness von Stein who was Christiane's number 1 enemy in Weimar and responsible for most of Weimar society cutting her for near two decades until Johanna Schopenhauer finally offered her a cup of tea. But! he added, suddenly going out of his professor of literature mode and into lighting up in happy fanboy mode instead, he had found a reference in one of Christiane's letters to Goethe from when she was on holidays and happened to be in the same Kurbad where Schiller had gone about two years before his death, and in that letter Christiane writes Schiller not only said hello but offered to row her over the lake in one of the little boats available for the guests, and then did so. "I was so happy when I found that," declared Mr. Safranski. "It was my balm of comfort." ("Mein Trostpflaster.") "I just couldn't stand the idea of Schiller having been horrible to Christiane till the end."
Moving on to the 21st century, Saturday was also when I listened to a presentation by three dissident Chinese writers, all three of whom are living in exile in other countries, and whose number included Bai Ling, one of the two writers whose invite/disinvite/invite caused such uproar and shameful embarassment in September. The others were a co-founder of the independent Chinese PEN and another writer; unfortunately, I have the programm in my suitcase, and I'm sitting in the train right now, so I can't look their names up. Not-the-PEN-founder seems to be a member of the Falun Gong, as he brought up not once but twice that they are the most persecuted of Chinese religions as they are "the most purely Chinese". (I have sympathy for anyone persecuted for their religion, but this singling out and unconditional praise of the Falun Gong made me distrustful of them instead, I have to admit.) All three are writing for an exile Chinese newspaper, The Epoch Times, and had a lot to say about how growing up with the system stays with you even once you've turned against it because of the words, the phrases you use. One of the writers, referencing the Cultural Revolution from the 60s but talking about the decades before and after as well, used an image that stuck with me: "Chinese culture," he said, "is like a beautifully coloured glass. It got smashed irrevocably. Now all we're left with are glass splinters. What the party does is put these splinters into a kalaidoscope, like the ones we use at children, and the image you look at is beautiful, too, in its own way, but it distorts and changes every time you want it to, and nothing is ever fixed." Switching from Chinese - which got translated (the translators were so the unsung heroes of this fair, always having to do three languages - Chinese, German and English) - into German for one sentence, Bai Ling interjected "Die Partei hat immer recht" and said that to understand the China of today we - the German audience, that is - should just think of the GDR, not of Chinese history.
All these speeches on part of the exile writers were very heartfelt and moving, but you know, there was one problem: they were basically preaching to the converted. There were Chinese attendants as well as German ones - actually the room was pretty packed, with all age groups represented - but the Chinese all seemed to be locals from Frankfurt. None from the Chinese delegation. And I don't think the German audience was labouring under the delusion that China is anything but a dictatorship, either. So attention was paid, but not from the people who would have been able to do something with these words.
Saturday evening I met a friend of shezan's, but arrived a bit early at his hotel and thus was sitting in the lobby for a while. Whereupon one businessman type sauntered towards me, looked me up and down in my Saturday outfit (because the fair is so crowded on Saturdays and Sundays, it's wise to wear the lightest things you can get away with instead of the trousers and jackets you wear for the rest of the weak, so in my case I was wearing a short knitted purple dress) and enquired: "Are you free?"
Note to self: now you can say you've been mistaken for a hooker at the Frankfurt Book Fair in your memoirs.
Today was mostly about the Friedenspreis, the peace award of the German book trade handed over in the Paulskirche. This year's recipient was Italian essayist, journalist and novelist Claudio Magris. The laudatory speech returned time and again to Magris' hometown Trieste as a symbol of European strife, European multiculturalism and European unity. Magris' own speech, which was riveting, managed to address patterns and injustices in past and present alike, starting with Italy once having exported fascism and now and more recently populism, that deadening of democracies. (Insert open loathing of Berlusconi here.) He pointed out that we did and do have a war after WWII in Europe, one we're in denial about and which involves organ trade, the camps for refuges, the way they're treated and often sent back, all the dead of illegal immigration and that wasn't counting Bosnia and currently our involvement in Afghanistan. Listening, I decided I needed to read one of his books now; this was a man who knew how to engage his audience on both an emotional and intellectual level.
Also present was nobel prize winner Herta Müller, which later at the celebratory lunch led to Gottfriend Honnefelder (remember, the head of the booktrade association) telling everyone that he had wanted to congratulate her in his own speech at the Paulskirche (there are always four: one by Honnefelder, one by the mayor of Frankfurt, one laudatory speech and one acceptance speech) but she had asked him not to, as this was Claudio Magris' big moment, but now we could congratulate her, yes? So everyone got up and cheered and toasted. Mind you, I bet most of the people present, including yours truly, hadn't read Müller's work, but never mind.
"So," said a lady at my table, "why do you think the Bildzeitung didn't have a headline saying "We won the Nobel prize"?
(Footnote: Bild is our biggest yellow press paper and prone to such embarassing headlines as "We are Pope" - back when Joseph Ratzinger was elected.)
Replied an ex Mr. Speaker of our parliament: "Because the Americans got there first?"
On that note, once I'm back in Munich, I must read all the delicious fanfic I saw tantalizingly referred to by other people on my list, as well as watch The Sarah Jane Adventures. And then I'll probably sleep like a stone. But truly, I would not miss the Frankfurt Book Fair for the world.
current mood:  tired
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| Saturday, October 17th, 2009
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5:36 am - Frankfurt Book Fair III: Storytellers
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One of the benefits of the world's biggest book fair is that you get to listen to all kind of fascinating stories. By which I don't mean the book fair gossip, though that's mildly entertaining. Sometimes annoying and sexist as well. I'll later given an example for the later, but first the most interesting bits from the last two exhausting days:
a) The reading by Mo Yan, from two of his novels, Die Sandelholzstrafe and Der Überdruss. (Again, no idea what the English titles are - considering Mo Yan is the most famous of the Chinese novelists visiting the fair, theyare bound to exist, but I don't have the time to check.) This was done, as all readings, Q & A's and debates with Chinese authors and scholars on the fair, via translators. (Usually the translators translate near simultanous and are sitting in a booth; as translations into German and English - and Mandarin, for the Chinese - are available, the book fair looks a but U.N.-ish right now. They didn't go to that much effort when the Indians were there, presumably because most of them read and spoke in English, which everyone speaks anyway.) He read two excerpts, and first an actress and then the translator of Der Überdruss read the same excerpts in the German versions. This was a fascinating opportunity to compare word melody for someone like me who doesn't speak Chinese, plus everyone could actually recite really well. (Not a given for readings.) Then there were the text excerpts; one was an animal pov, which is Mo Yan's specialty, and one was the start of the novel describing the set up, the hero who has been shot refusing to submit to the unjust underworld judgement of the demons, continuing his refusal despite being bullied and tortured (this was such an explicit metaphor for a show trial, btw, that I was amazed Mo Yan got the novel published) until they let him go and reincarnate near his old family - but as a mule. The excerpts were all very funny in a black humour way, had a rhythm that was downright catchy, and Mo Yan kept up the humour when talking about the writing. He held up the rather slim volume of his original novel, then the really large and heavy German translation and asked his translator, "Martina, have you added romances? Because my critics claim I can't write them, and so you may have improved me!" He also said that usually he takes much longer but he wrote this particular novel in 43 days ("after having thought about it 43 years"), and by hand, not with the computer as opposed to the others - by brush, no less. He said the sensation of brush on paper really helps with the writing. There were a lot of Chinese in the audience, and they asked questions later. They were standard reading questions, but I noticed the formality of the address (as rendered by the translator, anyway). It was always "hochverehrter Herr Mo Yen" - "very honored Mr. Mo Yen" - which sounds more fluent in German, though also old fashioned.
b) The presentation of the biography of Leopold Engleitner, who is 104 years old and a concentration camp survivor. He was present, though most of the presentation was done by his biographer, Bernhard Rammersdorfer; Mr. Engleitner sat in a wheelchair and looked a bit like a very fragile wood elf, talking in caustic Austrian dialect. He's a Jehova's witness, which was the reason for his arrest and captivity in three different concentration camps - Buchenwald, one whose name I'm blanking out on right now, and Ravensbruck. By the end of the war, he was weighing only 28 kilogramms. What I found most sad was the fact that his parents (conservative Austrians deeply embarassed their son left the church and went to the witnesses of Jehovah anyway) didn't want to hide him; most incredible that he did not appear to be bitter. Asked by Bernhard Rammersdorfer whether he had an explanation for reaching such an old age he said because he enjoyed most of his life ("hat mei Freud dran"); I felt awed and humbled.
From the historic, human and humane to the everyday trivia: some bits of book fair gossip:
- apparantly German book trade is doing business as usual, but everyone says the Americans made severe cut backs; a greatly reduced presence, far fewer agents, and several publishers switched completely to non-fiction
- most annoying joke at one of the few receptions that did take place as follows. To appreciate the background: Horst Lauinger is the head of Manesse publishing; Manesse publishes classic literature (read: anything older than a century). Joachim Unseld heads the Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt; he's also the son of the late Siegfried Unseld, legendary publisher of Suhrkamp, and was expected to take over Suhrkamp until S. Unseld got divorced and married Ulla Berkowicz, which resulted in a severe father/son falling out, which resulted in Ulla Berkowicz basically inheriting Suhrkamp and making herself the most unpopular person in Frankfurt by deciding to move the publishing house to Berlin. (And by other decisions, that's just the latest one.) So, at Joachim Unseld's reception, Horst Lauinger declared himself the luckiest of publishers: "Because my authors are so old that they don't have any bloody widows to trouble us." You know, I actually have a lot of sympathy for J.U., but I don't like cheap jokes about widows, and you hear them on every single fair sooner or later. How artist's widows should just be burned, etc., etc. Bah.
I'm really worn out by now - a week of browsing, listening and debating will do that to you, and it's not over yet - but have a growing list of books I want to buy or lend from someone else really badly, like always this time of the year. Today's most interesting browsed-through novel was about two women, who travelled as fairground attractions in the 19th century, "the ugliest woman in the world" and a pretty young girl named Rosie the "owner"/agent added to give the audience a kick by the physical contrast. I also liked a novel about Caterina de' Medici and a non-fiction book by Tom Holland called "Millennium" about Europe in the century leading up to and immediately after the year 1000 AD, which came across was entertaining and very well researched.
Now off to try and catch up online...
current mood: tired
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relieved