Beyond the Roundels

An icon batch I was waiting to post until I'd done the latest retro_icontest challenge, and then nearly forgot about! Most of these have probably been posted here before, although not the retro_icontest The7Days challenge to icon seven different angles from the last seven things you watched. The angles were above, below, left, right, back, front, artist's choice. Plus, all the icons I made recently to complete 100fandomicons and retro_icontest's Island Rumble round, making icons from the same two screencaps & some alts.


Preview



( Rest under here )

I started this on 27th Feb 2021 for 100fandomicons and have finally completed it, after taking longer than anybody else ever has, which I suppose is one claim to fame. (You can see the fandoms if you hover over the icons.)

( 100fandoms table under here )

Hello, I have been out, I am now not fully with it again, but in the meantime, have a post I made earlier when I couldn't actually post it!

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This isn't a proper transcript, because I'm not up to that and would have killed my brain, but I know sovay wanted to know if David Mamet said anything about the doors and possibly other things about it, so when I rewatched/relistened to The Winslow Boy as Yule-prep, I took notes and transcribed some exchanges as best as I could. I tried to be careful, but sometimes before I have still been really unreliable when doing this kind of thing, so I apologise if anything is incorrect!

The commentary has David Mamet, Rebecca Pidgeon, Nigel Hawthorne & Jeremy Northam (& it sounds as if they invited Gemma Jones as one of the first things JN says when he & NH join in after about 10 mins is that he's sorry Gemma couldn't make the journey to join them.) I'm not sure how it got the miracle of a proper cast commentary, but I'm so glad, even aside from it improving my fic.

Also, if Robert/Catherine has one shipper, it's Jeremy Northam. In this commentary he will... ;-p)


I should say straight up that David Mamet does not explain the doors motif as such, but he and various others say at several points that he was set on having all the important family scenes in hallways. Alas, nobody goes into why, which is atypical for this commentary, but that is the penalty of the chat-based format.

( Notes from the Winslow Boy Commentary )

I sort of temporarily stalled again on the icon-making, but the new graphics software is nevertheless conquered to a reasonable degree, and I have enough icons to make a post. So, here is an icon post! (I did post ten of these previously under flock, in case anyone's getting confused.)

Teaser:



( This is 1873. Emotions are like port - to be corked up tight, left in the cellar for forty years and given to your godson on his 21st birthday. )

sovay asked me some more film meme questions when I complained about the questions in the other film meme making me talk about my A-Level film watching. I have managed to post my answers to these in less than a month after being asked them, so go me. And thank you sovay! <3

1. A film you watched for a favorite actor (of any gender) which you would not have sought out otherwise?

I wasn't really watching film for a long while, because I couldn't, so only my faves forced me back to it, and made it possible again, so it would be true to say nearly everything I've watched since about 2011. But here is one for each of my faves that have sufficient films in their cv to make it worth nominating one:

a. Dean Spanley (2008), because it's so obscure, and even if I'd stumbled over it in some other context, the very quality of the cast would only have been a warning sign, because it'd have to be terrible to still not ever have pinged my radar, or, afaict, anyone else's that I knew. But the Jeremy Northam tumblrs were enthusiastic, as were the 2-3 others who had actually seen it, so I sought it out, and I'm so glad I was finally able to snag a DVD because they were right - it's an oddity, but it's also a gem.

b. Girl On Approval (1962), which is a lesser New Wave/Kitchen Sink installment that starred Rachel Roberts with my man James Maxwell in the supporting role as her husband. I have a fascination with New Wave, brought on my Media Studies tutor who haunted the other post - we watched Look Back In Anger, Man at the Top & Saturday Night, Sunday Morning (& I also, long before, watched half of A Taste of Honey in my first year at secondary school. Only half was because that was when I first had ME/CFS). This gave me a deep, enduring and entirely grudging fascination with this brand of TV/Film, but also an appreciation of Rachel Roberts, who is amazing.

This is written by a female writer, about two main female characters, and it was the first UK attempt at a realistic film about fostering/social care etc, and I find it fascinating and well done, and worth a look if you have a similar interest in these kinds of films, social history of the era, or Rachel Roberts. (I can also attest it is well worth it for some of the earliest surviving non-fake-hair-assaulted James Maxwell, even if he is not in Rachel Roberts's league.)

c. If I had ever looked at The Lady Vanishes (1938) properly, I would no doubt have always have been taken with the summary, but I'd not got on with old films before then, so it was only watching Margaret Lockwood in 1970s TV, loving her in that and looking her up, that made me actually try it. It was a complete delight, and I've really enjoyed trying lots of 1930s & early 40s films I've watched off the back of that since, whether with or without Margaret Lockwood. I've still got a mixed track record with all-time Hollywood classics, but at least I know there are some things out there I do like!


2. A film you wish had been made with one of your favorites?

I'm not sure whether this is a role swap - this film would have been better with James Maxwell in it! - or a non-existent film they should have made with a favourite actor. I shall answer with something that is simultaneously both, in a way.

BBC Radio's 1991 'Christmas at the Wells' season of Victorian plays was great, but of all radio things I've listened to, the one that most made me pine for a live-action version was their London Assurance with Jeremy Northam as Dazzle. Someone should instantly have grabbed all the cast that could reprise their roles in visual format, or at least Jeremy Northam, and made them do it in a film, or a one-off TV thing. There is no film version of London Assurance, so it'd have been a general service to humanity anyway. I need to relisten to this, because I was new to it, but Dazzle wanders through it, idly bluffing and obliviously causing plot to ensue for everyone else, and I really really wanted to see him. It's set in the 18th C, so there would also have been excellent costumes. I am glad we had the radio, though.

(I loved The Schoolmistress even more but while I would enjoy a live-action version of that, too, it couldn't have Jeremy Northam as he was too old to play a 17 yr old even in 1991, except on radio, lol. Besides, it worked perfectly in that format, so I can just relisten to it anytime I wanted and be quite happy. Although it's such fun, someone should give it a go sometime. The world is always in need of an extra cheerful thing.)


3. A film it surprises people that you love?

See my below answer about me maybe not being the person to judge this - I feel most films I love are obviously films I would love, but then I would. I suppose, to go back to my previous film meme post, people are understandably surprised when I tell them that Schindler's List is probably my favourite film. (I prevaricate unless I feel like explaining my whole totalitarian regimes history story yet again, which I don't always.)

People do get surprised sometimes about that anybody likes the Star Wars Prequel trilogy best, I suppose; and I do! (I'm not alone by any means. ;-p)


4. A film you feel it should be completely obvious that you love?

All my films I love seem pretty obvious choices - to me, at least! But I read the description of The Lady Vanishes (1938) and went "that sounds like almost everything I like in one film" and it really was. The Winslow Boy (1999) was so obviously catered to me that I've been nearly watching it for years and it was first on my list of Jeremy Northam films to get, even if dodgy DVDs delayed it. Gosford Park was super-inevitable in so many ways. Watching The Mummy (1999) in a cinema in Aberystwyth (with wet feet, because I forgot you don't mess with the sea in Aber) was insta-love for multiple reasons, chief of which was A Librarian Heroine. *heart eyes*

idk, all my likes seem painfully obvious to me, but no doubt I'm more inexplicable to other people. Well. Occasionally, perhaps?

Have YOU been shocked by me liking a film??? Do I need to explain myself? I expect I will be very happy to do so.


5. A film you wish had been a television show?

A lot of book adaptations really need a TV serial format to do the book justice. I've been blanking on a particular example for 2-3 weeks now, though. But it'll definitely be some frustratingly over-lite classic lit book adaptation that missed something vital. I think lots of us round here know that feeling!

I picked this up from scifirenegade, and apparently it's taken me a month to answer the last couple of questions and tidy it up, so most of this I wrote in July. Also, I was all: yay! A film meme, and I've actually watched good films recently, so I shall not have to resort to all the very weird things I watched as a teenager... and then every other answer was still one of those things. (I'm so sorry. My A-Level tutors have a lot to answer for.)


( Cut for a very long set of questions )

So, yesterday I managed to post one of my private post-in-progresses out loud and aside from that causing me to face-palm in the morning when I awoke, startled, to magic replies on my supposedly-invisible post, it made me realise that nevertheless it was so very much better to post and have nice comments on things I wanted to talk about than to not post all the time, so here I am again!

Although also at the same time that possibly I should have put the internet down for most of this week, but alas, one of the things about being more ill than usual is a lose of gauging exactly how ill that is and when I should shut up and lie down.

So, I should just say that re. A Piece of Cake, it was not based on memoirs, but on a novel (that was, however, supposed to be pretty authentic, and the series itself felt on a par in that regard with things like Danger UXB and Wish Me Luck, and I would have looked it up enough to say properly that it was Richard Hope who kept scene-stealing for me before I eventually posted it in two years or whenever. (But thank you sovay! ♥)


And, lurking in my actual secret post in progress tag is a complete post on my reading, which is A Post but also happily was not written by me this week (in which I have mainly been even more stupid than usual; whenever I got on the internet, which I should know better by now, although on the plus side, I did do that gifset, and I have achieved progress in my graphics program and headaches from both.)

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Continuing my 2017-to date catch up of (some) of my reading.

At this point, I'm hitting the end of 2020, where I decided to have one last re-read of Louise Cooper's Indigo Saga and get rid of the books. If anyone's been paying attention to my Yuletide requests in the last few years, you'll realise this did not go according to plan. I really enjoyed and appreciated them all over again instead. The previous re-read had been while being ill and I think hadn't helped. Some of them are still a bit overly horror-y for me & there are a couple of inevitable problematic things, but actually very few overall and the whole arc across the series resonated so much more with me now than before.

It's a quest fantasy retelling of Pandora's Box, set in a geomagnetically reversed version of our world (so turn the map at the front upside down and have fun.) Anghara Kaligsdaughter, Princess of the Summer Isles, goes to the forbidden Tower of Regrets, unleashing 7 demons, which slaughter her family and the royal court. She is cursed to walk the world unaging until she has destroyed each of the demons. So each book features a different demon in a different place with different characters. It's much more metaphorical than it seems, and I do enjoy the changing locations. I'm particularly fond of Infanta for the setting, Nocturne, for the Brabazon players and the vampire-demon plot, and Troika, for the vast, snowy geomagnetically-reversed Australia.

Mainly, though, what I love is Grimya, and Grimya and Indigo. Indigo meets an outcast mutant wolf who can talk to humans (out loud if she must, but mostly telepathically), called Grimya. Grimya volunteers to join her on her quest, so they are the main two continuing characters & so it's all telepathic wolf-human bff loyalty & true friendship, which = ♥.

tl;dr: I did not get rid of the books! I set about obtaining some of her others as well, heh. (I discovered in the process that she started out as a horror writer, which does not surprise me. I'm not very into horror generally, and when they edge more towards that, I find them harder going, but not enough to put me off.)


The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, which I enjoyed quite a bit, although it was another one of the SFF reads I could finally get to, but didn't quite manage to enjoy as much as I'd hoped. It was very readable and I liked lots about it I can't remember in detail at this date, but it could lost most of the 2nd or 3rd (?) quarter of the book and not suffered in the slightest. I haven't read any of the author's other books, but it did make them curious about them - as I said, the style was really easy for me to read, the characters were distinct, and I'd be happy to read something shorter by her.

Incidentally, when I was almost at the end I looked in the tumblr tag and saw people instantly fancasting the queen character as Katie McGrath and even though I never watched Merlin, I just immediately saw it as a Gwen/Morgana AU. I could map out all the characters and I don't even watch the show! I have no idea if that's actually true, but it was definitely a once seen, it can't be unseen thing. I don't think it entirely helped, lol.

Following on from how much I got hung up on a 1984 radio production of Dangerous Corner, I did take some steps to continue by J B Priestley experience by listening to a 1994 production of Time and the Conways, another of his 'Time Plays'. I spotted this one on the wiki and managed to find it at Radio Echoes. It had Stella Gonet, Amanda Redman & Toby Stephens in it, and it was adapted and directed by Sue Wilson, who did at least two of the Christmas at the Wells installments I thought were so good.

(There's also a 1984 version here starring Zena Walker; and a 2014 version here with Harriet Walter. Apparently the BBC are only permitted to perform it in years ending with a -4?? ;-p)

Anyway, generally, I'm not regretting my decision to continue, but right at the end of the second third (Act?) of it, two characters had a conversation that included this:

"...it’s hideous and unbearable. Remember what we once were and what we thought we’d be... Every step we’ve taken, every tick of the clock — making everything worse. If this is all life is, what's the use? Better to die... before you find it out, before Time gets to work on you. I’ve felt it before, but never as I’ve done to-night. There’s a great devil in the universe, and we call it Time.... We've seen it to-night. Time beating us."

and: "No, they're real and existing, just as we two, here now, are real and existing. We're seeing another bit of the view – a bad bit, if you like – but the whole landscape's still there."

And I was just... omg, J B Priestley effectively laid out part of the premise of Sapphire and Steel right there in 1937.


I haven't stopped listening to Crown House; I was just interspersing the odd SNT in between. I am about to get back to it, as we left it at a point where Richard Pasco might even possibly be persuaded to leave the roses alone and have some plot, but I don't count on it. XD


(I did distract myself a bit because Welcome to Our Village Please Invade Carefully s2 is now on BBC Sounds again, after them repeating s1 in the autumn. So a head's up, anyone listening to it that way and left hanging for s2. It's here! And obv. could not resist listening to "Tempting Fete" and now the next episode is up... and a person can't help but press that play button every now and then. (It's the pub quiz one now.) It is such a cheering thing. <3<3<3)

I am now ill/tired from having visitors, although not too bad, really, and we had a very nice time (there were even brownies as well as ice cream before Mum and Dad left, amazing.) In the meantime, have three very random things indeed.

1. I watched S2 of The Crown in time to give it back to Mum. It was v good, but there was one deeply weird moment where I realised a minor character was Jacqui Chan, who was one of the regulars in The Hidden Truth with James Maxwell. Idk why that is weirder than all the other real people, but I suppose you don't expect random old telly people to get played by other people in 21st tv unless they're much better known.


2. I looked up an actor to see who they were the other day because I recognised them but not their name. (Richard Lintern, and they were Daniel in House of Eliott, aka the least bad of Evangeline Eliott's terrible no-good love interests.)

But that led to me discovering the existence of Jupiter Moon, and I was deeply amused and bemused. You probably need to be a UK person of a certain vintage to appreciate just how unlikely every single sentence of that wiki entry is, but it's like an April Fool's entry, except it's totally real. BSB, in its short-lived existance did somehow make 150 episodes of a thrice-weekly soap opera featuring a university IN SPACE in 1990, as created by some guy who usually wrote The Archers. There is pretty much no sentence in the wiki page that's not making me boggle or laugh, or both. It has Anna Chancellor in it, and seems to be what Lucy Benjamin was doing between s1 and 4 of Press Gang.

I had to go look on YT and found the whole thing here so I watched some while I was a bit brainless the last few days. It is exactly what you would expect from the description. (Fake looking video-bound soap opera stuff with variable young actors, love drama, and can Timmy give up chocolate, oh and SWIRLY THINGS IN SPACE.)


3. I found another B7 reactor I occasionally look at when I'm tired etc, and recently watched their reaction to "Weapon" and had to link here, because their reaction when Servalan turns up in that costume was great. XD


I hope to be more sensible around here soon, you never know. It could happen. ♥

Two things:


1. senmut is running a prompt fest this month - July Jewels.


2. Just spotted that someone has currently got the whole of Press Gang up on YT. As that's something I'm always and forever reccing to people (1980s/90s ITV series, best ever teen drama, Steven Moffat's first TV work, starring Julia Sawalha and Dexter Fletcher), and I know it's really hard to come by in the US, I feel duty bound to point it out.

If you're interested, I'd watch it or grab straight away - it rarely stays up for too long. But it's just really really good, even now, and Lynda is amazing, and only 43 x 25 mins eps that fly by all too soon.

As I said, I've made a lot of gifs over the last couple of months and I have not inflicted them on you shared them with you yet! (Part One of...??)

So, very importantly, even if tumblr did not care, I finally managed to make gifs of Anne and James Onedin from The Onedin Line, which I watched over half of via Drama a couple of years ago and which was a ride (in Devon) but you might recall that Anne was the best, and her marriage of convenience with James where they married for a ship and then were both too practical and northern to know how to deal with feelings was all the things. And here they are (played by Peter Gilmore & Anne Stallybrass):

( Cut for giffage )

Also I finally managed to gif Bram Stoker's Dracula for my Dracula adaptations I have watched series, so I am up to date with what I have watched so far. (It was much overdue because I was posting collected gifsets of the various versions of each character from each one and they had been sitting in my drafts for a year, awaiting one last gif for each set. Now I have hardly any drafts at all, it's amazing.)

But I thought I'd share this set, as it interests me. The 1992 film seems to share a lot of little things with the 1968 TV Dracula that aren't present in the others. It seems an unlikely influence on the face of it, but it does seem nevertheless to be lurking somewhere in BSD's DNA. (Mystery & Imagination was shown in the US, or certainly the 6 surviving Thames episodes, so it's certainly possible.)

( Cut for Dracula parallels part 3 )

Another handful made for iconthat challenges "orange" and "stock." (Sapphire and Steel, The Mummy and Department S, plus several stock images of books/reading.) 3x icons per challenge, plus 3 alternates for the stock challenge.




( Plus 6x books & reading icons under here )