Beyond the Roundels

Some nice things:

1. Trailer for the new Librarians series! It looks just as fun as before! I have NO idea how I will see it, but I've been missing having a fun magic TV series so much, and especially The Libs. (My usual method was to wait for the UK DVD release and then rewatch it all to death, cheering myself up muchly. ha bloody ha, as they say.)




2. I don't know what was in the water re. my fandoms for last Yuletide, but not only have I continued to have much fun with edwardianspinsteraunt and The Winslow Boy, but someone showed up this week on tumblr to first shower love on my for writing the only Jack/Angela The Net fic on the internet, but then wrote their own start of an AU, which promises to be fun, and turned up on AO3. (The Net is v hoky, but also deeply nineties, and Sandra Bullock and Jeremy Northam play a fun game of cat and mouse, plus JN, a cyber terrorist, fails to win because he doesn't know when to use an escape key, which should get some sort of prize for popcorn-worthy silliness.)

Alive on Paper (2842 words) by theelectriccat
Chapters: 2/?
Fandom: The Net (1995)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Angela Bennett (The Net 1995), Jack Devlin (The Net 1995), Ruth Marks (The Net 1995)
Additional Tags: Suspense, Killer For Hire, Crisis of conscience
Summary: Angela Bennett sees her perception of the handsome Jack Devlin crumble before her, but before he can fulfill his employer's expectations, he has a crisis of conscience, which only intensifies when his coworker notices his obvious attraction to his target.


3. Talking of The Winslow Boy, I am now watching the 1970s BBC version from The Rattigan Collection - I didn't entirely mean to, but I finally treated myself to rewatching the 1980s Browning Version with Ian Holm & Judi Dench & Michael Kitchen (&, as it turns out, a wee Stephen Mcintosh as Taplow and, briefly, Imogen Stubbs as Mrs Gilbert) for the first time in 30+ years, and it was on the same disc. I wasn't sure if I was ready to be fair to an alternate version, but it's got such different emphases etc, plus I can see more of where the 1999 does differ from the play, and it's not only really good in itself, but it's fascinating. Sir Robert has just turned up, and I was intrigued to see what Alan Badel would be like, because I mainly know him from being the perfectly OTT saving grace of duff 1960s films, and it's a very different performance to anything I had expected he might do (but good obv.) Eric Porter has rocked up for duty, aged up as per usual. I am happy to see him, but I am beginning to worry that he spent the entirety of the 60s and 70s as an aged up Edwardian gent. XD


4. My main way of calming myself lately re. the whole world being what it is has somehow turned out to be watching the better end of the Thomas More vids for The Tudors (with occasional relapses into Obidala vids, as per 2020). (It was because I knew I had found a good one, but I'd lost it, but I rediscovered it last week. It turned out I had saved it, but it was to Hallelujah and I'd assumed no good could come of fandom's eternal use and abuse of every version of that, and then another one, if with some dialogue going on there, and apparently angst and dodgy hat-wearing angles help? Plus, I'll give the person who couldn't resist making one to I'm Just More points for the lols.)

... oh drat, late for dinner now!

Some of the things I've been watching in 2025 that I haven't really talked about so far, mainly because my chief feeling for all of them is that I need to rewatch them to make up my mind what I actually think of them, which is not necessarily a comment on the film(s) so much as it is the state of my focus and concentration re. watching anything, thanks to the CFS.

The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955) This was in fact the last thing I watched in 2024, so you can't believe a word I say, just like the hero of the piece. This film was a Christmas present, requested because it was part of my Watch All the Rattigan quest (harder than it ought to be), and this film is Rattigan's own adaptation of his play Who Is Sylvia?, starring Moira Shearer, John Justin, Roland Culver, Gladys Cooper, Kenneth Moore & Denholm Elliott.

It's pretty much pure candyfloss and mostly a showpiece for Moira Shearer to dance, but I will watch it again sometime, definitely, because sometimes candyfloss is needed. It would have been good to have a bit more of a comeuppance/stronger repentance for the lead, but then it is fair to say it's also rather a toss up as to whether or not he actually has been misbehaving as much as it appears or mostly fantasising all along, in addition to the very light tone. (This seems to be the main complaint of contemporary reviewers as well, who add that it is not the best Rattigan, with which I can also concur; it is very odd to be agreeing with contemporary reviewers.)

Mark, Lord Binfield (John Justin) is obsessed with Sylvia, a red-headed girl he met at a party when he was a teenager, and despite marrying Caroline, ends up living a double life with a flat in London where he pursues redheaded women who look like Sylvia. It's narrated by Kenneth More, Moira Shearer plays Sylvia and all the women who look like her, while Gladys Cooper swoops in at the end to steal the show as Caroline, who turns out to have known all about it all along, while his image of Sylvia is so far divorced from the reality, he doesn't even recognise her as she is now. (<-- technically a spoiler, but one that IMO totally would have benefitted the initial viewing experience to have known, because I don't trust the 1950s.)

Its tongue-in-cheek tone, narration and lightness saves it from being anywhere near as terrible as that summary sounds, as indeed does Caroline. It is quality fluff & nonsense, basically, and if you wanted to see a 1950s ballet performance of extracts from The Sleeping Beauty, this will deliver. It also provides a bit of a swift romp through the first half of the 20th C, which may have been the thing I enjoyed the most.

Some screencaps (mostly of Denholm Elliott) here. Oh, which reminds me: it's in colour!! It's always very exciting when that happens in a British film before 1960. (It's, like, that's a thing???? We can have colour???? *\o/*)



Angel (2007) is definitely an oddity. I watched it for Romola Garai, because I saw a clip of it with her in the fabulous red dress she wears in the middle - some tumblr gifs and pics of the film including the Dress - and I have to say the dress did not disappoint. The dress was worth it on its own, even without the also amazing green dress and the pretty wonderful blue dress that also happened. XD

Anyway, it was directed by François Ozon, so it is a French/Belgian film rather than a British one, despite the mostly British cast (Romola, Charlotte Rampling, Lucy Russell, Sam Neill, Jacqueline Tong & Michael Fassbender). Angel Deverell is an Edwardian romance writer, a monstrous narcissist who tries to live as if she were the heroine of one her novels and eventually crashes and burns, but it's an oddity in that she never really learns anything or grows, which made it unsatisfying to watch for me on first viewing as I didn't know to expect that. But it is more a study of her character and a commentary on art, with the rise and fall of Angel's populist romances vs the lack of success and then posthumus rise of her husband's avant-garde art over the course of the 1900s to the 1920s. I will definitely have to watch it again to see what I make of it, now I have a better idea of what it's doing. But it's very well made and played and, as I may have mentioned, costumed, and I did not grudge my £3.50 or whatever it was going on this, because if there is an audience for Romola wearing fabulous things in a period drama, I am definitely part of it.

Also bonus points for one of my favourite things in films/TV, ( Cut for gif of fake books )

I was going to bring this post up to date, but this got long enough already, so I might as well leave it here!

I actually managed to do this meme this year! I haven't got more than partway through it since about 2021, which I do regret, but here we are, I've been chipping away at this for a week or so:

Your main fandom of the year?:

Doctor Who, as ever. Not that I don't run off to flail at least briefly about many other deeply obscure things every other day, communicating my enthusiasms to the distant and patient sympathy of the flist by means of semaphore or something, but that only feels fannish if someone responds, and that can't be expected very often.


( Cut for length of me wittering about TV, film, audio & books under here )

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!