Beyond the Roundels

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 )

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!

So as I was saying on the accidental post the other day, I have been watching another batch of Jeremy Northam things over the past few months and pretty much all of them were either really great or at least interesting or both at once, so here are some more of them:

I rewatched Dean Spanley (2008) for my intoabar assignment I didn't complete (I was not in an S&S mood but signed up with S&S as an option, guess what happened?) I wasn't intending to rewatch it fully because it was so soon after the first time, but actually it was just really good, so I did, and this time I wasn't so ill my emotions were jetlagged, which I have to say does improve the effects of a film. In terms of Jeremy Northam, I think this is one of his most quietly beautiful performances.

It is this odd little mix of fairy-tale/whimsy and grief, very well executed by a small but excellent cast (Peter O'Toole, Sam Neill, Judy Parfitt & Bryan Brown), and in the latter respect therefore not so unlike:

The Winslow Boy (1999) which I rewatched after my Mum returned it to me. I had been pining to do so, and then, suddenly, alas, I had finished it (it was just as good as before), which was how the gifset happened, because that helped with the sadness of having watched it and not being able to look forward to doing so any more. (It did work, though. I think I will always have fears that it won't, which one day will inevitably be true.)

Anyway, see my gifset, which has a) little moving pictures and b) halfway coherent thoughts in the tags. But if you like Terence Rattigan or low-key excellently observed character studies, it is a treat.


Not a rewatch: Happy, Texas (1999) - a comedy that stars Jeremy Northam and Steve Zahn as a pair of clueless small-time criminals who accidentally escape from prison, and go on the run in a camper van that turns out to belong to a gay couple who run children's beauty pagents in small towns. So they end up in Happy, Texas, trying to run a pageant, maintain their cover, and rob a bank, and end up in way over their heads on every count.

I watched it twice in a row, because it was exactly the happy, cheering thing I needed in my life right then. It's funny, but never mean, and anything that should have weight, has. Have a handy and excellent gifset made by someone else on tumblr.

Anyway, as part of it, Jeremy Northam has to fake date William H Macy's sheriff "Chappy" aka Our Hero of the piece. (They do not wind up together, but they do get to go dancing in a gay cowboy bar before the truth comes out. William H Macy says that was great, JN is a tall glass of water, even if maybe a tad too tall for some moves.)

My first thought in describing it was thoroughly good-hearted, and I was amused/pleased to see that in a 2012 interview, Jeremy Northam described it very similarly as "sweet-hearted". (It is, apparently, the most fun he had working in the US. I saw some clips on YT before risking getting it, and Ally Walker turned up in the comments saying much the same thing, so people seem to have enjoyed making it, too! Not essential, of course, but nice.)

Incidentally, while watching it and wondering why some random bits of scenes were familiar, I finally realised that my former housemate N had had a Jeremy Northam phase in c.1999-2000 while I was not paying attention. I realised I'd seen parts of The Net in passing, too, but I thought that was part of her eternal Sandra Bullock quest, but Happy, Texas clinched it. Now that I think about it, I think the first thing I ever watched with her was Emma (1996)!

[Otherwise i just zoomed my two irl bffs , so i'll catch up with all else another day!]