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 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 )

More things, updating from the last report of things!

1. yuletide assignments have gone out! I have an excellent one, but obv no more can be said. Good luck to everyone else also starting the writing in secret portion of the Yuletide experience.


2. (a) Re. my resolution to Watch More Rattigan, which is progressing, or at least half progressing. I realised after making my last post about it, that such an animal as the BBC Rattigan Collection existed on DVD and was currently going too cheap not to snag, so I used lingering b'day/Christmas money.

Now it has arrived and it is mine, all mine! I have my mitts on not only ones I haven't seen but also the lovely 1976 BBC French Without Tears that YT provided the other week, and the Ian Holm and Judi Dench Browning Version that I haven't seen more than brief clips of since about 1993. \o/


(b) However, in the meantime, I looked at my Royal Exchange Theatre book to see if James Maxwell had directed or performed in a Rattigan play, and resolved that, if so, I would start with that one. It turned out that he did, directing While The Sun Shines (1943), a wartime comedy. I had a feeling this wasn't included in the BBC set, and I was right, so what I am doing currently is listening to a BBC 1969 Radio production via RadioEchoes of While the Sun Shines (also on YT). (Even the absence of the Internet Archive could not hinder my Rattiganisation.)

I think of the Rattigan productions I've experienced so far this is my least favourite, but given how stellar those have been, that is not really much criticism. I'm enjoying it, but I haven't got to the end, so I won't make any final judgments on the play itself yet, although it is more like French Without Tears than the later two. I am curious to know how it will wrap up, and it's not hard to see some of the aspects that might have interested James Maxwell as a director.

So far, though, Rattigan keeps making the hero sleep with other servicemen, for Reasons, and also the French Lt, talking about talking to people on trains, said that usually, When in Rome... so on English trains "I act as if I had died in my seat" which. Amazing. Accurate to this date. (Exceptions only in events on things going terribly wrong on the train, which was what happened to him.)


(c) YouTube noticed my interest, and threw me this little Part One of introduction to Rattigan by the National Theatre, which helpfully covered exactly the three plays I had seen. It's very short, but I really thought the director (directors?) talking about The Browning Version at the end (and calling it a perfect play ♥) absolutely got it. (And incidentally the photos they showed along with it suggested that the NT have done a version that had Anna Chancellor as Millie! With what looked like Nicholas Farrell, to me. Which made me go !!!!)


(d) And then also Talking Pictures turned out to be showing the film of Cause Celebre with Helen Mirren last night, which is another play not included on the BBC Boxset, so I recorded it. I feel like the world at large has just gone: at last! And is queuing up to shove three decades of long overdue Rattigan at me.

I will go slowly though and just watch one every so often as a treat. (WHICH PLAY NEXT THO???! XD)


(e) re. French Without Tears and my (now lapsed again) BNA subscription, I realised I'd claimed the 1987 one I had snagged a review of was directed by Sue Wilson, but actually I misremembered: she directed the next play Jeremy Northam did at Salisbury that year, and this one was by Lynn Wyfe. But The Stage did pause to vindicate my feeling that a v young JN would have been an ideal Kit Neilan, as the review singled him out for first praise: "Jeremy Northam produced all sorts of little tricks to make his portrayal of Kit Neilan touchingly appealing..." (although everyone else was good, too, they said.) Ha.


3. Talking my BNA sub, and finally escaping Rattigan's clutches for a moment, I did a quick search for my granddad's cousins, George & Bill Partleton, who were make-up artists on films, and retrieved this very random pic that should also please liadt, so I had to share it:

( Under here for pictorial evidence )

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!]