Starting my Sunday in a good mood because...

[selenak]

1.) Recently I saw a screencap from the s5/32 Doctor Who finale which pointed out something that had escaped me till then (haven't rewatched s5 yet) - Rory is holding Amy's shoes while they're dancing. Any woman who has ever worn high heel shoes for an entire evening knows that this by itself makes Rory the most considerate of heroes and husbands. It doesn't quite dethrone Rhys holding Gwen's bag so her trigger finger is free and she can shoot in my personal Top Ten Favourite Whoverse Couple Moments, but it's certainly up there.

2.) Speaking of adorable men: so, Oscar night. You know, the real reason why I'm rooting for Colin Firth isn't that he gave an amazing performance in The King's Speech (which he did), and it certainly isn't his long ago stint as Mr. Darcy (I like the that particular tv version of Pride and Prejudice just fine, but my favourite screen Austen will always bee the Ang Lee/Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility, and if I swoon over any actor playing an Austen male, it's Alan Rickman). No, the real reason why I shall sit in front of my t screen and behave like an American cheerleader, shouting "go, Colin, go!" is the following interview excerpt:

Colin: [on Mamma Mia] I think it’s one of the best things I have ever done. People expect me to apologize for it and I am completely unapologetic. Right now I would say, if you asked me the three things for which I am most proud I would say it is A Single Man, The King’s Speech and Mamma Mia.
Interviewer: How hard was it to get you to do the scene that’s used for the closing credits?
Colin: You know what, that may be the reason I did the movie.
Interviewer: You have no shame.
Colin: Yes. I’m sorry, if one thing has come out of 60 Minutes is that we have discovered, we’ve unveiled the fact that Colin Firth has no shame. I am such a drag queen. It’s one of my primary driving forces in life. You cannot dangle a spandex suit and a little bit of mascara in front of me and not just have me go weak at the knees.

(If you're not familiar with the glorious spectacle he and the interviewer are referring to, you can watch it on YouTube.)

3.) RPF, Procopius and me: really interesting essay discussing real people fiction, historical (mixed with fantasy frame work) fiction and indeed a historian who wrote two very different versions of his contemporary emperor's life. It's a subject for which I think there are only individual answers and boundaries, no general ones, so I'm always intrigued to read intelligent meta on it.

Comments

[katta]

That's such an awesome Colin Firth quote, and it really reinforces why Mamma Mia works - it really seems like everyone is having so much fun!

[selenak]

My thoughts exactly.:)

[legionseagle]

This regarding the use of JRR Tolkien as a character in a novel seems to be relevant to your point three. Actually, caulkhead and I have been going through quite a lot of behind the scenes consideration of the moral and ethical implications of what we've been doing with TBB and we may post on that when we've finished, but it's complicated by the fact that the person we're satirising is engaged on her own RPF exercise and (as you may have seen from some of the stuff I've written about that) one which is problematic and appropriative in its own way.

[selenak]

Thanks for linking the article! Leaving everything else aside, if the Tolkien heirs do succeed would that mean that, say, Frieda Hughes could sue the authors of the two Sylvia Plath novels out there or Mark Zuckerberg could indeed sue the Social Network producers?

...in Germany btw we had two relevant trials about novels, and in neither of them were the actual, real life names used. One was the famous Mephisto case, in which Gustav Gründgens' adopted son (Gründgens was already dead) sued the publisher Wagenbach for republishing Klaus Mann's novel Mephisto, the main character of which was clearly and obviously based on Gründgens. The other was three years ago, when a writer named Maxim Biller published a novel with two characters based on his former girlfriend and her mother, and they sued. In both cases, the court decision went actually in favour of the sueing party, only Mephisto got republished a few years later anyway and Peter Gründgens-Gorski let it pass because with all the historical-political implications this had become a cause celebre. Otoh Biller's novel was withdrawn from publication because his ex girlfriend and her mother had never been figures of public life and he had all but given their address in the novel, plus he couldn't claim the novel was a blow against fascism.

[legionseagle]

It's a US law case so your guess is as good as mine (my betting is no, they shouldn't succeed; transformative work, no right of libel in respect of the dead, rights of personality -in states recognising the same - usually expire on death also).

I dislike the stance taken by Kay, not merely because I write historical fiction (the novel which is currently doing the rounds has Engels as a main character, for instance) and I believe historical fiction has a value which his stance utterly ignores, but also because if you read The Lions of Al-Rassan for example he plainly has taken real characters and messed around with their stories to suit themselves, and then slapped a changed name on a recognisable person. So, for me, it has many of the flaws of bad historical fiction.

[monanotlisa]

I tried watching, but my broken graphic card just crashed my computer and keeps preventing vid-watching on it, so I'll take your word for it and smile, smile, at Colin Firth's words here. :)

[selenak]

I promise you'll like it once your computere is repaired then.:)

[watervole]

There's a real sense of joy in Mamma Mia.

[selenak]

There truly is.