![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Of awesomeness in various ways
One of the advantages of not being on the road but in one's place of residence: Munich offers one of those cinemas where they occasionally show live broadcasts of British theatre. Such as, last night, The National Theatre's 50th anniversary celebration, which was rather splendid, and great fun to watch on the big screen. As awesome as all the performances were (and btw, must check out that Brenton/Hare play about Rupert Murdoch), both the funny and the tragic, not to mention the musical (Judi Dench: still a goddess), here's what got the biggest laugh in a Munich cinema: during the introduction about the history of the NT, there is this news clip of Laurence Olivier, asked whether he's saying that a building for the NT should be prioritized over a new school or hospital, snarking back at the press: "No, I am not saying that. I'm just saying that in Germany, they would be."
(Okay, we did have subsidiized theatre earlier than Britain, but this has been something of a very mixed blessing. Not least because of the Regietheater excesses. Let's just say that while whenever I visit London I watch a play each nicht, I'm very rarely in the theatre in Munich, not because we don't have several but because it's really hard to find one that puts on a production using most of actual play text and not descending into endless gimmicks.)
(Anyway, that's not the only reason why Olivier's line had the audience chuckling, of course. We were aware he was playing on national rivalries there.)
This particular Munich cinema, as I learned yesterday, will also show The Day of the Doctor, aka the big DW 50th anniversary episode, live as the BBC broadcasts it on November 23rd, and hence I bought a ticket - they only announced that German cinemas would be included in the world wide broadcast yesterday morning, and by evening most of the tickets had already been sold out, which shows you Doctor Who has a lot of German fans, too. So I shall see The Day of the Doctor on the big screen as it happens, surrounded by fellow fans. Even if the Moff doesn't come through with the script, this should make it a great experience.
***
Rewatching Breaking Bad's third season would be compelling under any circumstances, but it's especially fascinating if you do so relatively shortly after the finale, because that's where so many paths took their crucial turn. Also, despite me marathoning the first four seasons during the s4/s5 hiatus, i.e. not that long ago, it turns out I had forgotten some important stuff, for example: Skyler actually tells her divorce lawyer the truth re: Walt (after her lawyer has reassured her of attorney/client confidentiality), and the show uses the Skyler/lawyer scenes to give us a look at Skyler's shifting attitudes regarding her husband and her new knowledge of what he did. I wonder what the woman did once the Heisenberg news got public? Move from Alburqueque, would be a guess. I mean, I'm not sure what the legal situation actually is, but would attorney/client privilege really cover the lawyer, or aren't lethal criminal activities somehow excempt? (All I know about American law is still derived from tv.) (Of course, Skyler didn't get into details beyond "I found out my husband produces and deals meth", but still.) What I hadn't forgotten was how Walter Junior aka Flynn reacts to Skyler's attempts to free herself of Walt, but seeing it all again relatively recently after "but if you knew, and didn't say anything, you're as bad as him!" scene makes it doubly, triply cruel, because he really gives his mother hell pretty much non stop all the time for a while. I mean, it's understandable from his pov in that he has no idea why his mother all of a sudden wants his father out of the house, she doesn't explain it, and Walt's non-explanation is delivered in extremely manipulative Walt-style ("I'm sure she must have her reasons") designed to make Skyler look even worse to her son, but it's still so viscerally cruel. And I still think the fact that Skyler, when Flynn much later asks her why she kept silent, doesn't do a Walt and doesn't say "I did it for you", i.e. doesn't burden her son with that guilt, is one of her saving graces.
Another thing that made me go "awesome parallel is awesome": Skyler and Walt have their first non-tense, non-icy moment after he forced his way back into the house at that dinner where after Junior has excused himself, Walt holds baby Holly (after waiting for Skyler's permission) and Skyler watches them together.
(And yet it's never so simple as "their children" as the sole factor why Skyler ultimately doesn't go through with the divorce after Walt finally caved and signed the papers, and it's not just because he's supportive after Hank's shooting, either; there are the mixed feelings about Walt himself - one scene I hadn't remembered is a conversation between Marie and Skyler in which Marie tells her about how Hank changed after his El Paso experience, and how killing and witnessing murder must have affected him, and you can see in Skyler's expression that she wonders whether this applies to Walt, too -; and there is the money factor. The silent scene where Skyler after initially soundly rejecting Walt's bag of money five episodes later comes across said bag again and looks at it in a mixture between horror and fascination is before, not after Hank's shooting. S3 where Skyler goes from "never!" to "well, if it's there...nope, must not think that" to "okay, this one one time, to help out Marie and Hank" to "oh God, this is stupid, this isn't how money laundering should be done, for God's sake, let me do it and make a success of it!" is her own start to "break bad", which in some ways is parallel and in some ways different to Walt's, always.)
So many details: Walt making himself a sandwich and writing his name on the paper bag with said sandwich in it before heading off to work in the lab for the first time is such a Walter White thing to do. And despite knowing what will happen with Gale later on, his expression when Walt gives him the "I am classical, you are Jazz" speech followed by the entrance of Jesse Pinkman in the superlab is still hilarious. Incidentally, upon my rewatch my opinion as to why Walt pushes for Jesse to replace Gale has slightly shifted. The first time around, I thought it was partly for ego reasons (Gale is actually as intelligent as himself, Walt doesn't have to explain anything twice and several things are anticipated - the fact that Jesse's Walt's long delayed big success as a teacher, albeit not at school, always was a part of their relationship), and partly because of his affection for Jesse. (It hasn't dawned on him yet that Gale could also be a danger, so that doesn't factor in. BTW what the rewatch also makes clear is that Gus intended for Gale to replace Walt from the get go, long before Walt or Jesse became troublesome to him, which makes Mike's angry "everything would have gone fine if you'd just done what you were told" speech before his death in s5 very economical with the facts, if ic for Mike in that situation.) Upon rewatch, it seemed to me the most immediate reason was that he needed to find away to stop Jesse from pressing charges against Hank (which, as Saul pointed out to both of them, would lead to the DEA looking through Jesse's life with a microscope and thus inevitably would lead to Walt; plus of course Jesse says outright he'll give Walt up if that's the case), though the other two reasons also were important.
Incidentally, if Hank had arrested Jesse and Walt in their RV mid s3, everyone's lives would have been SO much better off from a Watsonian pov (though of course from a Doylist pov, it would have made a shorter and lesser show). Another s3 turning point is that this is where the Hank and Marie marriage gets more depth and narrative attention, plus it's set up as a contrast to the White marriage. Not in a simple good/bad way; Hank initially isn't able to talk to Marie about his anxieties and fears because he's too married to the masculine code and the idea of not living up to it, and the scene with him in the shower, literally unable to let her in, is very striking; it needs his beating up Jesse and his horror at what he's done before he breaks down and in every sense opens up. But it's here where the show starts to explore their connection and need for each other. And speak about parallels to later events: Hank talks to Marie on the phone to tell her about how his hearing re: Jesse went and tells her he loves her just before the Cousins arrive to shoot him. It's just such a rich, rewarding show that deserves all the awards it ever got and then some. Golden age of tv indeed.
***
When you suddenly start to get kudos and comments on an old story, it stands to reason that someone must have reccomended somewhere, and after some digging, I found out this was indeed the case of my DS9 tale Abraham's Son, which made the grade here. Cue a very pleased author I. I loved Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but I did have some issues with it, too, and this story was inspired by a big one, so I'm thrilled when it still speaks to people.
****
And lastly, some months ago I linked to that John-Lennon-parodies-Bob-Dylan post of hilarity; the 60s crowd did that kind of thing a lot while also digging each other's music. Here's another example, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger in 1965 whiling the hours away while having a go at Beatles hits, I've just seen a face and Eight Days A Week specifically. (Keith can't sing, but that's not the point. :)
(Okay, we did have subsidiized theatre earlier than Britain, but this has been something of a very mixed blessing. Not least because of the Regietheater excesses. Let's just say that while whenever I visit London I watch a play each nicht, I'm very rarely in the theatre in Munich, not because we don't have several but because it's really hard to find one that puts on a production using most of actual play text and not descending into endless gimmicks.)
(Anyway, that's not the only reason why Olivier's line had the audience chuckling, of course. We were aware he was playing on national rivalries there.)
This particular Munich cinema, as I learned yesterday, will also show The Day of the Doctor, aka the big DW 50th anniversary episode, live as the BBC broadcasts it on November 23rd, and hence I bought a ticket - they only announced that German cinemas would be included in the world wide broadcast yesterday morning, and by evening most of the tickets had already been sold out, which shows you Doctor Who has a lot of German fans, too. So I shall see The Day of the Doctor on the big screen as it happens, surrounded by fellow fans. Even if the Moff doesn't come through with the script, this should make it a great experience.
***
Rewatching Breaking Bad's third season would be compelling under any circumstances, but it's especially fascinating if you do so relatively shortly after the finale, because that's where so many paths took their crucial turn. Also, despite me marathoning the first four seasons during the s4/s5 hiatus, i.e. not that long ago, it turns out I had forgotten some important stuff, for example: Skyler actually tells her divorce lawyer the truth re: Walt (after her lawyer has reassured her of attorney/client confidentiality), and the show uses the Skyler/lawyer scenes to give us a look at Skyler's shifting attitudes regarding her husband and her new knowledge of what he did. I wonder what the woman did once the Heisenberg news got public? Move from Alburqueque, would be a guess. I mean, I'm not sure what the legal situation actually is, but would attorney/client privilege really cover the lawyer, or aren't lethal criminal activities somehow excempt? (All I know about American law is still derived from tv.) (Of course, Skyler didn't get into details beyond "I found out my husband produces and deals meth", but still.) What I hadn't forgotten was how Walter Junior aka Flynn reacts to Skyler's attempts to free herself of Walt, but seeing it all again relatively recently after "but if you knew, and didn't say anything, you're as bad as him!" scene makes it doubly, triply cruel, because he really gives his mother hell pretty much non stop all the time for a while. I mean, it's understandable from his pov in that he has no idea why his mother all of a sudden wants his father out of the house, she doesn't explain it, and Walt's non-explanation is delivered in extremely manipulative Walt-style ("I'm sure she must have her reasons") designed to make Skyler look even worse to her son, but it's still so viscerally cruel. And I still think the fact that Skyler, when Flynn much later asks her why she kept silent, doesn't do a Walt and doesn't say "I did it for you", i.e. doesn't burden her son with that guilt, is one of her saving graces.
Another thing that made me go "awesome parallel is awesome": Skyler and Walt have their first non-tense, non-icy moment after he forced his way back into the house at that dinner where after Junior has excused himself, Walt holds baby Holly (after waiting for Skyler's permission) and Skyler watches them together.
(And yet it's never so simple as "their children" as the sole factor why Skyler ultimately doesn't go through with the divorce after Walt finally caved and signed the papers, and it's not just because he's supportive after Hank's shooting, either; there are the mixed feelings about Walt himself - one scene I hadn't remembered is a conversation between Marie and Skyler in which Marie tells her about how Hank changed after his El Paso experience, and how killing and witnessing murder must have affected him, and you can see in Skyler's expression that she wonders whether this applies to Walt, too -; and there is the money factor. The silent scene where Skyler after initially soundly rejecting Walt's bag of money five episodes later comes across said bag again and looks at it in a mixture between horror and fascination is before, not after Hank's shooting. S3 where Skyler goes from "never!" to "well, if it's there...nope, must not think that" to "okay, this one one time, to help out Marie and Hank" to "oh God, this is stupid, this isn't how money laundering should be done, for God's sake, let me do it and make a success of it!" is her own start to "break bad", which in some ways is parallel and in some ways different to Walt's, always.)
So many details: Walt making himself a sandwich and writing his name on the paper bag with said sandwich in it before heading off to work in the lab for the first time is such a Walter White thing to do. And despite knowing what will happen with Gale later on, his expression when Walt gives him the "I am classical, you are Jazz" speech followed by the entrance of Jesse Pinkman in the superlab is still hilarious. Incidentally, upon my rewatch my opinion as to why Walt pushes for Jesse to replace Gale has slightly shifted. The first time around, I thought it was partly for ego reasons (Gale is actually as intelligent as himself, Walt doesn't have to explain anything twice and several things are anticipated - the fact that Jesse's Walt's long delayed big success as a teacher, albeit not at school, always was a part of their relationship), and partly because of his affection for Jesse. (It hasn't dawned on him yet that Gale could also be a danger, so that doesn't factor in. BTW what the rewatch also makes clear is that Gus intended for Gale to replace Walt from the get go, long before Walt or Jesse became troublesome to him, which makes Mike's angry "everything would have gone fine if you'd just done what you were told" speech before his death in s5 very economical with the facts, if ic for Mike in that situation.) Upon rewatch, it seemed to me the most immediate reason was that he needed to find away to stop Jesse from pressing charges against Hank (which, as Saul pointed out to both of them, would lead to the DEA looking through Jesse's life with a microscope and thus inevitably would lead to Walt; plus of course Jesse says outright he'll give Walt up if that's the case), though the other two reasons also were important.
Incidentally, if Hank had arrested Jesse and Walt in their RV mid s3, everyone's lives would have been SO much better off from a Watsonian pov (though of course from a Doylist pov, it would have made a shorter and lesser show). Another s3 turning point is that this is where the Hank and Marie marriage gets more depth and narrative attention, plus it's set up as a contrast to the White marriage. Not in a simple good/bad way; Hank initially isn't able to talk to Marie about his anxieties and fears because he's too married to the masculine code and the idea of not living up to it, and the scene with him in the shower, literally unable to let her in, is very striking; it needs his beating up Jesse and his horror at what he's done before he breaks down and in every sense opens up. But it's here where the show starts to explore their connection and need for each other. And speak about parallels to later events: Hank talks to Marie on the phone to tell her about how his hearing re: Jesse went and tells her he loves her just before the Cousins arrive to shoot him. It's just such a rich, rewarding show that deserves all the awards it ever got and then some. Golden age of tv indeed.
***
When you suddenly start to get kudos and comments on an old story, it stands to reason that someone must have reccomended somewhere, and after some digging, I found out this was indeed the case of my DS9 tale Abraham's Son, which made the grade here. Cue a very pleased author I. I loved Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but I did have some issues with it, too, and this story was inspired by a big one, so I'm thrilled when it still speaks to people.
****
And lastly, some months ago I linked to that John-Lennon-parodies-Bob-Dylan post of hilarity; the 60s crowd did that kind of thing a lot while also digging each other's music. Here's another example, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger in 1965 whiling the hours away while having a go at Beatles hits, I've just seen a face and Eight Days A Week specifically. (Keith can't sing, but that's not the point. :)