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Sunday Links
Dec. 9th, 2012 06:41 amFirst, the Ian McKellen special edition:
On The Hobbit and coming out
He’s clearly no cultural snob. “I’m a snob about standards,” he explained. “But I don’t find anything odd at all in being known for playing Gandalf. I couldn’t be happier about it. Other people tend to get snobbish on my behalf. ‘It must be dreadful to always be thought of as Gandalf,’ they say. Well, I can’t always be thought of as Richard III!”
At which he ordered dessert and cheerfully imagined the inscription on his gravestone: here lies Gandalf. he came out. “That would do it! We needn’t mention Macbeth.”
Somewhat longer Observer interview on similar subjects
And finally, apparantly he is doing some voice acting for the Doctor Who Christmas special. (No spoilers about the plot of the special the link, just the name/type of the creature Ian McKellen is lending his voice to.) This is very cool indeed, no Whovian pun intended.
On to other interesting people:
David Harewood about being a black actor in the UK and the US. Where he's currently playing CIA director David Estes in Homeland.
Intense Terry Prattchet portrait:
It is at this point that he breaks into song. I don’t mean this figuratively. I mean that he calmly and decisively starts singing the old English folk tune “The Larks They Sang Melodious”. He has a good voice, a quavering baritone that has lost none of its strength, and he doesn’t give a damn that half of the café has turned to look.
Pratchett sings two whole verses. The song is full of firelight and longing and nostalgia for warmer, younger days, and if you half-close your eyes you could be sitting around a country fire, listening to some elderly relative tell you stories about love and death that are no less true for being ever so slightly made up. Except that that’s not where we are – we’re in a branch of Starbucks, drinking slightly stale tea, and “The Larks They Sang Melodious” was not written to be sung over piped-in Brazilian jazz.
Tales of Larry Hagman, which are the type of stories you'd want to be told at your wake to get everyone celebrate your life instead of mourning your death. I assure him that will be arranged and he gives me his address saying, "Now, if you lose that, just call the National Enquirer and ask them. They send a nice man around every night to go through my garbage."
On The Hobbit and coming out
He’s clearly no cultural snob. “I’m a snob about standards,” he explained. “But I don’t find anything odd at all in being known for playing Gandalf. I couldn’t be happier about it. Other people tend to get snobbish on my behalf. ‘It must be dreadful to always be thought of as Gandalf,’ they say. Well, I can’t always be thought of as Richard III!”
At which he ordered dessert and cheerfully imagined the inscription on his gravestone: here lies Gandalf. he came out. “That would do it! We needn’t mention Macbeth.”
Somewhat longer Observer interview on similar subjects
And finally, apparantly he is doing some voice acting for the Doctor Who Christmas special. (No spoilers about the plot of the special the link, just the name/type of the creature Ian McKellen is lending his voice to.) This is very cool indeed, no Whovian pun intended.
On to other interesting people:
David Harewood about being a black actor in the UK and the US. Where he's currently playing CIA director David Estes in Homeland.
Intense Terry Prattchet portrait:
It is at this point that he breaks into song. I don’t mean this figuratively. I mean that he calmly and decisively starts singing the old English folk tune “The Larks They Sang Melodious”. He has a good voice, a quavering baritone that has lost none of its strength, and he doesn’t give a damn that half of the café has turned to look.
Pratchett sings two whole verses. The song is full of firelight and longing and nostalgia for warmer, younger days, and if you half-close your eyes you could be sitting around a country fire, listening to some elderly relative tell you stories about love and death that are no less true for being ever so slightly made up. Except that that’s not where we are – we’re in a branch of Starbucks, drinking slightly stale tea, and “The Larks They Sang Melodious” was not written to be sung over piped-in Brazilian jazz.
Tales of Larry Hagman, which are the type of stories you'd want to be told at your wake to get everyone celebrate your life instead of mourning your death. I assure him that will be arranged and he gives me his address saying, "Now, if you lose that, just call the National Enquirer and ask them. They send a nice man around every night to go through my garbage."
