Hamlet:

Old Hamlet's New Groove: AU in which Claudius got the wrong potion and turned his brother into a swan instead of assassinating him. The rest is most definitely not silence.



Mary Reilly - Valerie Martin):

The Mary Reilly Papers: which takes the novel's conceit of being a genuine found Victorian diary, complete with editorial remark at the end, imagines a current day scholar or several reading said diary, and manages to be hilarious.

Penny Dreadful:

A trial all must undergo: the unexpected friendship between the Creature/John Clare and Vanessa was among my favourite elements in s2 and s3, and this shows said relationship growing between them.


Queen's Gambit:

Your past becomes your present if it's always on your mind: Jolene's story, from her own pov.

Liminal Lens: post canon story about Beth (and Benny) which pulls off the trick of making this chess ignoramus who hasn't finished a single game feel like she gets it, and is captivating to read to boot.


Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro:

A spot of bother: does the thing I'd have thought impossible if you asked me: the "two characters with repressed feelings for each other have to pretend being married" trope for Mr. Stevens and Miss Kenton, in a historical plausible and ic feeling, satisfying way. I loved it.


Isaac Asimov - Robot Stories

Training Data: sharp and clever and to the point like Susan Calvin herself, with a great robot problem, an excellent Dr. Calvin and a very sympathetic OC.


Sense8:

Serve me the sky tonight: in which, post show, Rajan decides he should woo Wolfgang properly, because the guy deserves some romance in his life. Kala agrees. Sometimes this reader's heart just wants adorable fluff, and this satisfied the need perfectly.


The Three Musketeers (2011 Anderson Movie):

The second certainty in life: in which we read the various replies of the Royal Tax Office to various movie characters. Hysterical, and makes this entire version worth it.

Blake's 7:

Compendium

Five games Avon and Servalan played with each other (and mostly lost). I always have had a soft spot for the twisted Avon/Servalan relationship, and find them both deliciously in character here.

Hamlet/Faust

How Luther laughed at the devil

Not a slash pairing, but a crossover of plays! And ten times more entertaining than when Gerhard Hauptmann sort of did it in his prequel play Hamlet in Wittenberg. (No, you didn't miss anything.) Official summary of this delight: "When a Wittenberg mathematics professor is possessed by a demon, there's only one man to whom Prince Hamlet can turn: the demonologist Doktor Faustus."

The Good Wife

Something to talk about

A Dana pov story that explores her while at the same time having a go at Cary and the way he relates to different women - Kalinda, Diane, Alicia, Wendy Scott-Carr, and of course Dana herself.


Greek and Roman Myths

The Dioskouroi

A story that uses the Castor and Pollux myth (brothers to Helen and Clytaimnestra, if you're not so up on your Greek mythology) to create a sci fi story with some wonderful world building. It's absolutely awesome, a treat both if you're familiar with the various Greek myths and if you've never heard of them. (For example, if you know who Jason is in Greek myths - he of the Argonauts, Medea's no good Greek husband - you'll get a kick out of the characterisation, but solely within the context of this story he works just as well.) If you're squicked by incest, I should warn you that this story has the twins, Castor and Pollux, as lovers, but that's handled very subtly, and left to hints; unless your squick is also a trigger, I would really advise you to read the story regardless, because it's just that good.

The death and resurrection of Persephone, in stages

A feminist rewrite of the myth of Persephone, and what's most impressive about it is that the actual actions were not changed from (many of) the myths - but the motivation and agenda, oh, that's such a very different story now. Brilliant.

Fairy Tales

Lovely, dark and deep

This one tackles Hänsel and Gretel, with Gretel as the pov character and center, focusing on her relationship with the witch. Who turns out to have another fairy tale identity as well. Really well written, disturbingly good.

Rome

Let it be

Despite having a song title by the Beatles, this one is not by me. :) It's Antony and Caesar talking shortly before the Ides of March. Considering how much the relationship with Caesar shaped Antony both in history and on the show, it's amazing how little it gets explored. Here we get a good glimpse.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Son of a Preacher Man

Jake and Nog through the years. Both get rarely tackled by fanfic, and I was delighted to find them and their relationship front and center here. Bonus for added Quark!

Tough Guide to Fantasy Land

A special limited time offer

A marvellously funny spoof of dark, gritty fantasy. Just the thing to read after watching Game of Thrones and/or reading G.R.R. Martin, among others. :)

Winnetou - Karl May

Okay. Karl May's Winnetou novels were the very, very first books I ever read, as soon as I could read, because my grandfather used to tell me stories from them when taking me along for walks, and so something in me shall remain eternally six years old, tackling books and being enthralled and thus not capable of sensible criticism when it comes to these novels by a nineteenth century German novelist who basically proved fantasy to be stronger than reality for a long time until reality caught up with him in a brutal fashion. And the first fictional character I ever cried for is the woman who gets explored by these two stories, one in English, one in German. Two character explorations of Nscho-Tschi:

Beautiful Dawn (the one in English)

Poetry in Motion (the one in German)

1.) Trailer for the Tennant/Stewart Hamlet , which both brings back the joy of having watched this live and the anticipation of seeing it again. I just hope the RSC delivered that dvd I ordered eons ago as promised. Also, once the dvd is available and the film has been broadcast, I hope for lots of screencaps and plenty of icons, hopefully some of which will show both actors I tend to fangirl in the same shot. (The publicity photos by the RSC last year just weren't what I wanted in this department.)

2.) Yuletide Uploading is open. Uploading my story reminded me again what fun it was to write. I've always looked forward to the 25th because Yuletide is such a great ficathon, but this year there is that additional slight nervousness which comes with having made a contribution as well. Let's see how rare that rare fandom is...

3.) Discovered via vilakins: Pride & Prejudice via Emoticons. Who cares about adaptions with zombies if you can have adaptions via emoticons! :)

4.) Methinks Warren Ellis really hit his stride with his second arc in Astonishing X-Men. #33 is out, that's the third issue in a row which is fun to read, doesn't have wth? character moments and came without any long interruptions in between. If you really want to nitpick, you can argue Storm's role in the Ellis line-up is, the one discussion she had with Cyclops in the last arc aside, somewhat bland, especially compared with Kitty in the Whedon line-up, but that's really not much of an issue. I'm so happy Hisako continues to play a major role in AXM, and Ellis writes her absolutely delightful. He also seems to want Scott/Logan 'shippers really happy with this second arc, seeing as he continues to write their interaction. Also, the art for the second arc is way better than for the first, especially for my beloved Abigail Brand and for Hank McCoy. Speaking of my favourite morally ambigous agent, ( I continue to harbor a spoilery suspicion. )

5.) Five Minutes, Mr. Welles. I had heard about this short film (31 minutes) which premiered at the Venice Film Festival 2004, starring and directed by Vincent D'Onofrio, but I had no idea it was available on YouTube until yesterday. D'Onofrio had played Orson Welles before, as a cameo in Tim Burton's Ed Wood, but this time he gets to use his own voice. Which doesn't sound at all like Welles', but that's beside the point here. (Especially since he's great with the body language and the script.) This particular short film is set during the shooting of The Third Man, at a time when Orson Welles had long since stopped being a beloved prodigy and was now in quasi-exile from Hollywood, mostly living in Europe and hiring himself out as an actor to finance his own movies. Quite often, this meant a lot of mediocre films to play in, but occasionally, he lucked out in his quest for movie-financing cash and got a role in a great picture. But you don't even have to know that in order to enjoy this half an hour which among other things showcases some magic of acting, as D'Onofrio-as-Welles goes from memorizing the Ferris Wheel scene in a listless, lifeless manner to injecting a flicker of personality in the lines to finally, at the end, coming up with a complete performance of Harry Lime, complete with the ad-lib Welles contributed to Graham Greene's script. The second character is an invented one, but in complete contradiction to my nagging about the book Me and Orson Welles I shall praise her existence. Katherine, scriptgirl-plus-personal-assistant, played by the classy Janine Theriault whom I've never seen before but now shall look out for, goes from seemingly powerless to actually powerful, and goes the through the full O.W. experience of alternatingly being frustrated, angry, challenged and charmed. There are some lovely visual homages to Welles as a director (the camera angles are obvious, but I clued in the Othello bit one only after I'd seen it; well-done, especially since Othello was the film Welles was needing the cash for). And in case you've never ever seen The Third Man - and what stopped you so far? - this is the scene Welles is rehearsing in Five Minutes, Mr. Welles. One of the all time classics and endlessly quotable. (And imitated and quoted from about a million times.)

The festival for short films has started in my hometown Bamberg, and I'm in the jury, so, no time for long entries, though I hope to post a report on the films later. (Also, I haven't been in a film festival jury before, so I'm looking forward to finding out the technicality of the process - will we get clipboards, I wonder?)

Meanwhile, things to read:

Politics:

On the interminable long farewell to Bush. It's been four years, and I still don't understand how that man ever got reelected. Eight years since the Supreme Court made him President to begin with. Marx' quote about history first coming as tragedy and then repeating itself as farce would probably be apropos, but to me, W.'s presidency has always been both at the same time, from beginning to end.

Shakespeare:

More than kin, less than kind: ever since watching Branagh's Hamlet film version, one particular idea concerning the ghost, Claudius and Hamlet has been bugging me, and lo and behold, someone wrote an excellent story which uses just that idea. Check it out.

Comics:

Project Wide Awake: the best AUs aren't simple fix-its but those alternate scenarios which really work the "what if X happened" through. This particular story takes on that flawed event still providing so much excellent ground for fanfiction, the Marvelverse Civil War, and asks what would have happened if Captain America and friends had won. It's a Steve Rogers pov, and the resulting story, intense, dark, but ultimately with some hope, carries an incredible punch.

Alias:

Don't stop (thinking about tomorrow): in nine out of ten cases, I stay away from works in progress, finding them frustrating and preferring to wait until they're finished before reading them. There are exceptions. yahtzee63 writing an Alias story always is one of them. (Though we won't have to wait long; the first two parts are up, the next two will follow soon.) It's Sydney two years after the s5 finale, it's Rambaldi madness and time travel, Seventies fashion and First Gen spies in their prime, and it's absolutely impossible to resist!

I - and bimo, and iamsab, and many another - are going to watch Hamlet in Stratford this season, so I was thrilled to find the RSC has put up an interview with the director, Greg Doran. (Why yes, I want to see two particular actors in that play. But I still want the play to be something other than a star vehicle, so finding out about production ideas is good.)

Firstly, I'm intrigued that Doran has cast Patrick Stewart not just as Claudius but also as the Ghost. (One of the elements I loved in the Kenneth Branagh Hamlet on film - that Derek Jacobi as Claudius and Branagh as Hamlet were made up to look as alike as possible given that they as themselves really don't. For the first time, this made me wonder how long the Claudius/Gertrude tryst had been going on, and whether in fact the Ghost's ultimate revenge on Claudius wasn't setting up Hamlet to avenge Hamlet Senior's murder when in fact Hamlet was Claudius' son.) Here's Doran on Claudius:

"When I was talking to Patrick, I quickly reaslised that you mustn't view Claudius through Hamlet's point of view. He's trying to sort out the kingdom. It might not be a completely selfless agenda, but it could be that the old king Hamlet was not a good King. It could be that in order to find stability for the kingdom he has also basically leapt over Hamlet's own right to run things because he thinks Hamlet would be a dreadful mess. I don't think that Hamlet shows a lot of evidence of leadership skills and we might need people like Claudius sometimes."

No kidding. I definitely would not want Hamlet to run a household, let alone a kingdom. In Branagh's witty black-and-white film about a Hamlet production (with Michael Maloney in the lead), In the Bleak Midwinter, you get a scene where the actress playing Ophelia decides to slap Hamlet in the "get thee to a nunnery scene", and I always thought that would have done him a world of good. Btw, while I've got opinions on various screen Hamlets and Hamlets (least favourite: Mel Gibson - Zeffirelli should have stuck with the Italian plays; the Olivier one has aged really badly, but at least doesn't have Mel Gibson; I do love the Branagh film down to each cameo, but K.B. himself impressed me more in other roles than as Hamlet; which leaves In the Bleak Midwinter, which isn't strictly speaking a film version of Hamlet but a film about a bunch of out of luck actors staging a production of Hamlet, and yet their Hamlet is my favourite. And not just because of the slap, I swear! Stage-wise, sadly, I wasn't very lucky; I've never seen a production that impressed me much. Which means all the more anticipation for this one!