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Casting news (in one case older news for most people, I'm sure) that made me realise my priorities and double standards:

a) Bradley James is in the fourth season of Homeland. Sorry, Bradley James, I loved your Arthur Pendragon in Merlin, but there were a lot of reasons why I quit watching Homeland in early s3, among them loss of quality and questionable ideology, and I'm not going back.

b) Lucy Lawless is the the second season of Agents of SHIELD. Now this is a show I haven't watched so far; my flist/circle had about two third naysays, one third (all the more enthusiastic) yaysayers about it, there were so many other interesting shows to watch, and also I'm so fond of the MCU I didn't want to risk dampening the emotion by disgruntlement should I dislike AoS. However, Lucy Lawless in the Marvelverse? Must have! (Unless she's only in one episode, I should acertain that first.) (If you recognize where the quote titling this post comes from, you might feel similarly.)

Meanwhile, further news both on the Lewis & Tolkien and the solo Tolkien biopics in planning demonstrate someone's (be the publicity people, the reporters, or, heaven forfend, the scriptwriters) lack of actual knowledge re: Tolkien and Lewis, as is entertainingly pointed out here.

Penny Dreadful:

We have a Penny Dreadful vid! And a good one, covering the ensemble and the relationships between same - with one unfortunate exception. Which, sadly for me though not for the vidder and the vid, happens to be the relationship I'm most interested in. There is a complete lack of Malcolm in the vid (and hence also no Vanessa and Malcolm). Which reminds me that last week when someone at last posted Penny Dreadful icons, I was delighted...until I saw there were no Malcolm and no Vanessa and Malcolm icons. Alas. Anyway, back to the original point, which was: a shiny vid about a lovely twisted Victorian Gothic show:

A Shot for the Pain (11 words) by Franzeska
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Fanvids, ConStrict 2014

X-Men: Days of Future Past:

Missing scene type of fanfic covering how old Erik and old Charles reunited, which is just what I need when the angst elsewhere gets too much:

Rescue Me (2492 words) by Unforgotten
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Characters: Erik Lehnsherr, Charles Xavier
Additional Tags: Pre-Movie(s), jailbreak, Reunions
Summary:

Against all hope, Charles and Erik reunite at the beginning of the Sentinel War.

And lastly, not completely unrelated to the beginning of this post, something only funny if a) you know German, b) have a vague idea about what the Bavarian dialect sounds like, and c) are familiar with a certain 1990s fantasy show made in New Zealand: Xena auf Bayrisch.

Current Mood: good
Current Location: Munich

Encouraged by certain people of my friendly aquaintance and the fact Lucy Lawless plays a prominent role in it, I finally got around to marathoning Spartacus: Blood and Sand and Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (the prequel). What I knew before going in: Steven de Knight, aka he who wrote two of my favourite BTVS and AtS episodes (Dead Things and Deep Down respectively), was the show runner, Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi, the enterprising duo which gave us Xena and Hercules, were the producers, Lucy Lawless was in it, and it was supposedly incredibly trashy yet oddly compelling.

What I know now: it is indeed very trashy and oddly compelling. Imagine the most over the top Slave AU story in any of your fandoms, then maximise by ten. There is no dismemberment the show hasn't thought of and liked, the constant non-con sex is a given considering two thirds of the regular characters are slaves, and the general aesthetic owes something to 300 (going by

luminosity's legendary vid, since I never watched 300 myself). What makes the end result the anti-Frank Miller, however, is that when an episode is titled Whore, this refers to the main character (that Spartacus guy you may have heard of) getting pimped out by his owners, not to one of the female characters. (Also some of the gladiators are gay, which I doubt Miller, F. would have gone for even in his better days.) Speaking of the female characters, I was promised much Lucy Lawless (in a meaty role, no pun intended), and lo, I got her. She's Lucretia, the wife of Quintus Lentulus Batiatus (aka the owner of the gladiator school Spartacus got trained in and broke out of). Lucretia and Batiatus (played by John Hannah, whom last I saw many years ago reciting W.H. Auden in Four Weddings and a Funeral) are two really well done villains, despicable enough in their actions that you yearn for their comeuppance yet also three dimensional, capable of more than one emotion (Lucy Lawless does that thing again where she can be terrifying, vicious and deeply vulnerable and tender in turn) and passionately devoted to each other. This is where the show departs from fanfic ground; in fanfic, villains capable of romantic love are usually presented as on the road to redemption, but this show in all its trashy guts and gore glory actually sees a difference between being capable to deeply love your partner (and both of them are shown as capable of giving up everything for each other when needs must while otherwise being the most greedy pair of social climbers you can imagine), and being aware the rest of humanity isn't there to be exploited to further your personal well being.

But if it had been only Lucretia and Batiatus who held my attention, I doubt I'd have managed to finish a season, let alone two. (See also: Camelot by the same network where the only character I found interesting was Morgana, which wasn't enough to keep me watching beyond two episodes.) The various gladiators and slave girls (displayed with equal opportunity frontal nudity by the show, and the perfect shapes are actually sort of justified by the plot as far as the gladiators are concerned, because that's how they make their living) make for an ensemble that grows on you (no, not like fungus), and for thematic reasons, one cliché that's utterly avoided is the devoted slave who is unthinkingly loyal to their master(s). (My favourite among the gladiators, Onaemaeus aka Doctore, played by Peter Mensah, is loyal to the school for a long time but competletely capable of having his less than respectful opinions about its owners.) While the tropes and clichés you expect from the genre (chiefest among them and indispensable in any gladiator film: ye gods, now I have to fight my dear friend!) are duly served up, there are some surprising twists (such as the widow of such a cliché who does a couple of very surprising things).

Historical veracity: err. Let me put it this way. The nastiness of what slavery (whether you were a member of the household or a gladiator) and the degradation that came with having no ownership of your own body and sexuality at all meant, strikes me as plausible enough. And Batiatus' obsession with raising his status and the Roman aristocracy's disdain do, too. But everything else, from minimal clothing in snowy Thrace to the gigantic arena in Capua which looks like something of the late Empire, not the Republic, to the bikini friendly shaved pubic hair is... questionable. Never mind, compared with the Stanley Kubrick/Kirk Douglas Spartacus, which pulls such stunts as letting an almost a century late member of the Gracchi show up in the form of Charles Laughton and gives the impression bisexuality only exists as part of Roman decadence (the infamous originally cut "snails and oysters" scene), it's downright authentic. And it avoids the hypocrisy of, say, Gladiator with its chastizing the audience for getting their kicks out of brutal violence while simultanously trying to entertain the audience by brutal violence. I'll be interested in how it will do in its third season which by plot necessity can't have any arena scenes anymore (except as flashbacks); battle scenes are someting different.

In conclusion: unabashed pulp fiction. Not a must, but if you're in the mood for extremely violent entertainment which manages to include some interesting characters, it might be the thing for you.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: Bamberg

The iSonnets (tm

kalypso) are one really nifty app. In addition to a lot of excellent actors (plus some academics like James "his books should be used to hit Oxfordians on the head with" Shapiro) reciting each and everyone of the sonnets, you have the Arden footnotes for all, plus Don Patterson's commentary for all which is immensely entertaining. I may not agree with his interpretations all the time, but I can see where he's coming from every time. (And if you like your Bard more on the gay side of bisexual, Patterson argues the "Shakespeare gay but repressed and guilty about same, hence channelizing sexuality in safe het ways but feeling hostile towards sexual partner for that and being over the top resentful towards Dark Lady" theory.) You can also make your own annotations. As for the actors used, it's a very pleasing mixture of legendary old timers like Patrick Stewart and Sian Phillips to young ones I haven't heard of but will now pay attention to when spotting their names, and because fandom taught me to notice such things, it's a multiracial ensemble. So no sense of tokennism either in terms of gender or ethnically, either. Some of the actors do several sonnets, some only one (like Stephen Fry who went for "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"). You can either click on the actor's face and pick from the sonnets he/she recites, or go to the scan from the original edition, scroll to the sonnet you want and get both the commentary and the performance. In short: love it.

ETA: and how could anyone not when Don Paterson in his commentary to sonnet 18 (recited, btw, by David Tennant) quotes the Klingon ~~original~~ translation?
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This week's fannish5 demands to know the five most annoying fictional children, and I just can't. Not because I've never been annoyed by fictional children. But if we're talking visual media, then we're talking about real children/teenagers who simply act parts and, well, I'm a Star Trek fan. Wil Wheaton has always taken the whole Wesley Crusher Die Die Die thing in good grace as far as public reactions from him are concerned, but it can't have been easy to go online and read your character oathed to the point of raped-to-death-by-Klingons fic getting written. As for children/teen actors who play children/teens who are actually meant to be hated by the audience, just the other day

katta posted about Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson on Little House on the Prairie, and as she says - Jesus. And then there's the factor that one fan's hated embodiment of irritation is another fan's love (case in point for me: Connor from Angel and Dawn from Buffy), so when I rant about character X, I'm aware others feel the same urge to twitch and defend I do when coming across yet another magazine complaining about Dawn's "whininess" or Connor's existence in the later seasons.

Now, infants and teens from books which have never been filmed don't pose the "real people portray this person" problem. And since several well meaning aunts dumped their share of books on me during my childhood which made me anything but bond with their child characters, there are several candidates which come to mind. But then my twenty years of internet fandom and fanfiction kick in and remind me that it's possible to take each and every one character who in the original source might come across as insufferably perfect to me and invest that person with layers and complicated feelings and make that sense of annoyance go away. So I don't want to pick on them, either.

"Pick on them" is probably the instrumental phrase here, betraying how I feel. I never had the urge to spare the feelings of Bill Adama fans or Eddie Olmos himself in the unlikely event he ever comes across a smidgeon of my ramblings, or Maxim de Winter fans, or Movieverse Loki fans. But, well: Adama's an adult. So is Olmos. (Also I swear I felt enormously guilty for eying young Willie on Caprica with disdain not for anything the poor kid did but for who I thought he'd turn into until it dawned to me what narrative trick Jane E. might be pulling there.) Ditto for the husband of the second Mrs. de Winter. And while Loki clearly won't ever an adult in terms of emotional growth but an eternal 13 years old, he did clock a few centuries, so. (And I swear I have nothing against Tom Hiddleston and look forward to him tackling Hal aka Henry V! I'm even waiting with bated breath at fanfic trying for a universe fusion which happens when an actor popular in one role acts in another and writes that inevitable story of how movieverse Loki got punished by amnesia and ends up as Prince Hal who totally gets to be king.) (After invading another country on a flimsy pretext employing grandiose rethoric.) .... Back to my point, which I think was that complaining about fictional character X annoys me feels somehow like bullying if it's a kid. Search me.

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Lucy Lawless, I might end up watching Spartacus just for you because I miss you on my tv screen. Here is a great interview with her, apropos using her status for eco protests, in which she comes across as smart, witty and down to earth in every sense of the word, which is familiar for anyone who's been following her during the Xena days.

Current Mood: content
Current Location: Munich