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selenak: (Gaal Dornick - Foundation)
Emerging dazedly with my first bunch of reccommendations:.


Roman History

Something Familiar, Something Peculiar, Something for Everyone: Julia, the daughter of Caesar Augustus, has just learned that her father plans to marry her off to his best friend, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. She is unexcited by this prospect. Agrippa convinces her of the potential mutual advantages of this alliance.

(I've always had a soft spot for these two separately and together, and written about them myself, so it was lovely read this different and delightful take on Agrippa convincing Julia they can actually be a good match.

The Last Unicorn:

An Autumn Dirge: And so the unicorn left her forest for the second time.

(Heartbreakingly beautiful and poetic at the same time. Just like the original.)


Matthew Shardlake Mysteries

De Humani Nexus Fabrica (On the Fabric of Human Connection): A collection of short pieces in a variety of genres about Guy, Matthew, and their friendship.

Guy Malton is probably my favourite supporting character in this series of books, and the relationsohip beween him and the novels' hero, Matthew Shardlake, one of my favourite elements. I loved this layered take on them.

Sweeney Todd

Walking with a Ghost Johanna goes to see her father's grave.

(Johanna is one of the few characters still standing at the end of Sondheim's musical, and she has had an incredibly messed up life so far. This story gives her the chance to learn the truth about her parents and (start) to come to terms with what has happened.)

Willow (tv)

I liked this short lived tv series, cancelled after only one season. For me, it had great charm and a similar mixture of humor and heart than the movie had. So I was delighted to see all the fanfic this Yuletide:

Pierced through the heart (but never killed): Thraxus Boorman grows up.

(In which we find out his backstory, how his connection with Madmartigan happened, and it's a fun growing up tale with a heartbreaking ending.)

Making Magic: They could do with another wizard. Elora thinks Bavmorda's granddaughter would be perfect but Kit disagrees.

(The way the series wrote both Elora and Kit against expectations, reversing tropes, as it were, was great, and their relationship one of the most interesting in the tv show to me. This story is a good illustration of why.)

Wheel of Time (tv)

The Truth You Think You Hear: Nynaeve manages to channel when Liandrin leaves them with the Seanchan, and her weave interacts unexpectedly with the Waygate.

(Liandrin is a character who on paper could have been one dimensional but who, especially in the second season, as played by Kate Fleetwood is absolutely fascinating. So was the way she sparked off Nynaeve on the show, and here in this story.)
selenak: (Sternennacht - Lefaym)
It's not paranoia if they're really after you. Let's see:

1.) Final scene from Blink, season 3 of current Doctor Who. You know, the one with all those statues. I should add that it doesn't work that way anymore after all the subsequent overexposure of the Angels, but back then? I never felt the same way around statues of any kind again. :)

2.) The panel of a cat dream in Dream of a thousand cats, in volume 3 of The Sandman. Anyone ever owning a cat, or rather, being owned by one, knows that Gaiman reveals the truth here. This is exactly what cats dream of. And if they do accomplish the change they wish, I fear I'll be one of the first to die in the cat revolution. My mother may be spared, being a superbly trained cat servant extraordinaire, but you know, when I'm back home in Bamberg and want to write and our cat wants to sit on the chair in front of the computer? I actually claim that chair and put her down to the floor. I'm DOOMED.

3.) Any number of Twin Peaks scenes featuring BOB, especially if he shows up only at the corner of one's eye, for a moment. But if I have to narrow it down, the final one. If BOB can be in spoiler ), there is no hope for the rest of us.

4.) Sweeney Todd, the song Have A Little Priest. I entirely blame Stephen Sondheim for suspecting that any given fast food enterprise, either in history or now, could be a means for serial killers to dispose of bodies. He accomplished this not just by adapting that Victorian potpoiler but for making the music of the ballad when Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett first develop their fiendish scheme such a damm ear worm.

5.) The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling enters what turns out to be the villain's lair, a fact she realises by a moth fluttering by. Now that movie has a great deal of scary scenes, plus I had read the novel it was based on before and actually knew what would happen. But the use of moths in it on screen somehow impacted me differently. Maybe because the night I first saw it, the summer night, I went home, took a shower, had the window open, a moth flew in while I was still in the shower... you better believe I screamed. I had no feelings about moths before. But after this film, I always get a little shudder when coming across one. Though the time in the shower was the only time I screamed. I blame you, Jonathan Demme.
selenak: (Pirate by Poisoninjest)
Now, I like Tim Burton, I like Johnny Depp, and I adore Stephen Sondheim. But like many a Sondheim fan, I'm not sure the combination of the three would be a good thing, aka Burton casting Johnny Depp in the title role of Sweeney Todd. Mostly because Johnny Depp is an actor, not a singer, and Sweeney really needs to be played by someone who can handle an operatic score (he's not Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, whose aria was composed with Rex Harrison's inability to sing in mind because after his performance as Higgins in Pygmalion, they wanted to cast him). However, the Film Society of Lincoln Center was presented with some of the arias on the 14th, and the soundclips are available. While Depp is no Caruso, I feel a lot better now:

My Friends (Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter; the later, btw, sounds great as Mrs. Lovett)

Johanna (Johnny Depp, Laura Michelle Kelly and Jamie Campbell Bower)

Off in haste, cursing the train strike -

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