The Rare Male Slash Exchange has gone live. Originally, I didn't think I'd participate this year, since my Frederician pals could not and I doubted I would be able to find enough rare slash pairings I'd be able to write, but then I had a look at the requests and found not one but three I thought I not only could write but would want to write. And indeed I was assigned one of them. (I had meant to write the other two as treats, but in the end was too busy, alas.)

Meanwhile, I got this lovely gift, backstory to one of my all time favourite movies, The Third Man:


A Man Who Writes Westerns (3174 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Third Man (1949)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Harry Lime/Holly Martins
Characters: Holly Martins, Harry Lime
Additional Tags: Sexual Content, Pre-Canon, Light Angst
Summary:

“When did you see him last?”

“September, ‘39.”

One last bunch of Yuletide recs while we're all still anoymous, and also: happy new year to everyone! May 2014 treat you well.

( recs for The Borgias, Historical RPF, Lord of the Flies, Puss-in-Boots, Here Be Dragons, The Third Man and The Wire )

The Third Man: or, the film every noir thriller since has wanted to be when it grew up. With rare success. Okay, so maybe I'm exaggarating just a liiiiitttle, but all the same, it's my favourite, over anything with Humphrey Bogart in it, no matter whether he's playing Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade, and anything sans Bogart but based on Chandler, and such neo noirs as L.A. Confidential, dearly as I love them. The Third Man remains untouched. Somewhere in the documentary on the dvd I bought in England, someone says it's in a way the anti-Casablanca, with Casablanca capturing the optimistic wartime spirit and despite the bittersweet ending of the lovestory going out on an upbeat note, whereas The Third Man is all post-war cynicism, with no more easy villainy in the form of the Nazis to unite against and boo-hiss at. There is something to that, and if you like, you can trace it to the origins: Casablanca, despite its many European contributors, is a quintessential American film, whereas The Third Man, despite one American co-producer (David O. Selznick) and two American actors, is quintessentially European, from its authentic 1948 Vienna location through its wonderful script by Graham Greene to its English director (Carol Reed). And the music, of course. A very late addendum, and yet the film is completely unthinkable without it: instead of the usual symphonic score movies of the period offered, you have Zither music throughout, composed and played by Anton Karas, and one can't think of any other music that would set the ironic, witty and deeply unsentimental tone so well. (Mind you, it's an earworm. If you heard Harry Lime's Theme once, you'll find yourself whistling it for days.)

( Detailed raving )