However, if you've followed a link to an entry on this journal and would like it unlocked please just let me know. There may be stuff that was originally public that I have forgotten to unlock.

38, 1931-2001

This month, I am representing my opinion of each film with a smiley face or a frowny face (or perhaps some variation). I will elaborate, upon request.

( movies! )

I've started watching Smith* . . .

What can I say, caitie you were completely right about this show. Simon Baker really, really wants Johnny Lee Miller - if they were cute, it would be cute. But they are horrible people, so it isn't.

I also like picking out actors from The Wire. My count so far is two (2), but my hopes are great.

*Uh, by which I mean: I have watched the first episode.

And also, it's all zempasuchil's fault because she put the idea in my head last time I posted mixes. Anyway: Here is a Merlin fanmix! Merlin, almost a month before it premieres on US TV. \o/

I did a cover this time. Yay, me!

Oh, Young Lions: a Merlin&Arthur (or Merlin/Arthur, this being Merlin) fanmix

( there may come a day when I will do a Gwen&Morgana mix, but it is not this day )

Actually, I have...three. They are fanmixes and you can certainly try and figure them out if you want. However, it is not terribly important in the scheme of things really! For example, it is not important enough for me to make cover art and post them to a community requiring said art.

( My Brain Knows Better )
( Trashcan Fire in a Prison Cell )
( Your Faith Is Making a Ghost of You )

For your amusement and edification...And so I don't forget this.

It was evidently there, at a party in Antibes, that [Louise Brooks] met Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald for the second and last time. It struck her that they were already considered a bit passé by the fickle breed that summered there: The smart set's literary conversation now ran more to Hemingway, whose A Farewell to Arms was just out, rather than to Fitzgerlad, whose Great Gatsby was four years old. Sensing the social (and perhaps literary) decline, Scott was apparently depressed - but Zelda was enraged. Though Louise never saw Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds together, she later came to a startling conclusion: "The homosexual hero of war and adventure. A man's man. 'Men without Women.' Zelda Fitzgerald hated Hemingway because he knew she was viciously insane, and Hemingway hated Zelda because she knew he was basically a homo putting on a fighting-and-fucking act to fool himself."

Barry Paris, Louise Brooks. Pg. 319.

(I would like to note, however, that she is far from a reliable source being insanely alcoholic and also, possibly, kind of just insane.)

I've been at The Golden Notebook for nearly a month, and not because it is a long book (although it is). Partly it is because Lessing divided it up oddly so I can't just pick it up and read it whenever - I have to know I have enough free time to get through a section. Partly it is passages like this one:

( pg 344-345 )

Ouch. :/

For some reason, TCM is not showing this movie today. But...Mr. Smith Goes To Washington will always be the movie that says the best things about our government and our political system (except, maybe, 1776). I do not universally adore all its polical opinions...but I do not universally adore all of Barack Obama's political opinions, either.

JEFFERSON SMITH: Just get up off the ground, that's all I ask. Get up there with that lady that's up on top of this Capitol dome, that lady that stands for liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes if you really want to see something. And you won't just see scenery; you'll see the whole parade of what Man's carved out for himself, after centuries of fighting. Fighting for something better than just jungle law, fighting so's he can stand on his own two feet, free and decent, like he was created, no matter what his race, color, or creed. That's what you'd see. There's no place out there for graft, or greed, or lies, or compromise with human liberties. And, uh, if that's what the grownups have done with this world that was given to them, then we'd better get those boys' camps started fast and see what the kids can do. And it's not too late, because this country is bigger than the Taylors, or you, or me, or anything else. Great principles don't get lost once they come to light. They're right here; you just have to see them again!

This is it! No more. I am all read out. As, indeed, are my superlatives and my aptitude for sincere hyperbole.

( Brick, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Swordspoint, Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia again, Merlin, Michelle West, Rome )

I haven't done this before, so we'll see how much I like it. Probably, a lot of the stories will be stories you have already seen plugged like crazy because they are Just That Awesome but I think some of these will be new as well.

Fandoms I have not yet investigated thoroughly include, but are not limited to: Brick, Ellen Kushner, Martha Wells, Merlin, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Rome.
( I am too lazy to count the stories or the fandoms )

So, I am pretty terrified about my upcoming Yuletide assignment. Also trying to think of any last minute changes I want to make. But, no. That is the whole point of Yuletide, yes? But I better not get someone I know.

The news about McKellen and Stewart doing Waiting for Godot (and I made noise out loud when I read that) is pretty awesome. Why, why, why. WHY. Am I not in the UK?! I want to go more than anything right now.

But that got me thinking about Betrayal (Beckett -> Pinter is a perfectly reasonable line of thought). I watched the film version last month, and honestly I didn't like it nearly as much as the play I saw in 2007. Even though the cast is arguably better in the film - Patricia Hodge, Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley - the movie just doesn't work. For one, it isn't funny. For another, it's reeeeeally flat. Betrayal is actually hilarious.

( this scene was unwatchable in the movie )

That went on longer than I expected.

Finished The Bell at Sealey Head (and, yes, I finished The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter first).

( some thoughts about Bell )

Finished up Veronica Mars today. I am so sad all over again. Plus, I watched the S4 pitch. It just made me want Brendan and Veronica to team up and fight crime. That would still be the best tv show ever.

For future reference, I guess? (Move along, now.)

( The Broken Crown )

( The Uncrowned King )

( The Shining Court )

And I never understand why.

( The Scarlet Pimpernel, Chapter XVI )

ETA: By the way, all the postcards should have arrived at their respective destinations by now. If they haven't...I dunno. Probably it is my fault, because I wrote the Chinese characters for America myself on a bunch of them and I...suck at writing Chinese. Okay. But, yeah, if they haven't I'm sorry. :(

ETA 2: That is just a PSA, though. I'm not asking for an analysis of the postcard. Because my grandparents called when they got theirs and proceeded to read it back to me. It was the most boring thing I've ever lived through. Don't make me live through it again.

Anouilh, Jean. Antigone.

( ANOUILH: my thoughts on collaborating, let me show you them. )

Heaney, Seamus. The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone. (Line numbers were included in the text, but I used page numbers for some reason.)

( I can't wait for Ruth Negga to get really famous. )

Mantel, Hilary. A Place of Greater Safety. New York: Picador, 2006.

Some books are very quotable.

( like this one )

"I am not one of those who stand for the untouchable holiness of the capital letter and traditional typography. So far as I am concerned, Mr. cummings may do anything he likes with the alphabet, English grammar, and the multiplication table, provided only the result of his activities be something interesting, and, after a reasonable period of application, comprehensible, to a reader of culture and brains. Mr. cummings may not, however, I say, write poetry in English which is more difficult for me to translate than poetry written in Latin. He may, of course, write it. But if he publishes it, if he prints and offers for sale poetry which he is quite content should be, after hours of sweating concentration, inexplicable from any point of view to a person as intelligent as myself, then he does so with a motive which is frivolous from the point of view of art."

- a letter to the Guggenheim Foundation on whether or not they should give him some money

Millay is just the best person to quote about other poets, I've decided.

Today I got complimented on my skirt, which was nice. I got slightly sunburned (we had philosophy outisde) which is not. I have a good chunk of my exegesis paper written, and I read Give Them Stones. Tomorrow I am going to a concert. I may pull this off.