Random randomness

[wiseheart]

Cos I'm on sick leave, although the sickness has passed, and feel like babbling a bit, yo!

The telly - or why I might end up spend my hard-earned cash on shows that I cannot watch, even though everyone says they're rubbish.

I heard really, really bad things about Starz' Camelot. So I googled a bit, and what I saw confirmed my worst fears. Come on, guys, WTF, Arthur a girl??? Okay, I know he technically isn't a girl, but he looks like one. Imagining him having sex with the actual girls on the show is... off-putting, to say the least. No offence against anyone, but if I wanna watch femslash, the least I could demand would be that both participants be real girls, right? At least Bradley James looks like a knight who would be capable of raising his sword without collapsing under its weight.

But... the show stars Eva Green as Morgan, and she looks absolutely stunning. I could never warm up to Katie McGrath's Morgana, so perhaps I should give "Camelot" a chance, after all. Plus, it has Sean Pertwee, with whom I've been in selfless love ever since I saw him as Hugh Beringar. And Clive Standen! *flails* Granted, I only saw him in Dr. Who, where he had a total of about three seconds of screen time, but I'm so totally fangirling him. Embarrassing, really, considering that I could be his mother. Ah, well. I might even buy some random Robin Hood episodes to watch him. I'm shallow that way. I like me some ruggedly handsome men from time to time.


Procrastinating - or the pain of too many choices after finishing a story.

Now that I've finally gotten "Eye Witness" out of my hair (not that anybody but artemis10002000 would give a rat's arse about my Torchwood fic), I've taken a good hard look of my unfinished WIPs - and blanched. There are too many, in too many different fandoms!

My best candidates to be finished in the foreseeable future would be "Vox Angelica" in the Cadfael fandom, "Brothers-in-Arms" (also in the Cadfael fandom) and "A Visitor from Avalon", my Merlin-Torchwood crossover. Consequently, what have I done all day? Background work on "Sea-Flower", a pre-Ring-War Tolkienfic taking place in Umbar.

Yeah, right. That's me, doing the least logical thing. But at least I've figured out how to include the bull games and cast some of the characters. Not surprisingly, Princess Ivriniel will be played by Eva Green and Lord Caliondo of Umbar will be played by Clive Standen. What? I told you I'm shallow! And I need my visuals. I'm seriously considering having Colin Morgan play the Dark Elf assassin, but I'm not sure I can pull that one out. Although he'd be creepy. Oh, and the malicious Haradric slave girl is played by Indira Varma.


Baking - yep, I did some of that, too!

Not much; we won't dare eating anything with cream in the next few days, so I made some Ischler and a small lamb out of almond biscuit. And I hung up the decorated eggshells in the living room. Mum is pleased with the results, so I'm pleased, too.


Other than that, I'm lazing around and wishing I had people I could discuss silly fannish things with. But you can't have everything.

Comments

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

There is a Norwegian tradition of reading/giving crime stories at Easter; you could make this your motivation for picking one of your Cadfael WIP to work on. The convoluted connections would entertain me. *giggle*

Your comment about the girlish looking Arthur-actor made me think of the time I went to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Twelfth Night: there was something strange about it and eventually I realized that one of the male roles was played by a woman. I never understood why. It was only one of the roles, and she was dressed as if she was a man, so it just didn't make sense to me. They were probably trying to be avant-garde and/or there might have been some deep reason for it, but I never got it. It just kept being slightly off, and it disturbed my enjoyment of the performance. I did see another Shakespeare play with women playing male roles (and vice versa). That was an amateur group performing Romeo and Juliet: all the Capulets were played by women and all the Montagues were played by men. That worked really well, and I thought it was a very clever way of making it instantly obvious which of the characters on the stage were part of which family with the small means available to the theatre group. Sometimes I just don't understand what the casting people are thinking, though. For example: Hugo Weaving as Elrond? Really? Yes, he is a great actor -- I have seen him in other things and he plays many different roles and does it well -- but he is not beautiful. And elves should be beautiful, even unearthly so, in Tolkien's Middle Earth. < /rant> Sorry, that is a pet peeve of mine.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I rather liked Weaving as Elrond once I got over the shock. It might have been trying to make the point that he's half elven and might age differently than pure elves?

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I absolutely despised Weaving as Elrond. I still do. But again, there's precious little that I actually liked in the LOTR films.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I do remember that I have other, more substantial objections to the LOTR films: the Ents needing to be tricked into going to war and Faramir being changed beyond all recognition to name two. However, I have read the books so often -- and reread them every time after watching one of the films when they came out -- that in my head I just edit the films to match up with the book. The one thing that isn't so easy to fix in this way is who plays Elrond.

I did have a conversation with a colleague once where I said "That isn't how it really happened" about something in the films; my colleague made some comment about the books not being "real" either...

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

People nearly beat me up during TTT. I watched it with Mum and a friend, and at every five minutes, my friend and I were moaning: "That isn't how it should be! What are these freaks doing?"

And then the Elves arrived at Helm's Deep, Haldir made his grand entrance, and Mum asked in the innocence of her old heart: "Tell me, is that bloke actually gay?" Loudly. It was an epic moment.

Yeah, Faramir was my pet hate, too, aside from Denethor and his absolutely undignified death, and the horrid exorcism scene at Meduseld, and Saruman being a silly old hippie with a bad manicure, the Wargs that didn't look a bit like wolves, Pippin, who did look like an ugly old woman, Éowyn who was such an anorexic wallflower that by rights she should have collapsed under the weight of her mail shirt, the Barbie Elves in Lórien, Gimli cheapened to comic relief, and... and... and...

And don't even let me start on Frodo. Whenever he rolled his eyes back and fainted, Mum commented scathingly: "Did that little idiot keel over again?"

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

There were a lot of things I found very hard to take about the films, but Faramir & Denethor were the things I absolutely couldn't tolerate. Two of my very favourite characters, completely trashed.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Well, Gimli, Merry and Pippin were trashed, too. And Legolas, the Idiot. *grrrrrrr*

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Yes, but none of those was among my very favourites. And I don't much like book-Legolas to be honest. Or at least I thought he was the thinnest of the Fellowship characters in the book.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Funny, I always loved him. And Gimli. And their friendship. But again, I started off with "The Hobbit", and Legolas was the son of the Elvenking and Gimli was the son of Glóin, so I was kind of biased from the beginning.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

Watching the LOTR films with you sounds like great fun! My family went to see them in the cinema and when we came out of TTT both my sister and I had identical reactions along the lines of "How could they do that to Faramir?". For reasons that aren't important the two of us ended up going to see it again with my aunt and her family; before going we warned my aunt that there were changes in the film that we found upsetting, without giving details. Her first comment when we got out was "They wrecked Faramir!"

I was never particularly fond of Denethor, so his death scene didn't affect me as much. The exorcism scene at Meduseld was horrid though and I will never forgive them for using Gimli for comic relief. However, as I mentioned above I only notice these things as I am actually watching the films, because as soon as it is not right in front of me my brain edits them to show the events as they appear in the book. Therefore the actual look of the actors playing the characters are more important to me than how they portray the character and what random completely pointless plot changes the film makers have implemented. Having said that though, I didn't much care for how Elrond was played in the film. I attributed this to them changing his character and making him more snobbish and superior than I think he comes off in the book. He does for example acknowledge that even if he sent one of the Elf warriors of old to go with Frodo this Elf would not be able to get him into Mordor by force.

I thought one of the best casting choices was Samwise. He looked like a proper hobbit in my mind. Boromir was good too, but he was never a favourite of mine.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Samwise was fantastic indeed. About the only good casting choice aside from Boromir.

It's interesting, that in the books, I didn't even like either Boromir, or Denethor. But I was completely converted by Sean Bean's performance, and now I'm a firm supporter of the Stewards against the King, hehehe.

As for poor Elrond... hard to believe that he used to be the one described "as kind as summer", eh? I used to love him in "The Hobbit" sooo much. And I feel deeply insulted on Frodo's behalf. How a fifty-some years old, steadfast Hobbit with a great deal of common sense ended up as a mentally imbalanced teenager on drugs, I'll never understand.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Yeah, even liking Weaving's performance, 'as kind as summer' got lost in the wash, unless JRRT was thinking of some desert country...

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

Perhaps they thought they would prove Shakespeare's point from Sonnet #18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Yes, I know that is very far-fetched, but the idea made me giggle so I decided to share it.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

The thing I think they did best in the Fellowship of the Ring film was the Black Riders and their eerie screams; they make me jump with fear every time, even when I know it is coming. On the other hand I didn't find the balrog of the film anywhere near as frightening as I did in the book. What was scary about it to me was always that Gandalf -- the wizard we had learnt through all the book up to this point -- was scared of it. I can see that it is difficult to do that build-up of a character in a film, but they didn't even try in my opinion!

Have you heard the BBC radio play of The Lord of the Rings? It has Ian Holm as Frodo, and while it has obvious faults (like skipping things to fit into 13 one-hour episodes) it is worth listening to.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Yep, the Black Riders were suitably creepy. And I loved Gollum, too, even though he was a bit too obviously CGI. They never really managed to make his movements seem natural, but he was well done nonetheless.

The Balrog wasn't bad, but it had too many devil-like attributes to be really scary. And yeah, characterization was rather low-key in all three films; what little was there, was done by the actors. *excuse me when I fangirl a little over Sean Bean's performance again*

No, I don't know the radio play. Ian Holm must have been quite good, though.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

It might have been trying to make the point that he's half elven and might age differently than pure elves?

I am afraid I don't feel charitable enough to entertain that theory, though it is a good one I suppose. Except then how does one explain Arwen? She is definitely described as the most beautiful female Éomer has ever seen, and Gimli lets him make that claim even against his candidate of Galadriel.

On the other hand it always irks me when a woman gets a role simply for being beautiful; I think actors/actresses should be able to act. Possibly the main reason I can't reconcile myself with Weaver as Elrond is that I watched the Matrix films concurrently with The Lord of the Rings. Weaver was just so marvellously good a playing the thoroughly and unapologetically evil Mr Smith.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Weaving wasn't only ugly as Elrond, he was also horrible as Elrond: stilted and unnatural and a poseur. Not half as bad as Arwen, of course. She with that overbite and the strangely jerking corner of her mouth, whenever she attempted to speak Elvish. IMO, Liv Tyler not only can't act to save her life, she isn't really beautiful, either. No matter how thick the make up has been splattered all over her stupid face.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

The only Elf I really liked was Blanchett as Galadriel (when they didn't go the cgi stuff on her).

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Yep, the moment she went radioactive was really creepy. But I didn't like her to begin with, either. And I absolutely hated Celeborn. No offence against Márton Csókás (I ought to support him, he's a fellow Hungarian, after all), but he's the last person I'd cast for the role of an Elf. A Haradric chieftain, yes, but not an Elf.

I cast him as Isabeau's OC, Andrahar, IMO he would be wonderful for the part, but he was a horrible Celeborn. And as Mum has very succintly realized, Haldir was a pouf.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Csókás was indeed terribly miscast. And the guy playing Haldir was just terrible. I didn't much like any of the cgi transformations, but I think they got cruder & cruder as the films went on.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

The other thing I really, really heated were the Orcs. I mean, they looked like terribly diseased people, not like monsters. There was a time when I was really asking myself whether young teenagers who never saw a person with a disfiguring carcinome before would now consider these unfortunte sick people as monsters.

The oliphaunts were fairly ridiculous, too. I mean, sure, they ought to be big, but so big that the horses would only reach to their ankles? Way overdone. And what about the six or how many tusks?

On the other hand, I was very disappointed that Shelob simply turned out to be a big spider. The Wargs were nowhere like wolves (although they were clearly wolves in all the books), and then Shelob is just a spider, like in one of those Tarantula movies? She ought to be more monster-like. Everything else was monster-like, so why not Shelob?

Oh, and why was Sauron a big flaming eyeball anyway? Sitting atop the tower of Barad-dur, too?

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I don't particularly care for the look of Liv Tyler either, but I have learnt that my opinion of beauty in women does not generally coincide with the mainstream.

It may indeed be the case that part of what I don't like about Weaving-as-Elrond is how different he was in the film compared to the book, not just in looks but in deeds and words. He really came off as a stuck-up besser-wisser in the film, with none or little of the grace, wisdom, and deep compassion for all living things that I felt he had in the books.

Hmm, all this discussion of LOTR is making me want to re-read the book. Damn it, I have far too many books to read for the first time on my list! *points to icon*

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Hehe. We should do that simultaneously at some time. And then discuss it and tear the film equivalent of each part to pieces.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

Oh that sounds like great fun! I do have serious difficulties stopping once I have started reading a book though; I always want to know what happens next! When I was an undergraduate at university this sometimes meant that I didn't go to bed until 7 or 8 in the morning. Of course when you are a student, at a university that doesn't generally require you to nor check if you attend lectures/tutorials you can do that; when you are actually employed to do a job, it doesn't work as well... For this reason I don't read much before going to sleep these last few years, just to keep myself away from temptation, which unfortunately means I don't read anywhere near as much as I used to. I miss it.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling. :(

Nowadays, I mostly read online, because fanfiction is often a lot better than whatever official novels are released in my fandoms (not to mention cheaper!) but I do miss the feel of a real book in my hands. I even miss the way books smell. Especially new ones.