discussing icons and Glorious 39
Aug. 18th, 2013 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessThis week, I decided to treat myself and buy more Livejournal icons, but after immediately bringing back a bunch of old ones I missed, I have a few gaps to fill. I’m umming and ahhing over resuscitating one or two further ones, but I also don’t want to have placeholders that I’ll replace when shows like Downton Abbey come back.
However, I desperately want an icon/icons of people from something that I love being happy/amused/laughing. Since I started watching it, I’ve wished there were more The Mindy Project icons out there to pick from. I don’t understand why there are so few: it’s a colourful show with far from ugly people pulling funny faces. I know it hasn’t been massive in fandom, but still.
Anyway, if anyone would like to rec icon makers who they love, please do so!
I caught up on the penultimate episode of Top of the Lake on Friday, but last night sat down to watch Glorious 39 on DVD, mistimed it and didn’t watch the final episode of TotL. I will watch it when I get the time and nerve (I’m more worried about being spoiled offline) and post about both episodes.
As for Glorious 39
Very good in parts (in others, I wish like I did with Dancing on the Edge, that someone would take Poliakoff aside and say ‘No, don’t do that’). Certainly worth seeing for Romola Garai’s performance, which was barnstorming, starting with speaking eyes as Anne almost doesn't notice the threat to her gilded youth and privilege, then being put under more and more strain until the crunch.
I sat down thinking of whether there'd be connections with Dancing on the Edge, and I wonder if Poliakoff ever imagined some of the characters crossing paths. There are certainly similar themes and concerns and a few similar types.
Actually it was all the connections between Britain’s luvvies that I couldn’t help noticing: you have an Emma (Garai) facing off against a Mr Knightley (Northam – typecast as a spy here, and I don’t know when ‘spook’ came to be used to mean ‘spy’, but I’m fairly sure the character of Celia referring to Balcom repeatedly as ‘spooky’ was intended to resonate. Furthermore, through Cypher, which plays off that typecasting as one of the James Bonds that weren’t, Northam acts against Lucy Liu, who plays Watson opposite Jonny Lee Curtis’s Holmes, and he was Romola Garai’s Mr Knightley.) At less of a stretch, the fact that Nighy played Garai’s father in I Capture the Castle too added tenderness to their scenes. And then there was the irony of Hugh Bonneville turning up as an actor who bemoaned not having his own chauffeur-driven Rolls and was in the scene where the heroine was informed that the country was at war (WW2) and I am so sure he carried that with him for the end of Downton’s first season. In which Charlie Cox also appeared.
All that is not the point of the film, by the by, which is about Anne (Garai) discovering a conspiracy to try to avert the outbreak of World War 2 close to home. Poliakoff packed in a lot, in this different look at the period to the usual narratives – making the most of what he’d discovered in research. Everyone is acting weirdly because Anne is unravelling a conspiracy, but also because of the times that they were living in. Privileged youth are suddenly finding out that being on a war footing means, like those who remembred the great war, different restrictions. The sequence involving putting down animals brought to life something I haven’t really come across in WW2 literature/filmography before, and it was powerful, disturbing and different, before leading to the final run, which is a lot more conventional, as Our Heroine is drugged and captive, realising that they’re (nearly) all in it.
Some of his stylistic tics worked, some of them were too unreal (I think budget constraints contributed to these choices). Sometimes it was all too deliberate. I didn’t really get the need for the modern day bookmarking. Walter and Oliver couldn’t be held accountable for the acts of the rest of the family, as the text acknowledged. I suppose Poliakoff was trying to make a point about British attitudes to the war and the stories we tell about it, but it didn’t add much. The mother’s behaviour was a better metaphor for Britain at the time of the war, if you accept the dominant British narrative about our part in WW2, which I suppose I do. I also liked that her actions balanced out the huge focus on Anne’s relationship with her father and his betrayal of his adopted daughter. Although, of course, the rest of the family toed his line. The themes of family/belonging/not-belonging were there, with a touch of looking at class. Anne is the adopted daughter of Sir Alexander Keys, MP, who went on to have two children after she came along. She’s an actress (who can be put down as hysterical and flighty when she notices that bad and unusual things are happening) and later learns that her parents were Gypsies (if this was the truth) which groups her with the people the Nazis were trying to eliminate – not that Britain was fully cognisant of that at the time, but in the eyes of the modern viewer. In the film, the point is that she isn’t on the side of the conspiracy and isn't willing for lives to be taken because of it.
And it's a feast for the eyes. The locations and the costumes were gorgeous - Garai in yellow, blue and red, particularly a long red gown popped out.
However, I desperately want an icon/icons of people from something that I love being happy/amused/laughing. Since I started watching it, I’ve wished there were more The Mindy Project icons out there to pick from. I don’t understand why there are so few: it’s a colourful show with far from ugly people pulling funny faces. I know it hasn’t been massive in fandom, but still.
Anyway, if anyone would like to rec icon makers who they love, please do so!
I caught up on the penultimate episode of Top of the Lake on Friday, but last night sat down to watch Glorious 39 on DVD, mistimed it and didn’t watch the final episode of TotL. I will watch it when I get the time and nerve (I’m more worried about being spoiled offline) and post about both episodes.
As for Glorious 39
Very good in parts (in others, I wish like I did with Dancing on the Edge, that someone would take Poliakoff aside and say ‘No, don’t do that’). Certainly worth seeing for Romola Garai’s performance, which was barnstorming, starting with speaking eyes as Anne almost doesn't notice the threat to her gilded youth and privilege, then being put under more and more strain until the crunch.
I sat down thinking of whether there'd be connections with Dancing on the Edge, and I wonder if Poliakoff ever imagined some of the characters crossing paths. There are certainly similar themes and concerns and a few similar types.
Actually it was all the connections between Britain’s luvvies that I couldn’t help noticing: you have an Emma (Garai) facing off against a Mr Knightley (Northam – typecast as a spy here, and I don’t know when ‘spook’ came to be used to mean ‘spy’, but I’m fairly sure the character of Celia referring to Balcom repeatedly as ‘spooky’ was intended to resonate. Furthermore, through Cypher, which plays off that typecasting as one of the James Bonds that weren’t, Northam acts against Lucy Liu, who plays Watson opposite Jonny Lee Curtis’s Holmes, and he was Romola Garai’s Mr Knightley.) At less of a stretch, the fact that Nighy played Garai’s father in I Capture the Castle too added tenderness to their scenes. And then there was the irony of Hugh Bonneville turning up as an actor who bemoaned not having his own chauffeur-driven Rolls and was in the scene where the heroine was informed that the country was at war (WW2) and I am so sure he carried that with him for the end of Downton’s first season. In which Charlie Cox also appeared.
All that is not the point of the film, by the by, which is about Anne (Garai) discovering a conspiracy to try to avert the outbreak of World War 2 close to home. Poliakoff packed in a lot, in this different look at the period to the usual narratives – making the most of what he’d discovered in research. Everyone is acting weirdly because Anne is unravelling a conspiracy, but also because of the times that they were living in. Privileged youth are suddenly finding out that being on a war footing means, like those who remembred the great war, different restrictions. The sequence involving putting down animals brought to life something I haven’t really come across in WW2 literature/filmography before, and it was powerful, disturbing and different, before leading to the final run, which is a lot more conventional, as Our Heroine is drugged and captive, realising that they’re (nearly) all in it.
Some of his stylistic tics worked, some of them were too unreal (I think budget constraints contributed to these choices). Sometimes it was all too deliberate. I didn’t really get the need for the modern day bookmarking. Walter and Oliver couldn’t be held accountable for the acts of the rest of the family, as the text acknowledged. I suppose Poliakoff was trying to make a point about British attitudes to the war and the stories we tell about it, but it didn’t add much. The mother’s behaviour was a better metaphor for Britain at the time of the war, if you accept the dominant British narrative about our part in WW2, which I suppose I do. I also liked that her actions balanced out the huge focus on Anne’s relationship with her father and his betrayal of his adopted daughter. Although, of course, the rest of the family toed his line. The themes of family/belonging/not-belonging were there, with a touch of looking at class. Anne is the adopted daughter of Sir Alexander Keys, MP, who went on to have two children after she came along. She’s an actress (who can be put down as hysterical and flighty when she notices that bad and unusual things are happening) and later learns that her parents were Gypsies (if this was the truth) which groups her with the people the Nazis were trying to eliminate – not that Britain was fully cognisant of that at the time, but in the eyes of the modern viewer. In the film, the point is that she isn’t on the side of the conspiracy and isn't willing for lives to be taken because of it.
And it's a feast for the eyes. The locations and the costumes were gorgeous - Garai in yellow, blue and red, particularly a long red gown popped out.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-18 06:56 pm (UTC)Yes, I felt much the same about "Dancing On The Edge". Bit disappointed in that one actually. The promotional material made it sound like such a good idea, but in the event, rather than being about a black jazz band in white Britain, it wound up being about white people who just happened to meet a jazz band once. It also suffered from that dreadful trope where white people teach black people how to fight racism. Terrific performances though, particularly from Chiwetel Ejiofor and Tony Head. Great soundtrack, too.
Have you seen much of Poliakoff's earlier stuff? I found I got annoyed with him far less back then. "Perfect Strangers" is terrific, and I love "Caught On A Train". Nice atmospheric piece from back in the days when the BBC still did one off plays, that actually looked like plays, rather than films.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-19 07:00 am (UTC)I've bought the soundtrack, although I think many of the songs work better in the context of the show.
I haven't seen anything else by Poliakoff. What I heard of them didn't appeal and I'd got a nebulous impression that his work wasn't my going to be my cup of tea.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-19 10:51 pm (UTC)Poliakoff does have a very distinct style, and I can understand it not being your thing. He favours the slow and ponderous, and he does tend to set his productions amongst a certain elite, or class. He likes people in expensive clothing, and in expensive, sumptuous surroundings. I've enjoyed his stuff a lot in days gone by, but his recent productions just don't seem as good.