2011 Fannish Roundup

Jan. 2nd, 2012 12:31 am
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I wrote a grand total of two (2) fics this year:

I also created the TRON overview at [livejournal.com profile] crack_van, which, for the record? OW. Tables are hard.
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On nom Illya nom

Oct. 15th, 2009 06:17 pm
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Some days, a girl just needs a melted-and-resolidified Lindor Truffles bar and a little ’sixties hoyay...

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Crime Does Not Pay, but Sometimes Luck’s a Lady

Aug. 24th, 2009 11:32 am
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  • Ah, Friday night at the Film Forum for two helpings of Brit Noir.
      Did William Hartnell ever play a wholly sympathetic character? (As much as I love the First Doctor, he is not a particularly nice person.) If he did, it wasn’t in Hell Drivers (1957), in which he and Patrick McGoohan conspire against ex-con Stanley Baker (seeking redemption for the crime that put him “inside” and condemned little brother David McCallum to a life on crutches) after he learns that they’ve been cheating him and his fellow drivers (who include Sean Connery and Gordon Jackson).

      Before that, I had the pleasure of watching Peter Sellers give a funny, frightening turn as a crooked garage owner whose car thieves’ ring and chop shop steal a brand-new, uninsured Ford Anglia from the wrong lipstick salesman in Never Let Go (1960). If you’ve ever wanted to see Inspector Clouseau administer a serious beatdown, this is your film.

  • I had a good time at the Dreamland Orchestra’s fund-raising gala on Saturday, despite the series of minor meltdowns preceding it: Mystery of the Vanishing Keys; Runaway Bobby Pins; Misadventures with Maquillage, or, the Return of Zombie Girl; and The Most Incompetent Driver in Queens (“Union Street, that’s in Flatbush, right?” “Carroll Gardens. In Brooklyn.”) Also, I won the silent auction for the RockLove jewelry set by placing the only bid.

  • Sunday was my friend Dave’s fiancée Cara’s bridal shower. I’d never been to a shower, since most of my friends are still single and my married cousins tend to live on the opposite side of the country, when they aren’t on entirely different continents. So that was...interesting. I won my table’s centerpiece, a cheerful little plant with yellow flowers in a smiley-face pot. I’ve dubbed it The Comedian.

  • After the shower I went to Film Forum for another Brit Noir double bill.
      First was Gaslight (1940), based on the same play as the version that MGM released four years later. I liked Anton Walbrook (the ballet impresario of The Red Shoes) as the villain and Frank Pettingill as the investigator more than their respective successors, Charles Boyer and Jospeh Cotten, though the hero did have a better motive in the later film. Diana Wynyard was every bit as good as Ingrid Bergman in the role of the tormented wife, and she had a great bit of business with the knife during her final confrontation with her husband.

      The second movie was Hatter’s Castle (1942), a thoroughly deranged story about an ambitious Scottish haberdasher, James Brodie (Robert Newton, AKA “Long John Silver”), with pretensions to a noble lineage, a monopoly on the town’s custom, a saucy mistress, a long-suffering wife, a daughter (Deborah Kerr) who catches the eye of a kindly doctor (James Mason) even though she’s practically sleeping in cinders, a nervous and anemic schoolboy son, and a ridiculous house that is the source of the title. Guess how much of that he has left by the film’s end.

  • A triumphant return to [livejournal.com profile] ljdq! I’m one of 41 who gave the obvious answer to #1; quoted in full on #2; shared credit with four others on #4 (and it was my version quoted); partial quote for #5; and received full credit for quoting They Might Be Giants in response to #6. \o/
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Unexpected!Man from U.N.C.L.E. is unexpected

Aug. 14th, 2009 02:46 am
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The prize in tonight’s round of Spot the Actor at the Film Forum’s Brit Noir series: Leo G. Carroll (A.K.A. Alexander Waverly, the boss of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), whose hound-dog features were nearly unrecognizable behind the massive mustache he sported as a confidential inquiries agent in So Evil My Love (1948), another Victorian potboiler about passion and poison.

The other movie on the bill was The Brothers (1947). It’s about the Macraes and the bonnie lass who was their doom, and it teaches an important lesson: when a mob turns up at your croft on the Isle of Skye inquiring after your younger brother and your maidservant, both missing these past two days, do not respond with “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Especially if you were the clever dick who came up with an execution method involving rope, cork floats, a hat with a fish tied on top, and the local seagulls.
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