life without a plot

I was planning on updating more regularly once I was done with the ECDL exams, but now I'm sitting here over an entry I've kept adding the occasional half-line to for the last week, and it feels like I've lost the knack of writing completely. Damn.

# Rewatched Casanova, which I actually enjoyed more than the first time, when it took me a while to disentangle David Tennant's Casanova from his Doctor, because the combination of same writer and same lead actor broke the fourth wall a little too much for my taste. There are of course still a lot of elements that turn up again in DW and TW, a lot of Casanova both in the Doctor and Jack, but with more distance from DW it was easier to watch and appreciated the story for itself. It's lovely and tragic and heartbreaking, and while I can't put my finger on it, because neither the story nor the cinematography are ground-breaking or unconventional as such, there's something a bit wild about it that I really liked. What's... I'm not sure if 'odd' is the right word here, but I can't think of a better one, is that even though the second half of the story is depressing and tragic throughout, like with Edith ('That stupid daft man and all his adventures, don‘t burn him!') what lingers in one's mind in spite of everything that followed is the sheer joy of the beginning. (It's the same with Ten, really. For all the angst and pain, what I'll always associate with him even more than that is his joy at travelling and all the possibilities of the universe...)

It also reminded me of what RTD wrote, although in a different context, in The Writer's Tale about how he loved writing liars. From the scene where Casanova first meets Henriette to Edith's lie in the end, when she's taking over the telling of the story, making him believe that Henriette is coming, so that he can die in peace, it's all about stories and pretending and a never-ending back and forth between lies and truth, what the truth really is, and that often it's both this and that, rather than this or that. (In hindsight I wonder if this is where the truth/lie/pretending theme in Jack and Ianto's relationship in CoE came from. Admittedly Fragments would probably have been enough to base this on, but watching Henriette and Casanova, who both lie about their social backgrounds, lying to everyone else, but sometimes not to each other... it's not the same situation, obviously, but something about that did recall Jack and Ianto.)

( cut for quotes )

# Also rewatched Bob and Rose, and much as I love TW and would absolutely watch another season, however unlikely it seems at this point that this is going to happen, I really would like to see something from RTD next where he doesn't feel obliged to write 'big' (or, worse, 'bigger'), but goes back to do doing character studies like that... (Also, Harriet Jones Penelope Wilton! How could I have missed that the first time?)


(# MD next!)


# This is probably my favourite program by Stephane Lambiel since Ne Me Quitte Pas. I really love what he does with the music here, translating it into a visual medium. The Rigoletto is perhaps more of an eye-catcher, but I've always preferred his serious programs.

 

I have to say I was a bit underwhelmed by the Europeans this year, there wasn't anything that really grabbed me except maybe a couple of the pairs' programs, and those only slightly, but Florent Amodio's reaction to winning the gold medal is just adorable. You can't watch that and not grin.

I love the internet. ;)

Hm, I just watched Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet movie, all four hours of it, and now I'm feeling bad for having complained about David Tennant. I think I've simply fallen out of love with the play as such; I'm not really getting anything out of it any longer. There still are a few quieter moments where I can recapture some faint echo of my original love for this film (most notably the graveyard scene), but generally speaking, meh. A bit too shouty sometimes, although OTOH at least it's not crazy!Hamlet all the time, and certainly too grandiose and choreographied, which is a pity, because what Branagh is good at is reducing a story to its purely human components and just letting it play out. The filmed illustrations of text/dialogue are more than a little awkward.

Horatio was the Prime Minister in CoE. He.

It's things like this that make me increasingly wary to make any kind of quality judgement beyond, Yay, I liked that. I loved that film a lot at the time, and now I couldn't honestly say any longer if it's good or crap, or it it's just me who has changed. And I'm probably the only person ever to worry about this kind of stuff. *headdesk*



On that note, something I still haven't got tired of watching yet is Stephane Lambiel's exhibition performance from the Europeans. Except for the enthusiastic Russian commentator being vocally enthusiastic over the first few seconds, but nobody seems to be willing to upload another version that is good quality, not squished into the wrong size or has an obnoxious pink frame. And I didn't think of recording it. But otherwise, wow. 'Speechless' pretty much covers it.

Fantastic. Utterly beautiful. I so do hope un-retirement and the Olympics will work out for him.

*fangirls wildly*

There's chaos all around me, I still don't know whether or not I'll actually be able to move into the new flat on Friday, & consequently am pretty much on the verge of a nervous breakdown, although today is at least better than Friday, when I was pretty much hysterically crying on the phone with my mother for half an hour or so, and there are a million things I should do rather than watching figure skating videos on YouTube, but, damn.

Men's figure skating has become quite boring to watch since he quit.