At the movies

June 23, 2020

Counteracting prejudice with movies

I saw this tweet late this afternoon and read the little article behind it…

… and it has made me feel completely sick! That comment about Jews, I will not repeat it here (don’t want those words on my blog) but I didn’t understand it at first. I’d never heard it before so I stared at it for a few seconds. Then it dawned on me what it was supposed to signify and I felt a punch in the gut, tears springing to my eyes. I literally couldn’t believe that such a cruel term existed! How disrespectful and hateful can someone be? How can anyone refer to survivors of the Holocaust like that? I just cannot wrap my head around such an awful comment. Ever since that antisemitic rant of that actor (he is also not worth mentioning) I have cringed at his name. Being drunk doesn’t excuse racist behaviour, it just exposes what is ingrained in a person. And that comment about gay people… wow… how can such a thing be said, even in jest?!?

Just before I read that I also read today (thank you Guylty for premiering the news for me!) that Richard Armitage will be making an LGBTQ+ movie called “Now and Then”. The article says it’s about: “Laura, in her 60s and Chris, her gay, middle-aged son, are forced to undertake an exploration of their past mistakes and regrets to try and make sense of their present condition and their relationship with each other. To find peace with now, it’s necessary for them to make peace with then.” Richard says it’s a role that resonates strongly with him (I would love to hear him speak more about that) and it sounds like a story with great potential. I’m really excited for this one!

We need movies like that to counteract the prejudice voiced by people like in the article above. We need more movies about antisemitism (that are not solely related to the Holocaust). Gregory Peck once made a good one in 1947 called Gentleman’s Agreement that may be a bit dated, yet still rings true today. It’s about a journalist who has to write a piece about antisemitism and to do so poses as a Jewish man for a few months…

In more recent years, we’ve also been getting some really good LGBTQ movies that have made it big, like the Moonlight movie last year that I loved about a young black man struggling with being gay, told during three key times in his life…

… and The Imitation Game about World War II code breaker Alan Turing who had experienced the necessity and cruelty of hiding that he was gay…

… and the movie Colin Firth made a decade ago called A Single Man about a college professor in 1962 wanting to kill himself after his boyfriend dies.

For Colin, this meant his first Oscar nomination and a turning point in his career when finally much better roles started coming his way again. I hope something like this will happen for Richard too, that this will be the door opening to other and better roles for him as well. Most importantly, though, this movie is a great thing in the fight against prejudice! The arts are so important…

June 4, 2020

Fictional crush challenge addendum

I just finished my 10 days, 10 fictional crushes challenge yesterday but as I am someone who develops crushes all the time, I decided on a bonus edition. So, here are some images of other fictional crushes that I’ve had that didn’t make it into the 10 days. This time I’m sticking to few or no explanations, as was originally intended.

Let me start with a daddy crush on Charles Ingalls/Pa (Michael Landon) in Little House on the Prairie…

Gilbert Blythe (Jonathan Crombie) from Anne of Green Gables from when I was a teen.

I also really like Anne with an E‘s Gilbert (Lucas Zumann)…

…but he’s the age of my son, so it’s more like a mommy-crush. I keep on wanting to take care of him because he is an orphan and I keep on wanting him to be happy with his girl. I made a ton of Anne with an E (and Gilbert) videos, viewable here.

Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck) in Roman Holiday…

James McKay (also Gregory Peck) in The Big Country...

Captain Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck) in The Guns of Navarone…

Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Andrews) in Brideshead Revisited…

Sir Percy Blakeney (also Anthony Andrews) in The Scarlet Pimpernel…

Don Pedro (Denzel Washington) in Much Ado About Nothing. Beatrice should have accepted him…

Harry Kennedy (Richard Armitage) in The Vicar of Dibley…

John Porter (Richard Armitage) in Strike Back….

Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) in The Hobbit…

Neo (Keanu Reeves) in The Matrix…

Alex Wyler (also Keanu Reeves) in The Lake House…

Remington Steele (baby Pierce Brosnan) in the 1980s tv show of the same name…

Daniel Rafferty (Pierce Brosnan) in Laws of Attraction. For me, sexier than James Bond…

I made a couple of Pierce Brosnan videos for Remington Steele, Laws of Attraction and Love is all you need, to be seen here if you’re so inclined.

Not normally a Mr. Bingley fan but I love this Mr. Bingley (Naveen Andrews) for this scene in Bride and Prejudice. I can’t tell you how often I have seen this clip. This is the sexiest Bingley I know.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) from the Thor Avengers movies.

Doctor Lucien Blake (Craig McLachlan) from The Doctor Blake Mysteries. This is the only one on the list where I’m not so fond of the actor himself but I do really like the character and he does a great job bringing that character to life.

And finally, Sebastian Lacroix, or Bash, (Dalmar Abuzeid) from Anne with an E…

OK, now this really is it and I am finally, truly ending this challenge. These were the honorary mentions; I’m probably missing a few more but it should still be enough.

June 2, 2020

One Zoom to rule them all!

I’m avoiding the news this morning (so, also social media, but will check in with all that later today. It’s too disheartening these days to try and catch up with that before breakfast and now I need to work). However, a bit of entertainment news did come through, thanks to my tiny friend I mentioned in my Aragorn crush post yesterday. She mentioned to me that this had just happened:

A Lord of the Rings cast reunion on Zoom! Apparently, Josh Gad did this. I don’t know how it came to be, but I’m so excited that this happened! I’ve only seen the beginning of the video as I need to work now, so I took this screenshot towards the end of the video because I wanted to see who would be in it. I know, spoils the surprise, but I was too curious. And yes, most of the principal players are there…

This has been online since Sunday and already has 1,8 million views. I have to get on with work now but I can’t wait to become the next number in that viewing statistic. I need to watch this. Maybe I’ll ditch work for an hour after my 1 pm meeting ends. Why oh why does work have to interfere with fangirling?

June 1, 2020

Fictional crush challenge – day 8

10 days, 10 fictional crushes
Post an image of a fictional character who has been or still is your crush. No names or explanations needed. TV, movie, book, comic, cartoon characters are valid.

Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) from The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. I’m not really a fantasy reader or fan but Mr. Esther loved the Rings trilogy books by Tolkien so convinced me to try the first movie The Fellowship of the Ring back in 2001. I went to the cinema with trepidation and yep, in the end I fell for it, head over heels, and for Aragorn specifically. I pestered Mr. Esther to tell me what would happen next in the story but he told me to wait for the next movie in a year’s time or to read the trilogy. So, I read the trilogy and the love for Aragorn deepened.

I feverishly awaited and then saw the final two movies when they came out and we bought the extended edition dvd’s as they came out as well. In the fall of 2004 I travelled to Boston to see an exhibition with props from the film (and meet face to face for the first time some friends I had made online via a parenting forum). No pictures from inside the exhibition, but this is my tiny friend with me outside the Boston Museum of Science while the third friend takes the picture. I still adore these two women to this day. It’s also quite lucky this fan crush post is scheduled for today, as today is also my tiny friend’s birthday and she was the biggest Viggo Mortensen fan of the three of us. 🙂

I even still have a few Aragorn fan items in my possession, like the action figure Aragorn that stands next to a Thorin Oakenshield (from The Hobbit) action figure in my bedroom and an Aragorn fridge magnet my tiny friend once sent me.

I really like The Hobbit and thought my fave Richard Armitage made an excellent Thorin Oakenshield but I never crushed as hard on the Thorin character as I did on the Aragorn character. I never loved The Hobbit trilogy quite as much as I did The Lord of the Rings trilogy either but even so I still love all these films and I’ve enjoyed the books. I am forever grateful to Mr. Esther for introducing me to the wonderful world of Middle Earth and to Aragorn in particular.

May 31, 2020

Fictional crush challenge – day 7

10 days, 10 fictional crushes
Post an image of a fictional character who has been or still is your crush. No names or explanations needed. TV, movie, book, comic, cartoon characters are valid.

Mr. Darcy (Colin Firth). I already loved Jane Austen’s most famous novel so when this was coming to BBC TV in the autumn of 1995 I was more than ready to watch it. I had only ever watched an old Pride and Prejudice with Laurence Olivier, which I wasn’t too fond of (Olivier was fine, just didn’t like the adaptation so much). I wasn’t prepared for the fierceness of love I felt for this 1995 TV series and for Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in particular. I can’t tell you how often I have re-watched (parts of) this adaptation over and over again. And yes, I was tickled pink when Firth reprised the character in modern times as Mark Darcy in the Bridget Jones‘s Diary movies.

No other Darcy was able to come close to Colin Firth’s portrayal of the character (nope, not even Matthew Macfadyen – he felt more like a Brontë character to me in P&P 2005 than a Mr. Darcy). I even have a Mr. Darcy pillow…

… and yes, I completely admit to being one of those thousands (or millions?) of women who have swooned over the actor and the character. No one can top Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy for me, ever.