Celebrating the white collar

I’m not talking of the TV show White Collar from some years ago with Matt Bomer and Tim DeKay that I really enjoyed at the time…

… I’m talking about this following kind that my dad also used to wear when he used to occasionally perform church services. In younger years it was like a white tie while I mostly remember him in later years (as a guest preacher) when he wore an actual white collar.

I never really thought of the collar as very sexy, until Father Ralph de Bricassart (Richard Chamberlain) from The Thornbirds…

And I’m not alone. Apparently Harry Kennedy in The Vicar of Dibley finds white collars very sexy too! Yes, I made gifs…

In these gifs it looks like he’s actually wearing one himself. Premonition for what was yet to come with The Man From Rome project that has started filming in Seville?

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Richard Armitage (@richardcarmitage)

The beginning of the book The Seville Communion describes Richard’s character Lorenzo Quart like this:

“At the beginning of May, Lorenzo Quart received the order that would take him to Seville. An area of low pressure was moving towards the eastern Mediterranean and that morning it was raining on St. Peter’s Square, so Quart had to skirt the square, taking shelter under Bernini’s colonnade. As he walked up to the Portone di Bronzo, he saw the sentry standing with his halberd in the gloomy marble-and-granite corridor and preparing to ask for his identification. The man, tall and strong with a crew cut, was wearing the red, yellow, and blue-striped Renaissance uniform and black beret of the Swiss Guard. He stared at Quart’s well-cut suit, matching black silk shirt with a Roman collar, and his fine, handmade leather shoes. Definitely not, the guard seemed to be thinking, one of the grey bagarozzi – the officials of the complex Vatican bureaucracy who passed through every day. But neither was the visitor a high-ranking member of the Curia, a prelate or monsignor. They wore a cross, a purple trim or a ring at the very least, and they definitely didn’t arrive on foot in the rain. They entered the Vatican palace by another gate, St. Anne’s, in comfortable chauffeur-driven cars. Anyway, despite grey hair cut short like a soldier’s, the man looked too young to be a prelate. He stood politely before the guard and searched amongst the various credit cards in his wallet for his ID card. Very tall, slim, sure of himself, he looked calmly at the guard. His nails were well kept, and he wore an elegant watch and simple silver cufflinks. He couldn’t have been over forty.“

RA Bulgaria on Twitter found the following picture of Richard Armitage as Quart, filming today in Seville…

And there it is in that picture, the white Roman collar on Richard that I’ve been looking forward to! Can’t wait to see more and better images of him wearing it. You can also see a hint of Quart’s shiny “fine, handmade leather” black shoes and the trousers look like they could be part of a “well-cut suit”. We can also see a bit grey in his hair, just as we have also seen in Richard’s birthday video from a month and a half ago…

So, yes, I’ve got to agree with Harry Kennedy here: “There’s something quite sexy about that white collar thing…” and the grey hair… and the black clothes… I know little about the story (I really should start reading the book beyond that first page) but I am so looking forward to seeing more of this white collar look!

Marry Me – 7 fantasy husbands

Nell participated in a challenge on her blog to name 7 fictional characters that she would marry on the spot (this is originally a challenge from another German blogger). I’m always one to fantasize, so I figured I’d just jump in and join the challenge as well.

The rule is that it’s all about the character and not about the actor who portrays him (all men, in my case). I know actors of course do influence my choice because favourite characters lead to favourite actors for me and vice versa. So, actors can not be completely ignored and characters played by my favourite actors are naturally on this list. 🙂

OK, on to the challenge: which 7 fictional characters am I so in love with that I could marry them?

1. I just had to pick a character portrayed by Richard Armitage and I considered Harry Kennedy from The Vicar of Dibley because he just feels so familiar, like I could know him in real life, or John Porter from Strike Back, a tough guy who can think for himself, but in the end I would just go for John Thornton. Ah, the way he and I could change the world together! And he sure can kiss…

2. Nell mentioned Joe Bradley, the reporter in Roman Holiday (as portrayed by Gregory Peck) and I thought I’d pick him too but then I thought of a few other characters Peck played who I wouldn’t mind marrying either. James McKay in The Big Country springs to mind, the quiet Easterner in the Wild West who has such moral fibre and is made of sterner stuff than most people think, and of course Atticus Finch who, in a way, reminds me a bit of my own father. I’ll just go with the Oedipus complex choice and pick Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird. He’d be a good daddy to my children too.

3. Prince Edward (Richard Chamberlain) in the Cinderella movie The Slipper and the Rose because he was the first character that touched my romantic childhood heart.

4. Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) from The Mentalist because life would never be boring with him around and you know how deeply he can love once he lets you in.

5. Amenadiel (D.B. Woodside) from Lucifer because who wouldn’t want a fierce looking but soft hearted angel at your side to fight for you?

6. Mark Darcy from Bridget Jones’s Diary. Yes, he’s uptight, but underneath all of that… woof! And he’s smart too, changing the world one high profile human rights law case at a time.

7. Captain Frederick Wentworth (embodied most perfectly by Ciaran Hinds) from Persuasion, a self-made man with a faithful heart and I would get to travel the world with him aboard his ship.

Compiling this list, I chose the characters that popped up in my mind quickest and another one of them was John Keating (so brilliantly portrayed by Robin Williams) from Dead Poets Society, so he gets an honourable mention.

I know that makes it technically eight men I would marry and if I think a little longer I could probably think of 10 more (ooh, maybe hotshot lawyer Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) from Suits or honourable FBI agent Jack Hudson (Yannick Bisson) from Sue Thomas F.B.Eye or even Charles Ingalls (Michael Landon) from Little House on the Prairie) but I’ll just leave it at this.

Fictional crush challenge – day 1

Zee and Nokisuu are doing a daily challenge and I’ve gotta say, I’ve been tempted as well, so I’ve decided to jump in. The challenge is as follows:

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.

I wasn’t sure I would have 10 good crushes but once I started listing them for myself yesterday evening, I found it isn’t that hard after all! I decided to tackle these 10 fictional crushes chronologically, starting with the first crush I remember having. I could possibly even do a list of 20 as well, at least three of which would be characters portrayed by Richard Armitage and another three would be Gregory Peck ones. I will stick with just one fictional character per actor, though (all my crushes are movie/TV ones, some based on literature), and I start this challenge today with a character portrayed by another Richard…

That’s Prince Edward (Richard Chamberlain) in The Slipper and the Rose from 1976.

To all the Catholic priests I’ve known before…

News this morning (yesterday morning by the time I publish this) is that Richard Armitage has a new role coming up…

What the what?? #RichardArmitage in 'The Seville Communion/The Man from Rome' accd'g to IMDb: https://t.co/zuirnvn6A7 pic.twitter.com/6npQFDbYaC

— Chrissyinwm (@chrissyinwm) January 17, 2019

… and I really like the sound of this. Finally an Armitage project for me to get excited about! He’s going to be playing a Catholic priest, “handsome Father Quart”, who solves mysteries. I know nothing of this story or this character but I am curious and I am quite partial to priests. In fact, priests have been on my mind recently, ever since Herba blogged about “The Thorn Birds syndrome” on her blog last week. It’s as if she felt some priest-announcement in the air. 😉

Due to my father’s work, we were friends with a lot of religious people. We grew up around nuns, we were friends with rabbis and priests. One of our favourite people was a Dutch Melkite (Greek Catholic order) priest who lived on top of a mountain in the Lower Galilee in Israel. Father Jacob, but we called him Uncle Jacob, was like a granddad to us and we visited him and his tiny community regularly. He had this beautiful little chapel hewn into the rock which I think still may be my favourite chapel ever…

Until we saw The Thorn Birds in the early 1980s I had never thought of priests as sexy, but then Richard Chamberlain was on the screen as Father Ralph de Bricassart and we loved it. I think my mum even had a bit of a crush on Father Ralph, I had the same crush. Can you blame us? Just look!

Now that’s a handsome and sexy priest. Will Richard be anything like that as Father Quart? I wouldn’t mind! By the way, not only Richard Chamberlain was sexy in this, I quite liked Christopher Plummer as a cardinal as well.

And my fave actor during my teens, Gregory Peck, has also played priests. It’s been ages since I’ve seen him in Keys of the Kingdom from 1944, one of his first starring roles, where he plays a priest that starts a mission in China. Even though he ages to an old man in the movie, he really is baby-Gregory as a priest. Very cute. 🙂

In the 1980s I also saw him in The Scarlet and the Black, a TV miniseries where he plays a Monsignor at the Vatican who hides POW’s during WWII. That too I haven’t seen in ages… In that one Christopher Plummer was a Nazi Commander, by the way.

Another priest I remember seeing in a movie was Bing Crosby in The Bells of St. Mary’s. I never was much of a Bing Crosby fan, I saw this movie for Ingrid Bergman, whom I do love. In the last picture of this group, they’re petting a kitten. Awww!

There was some comedy in St Mary’s and another movie about a priest (and a rabbi) that had some light-heartedness to it was a faith and romantic comedy called Keeping the Faith, starring Edward Norton, Ben Stiller and Jenna Elfman. I actually saw Keeping the Faith again recently and yeah, I still like it. Edward Norton looks very nice in a collar.

From comedy to darkness and Max von Sydow as a priest in The Exorcist. I have only ever seen that movie once (not my genre) and also barely remember it, but I do remember thinking that Von Sydow was good.

Another priest I liked was Jeremy Irons in The Mission, which I saw in the cinema in the 1980s, but also haven’t seen since, I don’t think. In class, in high school, we had to write a poem about a picture and I even wrote a poem about this one from that movie…

I wonder if I still have that poem somewhere, I remember writing it before I had even seen the movie, I just liked the image so much. That movie also starred Robert DeNiro and Liam Neeson as priests…

THE MISSION, Jeremy Irons, Robert De Niro, Bercelio Moya, 1986, (c) Warner Brothers

… and Liam Neeson as priest reminded me of a movie called Silence that I saw two years ago, which impressed me. Besides Neeson, it mostly starred Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield and also briefly Ciaran Hinds. Ciaran looks very dashing as a priest, I have to say.

That movie was a little grimy and gritty, just like Pilgrimage was, in which Richard killed priests instead of being one…

At least he could already practice with taking Communion…

These are all the Catholic priests that sprung to my mind (I’m sure there must be more but they didn’t pop-up in my head) when I read about Richard’s new role. He’ll be joining this nice line-up of actors before him and  I can hardly wait to see him dressed and act as a priest. He already looks good in a collar (of sorts) after all…

… he’ll be a knock-out in a priest’s robes.

I think I’m going to see if I can track down the book somewhere, my curiosity has been awakened! It feels good to be excited about an Armitage project again. 🙂

Pumpkins

“Mach was mit Kürbissen” (“Do something with pumpkins”) was the latest Herba and Pö challenge and yeah, I got nuthin’! I don’t cook or bake or paint, I don’t know of any pumpkin patches here like they seem to have everywhere in the US, Halloween isn’t a big deal here and I couldn’t think of any pumpkin songs, movies or books… unless it’s Cinderella and her pumpkin that transforms into a carriage, like here in my fave Cinderella movie ever, The Slipper and the Rose. In this movie the fairy godmother (played by brilliant Annette Crosbie) has a little dog who rounds up the pumpkin… Be aware, that this is a 42-year-old pumpkin!

Cinderella (Gemma Craven) gets to sit in the pumpkin that has been transformed magically into a beautiful carriage, with the fairy godmother looking on in delight…

… and then she goes to the ball, where the prince (Richard Chamberlain) falls in love with her (and she with him) at first sight…

… and then they dance in one of the most magical movie dances…

Sorry, getting carried away here… Back to pumpkins. Or rather, the lack of pumpkins. I searched for inspiration and took pictures of pumpkins I saw in my supermarket…

I saw these a week later…

When I visited Suzy from the Silverblueling blog a few weeks ago in and around Düsseldorf, she made a delicious pumpkin soup…

I hope she blogs the recipe for all of you to enjoy as well, it was really good!

And yet with all these pumpkins, I still had no inspiration to create anything pumpkin related myself, except for this rambling pumpkin blog post. The theme however did inspire me to buy this at the flower shop around the corner here…

It has been gracing my living room for the past two weeks now and it looks like it will hold a few more days till Halloween. So, even if I didn’t create much myself for this Mach-was-challenge, thank you for inspiring me to buy this lovely decoration, Pö! 🎃 🎃 🎃