today is a wednesday, i hope

[calapine]

• "A very annoying idea has grown up that Hammer films were always made tongue-in-cheek, that they almost defined camp, in fact the opposite is the case, in the early days at least," says Mark Gatiss. QUITE. Ahem.
  
  Very much enjoyed the first episode of A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss, which focuses on Universal, its iconic monsters, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney, and there's a lovely section on James Whale, plus stuff right through to the end of the forties that was all shiny and new to me, but the second episode just makes me GIDDY WITH DELIGHT for lo, it's moved on to my most beloved of film eras, the Hammer horror films of the fifties and sixties - with a couple of detours to Roger Corman's work and Amicus - and mostly it is a (not uncritical) love letter to these splendid movies: the writing, the music, the cinematography, the glorious colour and gratuitous gore, the actors, and, naturally, this means lots of loveliness about that sublime chap, Peter Cushing. There's a clip of Cushing and Vincent Prince being interviewed together that is most happy-making, and a gorgeous, gorgeous bit with Gatiss detailing why Cushing's his favourite Hammer actor which put an utterly ridiculous grin on my face. Tis marvellous stuff.
  
  
• Have preordered Dragon Age 2 in order to save money, because I know I will be buying every stupid add-on there is and at the moment there's an Exciting Offer on for preorders. Curse Bioware and its shiny gaming ways. Still saving the last DLC for Dragon Age because otherwise the Warden story will be OVER and there will be NOTHING NEW unless I really wanted to romance Zevran, which I don't.
  
  
• The current Government is evil, and thanks to it I'm not allowing myself to watch the news at the moment because I generally end up having what one could probably accurately describe as "a tantrum." One of the many ways in which they are evil is their atrocious plans to deprive the BBC of monies. I love the BBC. It is one of the very few things that make me feel vaguely patriotic in a British way. (The other biggie is the NHS.) Here is a lovely, lovely song about how lovely the BBC is. How lovely is it? Very fucking lovely.