Rambling on
The iSonnets (tm 
kalypso) are one really nifty app. In addition to a lot of excellent actors (plus some academics like James "his books should be used to hit Oxfordians on the head with" Shapiro) reciting each and everyone of the sonnets, you have the Arden footnotes for all, plus Don Patterson's commentary for all which is immensely entertaining. I may not agree with his interpretations all the time, but I can see where he's coming from every time. (And if you like your Bard more on the gay side of bisexual, Patterson argues the "Shakespeare gay but repressed and guilty about same, hence channelizing sexuality in safe het ways but feeling hostile towards sexual partner for that and being over the top resentful towards Dark Lady" theory.) You can also make your own annotations. As for the actors used, it's a very pleasing mixture of legendary old timers like Patrick Stewart and Sian Phillips to young ones I haven't heard of but will now pay attention to when spotting their names, and because fandom taught me to notice such things, it's a multiracial ensemble. So no sense of tokennism either in terms of gender or ethnically, either. Some of the actors do several sonnets, some only one (like Stephen Fry who went for "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"). You can either click on the actor's face and pick from the sonnets he/she recites, or go to the scan from the original edition, scroll to the sonnet you want and get both the commentary and the performance. In short: love it.
ETA: and how could anyone not when Don Paterson in his commentary to sonnet 18 (recited, btw, by David Tennant) quotes the Klingon original translation?
***
This week's fannish5 demands to know the five most annoying fictional children, and I just can't. Not because I've never been annoyed by fictional children. But if we're talking visual media, then we're talking about real children/teenagers who simply act parts and, well, I'm a Star Trek fan. Wil Wheaton has always taken the whole Wesley Crusher Die Die Die thing in good grace as far as public reactions from him are concerned, but it can't have been easy to go online and read your character oathed to the point of raped-to-death-by-Klingons fic getting written. As for children/teen actors who play children/teens who are actually meant to be hated by the audience, just the other day
katta posted about Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson on Little House on the Prairie, and as she says - Jesus. And then there's the factor that one fan's hated embodiment of irritation is another fan's love (case in point for me: Connor from Angel and Dawn from Buffy), so when I rant about character X, I'm aware others feel the same urge to twitch and defend I do when coming across yet another magazine complaining about Dawn's "whininess" or Connor's existence in the later seasons.
Now, infants and teens from books which have never been filmed don't pose the "real people portray this person" problem. And since several well meaning aunts dumped their share of books on me during my childhood which made me anything but bond with their child characters, there are several candidates which come to mind. But then my twenty years of internet fandom and fanfiction kick in and remind me that it's possible to take each and every one character who in the original source might come across as insufferably perfect to me and invest that person with layers and complicated feelings and make that sense of annoyance go away. So I don't want to pick on them, either.
"Pick on them" is probably the instrumental phrase here, betraying how I feel. I never had the urge to spare the feelings of Bill Adama fans or Eddie Olmos himself in the unlikely event he ever comes across a smidgeon of my ramblings, or Maxim de Winter fans, or Movieverse Loki fans. But, well: Adama's an adult. So is Olmos. (Also I swear I felt enormously guilty for eying young Willie on Caprica with disdain not for anything the poor kid did but for who I thought he'd turn into until it dawned to me what narrative trick Jane E. might be pulling there.) Ditto for the husband of the second Mrs. de Winter. And while Loki clearly won't ever an adult in terms of emotional growth but an eternal 13 years old, he did clock a few centuries, so. (And I swear I have nothing against Tom Hiddleston and look forward to him tackling Hal aka Henry V! I'm even waiting with bated breath at fanfic trying for a universe fusion which happens when an actor popular in one role acts in another and writes that inevitable story of how movieverse Loki got punished by amnesia and ends up as Prince Hal who totally gets to be king.) (After invading another country on a flimsy pretext employing grandiose rethoric.) .... Back to my point, which I think was that complaining about fictional character X annoys me feels somehow like bullying if it's a kid. Search me.
***
Lucy Lawless, I might end up watching Spartacus just for you because I miss you on my tv screen. Here is a great interview with her, apropos using her status for eco protests, in which she comes across as smart, witty and down to earth in every sense of the word, which is familiar for anyone who's been following her during the Xena days.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/792014.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
kalypso) are one really nifty app. In addition to a lot of excellent actors (plus some academics like James "his books should be used to hit Oxfordians on the head with" Shapiro) reciting each and everyone of the sonnets, you have the Arden footnotes for all, plus Don Patterson's commentary for all which is immensely entertaining. I may not agree with his interpretations all the time, but I can see where he's coming from every time. (And if you like your Bard more on the gay side of bisexual, Patterson argues the "Shakespeare gay but repressed and guilty about same, hence channelizing sexuality in safe het ways but feeling hostile towards sexual partner for that and being over the top resentful towards Dark Lady" theory.) You can also make your own annotations. As for the actors used, it's a very pleasing mixture of legendary old timers like Patrick Stewart and Sian Phillips to young ones I haven't heard of but will now pay attention to when spotting their names, and because fandom taught me to notice such things, it's a multiracial ensemble. So no sense of tokennism either in terms of gender or ethnically, either. Some of the actors do several sonnets, some only one (like Stephen Fry who went for "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"). You can either click on the actor's face and pick from the sonnets he/she recites, or go to the scan from the original edition, scroll to the sonnet you want and get both the commentary and the performance. In short: love it.
ETA: and how could anyone not when Don Paterson in his commentary to sonnet 18 (recited, btw, by David Tennant) quotes the Klingon original translation?
***
This week's fannish5 demands to know the five most annoying fictional children, and I just can't. Not because I've never been annoyed by fictional children. But if we're talking visual media, then we're talking about real children/teenagers who simply act parts and, well, I'm a Star Trek fan. Wil Wheaton has always taken the whole Wesley Crusher Die Die Die thing in good grace as far as public reactions from him are concerned, but it can't have been easy to go online and read your character oathed to the point of raped-to-death-by-Klingons fic getting written. As for children/teen actors who play children/teens who are actually meant to be hated by the audience, just the other day
katta posted about Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson on Little House on the Prairie, and as she says - Jesus. And then there's the factor that one fan's hated embodiment of irritation is another fan's love (case in point for me: Connor from Angel and Dawn from Buffy), so when I rant about character X, I'm aware others feel the same urge to twitch and defend I do when coming across yet another magazine complaining about Dawn's "whininess" or Connor's existence in the later seasons.
Now, infants and teens from books which have never been filmed don't pose the "real people portray this person" problem. And since several well meaning aunts dumped their share of books on me during my childhood which made me anything but bond with their child characters, there are several candidates which come to mind. But then my twenty years of internet fandom and fanfiction kick in and remind me that it's possible to take each and every one character who in the original source might come across as insufferably perfect to me and invest that person with layers and complicated feelings and make that sense of annoyance go away. So I don't want to pick on them, either.
"Pick on them" is probably the instrumental phrase here, betraying how I feel. I never had the urge to spare the feelings of Bill Adama fans or Eddie Olmos himself in the unlikely event he ever comes across a smidgeon of my ramblings, or Maxim de Winter fans, or Movieverse Loki fans. But, well: Adama's an adult. So is Olmos. (Also I swear I felt enormously guilty for eying young Willie on Caprica with disdain not for anything the poor kid did but for who I thought he'd turn into until it dawned to me what narrative trick Jane E. might be pulling there.) Ditto for the husband of the second Mrs. de Winter. And while Loki clearly won't ever an adult in terms of emotional growth but an eternal 13 years old, he did clock a few centuries, so. (And I swear I have nothing against Tom Hiddleston and look forward to him tackling Hal aka Henry V! I'm even waiting with bated breath at fanfic trying for a universe fusion which happens when an actor popular in one role acts in another and writes that inevitable story of how movieverse Loki got punished by amnesia and ends up as Prince Hal who totally gets to be king.) (After invading another country on a flimsy pretext employing grandiose rethoric.) .... Back to my point, which I think was that complaining about fictional character X annoys me feels somehow like bullying if it's a kid. Search me.
***
Lucy Lawless, I might end up watching Spartacus just for you because I miss you on my tv screen. Here is a great interview with her, apropos using her status for eco protests, in which she comes across as smart, witty and down to earth in every sense of the word, which is familiar for anyone who's been following her during the Xena days.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/792014.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.