RBOC: Emerging from the chaos edition (and obsession update)

Finished lecturing for the week today at two (students much more engaged today, thankfully). Three hours of stupor afterwards as I stare dumbly at my desk, the ordering of which has been neglected due to the holidays, the beginning of term, and the premiere of Spooks 9. Slowly getting the urge to put stuff in order and the gradually abating piles of stuff on the desktop calm me, so I will attempt to sort out the Armitage debris accumulating in my mind here and hope it has a similar effect.

Kath (Shirley Henderson) and Steven (Richard Armitage) in Frozen, as Kath gets Steven to help her view the pilfered security videotape with her sister’s image on it. Source: Richard Armitage Central Gallery. Look how clean Steven’s desk is in this cap; nothing like mine. This allows Kath to find the evidence of her sister’s relationship with him very easily later. I’m sure there’s more than one piece of incriminating evidence in my office, but good luck ever finding it!

Armitage watching since September 6:

• Saw Malice Aforethought for the first time and just loved it! For pronunciation mavens, the diphthongs in Mr. Armitage’s long “o” vowels are so pronounced that they occasionally sound like long “a”s. He says “gaying” instead of “going.” Fantastic. Will have more to say. Armitage makes Bill Chatford so deliciously evil.
• Read Dawn French’s autobiography, Dear Fatty. Delightful. She says she developed a real crush on Mr. Armitage. Can’t imagine why. She also includes him in a long list of “liptastic moments” and describes him as “shy, giggling, loving” as a kisser. In fact, the exact opposite of how Bill Chatford would osculate. Aside from that information, though, what I absolutely love about this book is her fearlessness and brutal honesty all the way through the narrative — something I’d like to emulate — which is what saves the rougher moments of her focus on the comedic from being mean, or rather, she puts herself under the same lens that she uses for everyone else. Wonderful summary review here, though keep in mind at the date of that writing Ms. French was still married to her husband (as of this writing they have separated with plans for a divorce).
• Finally unpacked and watched DVD of Frozen. Intriguing film (as you can guess, I greatly enjoyed the “what is real?” elements of the plot), and very visually appealing, all of those long shots of northern landscapes. Strong performances all round; I only remember having seen Shirley Henderson in Harry Potter (Moaning Myrtle, which is blatant typecasting) and The Way We Live Now (Marie Melmotte, a truly repellent role because of the blatant antisemitism in the original book and the series’ largely unironic stance toward it); I note from her imdb page that she’s been in a lot of other stuff I’ve seen but I don’t remember her at all), and like her better here than in either of those roles; love Roshan Seth in a very troubling role, here, too. Obviously, Steven was not a huge role, but I can see what the attraction would have been here; once again, it’s “who is this person really?” Although I feel that Armitage overplays the shifty eye movements in the scene where Kath asks him whether he knew her sister (at 0:55 here), I can see why — the script doesn’t send us in that direction by any other means, and the discovery of his lie later would thus have been highly implausible for the viewer. I love films that show rather than telling, but this one, which is heavily reliant on pictures and otherwise narratively laconic, needs the tension created by our curiosity about what exactly he is hiding in order to sustain our attention to the end. He makes it up to us in that shattering scene where he tries without success to speak to Kath through the mail slot of her house door.
• Several more watches of all of Spooks 8. Notified that the DVDs have been sent from Great Britain, so awaiting them although I’ve heard from commentators that the extras are disappointing.
• Ordered Peter Ackroyd’s Blake biography, which arrived today. Took this step mostly because RAFrenzy did. (In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve kind of imprinted on her. Girl crush!) Hated Blake in college, leafing through the book has me hoping there is a larger purpose here. Is Mr. Armitage rehabilitating my rather philistine attitude toward certain classics in British literature? I’m really rather a curmudgeon in this regard. I like what I like. Stay tuned.
• Rumors about Mr. Armitage’s potential role in Captain America abound. I find myself basically neutral to slightly skeptical about this as a career step — except maybe as a networking opportunity. However, if Mr. Armitage really wants to play a villain, and speaking of classic works of the English canon that I DO like, I read an intriguing report that Paradise Lost is to be filmed soon. I would LOVE to see Mr. Armitage as Lucifer. I’d definitely cast him. He could also play Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust if he wanted to. Could be breathtaking. Quasi-Nazi gangsters with thick fake German accents, eat your hearts out. Nobody’s as evil as the Prince of Darkness. He could also play Faust, that would be fine with me. I’m sure he could learn the German quickly enough. Lots easier than Russian. Somehow I suspect this is going nowhere. But it would be great. So many great titles for blog entires: “Justifying G-d’s Ways To Man: Armitage Theologus” (about the work of dogmatic theology Mr. Armitage will write after taking the role — wouldn’t that be great?) or “Service: Standing, or Waiting?” (about the annoyances of holding still for makeup).
• Talked the person who infected me with Armitagemania in the first place into sending my spare postcard to the Bring North & South to Masterpiece campaign. This was actually a funny conversation, will probably blog about it separately later. It’s not too late to join your voice to ours; click link above if you’re interested for more details. All postcards now gone from my desk.
• Spent a lot of time thinking about the implications of the portrait of Armitage in last week’s Sunday Times, but have still read very little of the Spooks 9 series opener publicity because every time I have so far I’ve learned something I wish I didn’t know.
• Learned how to use Handbrake and iMovie to create and edit cuts from Mr. Armitage’s work. This is fantastic — will be able to create my own illustrations of points in acting posts. This should make writing them a great deal more fun. Also learned how to use iMovie to voice over video — this could also be potentially useful.
• With help of fellow Armitagemaniac who shall remain nameless, learned what BitTorrent is and DLed Spooks 9.1. Now taking responsibility for my own illegal filesharing. After recording my initial reactions, there are two bits that I just can’t stop watching. Also had what I think is my first explicit sex dream ever involving Lucas North (till now these have been dreams involving cuddling / comfort, except for one where I dreamt I was Lucas North); is this a sign that the character has taken a decisive maturing step in 9.1 from wounded animal to whole personality? Reminder to any commentators not to discuss 9.1 plot elements in the comments — keep your responses vague. Is Lucas grown up enough to participate actively in my sex dreams yet?
• Having mastered Radio Downloader, again thanks to RAFrenzy, now have own copies of Symphony of a City and interviews on the Greg James Show and Loose Ends. For some reason can’t bring myself to relisten to Symphony again, but will do so soon as I have a related post in mind.
• Finally uploaded all of Convenient Marriage to my computer and hope to listen to it during upcoming grading / editing marathon.
• Why does so much of this list read as if I’m in an entry-level course on software for media uses?
• On one especially bad day, a greedy gulping of The Impressionists, episode 1. Needed the colors, the smiles, the panoply of expressions on Monet’s face.
• As far as back story goes, I am now up to Spooks 2.8. I have to say that these early scripts are excellent –2.5, the EERIE training exercise, being a case in point– but I find Matthew MacFadyen’s performances alternately tedious and underwhelming. I apologize to any of his fans who are reading here. Please feel free to mobilize the comments to alert me to things I have missed. Seriously. I’d like to know what people see in him. Perhaps it’s that the Tom Quinn character is written poorly. Relieved I only have four more episodes with him to watch.
• And on early Spooks, and the Sarah Caulfield anti-Americanism issue, and on Malice Aforethought, I finally figured out that Megan Dodds is actually American! I didn’t realize at first that Christine Dale and Madeleine Cranmere were played by the same actress, but I found her English voice in Malice completely convincing (didn’t notice she was American), while I heard Christine saying some stuff that made her sound British. I think I placed Christine as a northern Californian and gave Ms. Dodds as Christine a 95% on the American accent. That’s a disturbing error on my part! Well, Dodds is a Californian, anyway. Does she sound English to actual English people? BTW I think the scripting of Christine Dale is a lot more coherent than that of Sarah Caulfield.
• Way behind on reading fanfic, and a lot of what I am reading at the moment is behind a password, but wanted to note that khandy updated her John Porter fic, Absolution, this week.
• Angie has turned a joke Ann Marie and I made about sl–h fic into a new genre: sloth fic. Explanation here. Examples here. I love this stuff. I really giggled hard reading both of these. And I have never even eaten a boiled peanut myself.
• This is the fanvid I am now watching compulsively. I even bought the music to it today. That I could pay money for a Lady G*g* CD frightens me a great deal; I do not subscribe to “baby when it’s love if it’s not rough it isn’t fun” and I do not want to list her among my collateral attractions, though recently she’s attracted the attention of my beloved New Yorker and I know people who think she’s a real artist and not just a master of pastiche. But the video is so great: delicateblossom captures and retimes so many of Mr. Armitage’s best moments in RH so that we can look at them closely, all with that relentlessly simple drum track underneath them and the vaguely melancholic refrain with the tag that drives us back to the verses. Beautiful video to a song that I reluctantly must admit I find addictive.
• And I should mention, since it’s noteworthy, that I celebrated three religious holidays with little to no interference from Armitagemania. It’s just so hard to imagine him in that setting that even my rather forceful powers of imagination become shaky. It’s good to know that there are places where thoughts of him can’t go with me (the other one being the lecture room of the university I visited this summer to hear a long academic lecture in German. I could imagine him in the room, but figured he’d be restless and thus I liberated him in my mind to go sit in a café. But my imagination couldn’t even get him in the door of a synagogue. Don’t know why, since Harry Kennedy married a vicar, but all in all, I see this incapacity on my part as a good thing).

~ by Servetus on September 24, 2010.