Something like a crossroads song (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
charlieblue) wrote2010-06-09 07:21 pm
charlieblue) wrote2010-06-09 07:21 pm
Linkspam + Doctor Who
So I've always kind of loved Keanu Reeves, a love that has been tempered by the constant Keanu!bashing of the internet. Finally, I am vindicated! Keanu is an awesome guy! Keanu has had a very hard life! Basically, Keanu is awesome! And talented, no matter what people say! Exclamation point!
♕ Keanu Internet Meme:
"I had a few friends working special effects jobs on the Matrix movies, he bought all of them f---ing HARLEYS for Christmas during the shoot for the second one.
One of those guys, Paul, said that Keanu was the most sincere, humble and lovely dude he'd ever met. Said he eschewed contact with the cast in favour of hanging out with the crew, was the only guy the martial arts coaches respected out of the whole cast, and was the bravest man he's ever met."
♕ Salon: Queer Imagery in Lady Gaga's 'Alejandro'.
I loved it. If anyone feels the urge to squee/over-intellectualize with me in the comments, please, act on it. (I'm looking at you Sarah, re: deepthroating a rosary.)
(Also: From here, on entering her dressing room backstage at Berlin:
"With the walls and ceiling draped in black, it resembles a pop-Gothic seraglio. But while scented candles burn churchishly, a gorgeous vintage record player on the floor – surrounded by piles of vinyl – and works of art hung on the wall give it a cheerful air. There is a table, laid with beautiful china. There are flowers, growing in the dark. And at the head of the tea table, among the flowers: Gaga...The effect is one of having been ushered into the presence of a very powerful fairytale queen: possibly one who has recently killed Aslan, on the Stone Table." )
♕ FEMINIST HULK SMASH EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH MS.!
feministhulk: HULK DISLIKE BEING CALLED A “DUDE.” SOUND LIKE HULK SPEND TIME CHUGGING PBR AND READING MAXIM, WHICH IS NOT HOW HULK IDENTIFY.
J: Sorry. Did I hurt your feelings?
feministhulk: HULK OK. THANKS FOR ASKING.
♕ Could This Be Our Emma Frost?
Rosamund Pike is rumoured to be the forerunner for the part of Emma Frost in the upcoming X-Men: First Class, which is about Magneto and Xavier in their youth. Because Emma is one of my favourite characters, I was initially non-plussed by the choice, as I've only ever seen Rosamund Pike play polite, genteel characters such as Jane Bennet and Johnny Depp's wife in The Libertine. However, the choice has grown on me. She's a talented actress, and I have no doubt that Matthew Vaugh, director of Kick-Ass and Layer Cake, would not be looking at her unless she could pull off the verve of Emma Frost. Besides, I'd much prefer her talented ass to the nightmarish idea of a Hollywood Blonde like Katharine Heigl being hired.
♕ New Sons of Anarchy pictures + News
Apparently, there's going to be a Porn!Party scene. I can get down with that. Also, the Sons of Anarchy chapter in Belfast is called 'Sam Bell'. IDK, I just thinks that's awesome. (Warning, lots of spoilers in the link.)
-
♞ Doctor Who 5.10: Vincent and the Doctor
The way artwork moves our lives, the strange ways a few swashes of colour on canvas can resonate through the years, imprint on our minds in ways we can't even remember, and the strange, quiescent, quivering fury of things we find beautiful for no reasonable reason at all. I like to think this was the heart of Vincent and the Doctor.
It was the first time since the Eleventh Hour that I've really connected with Amy, and probably one of the only episodes of TV that I've truly, utterly and with abandon loved, no qualms, no ifs, ands, or buts. And that reason, that endearing, fairytale love of art and the humanity of the wild men and women who make it, is why.
Vincent was human. Bawdy, broken, bonkers, brilliant. And he fell in love with Amy in the same way that most of us who swing that way probably would if we ever ran into her in real life, and not through the distant sphere of a screen. He and the Doctor matched whimsy to whimsy, obnoxious madness to obnoxious madness and merciful, terrible pity to terrible pity.
The Doctor invites them to stay in Vincent's house. Vincent warns that it's only to be for one night. They fight off a monster, and the Doctor promises to be gone, only to find Vincent curled up in his bed sobbing at the notion of losing the only two people who have ever come close to getting inside his protective shell of madness and uselessness. They helped him fight a monster that nobody else could see, just like madness, just like depression, something not even they could see, but they believed him anyway. The Doctor holds him tight, because this is human, this is why he fights for Earth every goddamn time, and because Vincent is more charming and magnificent than he could have ever hoped.
And in the end, they lie in a circle, because Vincent is more daring with his self than most humans have a right to be, especially those who are outcast and socially inept, and wants to show them how he sees the world. He takes the liberty of daring to hold their hands, these strangers who walked into his life and bought him wine not two days ago, and tells them about a universe that, no matter how many machines and time and space are interwoven, nobody can see except through his paintings. And he holds the Doctor's hand to his chest, caresses Amy's hand, because, with all their madcap daring, they've strolled right past his barriers and straight into the one place he'd given up hope of ever finding anyone who would want to get into. Besides, both the Doctor and Amy are used to being seen as mad, to suffer for it, and being just a little mad after all, just not in the ways people put on them.
I don't quite know why this particular episode, of all episodes, of all TV shows, of all mediums, had this kind of effect on me. I think that my flist might just get this, because we're all artists here, in some manner or another, and we're also all broken, to some degree or another, and more than usually, the ways that we're broken encompass and permeate all the ways we create things, and this is a story about one of us, finding fairytale Doctors and Amelia Ponds who, for all kinds of reasons, bring life and sunflower love back into our mornings. Things that don't fix everything, that don't really fix anything at all, but add a tilt to the good in the balance of our memories.
Maybe that's just me projecting, like we're meant to when we watch television. Though I'm not quite sure we're meant to project onto Vincent Van Gogh.
Looking back, I especially love that the episode opened with Vincent painting the Wheatfield With Crows, and came back to it at the end, in a much more haunting manner, showing it hanging in the museum like an elegy. And speaking of the paintings, the way Vincent would leave coffee-stains and paint over his creations as easily as if they were old school papers and the pained agony in which Amy and the Doctor watched him do so was like music to my eyes on so many levels. The equal amount of disdain and love that he had for his own artwork seems so true to life; it's always the pretentious, usually less talented artists who consider every work of theirs to be nigh untouchable and unspeakably precious. Because in the end, genius is easy, art is fun, it's not serious business at all, not until long after you're dead and gone.
So the Doctor takes him to the Musée d'Orsay, and it's naff, yes, it's sentimental, it's all those things that should never work, but sometimes are just perfect enough to make me cry. Because Van Gogh's paintings make people happy, they resonate in minds and dreams, and of all the things that could fit into the end of this story like a jigsaw piece, it's Van Gogh finally knowing that people will step through and see what he saw, and it will be good.
♕ Keanu Internet Meme:
"I had a few friends working special effects jobs on the Matrix movies, he bought all of them f---ing HARLEYS for Christmas during the shoot for the second one.
One of those guys, Paul, said that Keanu was the most sincere, humble and lovely dude he'd ever met. Said he eschewed contact with the cast in favour of hanging out with the crew, was the only guy the martial arts coaches respected out of the whole cast, and was the bravest man he's ever met."
♕ Salon: Queer Imagery in Lady Gaga's 'Alejandro'.
I loved it. If anyone feels the urge to squee/over-intellectualize with me in the comments, please, act on it. (I'm looking at you Sarah, re: deepthroating a rosary.)
(Also: From here, on entering her dressing room backstage at Berlin:
"With the walls and ceiling draped in black, it resembles a pop-Gothic seraglio. But while scented candles burn churchishly, a gorgeous vintage record player on the floor – surrounded by piles of vinyl – and works of art hung on the wall give it a cheerful air. There is a table, laid with beautiful china. There are flowers, growing in the dark. And at the head of the tea table, among the flowers: Gaga...The effect is one of having been ushered into the presence of a very powerful fairytale queen: possibly one who has recently killed Aslan, on the Stone Table." )
♕ FEMINIST HULK SMASH EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH MS.!
feministhulk: HULK DISLIKE BEING CALLED A “DUDE.” SOUND LIKE HULK SPEND TIME CHUGGING PBR AND READING MAXIM, WHICH IS NOT HOW HULK IDENTIFY.
J: Sorry. Did I hurt your feelings?
feministhulk: HULK OK. THANKS FOR ASKING.
♕ Could This Be Our Emma Frost?
Rosamund Pike is rumoured to be the forerunner for the part of Emma Frost in the upcoming X-Men: First Class, which is about Magneto and Xavier in their youth. Because Emma is one of my favourite characters, I was initially non-plussed by the choice, as I've only ever seen Rosamund Pike play polite, genteel characters such as Jane Bennet and Johnny Depp's wife in The Libertine. However, the choice has grown on me. She's a talented actress, and I have no doubt that Matthew Vaugh, director of Kick-Ass and Layer Cake, would not be looking at her unless she could pull off the verve of Emma Frost. Besides, I'd much prefer her talented ass to the nightmarish idea of a Hollywood Blonde like Katharine Heigl being hired.
♕ New Sons of Anarchy pictures + News
Apparently, there's going to be a Porn!Party scene. I can get down with that. Also, the Sons of Anarchy chapter in Belfast is called 'Sam Bell'. IDK, I just thinks that's awesome. (Warning, lots of spoilers in the link.)
-
♞ Doctor Who 5.10: Vincent and the Doctor
The way artwork moves our lives, the strange ways a few swashes of colour on canvas can resonate through the years, imprint on our minds in ways we can't even remember, and the strange, quiescent, quivering fury of things we find beautiful for no reasonable reason at all. I like to think this was the heart of Vincent and the Doctor.
It was the first time since the Eleventh Hour that I've really connected with Amy, and probably one of the only episodes of TV that I've truly, utterly and with abandon loved, no qualms, no ifs, ands, or buts. And that reason, that endearing, fairytale love of art and the humanity of the wild men and women who make it, is why.
Vincent was human. Bawdy, broken, bonkers, brilliant. And he fell in love with Amy in the same way that most of us who swing that way probably would if we ever ran into her in real life, and not through the distant sphere of a screen. He and the Doctor matched whimsy to whimsy, obnoxious madness to obnoxious madness and merciful, terrible pity to terrible pity.
The Doctor invites them to stay in Vincent's house. Vincent warns that it's only to be for one night. They fight off a monster, and the Doctor promises to be gone, only to find Vincent curled up in his bed sobbing at the notion of losing the only two people who have ever come close to getting inside his protective shell of madness and uselessness. They helped him fight a monster that nobody else could see, just like madness, just like depression, something not even they could see, but they believed him anyway. The Doctor holds him tight, because this is human, this is why he fights for Earth every goddamn time, and because Vincent is more charming and magnificent than he could have ever hoped.
And in the end, they lie in a circle, because Vincent is more daring with his self than most humans have a right to be, especially those who are outcast and socially inept, and wants to show them how he sees the world. He takes the liberty of daring to hold their hands, these strangers who walked into his life and bought him wine not two days ago, and tells them about a universe that, no matter how many machines and time and space are interwoven, nobody can see except through his paintings. And he holds the Doctor's hand to his chest, caresses Amy's hand, because, with all their madcap daring, they've strolled right past his barriers and straight into the one place he'd given up hope of ever finding anyone who would want to get into. Besides, both the Doctor and Amy are used to being seen as mad, to suffer for it, and being just a little mad after all, just not in the ways people put on them.
I don't quite know why this particular episode, of all episodes, of all TV shows, of all mediums, had this kind of effect on me. I think that my flist might just get this, because we're all artists here, in some manner or another, and we're also all broken, to some degree or another, and more than usually, the ways that we're broken encompass and permeate all the ways we create things, and this is a story about one of us, finding fairytale Doctors and Amelia Ponds who, for all kinds of reasons, bring life and sunflower love back into our mornings. Things that don't fix everything, that don't really fix anything at all, but add a tilt to the good in the balance of our memories.
Maybe that's just me projecting, like we're meant to when we watch television. Though I'm not quite sure we're meant to project onto Vincent Van Gogh.
Looking back, I especially love that the episode opened with Vincent painting the Wheatfield With Crows, and came back to it at the end, in a much more haunting manner, showing it hanging in the museum like an elegy. And speaking of the paintings, the way Vincent would leave coffee-stains and paint over his creations as easily as if they were old school papers and the pained agony in which Amy and the Doctor watched him do so was like music to my eyes on so many levels. The equal amount of disdain and love that he had for his own artwork seems so true to life; it's always the pretentious, usually less talented artists who consider every work of theirs to be nigh untouchable and unspeakably precious. Because in the end, genius is easy, art is fun, it's not serious business at all, not until long after you're dead and gone.
So the Doctor takes him to the Musée d'Orsay, and it's naff, yes, it's sentimental, it's all those things that should never work, but sometimes are just perfect enough to make me cry. Because Van Gogh's paintings make people happy, they resonate in minds and dreams, and of all the things that could fit into the end of this story like a jigsaw piece, it's Van Gogh finally knowing that people will step through and see what he saw, and it will be good.