You had plenty money 1922

Like everyone and their wife, I'm reccing teh Sherlock Mornington Crescent fic. In which Sherlock gets very peeved because John and Lestrade are playing a game he can't figure out the rules for.

Tom Hardy obsession is ramping up something chronic. Damn Inception. have been eyeing various bits of his oeuvre on youtube clips the past few days (he's one of those actors I knew existed, heard good things about his acting skills, thought was terribly pretty, but only ever seen in minor roles in Brit gangster films.). And now he's filming This Means War alongside Chris Pine, in the remake of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and is now apparently being reported as getting some role (no idea what) in Batman 3. (once you're in with Chris Nolan and prove yourself to wear a suit well, you are *in*.) Boy's star is on the rise...

Finally watched Nine Queens last night after Rai passed it to me a few weeks ago because she loves it, thought I'd like it and wanted someone to talk to about it. (and like me does not believe in Hollywood remakes) Discovered something interesting. It's a film about 24 hours in the life of two conmen, interesting film rendered good by an awesome twist, very naturalistic with decent acting. Except. er. subtitles. You know how normally after about ten minutes you don't really register the subtitles, even when you don't speak a hint of the language, unless they get something really bloody wrong (see Crouching Tiger's subtitles' insistence on all characters calling Zhiyi Zhang's character by her formal name, that only her mother calls her on introduction to the character. Once. Rest of the film, everyone calls her 'Jen'.) and it's pretty easy to figure out what everyone's saying even when you look away from the screen for a bit? I have no problem with Cantonese, Japanese, French in pure dialect/slang, Russian... but apparently I have a problem with Spanish. I kept having to concentrate like fuck on reading the dialogue to keep up with what was going on and rewinding if my attention at all flickered. Think it was because it was very talky and none of the body/facial language cues were familiar. (Japanese is easy when it comes to this. Show a Japanese comedy to a British audience, they're in tears - the social rules/behaviours are similar enough to translate perfectly)

Adventures in clothing. Having got sick of bootleg jeans' tendency to let cold gusts up one's legs during the cold season and not tuck into boots, have been on the lookout for some straight leg. Accelerated by one pair of my jeans' seams getting worn as wells as developing a hole on inner thigh. You can't see it, but it's growing. Which has been a bastard. Given that I have very muscled legs, fashion's current cut does not like me. And their current definition of 'straight leg' also seems to mean 'tight on the calf but without the stretch of skinny'. So, in river island, in fitting rooms, having discarded them, and decide I might as well try the bloke's version. Which...fits really well, the fitting room assistant being a bloke is really helpful on fit and how much they'll stretch and what you want to look out for (also asked what I needed them for when assessing fit). and they're button-fly and £5 cheaper than womens. the slightly roomier crotch is a bit odd, but yay! Huh. And it turns out 30" leg on mens is the regular length. on women it's the short.

You like Mary Morstan? This fic induces the flail. It was in response to this prompt :

'The first three made such a good team that they decided to go into business (and bed) together doing spy/detective sorts of things, and Mary decides she'd rather participate than be left on the sidelines and lose Watson. She could handle most of the administrative/legal stuff. Do want: Mary learning to be badass, femmeslash, a nice, happy, porny foursome. If you can wrangle it, I want to see Mary and Holmes have sex with each other for the first time (in the context of group sex) and learning to get along.'

Imagine Me and You (and you and you)

And now imagine an adrenaline-hyped Mary dirty with smoke, holding a pistol and getting Holmes out of an incredibly sticky situation.

THIS FIC WILL GIVE YOU THAT.

:composes letter: 'Dear Mr. Ritchie, for christmas I would like...'

Updated merlin_ljguide, which is as usual every few months.

OOooo. amerlinworld - the first few were done for a fic about merlin as a webcomic artist in the merlin 'verse doing A Softer World, and now she's continuing it. YAY.

Boiler is playing up in the 'having to turn it off for 5mins occasionally'. wo0t. Started doing it before parentals buggered off to the far side of the world, but it's sodding annoying when I suddenly have no heat in the house.

Off to see Julie Fowlis tonight. WHEEEEEEEEEE.

it's very weird to hear Cobra Starship on the radio, instead of it being a mates and people you know through the internets obsession. And it's very mild lyrics-wise compared to half the stuff I heard about their first album. Where, pray tell, are the basements?

Went to see an installation in Kingsway tram subway last night with Jane and Megs. It was shut off years ago when different building work went through and is mostly used for storing stuff now. Fascinating, strange machinery, and round that, everyone was gleefully taking photos of the walls and old posters. We want more Neverwhere and Neverwhere fic nao, pwease.

Oh, paintedspires, bringing so much of the pretty....

SGA in the style of alphonse Mucha. Heather is now dead. very dead.

Art Nouveau circus posters!

SGA as con artists! (also a link to fic in the same vein) The whiteboard of planning!

You know, it's very scary when an old sixties tv show merges so well. Seriously. Wild Wild West (which I have never seen) with John and Rodney - she has screencaps. In which the body language is almost identical to some sga screencaps. and the body type. Head exploding now.

word count achieved. I rule. Now I just have to keep it up until friday. and, er, figure out a detailed *plot*

samphirette, I'm pretty sure the sixth ticket is yours - need to figure out arrangements. Will you be meeting us in Brum or what? Need to book hotel space.

oh, and of course, a gap looks like it's finally appearing schedule (or at least nano's out of the way), so I can figure out when I can give blood. Couldn't give for ages due to tattoo, have been getting several begging letters... and now I'm starting to get a cold. Which disqualifies me until it's cleared up. JOY.

(for those who don't know, Blood donor services will kick you out if you're even vaguely sniffling. This is along with having visited the dentist or hygienist in the past 24 hours, low iron levels, you name it. The fact that I have to tick the 'ever lived in a malarial country' box probably means that they only use a tiny bit of my blood as it is. Possibly just the plasma. Who knows.)

bethynyc wrote De-Lovely fic! She wrote De-Lovely fic with Jack and Cole that is during the slow path years and it is actually *good* and EEEEEEEEEEEEEE! (thinking about it, and yes, I've written it as personal canon that it happens during the slow path years - 1931 or '32, to be specific, to fit around Astaire filming 'Flying Down to Rio', considering Jack-the-actor's age/shyness/poutiness, I'm thinking it's probably more likely it happened during his time agent/two missing years period. I doubt Jack would've spent long enough on a con that would be plausible to cover the time needed to establish yourself as a reliable leading musical actor, not to mention the amount fo time you'd be expected to commit to a run, *and* then there's the affair with Cole Porter - the movie makes a point of establishing Jack-the-actor as *definitely* not one of his fly-by-nights.)

Some of you may remember the Torchwood Babies art I recced a while back. There's a full-on comic now... TEH CUTE, IT BURNS. I may be a small gibbering wreck now.

Ronon in a tutu manip. But, er, it doesn't actually look very silly. And my brain is half torn between trying to figure out whether it's going the Ballet de Trockadero de Monte Carlo (the blokes in full ballet drag in tutus and en pointe who take the piss) route or the Matthew Bourne route, which is so manly and thud-inducing that smelling salts are often required for the audience. Because, well, I can see him doing either - alternately giggly and pissed off or smouldering all over the stage. Ronon as The Swan. :swallows: For those familiar with the all-male Swan lake, I'll just let your brains absorb that image. Get back to me when you recover. :muses: Not entirely sure who'd be The Prince in that production, though - I can't think of anyone in the main SGA or SG-1 cast who'd be that lost, insecure and lacking in confidence - you'd have to do major character assassination to get anyone to even get close to it (though you could probably tweak early Xander or Willow from BtVS without a problem).

In other news, foolishly spent a good couple of hours yesterday evening tagging the entirety of thedarkisrising (ah, the power....). Four years worth. Still got 2006 to go. Course, now I found out that the template for that community doesn't show tags. Oh well. Least it'll show up on the flist. Internet Jesus knows how long it would take with a high-traffic community. Came across the first post about the car crash with added elephants and... oh, fandom. Your poor optimism and tentative hopefulness - because at that point, the narnia film hadn't come out yet so Walden were a completely unknown quantity aside from effects, and then the utter optimism and hope that we had post-Narnia. :cuddles and supplies DIR fandom with vodka: Oh, and found a pre-film rights bought and massacred post about fantasy casting. I'd completely forgotten my musings about Brian Cox as Merriman. Huh. Yeah, *definitely* better than Mckellen.

Over here, they're pondering the 'what if so and so wasn't available for casting at the time' game for Jack Harkness. Some er... *interesting* responses. And several stuck on american actors. My thoughts below.


First, the character wasn't originally written as American - he was supposed to be British (take your pick of which country) and it's only the fact that JB slipped into a US accent during one of the early read-throughs and they felt it fit the 'film glamour' image better that he's American (which of course influenced later things like costume and character reactions - though not necessarily Matt Rippy casting, since it's not absolutely essential that the closeted heroic self-sacrificer is American).

So, casting details as they originally were : Really good-looking classic 'film-star' looks with a slight 1940s bent, con-man, convincing in action scenes, and believable in the 'will shag anything and *can* get anything' category.

:scratches head on trying to get someone to fit entire package: - I remember them saying at the time that all of that pretty much narrowed it down to one person who was on the UK acting scene, ie, JB so... hoo boy. And even if you got all the briefing elements right, your Harkness would be quite different. Especially later eps, because after the first couple of eps/first season, they normally start writing to the cast actor's strengths.

James Purefoy could do it. (go watch Rome, then call me)
Daniel Craig - no problems.
Paul Bettany - nearly all of it. except I'm not sure how he'd handle the action man factor. never seen him with guns and running like mad. (the ruthless bastard part, no problem)
Dougray Scott - most of, not sure about seduce-anything
Jason Statham - *if* he could pull off the dashing RAF hero image.
Clive Owen - omnisexual... er.
Peter Wingfield - almost certainly, atch.

ETA: I started running the Captain Jack Harkness lines if spoken by James Puresex through my head on the way home. I... er... um. You know how we joke about Jack being a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen? Now imagine the 'And this is Ianto Jones, he cleans up after us and gets us everywhere on time. He also looks great in a suit.' sequence. Um. Oh dear god. Let's just say the jokey aspect of that bit? Really, really not so jokey.

And once again, ironicbees is trying to kill me dead from sheer pretty in the Jeeves and Wooster department. Though this time, not so much with the subtext. Allll about the text this time round. :happy sigh:

Oi, blythely, have you been influencing policy again? here.

Also : ponycake the plot for half the eps this upcoming S4 SGA

Just read a rather good piece of characterization AU of SGA as a high school american football team (Shep being the new coach that screwed up elsewhere, the marines being the team, Ronon and Teyla as assistants, scientists being teachers, Rodney subbing for Jeannie while she's on pregnancy leave). Over on parrotfic.

Of course, the actual mechanics of the play left me going 'er... no, still doesn't make sense. Why do you need padding to play a bastardised, not quite as skilled form of rugby?'

Does anyone know if they've ever made an American football team play a rugby team, and what the result was? (Of course, I wouldn't ask a pro US team to play against a national side. That would be ... well... rather nasty.) And now I have images of the antipodean members of the Atlantis expedition introducing Ronon to the concept of Jonah Lomu. Some time later, the sounds of the haka echo through the halls of Atlantis...

Gah. Flat hunting. You do not want to know. There was a bathroom that we feared to step into in one place. And you know it's bad when the letting agent is trying to look embarassed in the corner.

On the other hand, suddenly there's a whole bunch of properties in the Tufnell park area that weren't there earlier today. Huh.

Phone battery being weird. It's been going within the day for a couple of days now, so I let it completely run down yesterday, but still doing it. And can't get a new phone for free for another couple of months. Yay.

Watching Holby City from last week. Peter Wingfield, please stop being that awesome.

Finished Deathly Hallows. Have had a couple of discussions at work about it, and one screamed 'LALALALALALA' from Gregor this morning when I asked Liss whereabouts she'd got up to. Reaction is... er. Not entirely sure. There were great wodges that could've been slimmed down, the usual JK failings, some characters were completely wasted - not near enough screentime - and some you just love way too much. I seriously don't remember loving Luna this much during OOTP. And I may need to start a fanclub for Kreacher just for a couple of one-liners. :muses: Maybe we ought to present the case to JKR that she needs to write a book about house elves and lunatics and snarky bitter potion masters and werewolves, (ie, the secondary characters with DEPTH) since I'm always more satisfied with her handling of their characters than I am ever of her heroes. But anyway : Fic about how it could've ended. It's H/D - no, seriously, don't run away, there's more snark than anything, it's told from Luna's POV and features the appearance of an 'I'm not shagging Harry Potter' t-shirt. It is awesome and funny and adorable at the same time.