Imaginary time capsule

Yes, time to confirm it: My newest obsession is definitely John Barrymore in his silent era. Which is a relief, I mean-- I've spent a couple of months just half-heartedly liking things. That's not me at all. Thank God something came along.

I don't want to burn through all his best silent movies in just a few days, so my rule is only one (...ish) every week, with some of his early talkies (I'm ignoring everything after 1934 because yeesh, his alcoholism and mental issues really took their toll) in between.

His silent films are great fun though, even the ones that aren't particularly good. There's a lot of action, and even more romance. I've been infatuated with lots of actors and obviously I always enjoy when they get a love scene, but Barrymore love scenes really are next level stuff; Hands trembling, chest heaving, eyelashes fluttering... If you're really lucky it's all shot in profile, like in When a Man Loves (I've never seen an actor shot as much in profile as Barrymore):


Congratulations, you've just seen Drew Barrymore's grandparents making out (they married the next year). Share my shame.

When a Man Loves, incidentally, is a ridiculous, melodramatic film (he plays a priest, but can suddenly fence like a champ in the last reel) and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody, but it sure has a lot of sweet scenes.


*This is the first time I've had to fix the image quality of a film before I could gif it. Usually I gif a video file exactly as-is, but my copy of this film is kinda blurry and glitchy. That said, giffing silent films, turns out, is a cinch compared to seventies' BBC video transfer.

My failure to see the appeal of Douglas Fairbanks Sr. had me thinking maybe swashbuckling movies weren't as good in the silent film days as they would get in the Tyrone Power and Errol Flynn era.

But no more.

See, I used to think John Barrymore was exclusively a talkies (and stage) actor, with his sing-songy delivery and sonorous voice. Not the case, as I found out.

In talkies, he's pretty entertaining. In silent films he's an absolute delight -- agile, flamboyant, sexy, and with one of the best-looking noses I've ever seen captured on film (they didn't call him The Great Profile for nothing).

Tonight I watched Don Juan from 1926 and apart from being a surprisingly sophisticated film, you cannot convince me this wasn't made primarily for a female demographic. From the moment Barrymore first appears as the Don exiting his bedroom, post-coitus and half undressed, the camera doesn't so much capture him as suggestively linger on his body. There were no women in the movie as revealingly dressed as Mr. Barrymore. What a silhouette!


A lot of pre-Code movies strike me as sort of lewd (and very male gaze-y), but this was an elegantly suggestive movie even though it mostly centered around sex.

(Another silent Barrymore vehicle I've seen, The Beloved Rogue, features Conrad Veidt in his first Hollywood movie, and is hands-down the most homoerotic silent movie I've ever seen. You just won't believe how much pawing, caressing and embracing those two get up to in between Barrymore's fencing sequences.)

Ah, swashbucklers. Proving that all you have to do is don some tights, swing on a chandelier and leap on a table, sword in hand, and I'll love you unconditionally (except Fairbanks).

Just as sure as summer will follow spring, I'm pretty sure I will always return to Sherlock Holmes stories. Even if I forget how much I love them years at a time. Usually my infatuation with specific fiction abates after a while, either because I've run out of material or because I've gluttoned myself and had too much at one time -- but Holmes? That's an inexhaustible love of mine, even though I sometimes plain forget just how happy those stories make me.

A few months ago I was in a thrift shop where I spotted a particularly hideous Norwegian edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes -- the exact edition I first picked up at the library when I was ten, and which introduced me to the Canon! (It doesn't have a print year listed, oddly enough, but I'm guessing eighties/early nineties from the cover design). So I bought it out of sentiment and put it on my shelf and forgot about it.

And then I was out walking today because I wanted to give Welcome to Night Vale a listen (mostly to fill the temporary Zombies, Run!-shaped hole in my life, my knee is still a wreck), but the file was corrupted and I had to find something else to listen to. I always have one of the BBC Holmes audios stashed away somewhere on my phone, so I thought "Ah, for old time's sake" (the episode happened to Scandal in Bohemia, the first story I ever read). I spent the rest of the walk grinning from ear to ear.

Not just because BBC radio Holmes is by far the best Holmes adaption I've ever come across (I have nothing new to say about Merrison's Holmes, other than that he's wonderful in the role and has the most infectious laugh), but because, goshdarnit, I just love these old stories and characters. Even though I've read them, watched them, and listened to them countless of times, and I always know exactly who did it, and what challenges will be thrown Holmes and Watson's way, I just can't stop loving them.

So now I'm sitting here leafing through that book I bought at the thrift store, feeling like I've slipped on an old comfy sweater. I think this Christmas I'll bring back my tradition of reading that great pastiche story where Holmes is hired to stalk Santa Clause.

So I finished reading 52 late last night. And I might have been in such an emotional state it took me quite a while to calm down enough to fall asleep. Good golly what a ride that was.

52 is the first comic I've read all through on my phone, via the Comixology app. I still prefer physical copies, but buying and downloading one issue at a time means that I can pace myself in an entirely different way than when I buy trade paperbacks.

And you can't beat that handiness: I've been able to read comics wherever there's been a wifi setup. I've read 52 in hotel rooms, draped over strange beds and shouting "Oh my God" to myself at random intervals.

So yes, the plot of 52 itself - THIS is what huge events and dire consequences look like in a comic book world! Dear Lord. And so many characters I'd only had a passing knowledge of becoming so dear to me: Black Adam (which I always regarded as an evil, colour-swapped Captain Marvel), Dr. Will Magnus (who lives and copes with bipolar disorder! Who uses psychopharma and isn't demonized for it!), The Question and so many more.

And Booster Gold. Oh God. The only thing I knew going in (and the main reason I started reading it), was that Booster Gold had a massive role to play in the event. And I wasn't disappointed.

I don't think I've ever been as upset at a comic book cover:

What a ride.

This is a fairly old internet bloggy thing, but I haven't done it so I'm bringing it back out of the internet depths.

The rules are malleable, so here's my take: Twenty actors I will watch in anything, whose names inevitably give me that little jolt of delight when I spot them in the opening credits.

They're not the greatest actors of all time, some of them are more like guilty pleasures of mine, yet not all of them are great delicious hunks. I just love them. Also because it's their acting I love, I've chosen to present them through screenshots where they're in-character, rather than in beautiful promo shots - some from movies I love dearly, some from trash, but they all feature at least one memorable performance.

And because just naming twenty was so hard, I decided to not include actors I mostly known from television (which means no Patrick Troughton, DeForest Kelley, Michael K. Williams, etc.).

( Some beyond obvious, some new additions )

Haha, fooled you! Couldn't keep it under twenty-five. You probably wouldn't have noticed if I didn't tell you though.

As for the actors who very nearly made it: They were Hugh Jackman, Lee Marvin, Joseph Cotten, Knut Risan, Hiroyuki Sanada, Dirk Bogarde, Kevin Kline, Raymond Massey, Bruce Willis, James Macavoy and Christopher Lee. Then of course are the ones that I love dearly but I honestly can't say I'll watch in anything - Buster Keaton's talkie sex comedies, any Bing Crosby Technicolour venture...


I plan to do the Twenty Actresses challenges some day, and I've been toying around with some kind of favourite supporting actors list. Meanwhile I've just recieved my very own PVR, and I've already have a massive movie backlist to get through thanks to TCM. Time to get watching!

I'm trying to get back into the habit of taking daily strolls, you know; my constitutionals. I haven't done those regularly since I moved from Bergen. The most important thing though, apart from good shoes, is good audio dramas. I can't listen to audio dramas without going hiking, and I can't go hiking without listening to audio dramas.

Fortunately, exploring my external hard drive I found almost a hundred episodes of The Adventures of Sam Spade (all legal too - they're in public domain). I remember listening to maybe a dozen of them back when I lived in Bergen and even though I'll admit the actual whodunnits never particularly interested me, I love this show simply for how every episode is constructed:

Sam Spade always dictates his newest case to his long-suffering secretary Effie, usually after entering the office and scaring Effie with his newest wound or torn suit. And as I said, the mysteries don't interest me. I spend the main part of each episode admiring Steve Dunne (or earlier on, Howard Duff)'s great performance as Sam Spade. Quick-fire delivery, slightly nasal gumshoe voice, and Dunne in particular stood out among all the posh radio actors of the era simply for always saying "yah" rather than "yeah".

My favourite part is always the end of the episode, after Sam has wrapped up the case, because from then on it's always about his chummy relationship with Effie (or "Eff" as he calls her). Even if she's a bit of an airhead Sam always encourages her ("THAT'S my girl!" in a such a heartfelt way that not even my feminist core finds anything patronizing about it), and they joke and laugh and are such pals. Then they close up the office together and every episode ends with the exact same words:

"Goodnight, Sam."

"Goodnight, sweetheart."

I've finished this aboslutely amazing animated TV series (haha look at me still uncomfortable with the term "anime") called Baccano! and it was so wonderful and perfect and good. I haven't been this excited about storytelling in a TV format since The Wire. Aaaah, the plot, the characters, the setting (1930s America!), the music (OH GOD THE MUSIC), I loved every minute of it!

If you'd told me "hey watch this anime about gangsters fighting over a wine that gives immortality to the one who drinks it" I'd probably be all "uh, maybe later?" but I just went for it because I thought the art style looked cool and then it turned out to be fabulous.

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And perfectly contained in 14 episodes, Baccano! was so good I really don't want them to ever bring it back or revive it. I'm gonna rewatch it at some point though, definitely!

Yes here I am again. There've been some troubles with unstable internet access, but things are getting better all the time, and I'm switching companies tomorrow.

So what do you do in the evenings without internet when there's nothing but boring Olympic Games on the telly?

Games. You do games. Gaming.

Personally, I just finished Dragon Age II!


Also I played and completed L.A. Noire!


Right now I've gone on to the first Mass Effect game. I'm really intrigued by the "your choices carry weight in the sequels too" thing (which was very neatly done in Dragon Age 2), but eh, I really don't like those kind of dour grey sci-fi settings. I'm nine hours in and so far I just feel like I've done nothing but gotten lost in a lot of grey corridors, and done a lot of cover-based shooting at Geths.

Sometimes when I'm not gaming I'm reading. Right now it's The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht, and a massive one that I bought for my bachelor research but never read, about the plight of the common woman throughout Norwegian history.

Oh, and I'm still reading Justice League comics. Still early nineties issues, oh dear.


Oh wow, it's been so long since I wrote a long, random post just because I'm bored. And I'm not used to sitting on this hard sofa like this, ow ow ow.

Agh, finally managed to fall asleep sometime around five in the morning (in part because I couldn't stop myself from finishing the second season of Game of Thrones, fair enough), and at seven the construction workers across the street started with their pneumatic drills and angle grinders. I could just cry. There must be something about things like that in the Geneva Convention.

But Game of Thrones, oh my God. Quality television. 2013 can't come fast enough. I know there are quality books too, of course, but for once I'm reveling in the fact that I haven't a single clue how the story is going to unfold. Every death (I understand there are going to be a lot of those) comes as a complete surprise to me. I love stories where no one is safe, no matter how loveable.

And ooh that nigh-perfect marriage of actors (Peter Dinklage! Charles Dance! Michelle Fairley!) and editing, and sets, and ooooh costumes! Every episode I pray for more Littlefinger, because I'm a sucker for all his outfits. Seems like I'm not the only one. Daenarys has also been sporting some badass clothes lately, mmmm.

And obviously my desire to rear baby dragons is at an all-time high.


I want one.

A.K.A THE ONE WHERE LUPIN AND JIGEN FINALLY MEET. WOOOO.


( Ep. 5: 'Bloody Triangle' )