(no subject)

[rozk]

One of the odder side effects of watching I,Claudius every night is seeing familiar faces when they were somewhat younger and not knowing quite who they are. Some of them are easy - as Antonia ages, Margaret Tyzack gradually turns into her present self; and Patrick Stewart as Sejanus looks just the same as Picard or Xavier, only with hair. And having sex.

John Hurt has not aged well. Sian Phillips on the other hand will always look a lot younger than Livia gets to be, which may not be quite the compliment it was meant to be.

The odd one, for a while, was Livilla, Claudius' evil sister, because she seemed terribly familiar
but not from anything recent. And then I realized that she was Patricia Quinn and the reason she was so familiar was that she was also, at almost the same time, in The Rocky Horror Picture Show as Magenta, and sings 'Science Fiction Double Feature'. And all the sex between Livilla and Sejanus means that we know exactly what RHPS/TNG crossover hetfic would look like, which is a troubling thought.

I've been thinking about my soft spot for bad girls and mad girls and very occasionally boys...



i) Even when she is a crone, Livia as played by Sian Phillips is one of the most sexual women I have ever seen on television, all the more so because she does not especially realize it. She is so totally obsessed with her version of reality that she is mad and focussed at the same time and I find that kind of intensity scarily attractive. You just don't eat and drink anything she knows about, and you're fine.
ii) I may have mostly written about Cordelia, but actually I never really found Charisma attractive until the last episode of Season 2 of Veronica Mars, when Kendall has got her pile and suddenly isn't showing any skin at all. Again, it's focus.
iii) Presumably Drusilla in BTVS got her name from Caligula's sister. Juliet Landau's accent is one of the most bizarre things ever - I have always thought it based on Janet Street-Porter, myself. It's the skinny Goth surrealist look, and again, the sense of someone close to being utterly deadly.
iv) A token moment of heterosexual attraction while we are on the subject of the Jossverse - late mad unshaven sticking knives in people Wesley. Contemplate the hotness. What is the opposite of 'scrubs up nicely'? Scruffs up nicely.
v) Coming in from nowhere fast, Nicki in Big Love with her obsessive religiosity, her preparedness to, at the last moment, get herself up in non-polygamist drag for the sake of the family, and her strange mad eyes.
vi) Emma Frost, more for the sharp tongue and intelligence than the bizarre fetish outfits. She is obviously a very powerful telekinetic as well as a telepath and were-diamond because how else but through constant mind control do those clother stay up?

More of this anon. when I calm down from the contemplation.

The influence of the Caligula bits of I, Claudius on B5 is obvious - the mad emperor has the same weird whimsy. When Agrippina tells Tiberius that Sejanus squats on his shoulder like a big black spider, I found myself thinking, that Omigod, JMS was thinking of that when he devised Londo's eventual fate.

*******

I will post more on the terror plot etc. later when we know more and it is clearer how much is true, how much convenient. (My guess to both is, quite a lot.)

In the meantime, some thoughts.

When the police talk about finding 'martyrdom videos', do they mean that some of those arrested had already recorded their statements, or do they mean that they were collecting other people's pre-suicide bombing videos. I don't know which is the creepier thought.

I was thinking about the Forest Gate cockup the other day and realized that, quite possibly, it was less of a blunder than we tend to think. The organs of the state were monitoring the family because of the elder brother's wearing a suicide vest on a demo. Were they tapping their internet traffic? And was the raid brought about by the volume of encrypted material? And does this have anything to do with the subsequent rearrest of one of the brothers on child pornography charges? I hate to let the security services off the hook, and that would still be a messup, but...

Comments

[cleverthylacine]

Nicki in Big Love dresses a lot like me, except my skirts are longer and I generally undo the top button of my shirts. Also, the difference between the way the other polygamist women dress and one of the ways that I dress UP (sometimes I dress up in other ways--I have fancy Middle Eastern clothes, I have all sorts of periodish clothes, &c) is that I look good, because the patterns, prints and colours I wear match one another and aren't thrown on, and my clothes fit me.

It amuses me that I look like a 'prairie muffin' because I don't really think like one at all.

[auroramama]

Oh, man, yeah. Poor Londo. That was a pretty cruel universe.

*sigh* Sian Phillips. I loved Livia; she was an awesome force. I didn't quite get why she had to kill so many people, but I was young.

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

I first saw I, Claudius a few nights before my wedding where I'd stopped at a friends and we were tying up scrolls for the order of service. And she insisted I had to watch the "Miriam Margoyles with Livia" scene. Even though it's Patsy Byrne.

Unfortunately for my friend, she hadn't seen it for ages and I'd never seen it, but I do know the basics of that period of Roman history (hers ends with the Republic). I broke her at the "OMG, it's Magenta!" as soon as Patricia Quinn walked on screen. I further broke her by informing her in advance (at her agreement) of the fates of various characters - I reckon they deliberately cast really cute kids as Sejanus's children just to make it nastier for those who knew what was coming.

I broke, several hours later, after a drunken conversation that had included discussing how even the extras had a "I went to RADA, you know" look, when I said "oh for heaven's sake, everyone in this is famous, I bet that centurion who just turned around was Bernard Hill". Two minutes later, credits rolled. Yep, it was Bernard Hill. Bed was clearly indicated at this point.

Fortunately, we were given an Amazon voucher as a wedding present. I promptly splurged part of it on I, Claudius. My husband walked in when I was watching one of the early episodes, and started looked very confused indeed about Augustus. Eventually he said: "Who's that?" We both subsequently agreed that we hadn't known that Brian Blessed was allowed to appear on screen without a beard.

[verdandiweaves.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the both true and convenient - my concern would be on actions being taken pre-emptively and too exhaustively, leading to a failure to really uncover the core behind any plot.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Is that really Patricia Quinn on the Rocky Horror Picture Show singing "SF Double Feature"? Because it sounds a lot more like Richard O'Brien. I know Ms Quinn did it on stage, and I think I've heard her, and it sounds very different...

[rozk.livejournal.com]

I saw her do it on stage - not in the first run at the Royal Court, but shortly afterwards when they moved it to a then-derelict cinema - and the version in the movie is certainly hoarser. I think she is credited on the movie soundtrack album though.

Very very occasionally I bump into Richard O'Brien at parties - I'll ask him.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

It's definitely O'Brien credited on the movie soundtrack.

[namiag.livejournal.com]

and I was pretty sure that it was O'Brien on the movie version and Little Nell in the original as the Usherette character. But then, I am getting old.

[paratti.livejournal.com]

Emma must have a mutant minion on permant cleaning duty as otherwise the ammount she'd be spending on Persil would be horrific with all that white gear.

And, Word, that does have to be where Londo's fate comes from.

Emma Frost's bustier

[(Anonymous)]

Grant Morrison had already provided an explanation for how it stays on:

GLUE.

A.

[ianmcdonald.livejournal.com]

re Claudius --God bless BBC4 (and you also get Up Pompeii, worth it for the comic mastery of Frankie Howerd doing what is essentially panto on the TV with some very weak material. Over the past yeaer BBC4 has really turned into a viable alternative to the main terra channels

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

We saw I, Claudius in Latin class when I was in high school, but so rarely that I a) forgot what was going on between episodes and b) never saw the end. *pouts*

Also, I may have to make a "scruffs up nicely" icon. Would that be okay?

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

When Agrippina tells Tiberius that Sejanus squats on his shoulder like a big black spider, I found myself thinking, that Omigod, JMS was thinking of that when he devised Londo's eventual fate.

That's very interesting. As you say, JMS certainly has been influenced by the BBC version of I, Claudius, and there's at least one clearly identifiable reference to the series. I discussed all this in a paper at last year's Worldcon (http://www.sf-foundation.org/publications/academictrack/keen.php). I hadn't thought of the 'spider' bit, but I think you may well be right, and I'd like to mention that (properly attributed, of course), when I revise this material for the book I'm planning.

JMS "Influences"

[(Anonymous)]

Speaking of influences and JMS, There's an old issue of What If? whose ending is almost identical to that of Rising Stars. Spider-Man unleashes the Captain Universe Power, leading to a splash page of the world covered by an electical field, uniting everyone in the world in a moment of connection and peace, uniting us all. Sound familiar?

--Dan Coyle

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Sure, not a problem. Glad to be of use - who are you doing the book for?

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

I've got a publisher I've talked to a bit, but nothing is formally agreed yet, as I've been too busy with other tings to pull together the proposal and sample chapter. I hope to get that sorted by the end of the year.

I Can't Address the Terror Plot or B5 or RHPS, but:

[(Anonymous)]

All the roles I ever saw Margaret Tyzack in (which would be I, Claudius, Forsyte Saga, and one or another of the Elizabethan bios) had her aging through the course of the story. She had a blink-and-you'll-miss-her part in something I saw last year, and I had a moment of That Looks Familiar.

(It was Bright Young Things.)

John Hurt, alas, no. Overworn leather.

--
D.