At around 5am this morning I took a wander down to the beach and was greeted by this stunning view. The first signs of sunlight on the horizon with the endless amount of stars looming above. Cannot wait for the next couple of months as we move into Milky Way season and the core returns to our night skies.
I’ve played some far more physically energetic parts, but I don’t think that I’ve ever been as physically exhausted at the end of a take as I have with Darcy. I remember this particularly from the scene where Elizabeth and I have the argument at Netherfield: Darcy’s emotional and doesn’t want her to know it, he hates her because he fancies her, he hates her for being cleverer than he is during this particular conversation, and he’s got the Bingleys as an audience. So there are a million things going on inside him, yet he has to keep himself together and not show he is in the slightest bit ruffled; he mustn’t reveal his turmoil. So he sits there, as still and calm as his emotions can possibly allow.
Am I the only person who can’t fully enjoy these without assessing the likelihood that the mark was in the know, i.e., that the surprise reveal was staged?
In this one it’s the camera person that makes me suspicious. The mark never acknowledges that there’s someone standing there a few inches away filming the whole thing. But he must be aware of that. I suppose you could have set up the prank by desensitizing him to that over a period of time. But on balance I think it’s more likely the scene was staged.
It’s almost ALWAYS more likely the scene was staged. It’s a cynical view, I realize. But you have to ask yourself: which would have been easier to achieve? An actual prank with an unaware mark? Or a faux prank in which the mark is pretending?
So apparently, over the summer, Quibi (the shortest-lasting streaming service ever lmao) did a quarantine project called “Home Movie: The Princess Bride” where a bunch of celebrities recreated The Princess Bride in tiny chunks at home.
And like there was no permanent cast, all these celebrities seem to have gotten a scene or part of a scene to do (i’m not sure exactly, I did not ever watch Quibi and thus haven’t seen this yet), and then they just… recreated it as best they could. At home. Under quarantine.
So like, you had Jennifer Garner in a blanket cape playing Princess Buttercup AND the Booing Old Woman with a crowd comprised entirely of stuffed animals:
Or Taika Waititi paying Westley off a badly-drawn Inigo on a piece of cardboard held in front of someone’s face:
And it’s all just delightful.
But my absolute favorite part of this thing that I’ve sadly never seen but assume is probably absolutely hilarious and a treasure and I want to find it some day and watch the whole thing… is that Carey Elwes is in it.
Okay I just watched this and… it is the most ridiculous, most meta, most absurd and yet most wonderful thing. I don’t know how they decided who would play which role in which scene–several parts were played by actors whose gender did not match the character’s, and the actors were more diverse than they were in the original movie. There is a wide range in terms of how seriously the actors took it; some scenes are done with Legos; many of the scenes with dialogue were performed by two actors in completely different places filming their lines separately; and sometimes the actor playing a role changes from one moment to the next, with no uniformity of costuming or anything. It only works because everyone knows the movie, but… it is still hilarious!Â
As a University of Queensland researcher examined a 4600-year-old Egyptian painting last year, a speckled goose caught his eye.
UQ scientist Dr. Anthony Romilio said the strange but beautiful bird was quite unlike modern red-breasted geese (Branta ruficollis), with distinct, bold colors and patterns on its body, face, breast, wings and legs.
“The painting, Meidum Geese, has been admired since its discovery in the 1800s and described as “Egypt’s Mona Lisa,’” he said.
“Apparently no-one realized it depicted an unknown species.
“Artistic license could account for the differences with modern geese, but artworks from this site have extremely realistic depictions of other birds and mammals.” Read more.
heh. some kind of rail or crake? i don’t think it’s an ABA-area species, or I feel like I would know about it. but maybe it is? i can’t say I’ve paid a lot of attention to baby rails, when the chances of my seeing the grown-up ones seem so slim.
I’ve posted about this passage of Two Towers on my blog before but I gotta talk about another element of it that I really love but can’t capture in any other format. This is when Frodo & Sam are in Cirith Ungol:
All was dark about it, earth and sky, but it was lit with light. Not the imprisoned moonlight welling through the marble walls of Minas Ithil long ago, Tower of the Moon, fair and radiant in the hollow of the hills.
Paler indeed than the moon ailing in some slow eclipse was the light of it now, wavering and blowing like a noisome exhalation of decay, a corpse-light, a light that illuminated nothing.
In the walls and tower windows showed, like countless black holes looking inward into emptiness; but the topmost course of the tower revolved slowly, first one way and then another, a huge ghostly head leering into the night.
–The Two Towers, Book 2 Chapter 8
There’s so many things I love about this chapter, and of course this is creepy and mood-setting and world-buildy (just casually throwing in the corruption of Minas Ithil in there! I could write another post just about that line!) in a ton of amazing ways.Â
But what I’m thinking about this time around the most is that you get this sense, that even though it may be possible for Sam & Frodo to infiltrate Mordor and make their way through and do their job and maybe, maybe even get out–if they get taken into Minas Morgul, they’re not coming out.
It’s a credit to the way Tolkien has built up the terror of the Ringwraiths, partially, but they’ve always been able to escape or evade their attention, even narrowly, before. But now they’re on Ringwraith territory. Now this is their ground. And Tolkien makes the peril so real. If they’re caught, it’s all over. There’s no escaping this time.
And then there’s a moment where the Witch-King senses the Ring and very nearly finds them, but then:
At that moment the Wraith-king turned and spurred his horse and rode across the bridge, and all his dark host followed him. Maybe the elven-hoods defied his unseen eyes, and the mind of his small enemy, being strengthened, had turned aside his thought. But he was in haste. Already the hour had struck, and at his great Master’s bidding he must march with war into the West.
–The Two Towers, Book 2 Chapter 8
It’s such a close call, and there are many things that save Frodo & Sam in this moment–the light of Galadriel, the Elven cloaks–but also, Gandalf’s whole plan. He’s been saying all along at this point that his job is distract Sauron from Frodo & Sam, to keep him worrying about the war with Gondor instead of keeping too close an eye on his borders.  And in this moment, we see it actually work.
This is showing, not telling–we get a horribly close call, saved at the last moment by a desperate strategy, plotted by people who don’t and can’t know if it’s working, or how close it came to not working.
