#countess judy

[madame-yus-wife]

Miranda Otto in THE PORTABLE DOOR (2023).

[end0r4]

She thinks she's made of candy

• Countess Judy •

[thewholekeg]

Miranda's breath came ragged.

She had never been a good runner, and hyperventilating inside a cloth sack didn't do anything to help it. The only thing that kept her moving was fear, and even that was failing. Whatever had jumped on her had clung tight, poking and jabbing all over her.

She thrashed wildly, but to no avail. The best she'd managed was to pull her nose through a gap in the top of the sack, but her head was still stuck. She careened wildly through the attic, bouncing off walls and side tables. She was on the verge of tears. And worse, she was running out of room. A pair of old, heavy double-doors was bearing down on her.

She bit back a sob, and started to slow.

Then picked up pace again.

Deep inside, right down in the pit of her stomach, a little pearl of fear had turned into anger. And it grew, and grew, until she reached the end of the hall, braced, and threw herself into the door.

"Get OFF!"

[judi-daily]

Diamonds are Forever Charity Gala, 2016 with David Mills and The Countess of Wessex Photo credit: WPA Pool

[cultfaction]

Preview- Doomwatch (Bluray)

After the waters surrounding the remote island of Balfe become over-polluted by chemical dumps, some of the inhabitants begin to exhibit extreme behavioural and physical changes as they transform into violent and deformed creatures -enter Doomwatch! Directed by Peter Sasdy (Taste the Blood of Dracula, Countess Dracula, Hands of the Ripper) and based on the successful BBC science fiction TV show…

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Judy Garland (Meet Me In St. Louis, A Star is Born, Summer Stock)— Judy is the GOAT when it comes to classic movie musicals. The voice of an angel who deserved so much better than she got. She can sing she can dance she can act she's a triple threat. Though she had a turbulent personal life (her treatment as a child star by the studio system makes me mad as hell like Louis b Mayer fight me ((she was made to believe that she was physically unattractive by the constant criticism of film executives who made her feel ugly and who manipulated her onscreen appearance by capping her teeth and using discs in her nose to change its shape and Mayer called her "my little hunchback" like imagine hearing that as a child and not having damage)) she always goddamn delivered on screen and in any performance she gave. She began in vaudeville performing with her sisters and was signed to MGM at 13. Starting out in supporting parts especially paired with mickey Rooney in a bunch of films (she's the best part tbh) she eventually transferred to the lead role. She is best known for her starring role in movie musicals like the iconic Wizard of Oz (somewhere over the rainbow still hits hard and is ranked the top film song of all time), meet me in St. Louis (Judy singing have your self a merry little Christmas brings tears to the eyes she is that powerful), the Harvey girls (she looks like a technicolor dream and sings a catchy af song about trains), Easter parade ( dancing and singing with Fred Astaire), for me and my gal, the pirate, and summer stock ( with pal Gene Kelly who she helped when he was starting out and he helped her when she was struggling). But she also does non- singing just as well like the clock ( her first movie where she sings no songs and is an underrated ww2 era romance), her Oscar nominated a star is born ( like the man that got away she put her whole soul in that and I have beef with the fact she lost to grace kelly ((whom I love but like still not even her best work)), and judgement at Nuremberg (a courtroom drama about the nazi war criminal trials). Outside of film she made concert appearances to record-breaking audiences, released 8 studio albums, and had her own Emmy-nominated tv series. She was the youngest (39) and first female recipient of the Cecil B DeMille award for lifetime achievement in the film industry. Girl was a lifelong democrat and was a financial and moral supporter of many causes including the civil rights movement (she was at the March on Washington and held a press conference to protest the 16th street Baptist church bombings). She was a friend of the Kennedy family and would call jfk weekly often ending the calls by singing the first few lines of somewhere over the rainbow (she thought of them as Gemini twins).She was a member of the committee for the first amendment which was formed in response to the HUAC investigations. Though she died far too young and tragically she remains an icon for her work and her life. As a girl who didn't feel like i was as pretty as everyone else I have always felt a connection to Judy and I just really love her.

Patsy Kelly (The Countess of Monte Cristo, Merrily We Live, Topper Returns)—patsy kelly was a character actress best known for her brash wisecracking best friend roles, first appearing in a series of comedy shorts with thelma todd and then in a number of feature films. she was openly gay (lovers included tallulah bankhead), even candidly referring to herself as a dyke to the press on occasion and declaring she didn't intend to marry.

This is round 1 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Patsy Kelly:

Oh, that wry little smile! She could sing. She could dance. She could do comedy and drama. Her mother enrolled her in dancing school to distract her from playing baseball and trying to become a firefighter. At the height of her career, she burned the whole thing down (heh) by answering a reporter's softball question about why she never married with "Because I'm a dyke." She became Tallulah Bankhead's "private secretary" and by the 1960s, she was once again a prominent character actress. Remember Laura-Louise in "Rosemary's Baby"?

Judy Garland:

Judy's voice alone qualifies her for at least top ten hottest HOT VINTAGE MOVIE WOMEN. She was a truly incredible swing singer, with a stunning voice on top of her technique. Her short dark hair looked incredible in just about any style. Have I mentioned her swagger? I can’t do it justice with words. She had swagger. She was funny as hell, and clever too. Incredibly charming and cool. I adore her.

Her eyes, her voice have bewitched me

I mean how can you beat the one and only Judy? She's beautiful, her smile is contagious, the way she sings with her whole body. You can't help but love her.

Beautiful woman, love her singing voice. And she can do everything between happy or silly and angry or heartbroken

[justforbooks]

Dame Maggie Smith

A distinguished, double Oscar-winning actor whose roles ranged from Shakespeare to Harry Potter

Not many actors have made their names in revue, given definitive performances in Shakespeare and Ibsen, won two Oscars and countless theatre awards, and remained a certified box-office star for more than 60 years. But then few have been as exceptionally talented as Maggie Smith, who has died aged 89.

She was a performer whose range encompassed the high style of Restoration comedy and the sadder, suburban creations of Alan Bennett. Whatever she played, she did so with an amusing, often corrosive, edge of humour. Her comedy was fuelled by anxiety, and her instinct for the correct gesture was infallible.

The first of her Oscars came for an iconic performance in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Miss Brodie’s pupils are the “crème de la crème”, and her dictatorial aphorisms – “Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life” – disguise her intent of inculcating enthusiasm in her charges for the men she most admires, Mussolini and Franco.

But Smith’s pre-eminence became truly global with two projects towards the end of her career. She was Professor Minerva McGonagall in the eight films of the Harry Potter franchise (she referred to the role as Miss Brodie in a wizard’s hat) between 2001 and 2011. Between 2010 and 2015, in the six series of Downton Abbey on ITV television (sold to 250 territories around the world), she played the formidable and acid-tongued Dowager Countess of Grantham, Lady Violet, a woman whose heart of seeming stone was mitigated by a moral humanity and an old-fashioned, if sometimes overzealous, sense of social propriety.

Early on, one critic described Smith as having witty elbows. Another, the US director and writer Harold Clurman, said that she “thinks funny”. When Robin Phillips directed her as Rosalind in As You Like It in 1977 in Stratford, Ontario, he said that “she can respond to something that perhaps only squirrels would sense in the air. And I think that comedy, travelling around in the atmosphere, finds her.” Like Edith Evans, her great predecessor as a stylist, Smith came late to Rosalind. Bernard Levin was convinced that it was a definitive performance, and was deeply affected by the last speech: “She spoke the epilogue like a chime of golden bells. But what she looked like as she did so, I cannot tell you; for I saw it through eyes curtained with tears of joy.”

She was more taut and tuned than any other actor of her day, and this reliance on her instinct to create a performance made her reluctant to talk about acting, although she had a forensic attitude to preparation. With no time for the celebrity game, she rarely went on television chat shows – her appearance on Graham Norton’s BBC TV show in 2015 was her first such in 42 years – or gave newspaper interviews.

Her life she summed up thus: “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act and one’s still acting.” That was it. She first went “public”, according to her father, when, attired in pumps and tutu after a ballet lesson, she regaled a small crowd on an Oxford pavement with one of Arthur Askey’s ditties: “I’m a little fairy flower, growing wilder by the hour.”

Unlike her great friend and contemporary Judi Dench, Smith was a transatlantic star early in her career, making her Broadway debut in 1956 and joining Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre as one of the 12 original contract artists in 1963.

In 1969, after repeatedly stealing other people’s movies, with Miss Brodie she became a star in her own right. She was claiming her just place in the elite, for she had already worked with Olivier, Orson Welles and Noël Coward in the theatre, not to mention her great friend and fellow miserabilist Kenneth Williams, in West End revue. She had also created an international stir in two movies, Anthony Asquith’s The VIPs (1963) – she didn’t just steal her big scene with him, Richard Burton complained, “she committed grand larceny” – and Jack Clayton’s The Pumpkin Eater (1964), scripted by Harold Pinter from the novel by Penelope Mortimer.

Before Harry Potter, audiences associated Smith most readily with her lovelorn, heartbreaking parishioner Susan in Bed Among the Lentils, one of six television monologues in Bennett’s Talking Heads (1988). Susan was a character seething with sexual anger; the first line nearly said it all – “Geoffrey’s bad enough, but I’m glad I wasn’t married to Jesus.”

And the funniest moment in Robert Altman’s upstairs/downstairs movie Gosford Park (2001) – in some ways a template for Downton Abbey, and also written by Julian Fellowes — was a mere aside from a doleful Smith as Constance Trentham turning to a neighbour on the sofa, as Jeremy Northam as Ivor Novello took a bow for the song he had just sung. “Don’t encourage him,” she warned, archly, “he’s got a very large repertoire.” Such a moment took us right back to the National in 1964 when, as the vamp Myra Arundel in Coward’s Hay Fever, she created an unprecedented (and un-equalled) gale of laughter on the single ejaculation at the breakfast table: “This haddock is disgusting.”

Born in Ilford, Essex, she was the daughter of Margaret (nee Hutton) and Nathaniel Smith, and educated at Oxford high school for girls (the family moved to Oxford at the start of the second world war because of her father’s work as a laboratory technician). Maggie decided to be an actor, joined the Oxford Playhouse school under the tutelage of Frank Shelley in 1951 and took roles in professional and student productions.

She acted as Margaret Smith until 1956, when Equity, the actors’ union, informed her that the name was double-booked. She played Viola with the Oxford University dramatic society in 1952 – John Wood was her undergraduate Malvolio – and appeared in revues directed by Ned Sherrin. “At that time in Oxford,” said Sherrin, “if you wanted a show to be a success, you had to try and get Margaret Smith in it.”

The Sunday Times critic of the day, Harold Hobson, spotted her in a play by Michael Meyer and she was soon working with the directors Peter Hall and Peter Wood. “I didn’t think she would develop the range that she subsequently has,” said Hall, “but I did think she had star quality.”

One of her many admirers at Oxford, the writer Beverley Cross, initiated a long-term campaign to marry Smith that was only fulfilled after the end of her tempestuous 10-year relationship with the actor Robert Stephens, with whom she fell in love at the National and whom she married in 1967. This was a golden decade, as Smith played a beautiful Desdemona to Olivier’s Othello; a clever and impetuous Hilde Wangel to first Michael Redgrave, then Olivier, in Ibsen’s The Master Builder; and an irrepressibly witty and playful Beatrice opposite Stephens as Benedick in Franco Zeffirelli’s Sicilian Much Ado About Nothing, spangled in coloured lights.

Her National “service” was book-ended by two particularly wonderful performances in Restoration comedies by George Farquhar, The Recruiting Officer (1963) and The Beaux’ Stratagem (1970), both directed by William Gaskill, whom she called “simply the best teacher”. In the first, in the travesty role of Sylvia, her bubbling, playful sexuality shone through a disguise of black cork moustache and thigh-high boots on a clear stage that acquired, said Bamber Gascoigne, an air of sharpened reality, “like life on a winter’s day with frost and sun”.

In the second, her Mrs Sullen, driven frantic by boredom and shrewish by a sodden, elderly husband, was a tight-laced beanpole, graceful, swaying and tender, drawing from Ronald Bryden a splendidly phrased comparison with some Henri Rousseau-style giraffe, peering nervously down her nose with huge, liquid eyes at the smaller creatures around, nibbling off her lines fastidiously in a surprisingly tiny nasal drawl.

With Stephens, she had two sons, Chris and Toby, who both became actors. When the marriage hit the rocks in 1975, after the couple had torn strips off each other to mixed reviews in John Gielgud’s 1973 revival of Coward’s Private Lives, Smith absconded to Canada with Cross – whom she quickly married – and relaunched her career there, far from the London hurly-burly, but with access to Hollywood.

She played not just Rosalind in Stratford, Ontario, but also Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra to critical acclaim, as well as Judith Bliss in Coward’s Hay Fever and Millamant in William Congreve’s The Way of the World (this latter role she repeated triumphantly in Chichester and London in 1984, again directed by Gaskill). But her films at this time especially reinforced her status as a comedian of flair and authority, none more than Neil Simon’s California Suite (1978), in which Smith was happily partnered by Michael Caine, and won her second Oscar in the role of Diana Barrie, an actor on her way to the Oscars (where she loses).

Smith’s comic genius was increasingly refracted through tales of sadness, retreat and isolation, notably in what is very possibly her greatest screen performance, in Clayton’s The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987), based on Brian Moore’s first novel, which charts the disintegration of an alcoholic Catholic spinster at guilty odds with her own sensuality.

This tragic dimension to her comedy, was seen on stage, too, in Edna O’Brien’s Virginia (1980), a haunting portrait of Virginia Woolf; and in Bennett’s The Lady in the Van (1999), in which she was the eccentric tramp Miss Shepherd. Miss Shepherd was a former nun who had driven ambulances during blackouts in the second world war and ended up as a tolerated squatter in the playwright’s front garden. Smith brought something both demonic and celestial to this critical, ungrateful, dun-caked crone and it was impossible to imagine any other actor in the role, which she reprised, developed and explored further in Nicholas Hytner’s delightful 2015 movie based on the play.

She scored two big successes in Edward Albee’s work on the London stage in the 1990s, first in Three Tall Women (1994, the playwright’s return to form), and then in one of his best plays, A Delicate Balance (1997), in which she played alongside Eileen Atkins who, like Dench, could give Smith as good as she got.

The Dench partnership lay fallow after their early years at the Old Vic together, but these two great stars made up for lost time. They appeared together not only on stage, in David Hare’s The Breath of Life (2002), playing the wife and mistress of the same dead man, but also on film, in the Merchant-Ivory A Room With a View (1985), Zeffirelli’s Tea With Mussolini (1999) and as a pair of grey-haired sisters in Charles Dance’s debut film as a director, Ladies in Lavender (2004). Smith referred to this latter film as “The Lavender Bags”. She had a name for everyone. Vanessa Redgrave she dubbed “the Red Snapper”, while Michael Palin, with whom she made two films, was simply “the Saint”.

With Palin, she appeared in Bennett’s A Private Function (1984), directed by Malcolm Mowbray – “Moaner Mowbray” he became – in which an unlicensed pig is slaughtered in a Yorkshire village for the royal wedding celebrations of 1947. Smith was Joyce Chilvers, married to Palin, who carries on snobbishly like a Lady Macbeth of Ilkley, deciding to throw caution to the winds and have a sweet sherry, or informing her husband matter-of-factly that sexual intercourse is in order.

She had also acted with Palin in The Missionary (1982), directed by Richard Loncraine, who was responsible for the film of Ian McKellen’s Richard III (1995, in which she played a memorably rebarbative Duchess of York) and My House in Umbria (2003), a much-underrated film, adapted by Hugh Whitemore from a William Trevor novella. This last brought out the very best in her special line in glamorous whimsy and iron-clad star status under pressure. She played Emily Delahunty, a romantic novelist opening her glorious house in Umbria to her three fellow survivors in a bomb blast on a train to Milan. One of these was played by Ronnie Barker, who had been at architectural college with Smith’s two brothers and had left them to join her at the Oxford Playhouse. Delahunty finds her new metier as an adoptive parent to a little orphaned American girl.

She was Mother Superior in the very popular Sister Act (1992) and its sequel, and her recent films included a “funny turn” as a disruptive housekeeper in Keeping Mum (2005), a vintage portrait of old age revisited by the past in Stephen Poliakoff’s Capturing Mary (on television in 2007) and as a solicitous grandmother of a boy uncovering a ghost story in Fellowes’s From Time to Time (2009).

As this latter film was released she confirmed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and had undergone an intensive course of chemotherapy, but had been given the all-clear – only to be struck down by a painful attack of shingles, a typical Maggie Smith example of good news never coming unadulterated with a bit of bad.

Her stage appearance as the title character in Albee’s The Lady from Dubuque at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, in 2007 was, ironically, about death from cancer. She returned to the stage for the last time in 2019, as Brunhilde Pomsel in Christopher Hampton’s one-woman play A German Life, at the Bridge theatre, London.

Cross, who was a real rock, and helped protect her from the outside world, died in 1998. But Smith picked herself up, and went on to perform as sensationally and beguilingly as she had done all her life, including memorable appearances in the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films (2011 and 2015) and two Downton Abbey movie spin-offs (2019 and 2022). Her final film role was in The Miracle Club (2023), co-starring Kathy Bates and Laura Linney.

She had been made CBE in 1970 and a dame in 1990, and in 2014 she was made a Companion of Honour. Her pleasure would have been laced with mild incredulity. A world without Smith recoiling from it in mock horror, and real distaste, will never seem the same again.

She is survived by Chris and Toby, and by five grandchildren.

🔔 Maggie Smith (Margaret Natalie Smith), actor, born 28 December 1934; died 27 September 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[mydivasfan]

Tri-Guild Ball Finds

Stars Present

The town just coming up for air after the Tri-Guild ball which went on until dawn, Marlene Dietrich, gone very blonde, and black-haired Hedy Lamarr sitting at a table with Doug- las Fairbanks, Jr., and Reginald Gardiner. A study in black and white. Mariam Hopkins so enthused over Judy Garland's singing she led the applause, Countess di Frasso, escort- ed by Willis Goldbeck, and Irene Rich with Edward Everett Horton among the unexpected twosomes. One of the hits of the evening was the sketch Frank Morgan put on directing Gloria Stuart and Cesar Romero in a love scene as five di- rectors of varying technique might have done. The directors were John Stahl, Woody Van Dyke, Ernst Lubitsch, John Ford and Gregory LaCava.

The morning paper. April 23, 1938

[myfatmuses]

*Luz was driving to the outskirts of a town in Transylvania to place called bonesborough Valley. She heard it was home to some of the most beautiful haunted scenery's in Romania. Which be great for aspirations for a novel she was writing. Of course her thoughts were interrupted has her car engine started to have trouble.*

No no no not now. Come on you piece of junk we were almost there.*Unfortunately for the car slowed down and stop has it laid there dead basically.* That just great what now?*Luz tried to use her phone to call someone but no the battery was dead. Much to Luz dismay.*

Great just great battery dead has well. I knew I shouldn't have read those Good witch Azura fan fictions on my phone.*Look around to spot a castle nearby. She did hear from the townfolk that there was somebody that lived around here. Maybe she can find some help there? She walked to the castle till was stop at the front gates.*

Hello anybody here? I need some help here.*The girl shouted hoping that the person was home and could hear her.*

The countess of this region as far as the people knew was a woman of few interactions someone who only did her job and the bare minimum of it. To those lucky or haunted few who knew the truth that she was as pure blooded a vampire as you could get being one of The originators of the deal thanks to her mother who was long since... Retired from this world by amity's own machinations. She lost count of her age a few centuries back somewhere when she was 500 it didn't really matter now life was boring Judy was repetitive in the night was all consuming but perhaps tonight would have a bit of fun as she saw wanting traveler making her way to their door.

She waited just enough for the human to think no one was coming before opening the door revealing her unnaturally good looks.

"and just what is it you are in need of. " You spoke with an accent but her English was clear."

[thenightling]

Queer Horror

It's pride month so here is a (NOT complete) list of horror icons real and fictional who are of the LGBTQAI+ community. Writers / directors / Actors Oscar Wilde Clive Barker Caitlin R. Kiernan William Joseph Martin James Whale (director of Frankenstein) Ernest Thesiger (Doctor Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein) Anthony Perkins Vincent Price David Geffen (producer of Interview with the vampire movie and Beetlejuice) Jonathan Frid (Dark Shadows) Louis Edmonds (Dark Shadows) Ed Wood Elvira (Casandra Peterson) Amanda Beares (Fright Night, 1985) Merritt Butrick (Fright Night Part 2) Roddy McDowall (Hell House, Fright Night, Fright Night: Part 2, and Carmilla) _________________________ Characters Mephisto (Faust, 1922) Countess Zeleska (Dracula's Daughter) Carmilla (The Vampire Lovers, 1970 and all film adapations of Carmilla) Louis, Lestat, Daniel Malloy, Armand (Interview with the vampire movie and show and The Vampire Chronicles book series) Claudia, Madeleine, Nicolas (Interview with the vampire TV series) Jerry Dandridge, Billy Cole, Peter Vincent, Evil Ed, and possibly Amy (Fright Night, original 1985 version) Regine and Belle (Fright Night part 2, 1988) Miriam Blaylock (The Hunger movie and novel by Whitley Streiber, along with its sequels) Marius (Queen of the damned movie and novels) Glen / Glenda (Seed of Chucky) Dracula (Marvel comics, Dario Argento's Dracula, Steven Moffat's Dracula, Frank Wildhorn's Dracula The musical) Alucard, Striga, Morana, (Castlevania) The Corinthian, Hal Carter, Wanda, Judy, Donna (Foxglove), Hazel, Alexander Burgess, Paul McGuire, Cluracaun, Mazikeen, Lucifer, Loki, Desire, Johanna Constantine, John Constantine, Rachel, Chantel, Zelda, Aristaeus the Satyr, Jim / Peggy, (Neil Gaiman's The Sandman) Echo, Ruin, Heather After (From Sandman spin-off comics) April Spink and Miriam Forcible (Coraline) Angela and Sera (Marvel comics) Sam Black Crow (American Gods) EVERYONE! - Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles EVERYONE! - Lost Girl (TV series)

Snow White (Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman) Dorian Gray, Lord Henry Wotton, and Basil Hallward (The Picture of Dorian Gray) Captain Shaekespeare (Stardust) Loki (all incarantions) John Constantine (All versions) Aziraphale and Crowley (Good Omens) Renfield (Original Dracula novel, speculated by scholars) Mephistopheles, Faust, and Satan - Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe and Faust by Goethe. Carmilla and Laura (All versions of Carmilla) Eli and Oskar (Let the Right One In) Lily and The mermaid Queen (She-Creature, 2001 version) Radu (Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula) Lexington (Disney's Gargoyles, not canon until the comics) Dorothy and Ruby AAK Red (Once Upon a Tme) Tara and Willow (Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV series) Lorne (Angel) Ethan, Dorian Gray, Angelique, and Professor Lyle (Penny Dreadful) Thelma Bates (Hex) Joe (Midnight Texas) Skully (Scary Godmother) Mitch (ParaNorman) Henry Fitzroy (Blood Ties) Thomas Jerome Newton (The Man who fell to Earth) Any Clive Barker character NOT confirmed to be straight is presumed LGBTQAI+. There are many, many more but my fingers are starting to ache and these are the ones I could think of off the top of my head.

[end0r4]

Miranda Otto as Countess Judy in The Portable Door (2023)

[thewholekeg]

It looked like an old storage room. No different than anyone else's attic, really. Well, if you ignored the age and price of the old furniture and knick-knacks.

Stella must have just stepped inside to get something. Miranda couldn't see her from the door, though. She opened it futher and slipped inside, hoping that the leftover moonlight would be enough to keep her from tripping over her own feet.

It struck her, then, that the light wasn't on. She paused for a moment, but shook her head. In a house this old, of course they wouldn't have wired lighting into the attic, of all places. Still, she wondered if Stella had taken a flashlight or something. Surely Miranda would have been able to see the bea--

Something shifted above her.

Miranda's head snapped up to the source of the noise. But there was nothing. No movement, no sound…

Something must have just slide inside of one of the old boxes. She patted her chest, and laughed at herself for being so silly. First she was seeing ghosts in the graveyard, and now this! She was letting her imagination run away with her. It was just an old attic, in an old house.

Now, where was Stella?

[ahamasmiyodhah]

Who Was She?

PAIRING: Kane Yamashita x Salima (Beyblade Original Series) Art trade with @blossommoonart Moonie

He was sitting idly in the Dojo, looking at the falling Cherry blossom leaves with a smile when he heard the front door slam open and he blinked, sighing softly. Walking out, he greeted the Servants of his family and stepped into the main hall, immediately noticing the midnight blue haired boy. He turned around and gave a goofy grin to Him. 

"Oi Kane! What took you so long buddy? We have to go to the Hiwatari Palace for the Gathering, remember?" Takao exclaimed, his hands on his hips which also held his dual bladed Katana swords. 

"Takao, forgetting important meetings is your feat, not mine." Kane replied dryly. "But no wonder you remembered this. After all, Prince Kai is your own childhood buddy." Kane grinned and Takao laughed. "Yes he is! But let us go fast before Kai whoops our asses." Takao laughed. 

That's how after half an hour, Kane found himself standing at a stall looking at Takai who was ravaging the food brought from one of the stalls. "Takao, take it easy. You have to eat at the Palace as well." Max said, his one arm draping on Takao. 

Max was son of Lord Mizuhara, another of the Important Samurai Family head from the court alongside the main five Samurai Families. Lord Mizuhara had married a western Countess, Lady Judy. Other than him, the only non-Japanese were Crown Prince Rei, the Prince of China who was a great friend of Kai, Prince Yuriy of the Russian Empire alongside his friends Sergei, Bryan and Ivan and the Prince of Europe Robert.

“I know Max!” Takao slurped. “But it's way too tasty and invited me to have it!” Takao reasoned, making the two sweatdrop. Rei sighed. “Oh Takao, let’s go before Kai tears us in half.” He grabbed Takao by his forearm and dragged him towards the Palace.

“Rei, you know Takao doesn’t —” Kane was about to say when he bumped into someone, and heard jingles. Looking up, his eyes were met with the piercing dark black eyes of the girl. 

Her hairs were red, as red as the flame of scorching fire, adorned with a golden band embedded with jewels. Her face below her nose was covered with a dark veil, a pair of intricately designed flowy pants paired with a long skirt type shirt over which a heavy veil was draped. 

“I’m sorry..” Song.. her voice was like a song, a beautiful song. “It's fine…” He said in a daze, and the girl turned around moving her piercing eyes away from him and went, the chime of her anklets sounding like chirping of birds in his ears. He stayed struck at same spot, until Ray came towards him.

“Kane?” Ray shook him and he blinked rapidly, looking at Ray. “Yeah, Ray?” He asked in a daze and looked at Ray. “Let’s go, we are late.” Ray said and Kane nodded, following Ray. But before going, he turned back towards where he had seen the girl, and finally thought..

I hope you will like it dear. It was quiet long, but I lost my previous data and lost that one as well and I was genuinely so devastated.

[coochiequeens]

We lost a legend

Two-time Oscar winner Maggie Smith, the celebrated stage actress who starred in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and burnished her long-shining star by playing the scene-stealing dowager countess of “Downton Abbey” and the exacting Professor McGonagall in the “Harry Potter” franchise, has died. She was 89.

The respected English dame “passed away peacefully” early Friday in a London hospital, her sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, said in a statement to The Times.

“An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother,” they said in a statement issued through publicist Clair Dobbs.

Her sons did not disclose her cause of death in the statement. Smith had been candid about her health issues in the past, suffering from glaucoma, Graves’ disease and breast cancer, and she underwent hip-replacement surgery in her 80s. In their statement, her sons thanked the “wonderful staff at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their care and unstinting kindness during her final days.”

During a career that spanned six decades, Smith acquired a large following on both sides of the Atlantic and became one of few to achieve the triple crown of acting — winning Academy, Emmy and Tony awards. She earned her Oscars playing the unconventional schoolmarm in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and a brittle movie star in “California Suite” in the 1970s. She also had four Primetime Emmys, three Golden Globes, a Tony, an Olivier Award and a slate of BAFTAs to her name.

The veteran performer famously summed up her career in a single sentence: “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, and one’s still acting.”

Beginning her work in theater as a teen, Smith played Shakespeare’s Rosalind and Beatrice. She hit her stride with imperious characters and class-conscious snobs. A commanding presence on par with contemporaries Judi Dench and Vanessa Redgrave, Smith was awarded as a Companion of Honor by Queen Elizabeth in 1990. In person, Smith was funny, self-deprecating and down-to-earth.

“I’ll get restless unless I’m acting. That’s when I come really alive, you see,” she told The Times.

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[mirandalinotto]

Promotional photo of Miranda Otto as Countess Judy in The Portable Door

[sunlitroom]

Tagged by the marvellous @rhavewellyarnbag. Thank-you very much :)

Last song:  Both Sides Now, the Judy Collins version. I heard her version for the first time in Mad Men. Joni Mitchell apparently dislikes this version - not sure why :/

Currently watching:  I fall into a weird spell of low mood every July. I'm not quite sure what causes it- maybe the fact that it's usually grey and rainy here when it should be summery; or the feeling that I should get away somewhere but everywhere else is too hot; or that I should be doing summery things and am not doing said summery things. I've read some people get a seasonal affective depression at this time of year (it's really only dark here for a few hours at this time of year).

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that starting something new seems like a massive effort. I was actually thinking of starting Endeavour - which @rhavewellyarnbag mentioned. In the meantime, though, I'm mostly watching things I've seen before. Enjoying old Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films late at night.

Currently reading:  Maigret novels. Again - I have stiffer things on the reading list, but anything that's too much effort is not currently happening.

Current obsession:  Teas. I have discovered I like things other than Assam and have been drinking Lapsang Souchong, Ceylon, genmaicha - all in blends with lots of different things.

Thank-you! I tag, should they wish to play, @countess--olenska, @honestmrdual, @ncfan-1, @jeremiahwasajoker, @lalaurelia, @kenobiwaned, @peritwotone, @marywisdom, @zara2148, @shadow-waterglow, @linotte-melodieuse, @somebodyhelpthenotdeadfreds, @inappropriatefangirlneeds, @bunchofasholes and @countessrivers