#so SO beautiful and so sensuous and irreverent

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

my propellor, boston 08/05/2009

[perverse-idyll]

Danni! Danni Danni Danni. Have I told you lately that you are phenomenal? I don't think so, and even if I have, it's not enough. Thank you, thank you for everything you do - I'm not sure you realize how extraordinary it is to see so much love poured into fandom. Not just for me - seeing your posts celebrating other writers and artists, recommending fanworks, sharing the joy of new discoveries, lighting up my Tumblr feed with outbursts of creativity that seem more embracing and virtuosic than one person alone should be capable of - it's so bloody inspiring! And gobsmacking! And sparkling and sweet and brave. Your words and the way you share your explorations and your struggle with obstacles and betrayals, with creative frustration and obsession, your sense of artistry and your passion for Snape, Harry, femslash, rare pairs, vilified tropes, dark themes, dead doves, characters who seem beyond redemption (but aren't!), messy electric sensuous sex, but also fluff and charm; your buoyancy when it all finally pays off, your encouragement of others in their endeavors, in all varieties of ship - it forges the kind of community that's so hard to come by but that blossoms sometimes in fandom and is so lovely and so much damn fun when it does happen. And you make it seem effortless! I know it's not. And sometimes you need to go off and do your own thing in private. But part of the beauty of it is that creative pleasure comes naturally to you.

I don't know what I did to deserve such an outpouring of love and delight, for you to champion my rather odd fics with such conviction and eloquence. It helps that I was lucky enough to start writing during the Snarry middle period, when excitement over the pairing brought so many memorable, ship-defining fics bursting forth in this irreverent fountain of UST and wartime plots. Still, I have to shake my head in amazement because - my stories inspired you! That's one of the deepest and most personal compliments I can imagine. Especially since every Snarry fic you post already feels like a gift (one in particular!). So few writers portray their fraught, all-consuming dynamic in exactly the way I love best, with such a sure hand, such burnished and sensuous and bitter passion, such an intense rapport. And of course for us to have that connection through our OTP and the way we see them and what they mean to us. All the emotions that surround our interpretations, how their flaws speak to us, how their capacity for devotion (a word I will now, in expectation, forever associate with your Snape and Harry) matters so fiercely and draws stories out of us. And how that can forge friendships from the spark of mutual recognition that starts in our creative bones but transcends the characters we've poured our hearts into.

I understand how nervewracking it can be to approach someone on social media (it took me forever to jump into the LiveJournal pool of Snape ferment back in the day, and I'm still out of my element here on Tumblr) but I also have to laugh and hug you because - hah, me, intimidating? But there's no way you could have known that for sure, especially with recent painful history breathing down your neck. Distances, even ones the size of a comment, can feel too large to cross, too potentially unwelcoming. So I'm delighted you made the leap! Thank you for talking to me and breaking whatever ice there was. I can't imagine not knowing you now. I can't imagine not being friends. I get to bask in your company and your accomplishments for the foreseeable future! This is one of the true, often elusive gifts of fandom: friendship. And the fizzy excitement of boggling at what you create - the sharing of your brilliance and talent, watching you throw self-doubt aside and leave behind all attempts to crush your spirit, to see the outpouring of stories in all shades and colors, the astrological analyses, the lovingly and thoughtfully written recommendations, and now - bookbinding!

And I don't even know what to say about your celebration of my work. I suffer massive imposter syndrome in the face of praise; it makes me happy and anxious in equal measure. But I love that I was a writer crush! That's one of the most - I don't know, validating, sublime - compliments ever. And the fact that you're such a marvelous writer - and that we share a self-tormenting fussiness about prose and the beauty of words - just makes it count for more. Frankly, I think I'm a storyteller of limited appeal, and I see in you a writer freer with her imagination, a storyteller whose wider range and style and spirit should earn you a large, grateful, enthusiastic audience.

And thank you, also, for reccing my work - for enjoying the themes and preoccupations and verbosity and especially the Snarry obsession. For urging other people to give them a try. ☺️❤️

I'm sorry to have left this so long, but I didn't want to respond until I had a clear and wakeful break in my [hah, spoke too soon, I was interrupted right here and called away, so now it's days weeks later] schedule. Also because it's easy to get tongue-tied - or the keyboard equivalent - in the face of attention. Even exuberant attention. (I completely understand the stage fright of volunteering to be interviewed. Being in the spotlight is hard!)

So more than a month has passed, which is ridiculous, so shame on me. But I hope you know, even when I disappear for a month, you have all my love and appreciation, all my feelings of sheer good luck in having you in my life. I feel I've been given a remarkable, one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted, incredibly meaningful gift. Thank you, dear Danni. <3 <3 <3

Ending Mutuals March on a very special note. PI, @perverse-idyll, my longtime writing crush, and now my friend.

It was love at first sight when The White Road was first posted. I can't remember when I first read it, but it was around the time it was posted for sure. And I've read that fic every year since. At least once a year, if not more. By the time I read When the Rose and the Fire Are One I knew it was true love!

PI's stories have been deeply meaningful to me for a long time. And I have always admired her skill. Prose? Gorgeous, stunning, perfect. With great knowledge and great passion she strings words into gorgeous treasures. Raw stones left to their rough glory, or shaped and shined as needed. Not only a gifted wordsmith, but a wise and empathetic person who understands the human condition, and the complexities of emotion. Someone with great love for beloved characters, but also great understanding. Love born of understanding, which is everything I long for!

We love the same characters, and the same OTP. She does such justice to these characters, and their dynamic. She's always written Snarry exactly how I needed it. I have treasured her works for many years, and they have been my favorites for many years. Of course, in those earlier days I was much too shy to let her know just what her works meant to me.

Then, in recent years, I had my first interaction with PI. On Reddit, of places. I recced one of her fics and she responded to it which blew my mind a bit, since her Reddit name isn't perverse_idyll, lol! So...I tried to be chill, which if you know me, you know how hard that is! Me, but an overenthusiastic fangirl trying not to scare off her faves, haha! If I remember correctly, I finally set about drafting a comment on The White Road not long after that. Long overdue that one!

Then...time went on. During a very rough period with an old fandom group, I turned to PI's works for comfort. And in November 2021, the same month I left that old fandom group, PI's episode on @fanficmaverickpodcast (Ep. 25 interview) was released!

I was over the moon excited to listen to it! But the sort of excited that meant I couldn't dive in right away. I had to run around and squeal a bit and settle myself down in order to listen. It is a long episode, two and a half hours long, but well worth it! The host, ChaosBlue, is a dear friend of mine now, and a very professional and charming host. And perverse_idyll was a fantastic guest, with so much insight and enthusiasm for fandom and for writing. 10/10 recommend it. I ran around and shared the episode everywhere I could.

And then...Reddit. PI shared the episode on Reddit, with encouragement for others to reach out to ChaosBlue to do their own episode. And...I did! God, that's a whole other post in of itself and how amazing ChaosBlue is, but basically...I felt pretty audacious! I had to work myself up quite a bit to reach out. And as hard as it was to reach out, I don't think I'd have found the courage to even think about it without PI's little note. It both inspired and comforted me. And doing my own interview for the podcast was such a great (and terrifying!) experience that I'm glad I did. (See: ep. 32 Interview)

From there...it came over time. PI was so kind and supportive about my interview. I found the bravery to reach out to her directly at some point. And though she is quite the busy lady, she is always so giving of her time and energy in responding when she can! PI is such an encouraging, generous, compassionate, supportive spirit. One I feel very blessed to know. She has so much clear respect and admiration for other creators. So much love and dedication to fandom, however busy or wild life may be.

Other fandom experiences reminded me of why they say to never meet your heroes. But PI spared me from being too wary of folk. PI is an excellent reminder that, sometimes, the creators we admire are even better humans.

PI's works were so meaningful to me for so long. And PI as a person has just as much impact! Thank you for being my friend, PI. Thank you for everything that you do. Thank you for all that you give to fandom; for all that you create, and all the support you give. And thank you most of all for being there for me. And showing such kindness and gentleness in times I needed it most, whether you knew it or not.

Here's to you, my friend. Time for me to wipe my eyes and drop some recs! Maybe by the end we'll have forgotten what an emotional mess I am LOL.

The Afterlight

Harry/Severus. Rated: E. Work in progress. Background case. Mutual pining. Friends with benefits. Denial of feelings. Angst. Hurt/comfort. Eventual happy ending.

Y'all cannot know how thrilled I was when PI posted a new fic. This one! And though it's only just begun, I already feel in my bones it will be a new favorite! PI as ever provides Snarry exactly the way I love it!

After surviving the Battle of Hogwarts, a long convalescence, and a short trial, Snape walks free and promptly vanishes from Wizarding society. Six years pass before he shows his face again. A lot can change in six years, and a romantically disillusioned and inebriated Harry hits Snape up for a friends-with-benefits arrangement. After all, they share an experience most people have never had: they both know what it's like to be dead. Their liaison works surprisingly well until Harry's reckless behaviour as an Auror leads to unethical practices and personal calamities, and things start to fall apart.

Candles Lit Against the Dark

Minerva/Wilhelmina. Minor Harry/Severus. Rated: G. Words: 13,585. Old friends. Postwar. Heavy drinking. Fond bickering. Snapecase 2023.

Many feelings. Very realistic and bittersweet. With all of the realism of life, for all of its rough edges, uneven paths, and the love found along the way.

It's been a few months since Minerva's retirement, and she'd promised Wil a dinner out. Before she knows it, friends start turning up on her doorstep and then at the pub, not least among them a certain spy who came in from the cold.

In Infinite Remorse of Soul | And Mine the Gall

Albus/Severus. Harry/Severus. Revenge. Obsession. D/s undertones. Afterlife. Incest (ish.) Dub-con. Twisted love.

I am obsessed. This is dark and fucky and weird and wonderful and gorgeous. The sequel, And Mine the Gall, features one of the lines that has most haunted out of every fic I've read. Love it love it love it!

Albus Dumbledore never makes the same mistake twice. Certainly not in love.

No Room for the Weak

Eileen POV. Rated: T. Words: 10,444. Dysfunctional family. Mindfuck. Pre-Snarry.

Love love love love love this. Some Snape family history. Eileen is great. Very fascinating look at the woman who bore and raised Severus.

There's a Boy Who Lived and a boy who didn't, and even a mother can't always tell them apart.

The Son

Regulus POV. Rated: T. Words: 5,422. Unhappy families.

First there were two sons. Then there was one.

Warm

Harry/Severus. Rated: E. Words: 11,323. PWP. Fluff & smut.

PWP feels wrong for this. So much sensuality and tenderness and good god the LOVE here. Also, I'm sorry, but Harry and Severus existing as themselves basically is plot, but I digress....PI says it's PWP so it's PWP. I'm not going to argue with her!

Severus still suffers the after-effects of Nagini's venom, especially in winter. Harry knows just how to warm him up.

When the Rose and the Fire Are One

Harry/Severus. Rated: E. Words: 81.619. Confinement. Dysfunctional Relationships. Spinner's End. Dubious consent. Sex magic.

Cool magic stuff. The best OC I've ever met (Odile, my beloved.) Ideas of Spinner's End and Eileen Snape that have lived in my head ever since. Big angst and fuckery. Great characters. Great relationship development. Everything is just...A+, chef's kiss, amazing.

Harry's haunted by guilt. Snape's warded by roses. Each must free the other in order to free himself.

The White Road

Lily POV. Harry/Severus. Rated: E. Words: 47,877. Afterlife. Romance. Redemption. Voyeurism. Incestuous vibes.

Longtime favorite. One of the first fics that fully blew me away. I read this and thought "this does not belong on the internet, this belongs on a bookshelf."

One day, comfortably set up in the afterlife, Lily Evans Potter switches on the telly and gets hooked on the Harry Potter show.

for an explanation about Mutuals March, or to figure out why i wrote you a thing, please check out this post.

[thesurielships]

143. “Just how stupid do you think I am?”

magnifique

This is super late, I’m sorry. Enjoy :))

Word count: 791 | Masterlist | ao3

Feyre hated French. She hated the snobbish accent, the garish vowels and the fanciful spelling that had no logic or practical use. Whoever dubbed it the language of arts and love and all that was beautiful in life was a fool. Beauty was simplicity. It was a stroke of paint on a blank canvas, vibrant colors coming to life under an inspired gaze. It was the stars glowing in the night sky, the violet of amethyst and crocuses, an irreverent smirk on sensuous lips -

She scowled at the turn her thoughts had taken, fighting the blush creeping up her neck.

“Here, translate these sentences for me.”

She huffed, rolling her eyes at the tutor the principal had forced on her. As if she needed more reasons to stand Rhysand putain de Night’s company.

See? She spoke French just fine.

He tapped the paper in front of him. “It’s just so I can see what level you’re at.”

She dragged it to her side of the table, avoiding his gaze. The handwriting was elegant, the letters beautifully looping into one another.

Rhysand est le gars le plus beau du lycée.

She frowned at the name, knowing mischief was afoot. It was a simple, short sentence, and yet it took longer and much more effort than she cared to admit, but –

“Are you fucking kidding me? How stupid do you think I am?”

Rhys’s eyes were twinkling with amusement. “What is it?”

She nearly slammed her hand – or his face – on the table. “This says Rhysand is the most handsome guy in school!”

“I’m glad you think so, Feyre darling,” he purred, his voice sinfully seductive in the shadowed corner of the stuffy school library.

“No, I –” she protested but she knew her blazing cheeks betrayed her.

She’d had a strong, albeit reluctant crush on Rhysand since sophomore year. He was one year older, her best friend’s cousin, the most popular guy in school and every other trope imaginable, but whenever their eyes locked and he winked or smirked or smiled, she stopped caring how silly she was being.

Rhys was already writing down other sentences, and she could see his name every couple of lines. Gods, how was she supposed to keep a straight face, let alone learn French, when the hottest guy in existence seemed hell-bent on teasing her until she died of embarrassment and/or intense emotional repression?

“Since we’re past that, how about we move to la conjugaison?”

Feyre scowled at him. “Prick,” she muttered under her breath. He’d known that was the area she needed help with from the beginning.

Rhysand … (être, présent)  merveilleux.

Je … (faire, futur simple) n’importe quoi pour ses beaux yeux.

J’… (adorer, présent) la compagnie de Rhysand.

Feyre was careful to keep her face blank as she worked through the ridiculous exercise, until the last sentence had her snapping her head up so fast she almost gave herself whiplash.

(Vouloir, tu) … sortir avec moi? ‘Would you like to go out with me?’

She couldn’t gauge Rhys’s intentions with his face buried in a textbook. Was he serious? Or was it just his usual shameless flirting?

Feyre’s heart was beating so loud she was sure he could somehow hear it. The guy never missed anything. There was no way he didn’t know about her silly crush on him, and he wasn’t so cruel to tease her this way… or was he?

There was only one way to find out.

She steeled herself and scribbled down at the bottom of the page, her handwriting a messy scrawl near Rhys’s picture perfect penmanship.

“Rhys,” her voice was breathless. She cleared her throat and pushed the paper towards him. He slowly closed the book, or maybe it was only slow to Feyre’s heightened senses. His gaze was inscrutable. “When you finish correcting, there is a question in vocabulary I need your help on.”

He clicked his pen open and got to work. She winced at all the wrong answers she had, barely less than half, then held her breath as he read what she’d written.

She couldn’t read French upside down, nor could she decipher Rhys’s face through its impenetrable mask, so she waited.

After what seemed like an eternity, he handed her back the paper. He had filled out the blanks she’d left for him.

Feyre est… belle (adjectif). ‘Feyre is beautiful.’

Je voudrais … sortir avec elle. ‘I would like to go out with her.’

She bit her lip, shyly glancing back at him. His eyes were glowing, as bright as the stars in the night star, as vibrant as amethyst and crocuses.

“So?”

“Yes,” she breathed. “Yes, I would love to go out with you.”

Rhysand’s answering smile was nothing short of magnifique.

Tag list:   @joyceortiz13 @bailey-4244 @quakeriders @standbislytherin @mariamuses @ignite14 @1800-fight-me @velarian-trash @rhysands-highlady @queenblueoffire @rowaelinforeverworld @feeoly @buckybvrnes @dayanna-hatter @shadowstar2313 @goldfishh20 @sleeping-and-books @crackedship @your-high-lady @thesirenwashere @whiskeybusiness1776 @amren-courtofdreams @tswaney17 @julemmaes @booksbooksbooksworld @queenofbumblebees @meowsekai @awkward-avocado-s @jesstargaryenqueen

[notesonfilm1]

  The Long Goodbye is by now an acknowledged classic. It wasn’t always so. As Pauline Kael writes in her 1973 review, ‘It’s a knockout of a movie that has taken eight months to arrive in New York because after being badly reviewed in Los Angeles last March and after being badly received (perfect irony) it folded out of town. It’s probably the best American movie ever made that almost didn’t open in New York.’ Charles Champlin, one of the initial culprits, titled his review ‘A Private Eye’s Honour Blackened’. But as early as 1974, Stewart Garrett in Film Quarterly was already underlining its importance and influence: ‘‘the masterwork of America’s most interesting working director….In watching Chinatown, one can feel The Long Goodbye lurking behind it with the latent force of a foregone conclusion’. All I want to do here is add my praise, point to a couple of aspects of the film’s particular brilliance, and also indicate some problems with the film that its biggest fans have been too quick to gloss over.

The movie begins and ends with an extract from the song ‘Hooray for Hollywood’, a nod to dreamland and part of the film’s homage to noir and the detective genre. Elliot Gould is a different Marlowe than Humphrey Bogart, looser, gentler, even more addicted to tobacco, with cigarettes constantly dangling from his thick, sensuous lips. The car he drives, the apartment building he lives in, the bars he frequents, all conjure up the forties. But the LA he moves through, a character of its own in this film (the skyline, the highways, the all-night supermarkets, Malibu), with the women in the apartment next door making hash brownies, practicing yoga, and dancing topless, all point to the film’s present. And that interplay between past and present, figured through the casting of Elliot Gould as the central character, is one of joys of the film.

  Gould’s Marlow,  unkempt, seeming to offer a wry, disbelieving and humours look at everything he sees, is convincingly single, marginal, and over-reliant on his cat for company. He is the most unkempt and bedraggled of leading man: loose, irreverent but convincingly embodying someone who carries the night with him like a halo; a knight errant reeking of stale tobacco, too much booze and too little sleep. His friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouten) calls hims a born loser.

David Thomson writes of how Altman ���spends the whole film concentrating on the way Elliott Gould moves, murmurs, sighs, and allows silence or stillness to prevail’. And this at a time when as Pauline Kael writes in her review of the film, by 1973 , ‘Audiences may have felt that they’d already had it with Elliot Gould; the young men who looked like him in 1971 have got cleaned up and barbered and turned into Mark Spitz. But it actually adds poignancy to the film that Gould himself is already an anachronism…Gould comes back with his best performance yet. It’s his movie.’ It certainly is. Next to M*A*S*H and Bob &Carol&Ted&Alice, it’s also become the one he’s most associated with.

  The first few scenes in the film dazzle. The whole sequence with the cat at the beginning where Marlowe gets up to feed it, the cat jumping from counter, to fridge, and onto Marlowe’s shoulder is disarming and rather wondrous. Even those who don’t love cats will be charmed. But the scene also conveys quite a bit about who Marlowe is: someone lonely, who relies on cats for company; someone responsible and loving who cares that the cat is well fed and willing to go out in the middle of the night to buy the cat’s preferred brand; a good neighbour too, prepared to get the brownie mix the women next door ask for  and unwilling to charge them for it: a gent or a chump? The choices Altman makes to show and tell us the story are constantly surprising, witty and wondrous on their own. See above, a minor example, that begins inside the apartment, showing us the city’s skyline, then the women, then the women in the city, before dollying down, something that looks like a peek at a little leg action before showing us, perfectly framed, Marlowe arriving in his vintage car.

In The Long Goodbye much  is filmed through windows, which sometimes look onto something else, allowing action to happen on at least two planes. However the dominant use of this is to show the play of what’s happening between foreground and background, with the pane of glass, allowing partial sight of what’s beyond the glass and the reflection itself only partially showing what’s in front of it; and both together still only adding up to two partial views that don’t make a whole but which suggest there’s a background to things, and things themselves are but pale reflections of a greater underlying reality. You can see an example of this in the still above, from the the interrogation scene at the police station with the two way mirror. It’s a beautiful, expressive composition. According to Richard K. Ferncase, ‘the photography by Vilmos Zsigmond is unlike the heavy chiaroscuro of traditional noir’.  However, as evident in the still above, whilst it might be unlike, it certainly nods to and references it. In fact it’s part of a series of references: the gatekeeper who does imitations of James Stewart, Walter Brennan, Barbara Stanwyck etc; the way Marlowe lights matches a la Walter Neff, the hospital scene where it seems like the Invisible Man or Bogart before his plastic surgery in Dark Passage, etc.

This must be one of Vilmos Zsigmond’s greatest achievements as a cinematographer. Garret writes of how, ‘Altman accentuated the smog-drenched haze of his landscape by slightly overexposing, or ‘fogging’ the entire print.’ Ferncase admires the ‘diaphanous ozone of pastel hues, blue shadowns, and highlights of shimmering gossamer’ Zsigmond created by post-flashing the film. Zsigmond himself attributes this to a low budget: ‘We…flashed the film heavily, even more than we flashed it on McCabe. And the reason was basically because we didn’t have a big budget there for big lights and all that. So we were really very creative about how, with the little amount of equipment that we had, how we are going to do a movie in a professional way. A couple of things we invented on that movie — like flashing fifty per cent, which is way over the top. But by doing that we didn’t have to hardly use any lights when go from outside or inside and go outside again.’.

Robert Reed Altman notes how, ‘On Long Goodbye the camera never stopped moving. The minute the dolly stopped the camera started zooming. At the end of the zoom it would dolly and then it would zoom again, and it just kept moving. Why did he do it? Just to give the story a felling, a mood, to keep the audience an an edge’. Zsigmond describes how this came to be, ”On Images, when we wanted to have something strange going on, because the woman is crazy, we decided to do this thing — zooming and moving sideways. And zooming, and dollying sideways. Or zooming forward. What is missing? Up and down! So we had to be able to go up and down, dolly sideways, back and forth, and zoom in and out. Then we made The Long Goodbye and Robert said, ‘Remember that scene we shot in Images? Let’s shoot this movie all that way’.

They did. But it’s worth remarking that whilst Altman was happy to let actors improvise and to grab and use anything useful or interesting that happened to pass by the camera’s path  (the funeral procession, the dogs fucking in Mexico, etc.), the use of the camera seems to me to be highly conscious and controlled. See the scene below when Marlowe brings Roger Wade (a magnificent Sterling Hayden, like wounded lion on its last legs) home to his wife.

In the scene above Marlowe has just brought Wade back home to his wife Eileen (Nina van Pallandt), who’d hired Marlowe to do just that. As Marlowe heads to the beach, note how they’re both filmed outside a window, Wade cornered into the left side of the frame, his wife on the right; the palm trees reflected on the glass but outside. Inside the house is dark, the conversation pointed. In the next shot we get closer to Wade but stil framed within frames, encased in his situation, with window shades acting like bars behind him. In the third shot, we get closer to where the first shot was but Wade seems even murkier, hidden. When Eileen says ‘milk, is that what you really want,’ The camera zooms in, first on him, then her, then him, and as he walks over to her, we see Marlow behind a second window in the back. So we are seeing a domestic scene through a window, sunny California reflected in the palms in front, in the surf behind, something dark happening inside the house, and Marlow, pondering outside, for the moment their plaything, and playing on the surf behind, seen through two sets of glass. Much of the scene will be played like that until Wade goes to join Marlowe outside. Brilliantly evocative images, vey expressive of the characters, their situation and their dynamic, and they seem to me to be perfectly controlled to express just that. In fact that series of images evoke what the film’s about (see below)

  The scene where the Wades and Marlowe are gathered together for the first time, rhymes with their last one. This time it’s Marlowe and Eileen who talk, and the discussion is on the husband, who as the camera zooms past Eileen and Marlowe’s conversation, and through the window, we see heading fully dressed to the ocean. The camera cuts to them from the outside, once more seeing through a window, but the darkness is on the outside now, and we don’t hear what they’re saying. What we hear now is the darkness, and what we see, clearly and without mediation is Wade letting the surf engulf him. It’s a perfect riposte to the first scene, taking elements of the same style, but accenting different ones, and creating a series of images that remain beautiful and startling in themselves but beautifully express what’s going on, what’s led to this. Had I extended the scene longer, you’d be able to see Eileen and Marlow also engulfed by the sea, the Doberman prancing by the shore, and that indelible image of the dog returning only with Wade’s walking stick. It’s great.

  Schwarzenegger makes an uncredited appearance in The Long Goodbye, screaming for attention by flexing his tits, and looking considerably shorter than Elliot Gould. An interesting contrast between a characteristic leading man of the 70s and how what that represents gave way to Schwarzenegger’s dominance in the 80s and 90s, and what that in turn came to represent. But though this is a fun moment in the film, its also what I liked least about it: i.e. the stunt casting. Nina van Pallandt is beautiful and she’s ok. But think of what Faye Dunaway might have brought to the role. Director Mark Rydell as gangster Marty Augustine is also ok but imagine Joe Pesci. As to Jim Bouton, a former ballplayer and TV presenter as Terry Lennox, to say that he’s wooden is to praise too highly. There’s a place in in cinema for this type of casting– and a history of much success — but see what a talented pro like David Carradine brings to the prison scene — not to mention Sterling Hayden and Elliot Gould both so great — and imagine the dimensions skilled and talented actors might have brought to the movie The Long Goodbye is great in spite of, not because of, the casting of these small but important roles.

José Arroyo

The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, USA, 1973) The Long Goodbye is by now an acknowledged classic. It wasn't always so. As Pauline Kael writes in her 1973 review, 'It's a knockout of a movie that has taken eight months to arrive in New York because after being badly reviewed in Los Angeles last March and after being badly received (perfect irony) it folded out of town.

[lovelyanddespised]

Off early today, I manage the energy for a dérive around Charlotte after I realize the arcade to which I took the light rail is closed and also a bar. A brief psychogeographical acquaintence with the streets is an indulgence I haven’t had access to since Durham and haven’t deeply engaged since Philadelphia. The solitude that hues most of my existence here matches with the quiet underpasses and their secret graffiti. Disorientation on an unplanned journey is my macro anyways, so engaging one micro here feels sensible. Sensate sensible with sensuous like the wash of stain on the sidewalk that draws my head up to a perfect ripe mulberry situation and the gentlest palpation lacquers the pads of my fingers. Plants’ fruit and seed plan is still so generous and delicious even though our shit doesn’t usually go straight to the soil like it used to. I remember a Red Hot Chili Peppers song where the man is in love with Los Angeles and cries alone together with the architecture. I remember an ex’s old blog that quoted Debord, a lifetime ago before her brand changed and before my handful of breakdowns. I remember a slice of conversation with a friend who’d left Carolina for the Ivy League, I asked her what she was doing and she said ‘trying to figure out French Situationism.’ Prompted by the discussion at last night’s fellowship meeting, I try to examine the motivations of my desire to be in a relationship and ask myself how much of that desire is contained in simple insecurity. I am not sure if I am an artist. The mosquitos find me before long; I find the freight train tracks before long, and it is unusual to not immediately run down the embankment to traipse the ballast. I remain law-abiding. I attempt to become beautiful, slowly. Only a mile or so of ambling through velvety lattices of shade in the wash of green leaves before I decide I ought to head back to the compound—‘compound’ is the word the director accidentally used the other day at the community meeting and it is a good word for here. I am falling back in love with good words. My comprehension is up; I sit with a book my Sister gave me in my lap on the bus and keep track of where I am with a book mark. The cover of my book is mirrored and the top right corner is stained bright fuscia from where I spilled the strawberries my Mom gave me in my backpack. I do not know much about science and there is not much dynamism in my relational world. I try to accept how little I have to do with a lot of things. I ask God over and over for forgiveness and mercy. I think the dérive worked, more or less, to interrupt the monotony of everyday life in advanced capitalism, although I did pay $5 for an ice-cold glass bottle of San Pellegrino from a much better cafe than the one I work at near the end, which, even as I type it, I probably would have paid $10, I mean the lovely film of micro-beads of condensation on the embossed green glass and that classy blue and white label, especially coming out of the humid miles of verdant trek. I was definitely out of place in that cafe and it made me think about getting a haircut and working out enough to where I’d feel good about investing in a tailored suit. There’s a lot of little things I can think about and be pleased with even though I am not in a romantic relationship with anybody. I am fully in love with Jorge Luis Borges and his love for every word in every language composed in compendia of every conceivable length and subject matter. His prose is martial sometimes just like it needs to be when you turn a page and a compound adjectival phrase he makes spreads out as wide as the horizon, just as valid as any conclusion or plot or caesura but breathtaking in the way it comes out of the smooth frieze of the page and becomes true irrespective of how closely you are following the wild irreverent plot he has meticulously crafted and whether or not you understand a bit of it.

[followmephuket-blog]

Make Your Trip Exciting By Visiting To Top Ten Beaches In Phuket

What are you browsing for, But unable to decide the country and the destination? Beach vacations are available all over the world. But soaking at the Top Ten Beaches In Phuket is a different feeling. The great advantage of this largest island of Thailand is that,there's always something to do on and off the island, whether it's raining or shining. From the sublime to the seemingly irreverent, the range of activities and places to visit are enormous. The scenic beaches, the cities and market places, the phuket Phantasia, dazzling night life and many others Phuket is famous for , have together made phuket an ideal destination for the visitors world around.

Your Visit To Phuket Is Incomplete Unless You Visit To The Top Ten Beaches In Phuket Described Below:-

Pensea Beach: - The northern extension of Surin Beach, but it’s completely cut off by a small headland and the crowds of visitors who come to Surin in high season cannot see it. Some of them even don’t know that it is even there. Less visited , but a paradise for the honeymooners.

Nai Harn Beach: - Geography has placed this beach in the most beautiful bay on Phuket, with high hills around the sides and a small coconut-covered island just offshore. A meditation retreat built by the Budhist monks adds beauty to this beach.

Nai Thon Beach: - It is the last of Phuket’s major west coast beaches but still remains relatively quiet. It’s isolation from Phuket’s major dining, shopping and entertainment centres is one of the reasons of its quietness. It’s fine sand sloping down to exceptionally clear, calm water is the centre of its attraction.

Kata Beach: - It is the most famous beach destination in Phuket at present. The beach has now retained much more of its original charm and natural appearance than Patong, which has now renamed itself as ‘Patong City’. The beach has no offshore reef, and the sandy, rock-free bottom slopes gently off into the deep. This creates great swimming conditions through most of the year.

Karon Beach: - With finest sand and clearest water Karon Beach is one of Phuket’s tropical classics. Karon’s sand is so fine and soft, with a near perfect mix of silica, coral and ground-up shell, that it has been the chosen venue for the Asian Beach Games, X-Sports, sand building competitions and other beach activities over many years.

Mai Khao Beach: - The beach of peace and tranquility. The high season months are crowded and it is hard to get a tourist in the low season.

Cape Panwa Beach: - One of the old beaches of exceptional beauty. Lying at the far southeast corner of the island, it is exposed to relatively big ocean waves and deep, clear seas, the very things that build nice beaches.

Surin Beach: - A beautiful beach lying on the island’s west coast.  Surin’s trump card is her sensuous shape. The fine, soft sand slopes away more steeply than on most other Phuket beaches, quickly running into deep water. It makes Surin one of the best swimming beaches on Phuket.

Kata Noi Beach: - Kata Noi is backed by a huge, steep mountain. The beach has no offshore reef, with the fine sand bottom sloping down into the water of ever-increasing depth. The water here is always clear and warm. It’s one of Phuket’s top swimming beaches, and even produces some well-shaped surfing waves during the monsoon.

Patong Beach: - The most famous beach in Phuket. The blue water creates a magnificent scenic view when over runs the golden sands.

If you want to have a splendourious beach break at Top Ten Beaches In Phuket then contanct us the Follow Me Phuket, a local family run tour company which can provide you the best experience of the tropical island. We arrange various kinds of tour programe to Phuket within your budget and stay with you from your arrival to departure. Just go through our customer’s review and you would not hesitate to drop us a mail.