#this photoset Turner out Nice

[dreamyberry]

February 2023

[weshallc]

Al's Two Penneth. Well, it's more like half a crown.

So, it's that time of year again. Thank you to everyone who posted recently. We need to have an open fandom. If I haven't touched on one of your points sorry, it may be something about a character that doesn't bother or interest me, but I may turn up on your post later if I feel inspired.

Series 10 and 11; we have the addition of social distancing to the conversation. So, I will get that out of the way first, nice to have a new topic.

As has already been stated I don’t think we can compare a work environment with babies and new mams, elderly folk and people who may be vulnerable with the main cast photographed together at a social occasion such as a theatre production or awards night. I know this is a contentious issue, but I don’t believe they were at a work event (ahem). What they do in their own time is up to them and the venue’s management. Neal Street will be following strict protocols within the workplace to avoid large fines and to keep its employees safe.

Saying that, I felt the direction could have been better this series. In some places, it's been bloody awful. I guess this is a learning curve for everyone. I had similar thoughts to @earnestlylost prior to Series 10 that the cast would be assigned bubbles and the stories maybe centre around a Nonnatus Bubble, Turner and Maternity Home bubble, a newsagent bubble with the Buckles and Robinsons. I thought there would be fewer guests and just one main story giving time for some cast development.

I haven’t watched any shows with large casts such as soap operas and I’d be interested in knowing how they adapted. I do watch All Creatures Great and Small and I noticed the direction is much more subtle. They however, have a much smaller cast and a lot of the action takes place outdoors. I think they are on location for most of the filming, so it is much easier to form a cast and crew bubble.

I must admit I do miss the use of popular songs of the time, but I guess that’s expensive and runs into difficulties when the show is sold internationally. I find the original music a bit melodramatic for my taste and not always reflective of the era. It does seem a bit quieter or maybe I’m just desensitised. Nice to hear The Mirror again and I like the music in episode 4. I’m not a big fan of auld Jenny and the voiceovers. I must admit it was something that put me off the show when it was first aired, but I can live with them and sometimes people make nice posts out of them.

Speaking of which, “so there are just a lot of photosets and scattered comments" go easy @snoopctm I feel rumbled ;) . I would love you to start up your Tuesday and Thursday posts again. There is one thing I might add. I love discussing the show and episodes, but it is worth remembering Fandom etiquette. If someone writes a post about a certain topic and it promotes discussion, that’s great, but hijacking the post to bash your particular tambourine is not so great. Just start a new post and maybe add so and so’s post made me think of this and so and so might even be happy to respond to your new topic in an original post .

Shelagh, Shelagh, Shelagh! I think I have been watching a different show for the last 9 years, but Shelagh is still Shelagh to me. She was somewhat softer in series 2, for the whole romance vibe. That’s why I have never written her past series 2, too difficult for me to get her character right, almost impossible to write her in AU, because she is very much mired in the 1950 housewife mode. I found she just doesn’t lend easily to modern storylines. I know I have tried. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy reading all the excellent Turnadette fics and enjoy being privy to people’s aspirations for the character including my own, but we’ve romanticised Shelagh so much as a fandom. I doubt anyone’s idea of the character corresponds with anyone else’s by now, especially Heidi's.

I have to admit; I enjoy watching Dr T work with Phyllis and Trixie. I think there is a good work chemistry between these characters. The Turner medical scenes have a tendency to turn into infomercials. If it was on ITV, the adverts would all be for pile cream and breast pads.

Other thoughts:

We’ve gone from: 4 nuns, 4 nurses, 1 handyman, 1 doctor, 1 child, 2 love interests (13)

To in series 11: 4 nuns, 4 nurses, 1 non-Nonnatun based nurse, 1 handyman, 1 nephew, 1 shopkeeper/ councillor, 1 doctor, 4 kids, 1 teenager, 2 love interests. (20) plus a more frequent guest from the mother house. Edit* 1 receptionist, so that is 21 regular cast.

I actually love all the characters. I think Reggie, Sister Frances and Hilda have been great additions and I’m really warming to Nancy she offers that young swinging 60s vibe that Lucille doesn’t quite fulfil (she has another story to tell.) and Trixie needs to hand the young frivolous baton on once and for all.

Add two storylines with their own casts. It really is top heavy. I have really enjoyed the main storylines of this series, but I have been left wanting more. I feel at times they are too neatly wrapped up with an auld Jenny voiceover and I still have unanswered questions.

[find-the-eyes]

just 2014-2015 franzdom things

- franz fridays

- franzyfrenzy

- just really good straight up content blogs

- fyeahnickmccarthy

- there were so many Nick stans... where did you all go

- nightspams (literally just post spams at night, equivalent to shitposting or nightblogging)

- pizza gets personal

- smolchol2k15

- “if you’re going to spam please use the proper tag”

- franzyfighters

- trilo-bilo. trilo freaking bilo

- “says the trilobite”

- “please don’t ship band members it’s not nice!! ship oc/alex instead” (death glares ensue)

- trilo-bilo’s trip to the eye doctor

- the narwhal video. I can still hear the THWACK in the back of my mind sometimes

- the death of trilo-bilo

- everyone’s obsession with fighting Alex, which totally definitely wasn’t the reason he hated us so much that year

- “meet me in the pit”

- why didn’t he hit that block button on all of us

- the life of a franz ferdinand reference (lffr)

- music video screenshot photosets

- waiting for new vines and never getting them

- chatting on kik because no social media platform had a proper DM system yet

- matching kik names and photos to make the band

- making your kik color orange for franz shshjsjhssjh what were we ON

- memeing FFS and getting yelled at by the half of the fandom that liked FFS

- the word stan wasn’t a thing yet i think we just said ‘favs...’ like “i fav Paul” etc

- Nick, Bob, and Paul stans supporting each other through FFS

- when Nick crowd surfed at that one FFS gig in France and we all thought he wasn’t allowed back onstage for some reason

- wanting a blue flannel

- not understanding the farmhouse fics

- idolizing the slacken_ties writers

- that weird nilex fic on ao3 where they got absolutely smashed on the set of the dywt video and then... they absolutely smashed

- “we topped the tag again”

- the wattpad fics

- Alex’s twitter hiatus that lasted for literally six days

- the fight for the tag or whatever that was

- the franzdom clique vs the franz fandom

- literally all of the fights

- kaprandczar

- calling Alex ‘kaprand’ in general and how the franzyfighters morphed it into just ‘kapran’

- whykaprandissad

- the franz ferdinand spoofs... I remember exactly where I was when ‘franz ferdinand direct’ was posted

- discovering m****c*** for the first time... where were YOU? i was at the pool with my friends

- that one girl who dressed up as franz in her videos omg she had talent

- franzferdinandphilosophiles

- everyone literally seemed so smart but we were all just a bunch of boo boo the fools fighting over nearly-middle aged british men

- everyone’s name was katherine or lindsey of eleanor i genuinely thought they were the girls from the franz songs

- the fake Paul twitter

- the fake Bob instagram

- the hype around Nick’s keysmash tweet... why

- that one rtrwra promo where they were sleeping and everyone was like “OHOHOHO”

- the rtrwra promo where they were recording somewhere and Nick and Paul were cuddling?????

- and Alex was wearing a blue flannel... slacken_ties propaganda

- actually ALL of the RTRWRA promos

- “bring back the blerp”

- “smol puppy”

- ‘trash lemon & teeny beany & poptart & bobe’ shirts

- the domino theory and how much Alex hated it, which just fueled it even more

- being called out by Alex’s finsta 

- pizza, kissy (our kissy!), sparkles, punchy, and swirly, aka the pup squad

- “THIS IS A CODE STRAWBERRY”

- scarlet and blue

- fuking-bob’s profile photo

- all of the awkward Bob photos actually

- Bob going from thicque to thinne

- everyone’s obsession with the erdbeer mund video

- not the archduke lol!!!!!!!

- nilex rhett and link aus... you heard me... why did that get so many notes

- crying over ‘old franz...’ girl it WAS old franz

- having to watch nick be depressed onstage

- the music note shirt

- 1-800-CALLGIRL and other hotline bling vs call girl memes

- dropping fake franz collabs to celebrate ffs GFGGHBJGF

- when someone said Alex looks like Pepe the frog

- “I knew Bob was thick, but damn...”

- tour de franz screenshot photosets

- discovering the tonight commentary for the first time...

- those 2007 video compilation things

- that one photo of alex with alex turner and julian casablancas and everyone was like “aaaahhh holy trinity”

ok that’s it for now going back to franz nostalgia land

[dweemeister]

FOR NEWER FOLLOWERS (but if you’re an older follower, you can read this, too)

I’ve picked up a lot of you in the last weeks or so because of all my photosets to Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War. What you all need to know that I run a blog that is primarily dedicated to older movies - generally anything released before the 1980s, although more contemporary stuff does appear here. For a more concise description of what this blog entails, read THIS. But for those who want to have a regular post describing things... here goes!

The primary reason for this blog’s existence are for my movie write-ups. These write-ups are tagged “My Movie Odyssey” (the full index can be found here). They don’t appear as often as they used to when I was in undergrad, but you’ll see them on occasion - they’re more likely to appear on weekends than weekdays, but now that I’m out of school and have a part-time temp job, my schedule is a little free. Since mid-August 2012, 588 full-length reviews have been published. I’m aiming for 600 by the end of the year. They average 1000+ words, and I think by this point I’ve written more words than there are in War and Peace. That doesn’t necessarily mean I should be professionally published, though.

These write-ups are almost always on films that I have seen in their entirety for the first time. On rare occasions, there will be a Movie Odyssey Retrospective - a review on a movie I saw before this blog’s creation or one that I saw afterwards but never gave a full-length write-up, too. Examples include The Wizard of Oz (1939) and The Sound of Music (1965). My next write-up - to be published this week, I hope - is a Retrospective.

Movie specialties of mine: Old Hollywood, animated movies (mostly American animation of all eras and Japanese anime of the last 30 years, but the globalized present as well), Japanese movies (particularly those that touch on WWII indirectly or directly), English-language musicals from 1930s-1970s, American Westerns, American WWII movies, science-fiction, modern short films.

Not a specialty, but not a strength or weakness: silent film, pre-Code American movies, horror movies post-Exorcist, martial arts movies

Biggest blind spots that I would like to prioritize: Indian cinema (Bengali and Hindi, especially), African cinema, older Latin American films, queer cinema, mature or R-rated American movies released 1980 and after that I never saw because I was a sheltered (and sensitive) kid, early Japanese anime (pre-1980s), propaganda movies

Biggest blind spots that I really should get a move on: experimental/avant garde film, documentaries, independent American movies made largely by non-white individuals (given the concentration of this blog, though... what did you expect?)

Movies I don’t care for: exploitation films (blaxploitation, nunsploitation, sexploitation, slasher, Nazi exploitation), a lot of modern action movies (Mad Max: Fury Road was fantastic, though, and resulted in one of my best-written write-ups)

My queueing schedule is heavily - but not entirely - based on Turner Classic Movies’ (TCM) schedule. TCM is the last-remaining channel in America dedicated to showing older movies, after AMC (American Movies Classics) decided to *ahem* sell themselves out.

Movies covered here in reblogs and original posts are primarily pre-1980s English-language, American movies, but stuff lying outside those bounds are fair game, too.

Some favorite TV shows will be represented on occasion. I’m a big Trekkie, and I love M*A*S*H, The West Wing, select anime, childhood ‘90s/early 2000s cartoons, among others.

I love Peanuts, the comic strip. Before February, this blog regularly featured individual strips every other day. But after my source for these strips made them un-copyable - unless I look at the code; I’m lazy - I’ve stopped. I’d like to resume again, someday.

I’m a big soccer fan. Arsenal is my adopted European club (#wengerinbutheneedstohavefewerresponsibilitiessohecanconcentrateongamepreparationalone); Los Angeles Galaxy my hometown (well, close enough) club; and anything to do with the United States’ men’s and women’s national teams as well. Only if Vietnam (I’m Viet-American) were better... Anyways, expect this blog to crazy June-July 2018.

There is only one remaining marathon on this blog, and that is something called “31 Days of Oscar”. I’m not sure about the start date next year because of the 2018 Winter Olympics, but for thirty-one days the only movies that appear on this blog are movies that have been at least nominated for an Academy Award or won an honorary award. We’ll get there when we get there.

This is largely not a personal or political blog (polisci major; public policy master’s), but those things will seep in at times. My life isn’t perfect (whose is?), and I need to vent or express my sadness sometimes. But it’s been a lucky one, too. My politics are left-of-center. Socially liberal, left-of-center economically, pragmatic foreign policy-wise. I don’t like to be confrontational about politics. I read/watch a lot of conservative media to understand where they come from... not that I agree oftentimes.

Oh, and don’t feel shy around me. I don’t talk to my followers enough, and it’s always nice to start a conversation with them. Reach me by PMs, replying to posts, all of that stuff. Hope this helps, and if this prompts you to unfollow, don’t feel guilty about that. Thanks for reading!