unfortunately I just can't see you two as a couple

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    One knows that one's Fred Astaire obsession is getting out of hand when one is typing in the url for IMDB and one sees this:

Search prompts for the letters "im".

    I'm trying to tell myself that Fred's movies just have more trivia and things but gosh I just feel dirty looking at that screenshot. Do I really look at his page that much more than I look at yours?

     Hold on, I need to count whose movies I've seen more of.

    Fred: 19 movies and the parts of Ziegfeld Follies as had him in. 19.5 total.
    Harriet: 12 movies, 6 miniseries/TV shows, 3 movies/tv shows that had you in such tiny roles that they basically don't count (Rebecca, "Marple: Sleeping Murder", "Five Days"). 18 things and 3 almost-things total.

    HRRRRRRRRRRMMM.

    That's counting all three of the Dorothy L Sayers Mysteries miniseries as one miniseries, of course, which I'm not sure if I ought to do or not. (Side note: I used to know several Romanian people over the internet who used "serie" as the singular of "series". I've looked at a couple of dictionaries and I still can't figure out if it's an additional correct form or not.)

    And besides, if I could un-see Finian's Rainbow I totally would, and that would bring the Fred-total down to a more even range. (My new glass eyeballs are a pain.)

    MAYBE I JUST NEED TO WATCH MORE HARRIET WALTER MOVIES AND RESOLVE THE ISSUE, HRRRMMMM

    Obviously my life is now a battleground between King Fred Astaire and Queen Harriet Walter.

whyyyy do I not have any quality screencaps of Queen Harriet Walter whyyy

    Obviously.

(f)red alert!

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    I've had a disgustingly busy and tiring week, but now I'm shivering at home with a cold coming on so I am going to tell you all about the three new-to-me Fred Astaire movies I've seen recently.

    (Today is also the one-year-anniversary of my having seen my very first Fred (and Ginger) movie. Huzzah.)

    Two-sentence-reviews each, I think. I'm not going to give plot synopses because they bore me.

    Royal Wedding (1951, directed by Stanley Donen)

    Charming, funny and comfortably forgettable.

    Also, Fred Astaire dancing on the walls and ceiling because he's in love.

    Silk Stockings (1957, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and also starring Cyd Charisse)

    Sometimes very funny, sometimes rather corny, I liked this movie a lot but it bothered me a bit because it has serious problems with its attitudes towards women, to say nothing of the disrespect for public utilities. The Cole Porter score is generally amazing except for the staggeringly sexist "Without Love", the lyrics of which make it hard to believe this film only came out about half a century ago.

taken from the awesome tumblr astairewashere.

    Finian's Rainbow (1968, directed by Francis Ford Coppola of all people)

 

    Notwithstanding the occasional presence of a charming-if-aged faux-Irish Fred Astaire, this movie is so unspeakably bad that during the two and a half hours my mother and I watched it, my eyeballs gradually withered and began to crawl back into my skull, until they realized that even the darkest darkness inside my body could never enable them to un-see what they were seeing; at that point, they attempted suicide by launching themselves through any passage they could find until they got to my throat, where they burst into flames and dived down to my stomach, hoping for sweet acidic death, but the gory flaming eyeballs proved too much for my already highly nauseated stomach and I ended up violently vomiting out my own charred, bloody eyes along with chunks of my stomach lining all over my own lap, before collapsing in a fitful heap of weeping and gnashing of teeth whilst black blood seeped out of my ears and slowly trickled down to join the oozing mess of escapist body parts already soaking my formerly nice gray skirt. Would not recommend this film.

My face during the whole thing.

Performance: Onegin

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    About a week ago my sister and I watched the movie Onegin (1999), starring Ralph Fiennes and Liv Tyler (and, awesomely, Toby Stephens), solely because you were in it and it was on YouTube. (Lest I forget in future, it's pronounced "own-YAY-ghin". Except that looks really stupid.)

    As we all know, Onegin is the story - I think it might be based on a book - of a limp, dead-fish-resembling Ralph Fiennes who flops around in 19th century Russia, and who gets, like, money from some dead uncle or whatever, and who thereupon decides to leave his idle existence and give living in his dead uncle's estate in the country a try for no discernible reason. Ralph Fiennes then shocks and outrages the quiet country dwellers by befriending Toby Stephens, politely talking with Liv Tyler, having no chemistry with her and mentioning new ideas about land ownership to the well-dressed Harriet Walter, Liv Tyler's criminally adorable mother. People make vaguely bad decisions every so often and everyone ends up vaguely unhappy.

    (I will admit that I rather enjoyed the bit where Toby Stephens charges up to Ralph Fiennes at a party and is like OH MY GAWD YOU DANCED WITH MY GIRLFRIEND WE HAVE TO GO KILL EACH OTHER NOW. Which Ralph, with the tact and sensitivity of a true gentleman, replies to with something like "lol ur gf's a slut". Nice work, Ralph!)

    While it was mostly rather useless as a movie - my mother, who watched the second half with us, described it as "pretty but vapid", which I think is apt - I really really enjoyed the few bits of it that had you playing Madame Larina.

    I mean, the clothes! The hair!

Stop being so adorable.

Seriously.

Also, I'm pretty sure that's you on the left, dancing with the young girl.

And knocking over a table in your rush to comfort Liv Tyler.

And OH MY GIDDY GOODNESS. THE HAT. THE HAAAAAT.

    Okay, I hadn't even noticed what was going on with Liv Tyler in the table picture. Wowzers.

Ballet Shoes (2007)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Watching a movie I've never seen before which has you in it is always exciting. Questions like "what will she do", "what will she look like", "what will she say" and so on arise. And the film could be a rotting, soggy heap of Useless Drivel in all other respects (read: The Governess (1998)) but always I know, I know, I know with all of my knowings that at least a few moments of the whole will be totally worth it.

    Ballet Shoes (2007) delivered in this way. Oh, oh, how it delivered.

    Language is a mysterious and wonderful thing. Once in rather a while, noises and letters can be neurologically processed into explosions of happiness in under a second, and it's entirely normal and good.

    I didn't know what those moments in Ballet Shoes as had you in would be like when I watched it a few months ago. If someone had caused such an explosion (of happiness) by saying to me, "Ballet Shoes has a couple scenes with Harriet Walter wearing a monocle", I don't know exactly how I would have reacted. The revelation came as a surprise. Even now it lights my days and makes me unable to sleep at night for gleeful wriggling.

    Harriet Walter wearing a monocle.

    (tiny images are tiny and can be clicked for maximization and maximum awesome.)

(yes this has no monocle but I can think of no reason to exclude it)

slightly terrifying Gemma Jones is slightly terrifying.

    I don't know whose idea it was but they need a very shiny award right now.

he's a swell, he's a swell

(written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    OH MY HIPSTER FRED ASTAIRE.

    That is not even creative swearing. That is a straight-up observation. That is me having now seen Easter Parade (1948), which contained the musical number "A Couple of Swells".
    (Actually it is more like neo-Victorian hobo hipster Fred Astaire). Anyway I had never ever in my life - my life being the last eight or nine months since I saw my first Fred Astaire movie - stopped to wonder what Fred would look like with messy hair or facial hair. In this song, he and Judy Garland are onstage dressed up as a pair of high-minded bums and he has both kinds of unheard-of hair.

LOOK AT HIM

                                                    

LOOK AT HOW AMAZING HE IS

                                        

IT IS HIPSTER FRED ASTAIRE AND IT IS GLORIOUS

                              

OHMUHFUHGAAAAH

                                                

ASGDTHBGERSRTGHBTHADFaaaaaaa][[l/';

                                          

crush

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    I'm a little bit weirded out by myself these past few days.

    It just feels a bit odd to be getting huge crushes on the exact same dudes that my mom had crushes on when she was my age.

    Like Peter O'Toole.

    Or Roddy McDowall.

    I mean, it's just...I don't know.

    I am glad that I do not have a crush on Clark Gable, because that would be in double mom-and-my-aunt territory.

    Why is it so much weirder this way than when my mom and I fall in love with the same dude simultaneously? Like Jeremy Brett. We watched his Sherlock Holmes stuff together (neither of us had seen it before) and both eventually mooned, though he's more her thing by now. I say eventually because the first episode we saw was The Speckled Band and we were understandably under the impression of his being, like, kinda totally weird at first.
    Or Fred Astaire - she knew about Fred Astaire rather longer than I did, bein' some 32 years older than myself, but I was the one who got us into the Fred and Ginger movies. (She'd never actually seen a full movie of his, just clips on tv things.) And now we both totally adore him. Admittedly, Fred is more of an "oh he is so dreamy and charming and gentlemanly and snazz-tastic" thing rather than a Peter O'Toole-ish "damn it if only I could just get my hands inside his shirt" thing, but there is still love and eyeballing involved. And none of it is the least bit weird-feeling.

    Sigh. There's also the part of crushin' on dudes before one's own time that involves knowing their futures, so to speak. One looks at young Peter O'Toole and marvels that he looks so different from his ancient, grayer, modern version. One admires Roddy McDowall's handsome self and curly locks in Cleopatra and tries to focus on the thought of "o! to involve my hand in those golden curls whilst he speaks cunning political treasonings like a sexy thing!" and ignore the little curdle in the back of one's skull which murmurs, "yes, and also he died of cancer when I was six." I suppose my mother must know the feeling. Clark Gable, for example, died just over a month after she was born.

(sexy things that are dead are not as sexy)

Swing Time/Top Hat

(written at a previous date)

   Dear Harriet Walter,

    I'm confused. I've been thinking about the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies Swing Time (someyearinthethirties) and Top Hat (alsosomeyearinthethirties). They're generally considered the two best of the ten Fred 'n Ginger flicks, and different people are always saying one of the two is the best followed by the other. I thought once I saw them both I would have a definite opinion on the debate which would automatically negate everybody else's opinions but I don't.

    Like, Top Hat has a tighter plot, better characters and a better supporting cast...but Swing Time has such damn fine musical numbers.

    Honestly Swing Time is a bit like a mosaic, with the plot forming the grout which frames and holds together the interesting bits which are the musical numbers.


    Also, seeing as the two numbers are basically parallel (at least in my mind), I have to say that Ginger's white swirly gown in "Never Gonna Dance" (from Swing Time) is SO MUCH BETTER than Ginger's gown in "Cheek to Cheek" (from Top Hat). I mean that awful feathery creation is just such an...object!

totally awesome, classy and gorgeous and so on

komondor had sex with an ostrich and their baby was a yeti and it lived in a haystack and ginger murdered it and wore its skin as an evening gown

    (Later PS: Have just learned that the white Swing Time gown was in fact light pink. Am shattered.)

Breakfast at Tiffany's

(written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's with my sister a few months ago.

    At the end when everything was being all rainy and dramatic/romantic, the camera was watching the guy playing Paul (George Peppard or whatever) and he was saying something dramatic and acting as a Romantic Lead and stuff and I just don't know.

    I was like "I wish this guy was Ryan Reynolds."

    My sister was like "YESSS"

    And I was like "LIKE HOW AWESOME WOULD THAT BE"

    Just think about it.