sundries

Coco Before Chanel -- well, I found it very moving, but this was even more explicitly about my own neuroses and sense of failings than usual. The class issues, the gender issues, the matters of being pleasing and loathing the burden of it, the bad at sex-work factor (and don't mistake it, this is a film about sex work)... etc. Or maybe, maybe it was just the driving that got me. No, really.

Problems (and I hope Patty will review it as well, as she had more problems with it than I did, and they were largely different than mine, and I think a lot of people's viewing experience will be closer to hers):

- it was ridiculously ungrounded when it came to time, which seems an absurd complaint for a bio pic... but there's a mention of the war, a jump in time and has it happened or not?

- I found the story of this woman's life compelling in and of itself, not because she was Coco Chanel, so I found it a little tedious whenever something would happen and you would see her suddenly observing a piece of clothing in a certain way. We get it! We're smart. Stop hammering.

- A tragic event happens towards the end of the film, and from there it cuts to her making dresses which then evolves into the film's final moment of a big Chanel fashion show... and I thought "are you trying to tell me the iconic Chanel suit came out of something she made to wear to a lover's funeral?" If so, that's fascinating... but I don't know if they were telling me that or not -- which was a big misstep.

That said, I thought the performances were wonderful, and the subtitles were remarkably better than they usually are and it was lovely to look at. I think, it's an angry-making film though -- in ways that are both intentional and not. It is certainly not a victorious film, it leaves us with that idea of a woman only being something is she is alone and enduring pain to great acclaim! A notion I find even more troublesome than the whole dead, gay and beautiful thing (which has certainly been a hot topic around other media properties I'm engaged with lately).

You know what I never noticed before? There's a photo of Luhrmann working with Nicole Kidman during Moulin Rouge shooting as the first thing you see when you walk into the DGA theater. I think maybe it's new? Or I just forgot? I dunno, but it pleased me anyway.

It's fall! We're too busy. I just want... time to do nothing! I suppose this is why we take vacations.

Ambivalence about my birthday continues, although Patty is helping me figure it out.

Apparently Gareth David-Lloyd from Torchwood is going to be in some straight-to-DVD Sherlock Holmes thing. Aside from the fact that this is breaking my brain... does anyone know what role he is playing?

From the department of old news: I really need to actually learn how to swing dance.

Westboro Baptist is planning to protest at Brooklyn Tech. As a NY science high school graduate (we have three science high schools, it's a thing), this hits close to close to home. I am unamused.

Speaking of high school, last night, I got my alumni newsletter and discovered someone who graduated the year before me was murdered by a man obsessed with his fiancee. Two days later, the fiance killed herself. I can barely call the guy to mind because my high school was huge, but how awful -- not what you expect in Class Notes.

We've booked our hotel for the night before the cruise. It's not glamorous (hello, airport hotel!) but it has a restaurant and Internet, which as non-drivers at an airport hotel, were the main criteria. Hilariously, it also has a nightclub, which I think means drunkity drunk drunk flight crews, which is one of those things that always possesses a sort of tawdry (and horrific) charm for me.

[fic] Red and Fourth (Jack/OMC, Jack/Ianto; NC-17)

Title: Red and Fourth
Pairing/Characters: Jack/OMC, Jack/Ianto
Author: rm
Rating/Content: NC-17; BDSM
Summary: Jack has a rebound relationship. Because Jack is a fuck-up it lasts for 45 years.
Wordcount: ~3300
Author's Note: Thanks to kalichan and tsarina for sitting through 800 different spellings of Lashansky and reassuring me I was on the right track.

( Jack is two years out from Cardiff the first time he meets Martin Lashansky. )