I said this on the Westworld thread already but:
Game of Thrones credit sequence: mechanical mapworld comes into being before your eyes.
Vinyl credit sequence: an LP comes liquidly into being before your eyes.
Westworld credit sequence: various biobots come liquidly into being before your eyes.
The Crown credit sequence: molten metal liquidly becomes a crown before your eyes.
I think we've found the MMteens' dominant visual cliché. It's the new teal & orange.
― marzipandemonium (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 14 November 2016 13:55 (seven years ago) link
Oh and btw ilx hath infected my brain so thoroughly that at the beginning of E3 all I could think was YES! THERE ARE, INDEED, MOTHERFUCKING CORGIS.
― marzipandemonium (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 14 November 2016 13:56 (seven years ago) link
:D
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 14 November 2016 16:15 (seven years ago) link
the Corgis just turned up though. I wanted an origin story
― Number None, Monday, 14 November 2016 19:00 (seven years ago) link
I finished the final ep last night
A+, looking forward to more in the future if it's more of this calibre of storytelling.
The stuff between Lizzy & Margaret in ep10 is so sad & kinda gutwrenching to watch it play out even when you know what's coming. Actress who plays margaret is so good
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 14 November 2016 19:08 (seven years ago) link
do they explain the awful hats?
Jared Harris currently brilliant in Certain Women btw
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Monday, 14 November 2016 19:22 (seven years ago) link
no hat explanation sry morbs
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 14 November 2016 21:07 (seven years ago) link
Daredevil has the same opening sequence design too.
― Immediate Follower (NA), Wednesday, 16 November 2016 03:29 (seven years ago) link
matt smith should play frankenstein's monster in something. he looks like frankenstein's monster.
― na (NA), Wednesday, 16 November 2016 17:57 (seven years ago) link
i will get back to this soon. thanks, trump!
― scott seward, Wednesday, 16 November 2016 18:21 (seven years ago) link
apropos of nothing I am really into the Queen + land rover + headscarf + gumboots look, it's a real winner for me
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 16 November 2016 19:35 (seven years ago) link
the woman clare foy reminds me of also rocked that look -- well, not the land rover, she had a SHOOTING BRAKE instead
or actually one of those half-timbered morris minor travellers full of smelly king charles spaniels
http://www.classicandsportscar.ltd.uk/images_catalogue/large/morris-minor-traveller_17586.jpg
― mark s, Wednesday, 16 November 2016 19:44 (seven years ago) link
watched this last weekend (except for episode one which my wife had already watched), certainly addictive. matt smith is great as philip in this, since I only ever think of him as an ancient horrible racist monster. princess margaret is much too pretty in this compared to her real life self.
― akm, Wednesday, 16 November 2016 22:37 (seven years ago) link
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/80/d6/4f/80d64f2c25860c419df4a01024e5b8c0.jpg
― mark s, Wednesday, 16 November 2016 22:45 (seven years ago) link
xp really? i always thought margaret was v beautiful as a young lady
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 16 November 2016 22:59 (seven years ago) link
Like a good looking version of the Queen.
― The Doug Walters of Crime (Tom D.), Wednesday, 16 November 2016 23:09 (seven years ago) link
p much yeah
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 16 November 2016 23:12 (seven years ago) link
looking thru her pix on GiS she's one of those people who just looks really -- almost unrecognisably --- different in different photos, at least until she worked out her glam mojo in the 60s
― mark s, Wednesday, 16 November 2016 23:14 (seven years ago) link
Margaret was royal family attractive. Vanessa Kirby is attractive attractive
― Number None, Wednesday, 16 November 2016 23:16 (seven years ago) link
from either eavesdropping on some misspeak from my mum or something misheard when I was a kid, for most of my adult life I was convinced she had an affair with Pete Townsend.
― calzino, Wednesday, 16 November 2016 23:34 (seven years ago) link
haha
― akm, Wednesday, 16 November 2016 23:57 (seven years ago) link
anyway margaret def best 'character' here, love it when she takes over while queeney is away and just says whatever the fuck she wants
also, next series needs more dog
― akm, Wednesday, 16 November 2016 23:58 (seven years ago) link
best character is elizabeth, forzen at the centre dissolving herself in duty; margaret is the most fun character
― mark s, Thursday, 17 November 2016 00:00 (seven years ago) link
yeah elizabeth for me is the best character; rmde @ margaret & phillip with their endless "wants" & "needs" worse than actual corgis imo (/jk)
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, 17 November 2016 02:06 (seven years ago) link
maybe it's just the older sister in me that sympathizes with lizzy
it's fucking hard work being the square responsible one!
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, 17 November 2016 02:08 (seven years ago) link
this is v good but i have to remind myself what kind of life i'm seeing, what's being dramatized. lethal smog has the same weight as whether philip has enough to do day to day.
― goole, Thursday, 17 November 2016 17:06 (seven years ago) link
yeah I'm a bit torn between thinking ^that is kind of the point of the series and wondering if I should really be spending hours contemplating said basically appalling point. In TV drama terms though, so far my only real complaint is that Edward is no fun as a villain, he's just really contemptible and joyless to spend time with.
― rob, Thursday, 17 November 2016 18:07 (seven years ago) link
he isn't the villain, he's the warning
― mark s, Thursday, 17 November 2016 18:09 (seven years ago) link
I had a feeling "villain" might be objected to, and I don't disagree about his importance to the show's central idea of the function of the monarchy. Maybe it's the actor? I stand by "joyless to spend time with" so when he's central to an episode I find them a bit more of a slog (but I'm only halfway through in case that matters).
― rob, Thursday, 17 November 2016 18:14 (seven years ago) link
as an american i shd probably look into what duties the monarch has. the 'heavy hangs the crown' type stuff between harris and foy is the show's strongest, but again i'm like... why. why is it like this.
― goole, Thursday, 17 November 2016 18:15 (seven years ago) link
It seemed like that to them. At the time.
Not an expert on this by any means but it seems like in 195whatever they still had a huge hangover from empire and from, of course, the wars, where they felt the idea of the steady "leadership" of a dutiful self-effacing monarch made a bit more sense.
As they do less and less of consequence nowadays, they're just reality-show-type celebrities given stilts by history, so it seems silly to us now. But even non-royal britishes in 1952ish might well have regarded the persons and fates of individual royals as a sort of proxy for the national identity, in the way perhaps that we regard sports stars. To what extent is Cleveland's fate entwined with LeBron's? It isn't, except for the person who feels that it is.
― marzipandemonium (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, 17 November 2016 18:25 (seven years ago) link
yes, the series is basically about duty vs the call of modernity (which is already super-unusual, i can't actually think of another drama that's done this in the present-day era)
my feeling (having watched it all) is that it's surprsingly harsh on ppl who don't usually get harshed on (churchill, for one): but yes, it is entirely (and deliberately) told from inside the buck house bubble
i suspect if it had tried to make much of the view from outdside, it would actually probably sentimentalise both
i also suspect that it will get less rigorous as it approaches the present
― mark s, Thursday, 17 November 2016 18:26 (seven years ago) link
my favoutite exchange was a burn from queen mary (of teck, aka edward/george's mum) pointing out that philip's family (the schleswig-holstein-sonderburg-glücksburgs) are jumped up parvenus, whose line did not -- of course -- go back a thousand years
it was just to win a minor family argument but she was irritated
― mark s, Thursday, 17 November 2016 18:30 (seven years ago) link
From the perspective of now, the royals who basically said "hey, we're rich and we have basically nothing to do, so let's just party and fuck" are actually sort of on the right side of history. The ones who thought they had a moral obligation to lead, set a good example, and carefully read government documents actually come off looking sorta like chumps. Because a parliamentary government can run fine without them (in fact, most do).
But just like we take the internal logic of a show seriously when we watch "The Tudors" or "Wolf Hall" or "Man for All Seasons" or, heck, "Game of Thrones," to enjoy "The Crown" requires inhabiting, however temporarily, its point of view.
That said, "The Crown" might be made more exciting with tits 'n' dragons.
― marzipandemonium (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, 17 November 2016 18:37 (seven years ago) link
i think the approach will make it v interesting in later seasons - all of the things that Elizabeth has to give up, repress, compromise & reject entirely now will all become (for her) depressingly moot as her role as queen becomes more & more meaningless
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, 17 November 2016 18:40 (seven years ago) link
The ones who thought they had a moral obligation to lead, set a good example, and carefully read government documents actually come off looking sorta like chumps.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=FTQ
― The Doug Walters of Crime (Tom D.), Thursday, 17 November 2016 18:49 (seven years ago) link
yes -- and i think it's a bit deeper even than this, as well, bcz the ones who say "let's party and fuck" (who are totally the ones who make sense, even more in the 60s than the 50s, are also the ones where it's obvious that they're doing nothing to justify the colossal privilege: elizabeth's determination is a double one, to prove she can be a satisfactory monarch even though she's a young girl with a very odd and inadequate education (except in the constitution), one that can match up to her dad, and victoria and the other semi-mythical elizabeth, but also to justify the privilege by an iron committment to a selfless version of the duty she owes and the role she must commit to (the dowdiness is an expression of this, like the other elizabeth's quasi-holy virginity)
^^^which is a bonkers insupportable topsyturvy view, but without it, there's just nothing left to ground the wealth and the palaces, etc, as any kind of equitable settlement -- and that's where elizabeth is coming from
re the constitution: she refers to bagehot* when he comes into conversation as "badgett", but her teacher -- a professor with a northern accent, who drinks -- calls him "batshit"... which is not IMO an accident
*(walter bagehot, the 19th centry theorist of the constitution and apologist for the victorian monarchy)
― mark s, Thursday, 17 November 2016 18:49 (seven years ago) link
until i watched this i don't think i ever *fully* appreciated just how insane the mythology of the monarchy is when applied to a human being
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, 17 November 2016 19:06 (seven years ago) link
It has been announced Brenda is getting a £370 mill full electrical/mechanical refurb to her house scot free, now that's what you call full bennies.
― calzino, Friday, 18 November 2016 18:48 (seven years ago) link
Just finished watching this with Kate (ie, my girlfriend, not a certain princess) over the past few days. Good stuff, all points above taken on board of course.
Our favorite character was the mustachioed hatchetman.
"Bon voyage."
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 23 November 2016 05:02 (seven years ago) link
he was so good!
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 23 November 2016 05:34 (seven years ago) link
Pretty much whenever he appeared on screen I assumed he was about to have someone killed.
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 23 November 2016 05:51 (seven years ago) link
marming like a badass
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 23 November 2016 06:02 (seven years ago) link
= tommy lascelles (rhymes with tassles)
― mark s, Wednesday, 23 November 2016 10:25 (seven years ago) link
his royal mustache
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 23 November 2016 17:43 (seven years ago) link
I rather enjoyed this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3657397/A-most-devoted-subject-and-a-most-exacting-critic.html
Tommy's bête noir was the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII and ultimately Duke of Windsor. "He is the most attractive man I have ever met," Tommy declared on appointment to his household in 1921. Disillusionment was swift. "I have wasted the best years of my life," he said after resigning in 1929, outraged by the Prince's neglect of duty and loose morals.Half a century later, when I was writing a biography of George V, I asked Lascelles what he remembered of the King, who had summoned him back to royal service in 1935. He said: "The King gave me an MVO for looking after his son. It was the hardest-earned medal I ever had." From a man who had won a Military Cross on the Western Front, that was indeed a savage epitaph on the Prince.He wrote no less bitterly of Mrs Simpson in his retrospect of the Abdication crisis printed in the present volume: "The vast majority of the King's subjects… would not tolerate their Monarch taking as his wife, and their Queen, a shop-soiled American, with two living husbands and a voice like a rusty saw."
Half a century later, when I was writing a biography of George V, I asked Lascelles what he remembered of the King, who had summoned him back to royal service in 1935. He said: "The King gave me an MVO for looking after his son. It was the hardest-earned medal I ever had." From a man who had won a Military Cross on the Western Front, that was indeed a savage epitaph on the Prince.
He wrote no less bitterly of Mrs Simpson in his retrospect of the Abdication crisis printed in the present volume: "The vast majority of the King's subjects… would not tolerate their Monarch taking as his wife, and their Queen, a shop-soiled American, with two living husbands and a voice like a rusty saw."
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 23 November 2016 18:03 (seven years ago) link
Also what the hell:
Tommy undoubtedly gave a steadying hand to a master notorious for his outbursts, and it was his diplomacy that kept both the King and Churchill on dry land after each had declared his intention of watching the D-Day bombardment of the French coast from a cruiser.
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 23 November 2016 18:04 (seven years ago) link
whoa
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 23 November 2016 18:29 (seven years ago) link
I loved that awesome temper tantrum by the King in ep1 when he is getting ready
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 23 November 2016 18:35 (seven years ago) link
And learning about Antony Eden's health problems, jeez:
Eden had an ulcer, exacerbated by overwork, as early as the 1920s. His life was changed forever by a medical mishap: during an operation on 12 April 1953, to remove gallstones, his bile duct was damaged, leaving Eden susceptible to recurrent infections, biliary obstruction, and liver failure. He suffered from cholangitis, an abdominal infection which became so agonising that he was admitted to hospital in 1956 with a temperature reaching 106 °F (41 °C). He required major surgery on three occasions to alleviate the problem. Eden would almost certainly have become Prime Minister when Churchill suffered a severe stroke on 23 June 1953, had he not been recovering from corrective surgery in the United States on the same day.He was also prescribed Benzedrine, the wonder drug of the 1950s. Regarded then as a harmless stimulant, it belongs to the family of drugs called amphetamines, and at that time they were prescribed and used in a very casual way. Among the side effects of Benzedrine are insomnia, restlessness, and mood swings, all of which Eden suffered during the Suez Crisis; indeed, earlier in his premiership he complained of being kept awake at night by the sound of motor scooters. Eden's drug use is now commonly agreed to have been a part of the reason for his bad judgment while Prime Minister. Eden was secretly hospitalised with a high fever, possibly as a result of his heavy medication, on 5–8 October 1956. He underwent further surgery at a New York hospital in April 1957.In November 2006, private papers uncovered in the Eden family archives disclosed that Eden had been prescribed a powerful combination of amphetamines and barbiturates called drinamyl. Better known in post-war Britain as "purple hearts", the drug can impair judgement, cause paranoia, and even make the person taking them lose contact with reality. Drinamyl was banned in 1978
He was also prescribed Benzedrine, the wonder drug of the 1950s. Regarded then as a harmless stimulant, it belongs to the family of drugs called amphetamines, and at that time they were prescribed and used in a very casual way. Among the side effects of Benzedrine are insomnia, restlessness, and mood swings, all of which Eden suffered during the Suez Crisis; indeed, earlier in his premiership he complained of being kept awake at night by the sound of motor scooters. Eden's drug use is now commonly agreed to have been a part of the reason for his bad judgment while Prime Minister. Eden was secretly hospitalised with a high fever, possibly as a result of his heavy medication, on 5–8 October 1956. He underwent further surgery at a New York hospital in April 1957.
In November 2006, private papers uncovered in the Eden family archives disclosed that Eden had been prescribed a powerful combination of amphetamines and barbiturates called drinamyl. Better known in post-war Britain as "purple hearts", the drug can impair judgement, cause paranoia, and even make the person taking them lose contact with reality. Drinamyl was banned in 1978
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 23 November 2016 18:59 (seven years ago) link