vivdunstan

Was just checking my profile on Doctor Who fan forum Gallifrey Base. And thought it might be worth sharing some of my answers here too.

Favorite Doctor: David Tennant
Favorite Companion: Sarah Jane Smith
Favorite Master: Derek Jacobi
Favorite Classic Doctor Who Story: City of Death
Favorite New Doctor Who Episode: The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances
Favorite Television Shows: Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, Danger Mouse, The Avengers, Babylon 5, Robin of Sherwood
Favorite Films: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Fellowship of the Ring, Back to the Future
Favorite Musicians/Bands: ABBA, Runrig
Favorite Books: Lord of the Rings, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Discworld series
Year You Became a Doctor Who Fan: 1978

Slightly Foxed issue Winter 2020 (yes I have a bit of a backlog) and Kim Newman’s short book about Hammer’s Quatermass and the Pit movie.

Managed a little accordion play this morning. I was practising the main Pirates of the Caribbean tune mainly, and posted a recording of that from today on Twitter. Then played Despacito and Lambada, and my brain ended up very light headed and everything went to pot! But really pleased with how things were going overall. Just one chord fluff in Pirates, and I was managing to keep the momentum going. It is rather a difficult tune. Much practice still needed.

I was also amused by how the sound recording wave pattern looks for my Pirates play. I'm pleased by how regular the rhythms are! Also the contrast between the leisurely harmonic opening and the highly staccato main part. I've only practised so far at the moment, with much still to learn. But good progress.

Tonight’s movie watching - and we managed all 80 minutes or so in one sitting - was the 1950 thriller So Long At The Fair starring Jean Simmons and Dirk Bogarde. I’d last seen this movie in the 1980s, catching it by chance one afternoon while flicking through television channels. It made a big impression on me, but I haven’t seen it again until tonight.

It’s set in Paris at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, the story of a disappearance, and the increasing mystery surrounding it. It’s a very well constructed thriller, directed by later frequent Hammer director Terence Fisher. The entire cast impresses. I found it as enjoyable the second time around. Martin enjoyed it too.

Rating 5/5. A really nicely done historical thriller with a superb central mystery and great cast and direction.

Miraculously we managed another film, albeit a short one, the first in the Roger Corman Vincent Price Edgar Allan Poe series of collaborations, The Fall of the House of Usher (1960).

It’s fun, gloriously hammy, and wonderfully garish in colour and themes. But Vincent Price’s acting is really dodgy, and Mark Damon playing the heroic wooer of Madeline Usher delivers a really poor acting performance. On plus Myrna Fahey as Madeline is strong, and the only other cast member, Harry Ellerbe as the butler, is reliable.

But oh it is padded. Not one of the best in the series for me. Though the visuals are superb, especially the looming Usher house. I’d forgotten the psychedelic blue sequence with Usher ancestors.

I do have a soft spot for this film though. Perhaps helped by my descent from a very old Usher family at Melrose! And the ending, once we finally reach it, is rather glorious.

Finally finished Pixar’s Onward, a week after we watched the first half. A lovely film, that definitely appealed to RPG geeks like us two! I was also struck by how much the magical landscape looked like Skye. Not sure when we’ll get to watch another film, but one down.

I started reading the first Expanse scifi book last night. I’m enjoying it, but struggling with the writing style in half the book. The book is split completely into alternating chapters, switching between two POV characters. I’m guessing the two authors who wrote the book together took one character each. The chapters are not just different settings/characters, but dramatically different in writing style, which only easily fits with a different writer. I’m hugely disliking the writing in the Miller chapters, finding it frenetic, choppy and uncomfortable to read. It’s a sort of hyper speeded up writing I greatly dislike. I am fine with the Holden chapters. But pushing on. It may be the only Expanse book I read though. This is a new novel read at the same time as Wheel of Time book 3, which is fantasy, much slower, and totally different in feel. I like to always have multiple books on the go, so if I don’t feel like reading one, or maybe would benefit from a brief break from it, I can switch to another temporarily. I also like to have a variety of non fiction and short story books on the go at the same time too, so I have lots of things to choose from on a given night.