Postcards from Oz

Merry Christmas Everyone!

bimo — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 09:03:24 GMT

A happy and safe Christmas to every one! I figured in times like these we all might need a bit of "magic" :-)
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Happy Halloween! (I thought I should share

bimo — Sun, 31 Oct 2021 11:17:44 GMT

I just wanted to share the playlist that Cavendish and I have created for this year’s Halloween! A Happy Halloween to everyone who celebrates! :-)

Bimo

The X-Files Theme (Main Title: Materia Primoris), The X-Files Theme, 03:21

Sunrise, Uriah Heep, The Magician’s Birthday, 04:20

Hide and Seek, The White Buffalo, Darkest Darks, Lightest Lights [Explicit], 03:03

Time Warp, Little Nell, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Original Soundtrack, 03:19

I Put A Spell On You, Nina Simone, I Put A Spell On You, 02:35

Stairway to Heaven (Remaster), Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin IV (Deluxe Edition), 08:02

Black Wings, Tom Waits, Bone Machine, 04:35

Sympathy For The Devil, The Rolling Stones, Hot Rocks (1964-1971), 06:17

Highway to Hell, AC/DC, Highway to Hell, 03:28

Lady in Black, Uriah Heep, Celebration, 05:30

Where the Wild Roses Grow (2011 - Remaster), Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Murder Ballads (2011 Remastered Version) [Explicit], 03:57

Over at the Frankenstein Place, Richard O'Brien, The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Original Soundtrack, 02:45

The Nameless Murderess, The Once, Departures, 05:26

Black Wings, Tom Waits, Bone Machine, 04:35

Sympathy For The Devil, The Rolling Stones, Hot Rocks (1964-1971), 06:17

Highway to Hell, AC/DC, Highway to Hell, 03:28

Lady in Black, Uriah Heep, Celebration, 05:30

Where the Wild Roses Grow (2011 - Remaster), Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Murder Ballads (2011 Remastered Version) [Explicit], 03:57

Over at the Frankenstein Place, The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Original Soundtrack, 02:45

The Nameless Murderess, The Once, Departures, 05:26

Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair, Hugh Laurie, Didn't It Rain, 05:26

See That My Grave Is Kept Clean, B.B. King, One Kind Favor, 04:48

Ghost Riders In The Sky, Johnny Cash, Ze Best - Johnny Cash, 03:47

Paint It, Black, The Rolling Stones, Hot Rocks (1964-1971), 03:22

Ghostbusters (From ''Ghostbusters''), Ray Parker Jr., 80s 100 Hits, 03:58

Bat Out of Hell, Meat Loaf, Heaven & Hell, 04:53

Personal Jesus, Depeche Mode, The Best of Depeche Mode, Vol. 1 (Deluxe) [Explicit,] 03:45

Red Right Hand (2011 Remastered Version), Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Red Right Hand (Theme from 'Peaky Blinders'), 06:12

Vagabonds, New Model Army, Thunder And Consolation, 04:20

Bohemian Rhapsody (Remastered 2011), Queen, A Night At The Opera (2011 Remaster), 05:54

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Still Out There :-)

bimo — Fri, 26 Feb 2021 10:22:40 GMT

Quite hard to believe that another year has gone by without any proper entry from me, when I’m actually doing fine (considering there’s a global pandemic going on) and reading and waching stuff just as usual. Albeit with a slightly nostalgic, comforting twist to it.

First a complete Babylon 5 rewatch, now ST:DS9. Oh, and lots of Doctor Who, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor, complete runs, before finally turning back to Ten and Donna. (No way on Earth I am going to watch any more Thirteenth Doctor episodes than I already have at this point, well except for the unlikely case Chris Chibnall should quit as a showrunner while Jodie Whittaker is still being around.)

As for books: Lots of them, yes. Mostly fiction from a variety of genres, the three most memorable novels probably being Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead , Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half and Micaiah Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds.

I guess that’s all for the moment.Greetings to everybody out there. :-)

Take care!

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So I turned 45 last Wednesday

bimo — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 10:43:24 GMT

Celebrating your 45th birthday at a time when the German federal state that you live in is also the federal state with the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases (1041 so far, and rising) is a pretty strange experience, I can tell you. Filled with a kind of decisions I wouldn’t have dreamed of a month ago.

Cavendish and I are, luckily, still young enough not to fall into any of the high risk groups; however it’s a different matter with our 75+ parents, especially with my father-in-law, who is terminally ill with colon cancer.

So we are thinking a lot about risk minimising measures these days, for example stuff like cancelling our reservation for the super-nice but also somewhat crowded Indian restaurant where we had originally wanted to take my own Dad on Saturday for a slightly belated birthday dinner. The restaurant owner, who is of the loveliest, helpful and most welcoming type you can imagine, is having a three course takeaway meal prepared for us now, so that we can enjoy at least part of what their sumptuous weekend buffet has to offer without having to consume our food in a room full of people.

Not that I believe contracting SARS-CoV-2 right at this point is all that likely, the case numbers even here in North-Rhine Westphalia are still too low for that. But what I believe in are the accumulated effects of people’s behaviour. Science, mathematics and expert projections. Everything coming down to the inconvenient, unpleasant fact that every decision with potential to slow down the virus’s spread is a good decision and a responsible one.

Thus I’m still rather torn about the Lichtburg Essen’s decision to have their great Star Trek: Wrath of Khan screening on March 11th take place exactly as scheduled. (The theatre usually holds 1250 people but apparently managed to keep the audience under 1000 by cancelling evening ticket sales and not putting any returned tickets back into sale.) William Shatner, in his late eighties now and still very much William Shatner as you know, love, or hate him, is touring Europe with Wrath of Khan at the moment. Movie screening followed by extensive ~~Q&A~~ stage program.

The film, with its opening scenes taking place on Kirk’s birthday, is a wonderful film to see on your own birthday. Especially if you are someone like me for whom Star Trek has been there all their lives. (One of my earliest conscious memories of watching TV is a Star Trek one, my Dad was watching, I was about three years old and sitting next to him on the sofa.)

Cavendish and I had bought our tickets sometime last September, practically as soon as we had seen the event first announced. Very much looking foward to it and learning that, against all odds, Wrath of Khan would definitely take place, we decided to go (The ratio behind this being that it was just the two of us, and it would be several days before we would meet with any of our parents again.)

Wonderful evening, full of fun, excitement and the priceless experience of feeling like the Star Trek loving kid I once was all over again. But a lot of anxiety and scruples before and after.

To quote Mr. Spock: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Whatever you do, people,wherever you are, take care!

ETA: It has just been publicly announced that all North-Rhine Westphalian schools are going to be closed down until the end of the Easter holidays, which means no school until April 17th. We are living in interesting times… This entry was originally posted at https://bimo.dreamwidth.org/81499.html. Comment there or here, as you like. I'd be glad to reply to your comments over on DW.

An awful lot of cooking

bimo — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 11:16:08 GMT

Our annual Burns Night supper, six guests, so altogether a group of eight. This year, Cavendish and I came up with the following menu:

My Heart is in the Highlands

~Traditional: The Skye Boat Song~

1st course: Traditional Cullen Skink

~Toast to the Lassies: Afton Water by Robert Burns~

2nd course: Black and white pudding and pan-fried scallops with pea and mint puree at the side.

~Traditional: Come by the Hills~

3rd course: Haggis with pumpkin, mixed vegetables and mash at the side

~Traditional: Loch Lomond~

4th course: Apple Crumble with blueberries (absolutely delicious and kindly provided by one of our guests)

~Auld Lang Syne: Sing Along ~

All in all an awful lot of cooking, since I did most of the food from scratch. (Well practically everything except the Haggis and puddings, which were store-bought.) Never having done the pea and mint puree, black pudding, scallop dish before, I was rather worried about it and also rather surprised how well it turned out. This entry was originally posted at https://bimo.dreamwidth.org/81155.html. Comment there or here, as you like. I'd be glad to reply to your comments over on DW.

Almost a year without any proper entry

bimo — Wed, 15 Jan 2020 13:04:36 GMT

Which is really a shame, because just like I recently mentioned in a conversation with kathyh , there is this weird feeling that the older I get, the more I would actually love to have some sort of account of both my fannish and real life, just to look back and marvel. ;)

So it’s probably high time for me to get back into journalling again! Hello to anyone still out there! :)

Current book: Amy Waldman, The Submission

Current or recently enjoyed shows: The Expanse S4, Lost in Space S2, The Crown, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel S3, Mindhunter, Doctor Who Series 12 (Though after seeing “Orphan 55″ I’ve decided to give up on the current series/showrunner and quit, because for my personal taste that was just one cringeworthy script too many, and I’m definitely not in the business of hate-watching.)

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It seldom snows in north-western Rhineland

bimo — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 15:20:23 GMT

It seldom snows in north-western Rhineland, but the weather forecast says that it might, with the first flakes likely to fall around five o’clock this afternoon.

Current book: Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver.

Current shows: Only Star Trek: Discovery and A Series of Unfortunate Events, I’m afraid, since the latest seasons of other shows that I follow haven’t been released yet. (Or still aren’t $&/&!*** legally available in Germany. I’m looking at you, The Expanse.)

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Since Halloween is fast approaching

bimo — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 10:42:54 GMT

Anyone else watching The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix?

The show is a very smart, atmospherically intense reimagination of both the Robert Wise’s 1963 black and white genre classic The Haunting as well as the original Shirley Jackson novel.

Somewhat sceptical at first whether any modern day TV adaption could pull off the same level of psychological horror and deeply intense fright, I was soon taken in by the effective story telling (seemingly non-chronologic and elliptical, but in fact revealing itself to be perfectly concentric in a dark, twisted dream logic kind of way).

Also, intriguing characters, well-nuanced and coming with fascinating dynamics. (If you are familiar with their Robert Wise versions, names and depictions will be a sheer delight!)

The show’s ensemble cast is as female-dominated as it is superb.

Oh, and then there is that! cameo! Chilling and brilliant! Hell, yes, on so many levels! ;)

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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

bimo — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 13:07:07 GMT

Yeah, I know. But BimoDad and I have been watching the various Jurassic Park/ Jurassic World movies together ever since the first one came out back in 1993.Thus, no way we were going to miss this latest installment.

A few mostly spoiler-free observations:

Pure popcorn entertainment and actually great fun, however offering very few surprises since the film displays exactly the same strengths and weaknesses as the previous one.
Cookie cutter characters, but perfectly likeable, or, in case of the villains, properly despicable.
Simply gorgeous dino animation, done in a way that really makes you care for these beasts.
It totally escapes me why Fallen Kingdom’s rather obvious Frankenstein theme (all complete with Gothic mansion, thunder, and discussion of scientific ethics) doesn’t show up in reviews. (I’ve read various ones, none of them cared to mention it.) Fallen Kingdom is Frankenstein, as much as one of its predecessors, The Lost World, was King Kong.
Oh, and I couldn’t help smiling about the scenes showing Chris Pratt’s character raising young Velociraptor Blue. So reminiscent of training Little Jasper. ;)

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Look who is keeping me busy

bimo — Thu, 05 Apr 2018 09:46:59 GMT

After our old cocker spaniel Wesley had died in late November last year, Cavendish and I felt it was high time for a new fluffy housemate.

Little Jasper (right) and one of his brothers on the day we decided that it just had to be this pup, sometime in February. I think what finally won us over were his eyes and that special air of sensitivity and sweetness. That and the way how, within the space of five minutes, he managed to both steal my woolen cap and then fall asleep on my feet.

Playtime in our garden. Jasper has been living with us for roughly ten days by now, and it seems the garden is his absolute favourite place to be.

However, this carpet isn’t bad, either… ;)

Resting from so much excitement. :)

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Slightly belated Burns Night Dinner - Jan 28th 2018

bimo — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 13:25:14 GMT

What happens when Cavendish invites a bunch of colleagues for a small belated Burns Night Dinner ;)

2nd and 3rd course provided by us, extremely delicious lentil soup, amazing cheese and wonderful dessert by above mentioned colleagues…

Btw., never having tried anything like this before I was at first super skeptical about the Whisky-Cured Salmon. (Essentially fresh Salmon generously covered with a mixture of casting sugar and salt and then drowned in a larger amount of Whisky.) Turned out I need not have worried, because twenty-four hours in our fridge rendered the fish as tender and aromatic as could be. Perfect texture and taste!

1st course
Soup of the Day

Toast to the Lassies

2nd course
Whisky-Cured Salmon with Beetroot Dressing and Oatcakes

Address to a Haggis

3rd course
Haggis with Mashed Pumpkin, Mixed Vegetables and Colcannon at the Side

The Corries: Oh Flower of Scotland

4th course
A Selection of fine Scottish Cheese

Sing Along: Will You Go, Lassie Go?

5th course
Surprise Dessert

Sing Along

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Almost two weeks into 2018

bimo — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 09:02:04 GMT

I figure it’s high time I started to kick off the new year journaling-wise, if only just to wave at folks and say “Well, hi! I’m still hanging out here, having a good time :)”

TV Shows I’m currently watching or have watched just recently:

The Crown

Mindhunter

Star Trek: Discovery

Bates Motel (only season 1 so far, but definitely planning to catch up on the rest)

Movies

Nothing worth writing about at the moment. Well, during our New Year’s holiday, Cavendish and I ended up seeing Victoria & Abdul (2017, directed by Stephen Frears) at the Spiekeroog island cinema. However, we found ourselves so frustrated by that movie’s amount of kitsch and gross diminishing of British colonial crimes that we almost would have got up and left. (We probably would have left if it hadn’t been raining so strongly outside. Both of us were without umbrellas.)

Hard to believe Victoria & Abdul came from the same director who did such a smart and brilliant film as The Queen back in 2006. But then again, The Queen’s screenplay was written by Peter Morgan.

Books

selenak , knowing how highly you think of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, have you ever read this one?

Paul M. Sammon, Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner. Revised and updated 2017 edition.

Described as “The ultimate guide to Ridley Scott’s transformative Sci-Fi classic", Sammon’s decade-long labour love so far 100% lives up to its promise. Well written, intriguing background infos and interviews on just about every aspect of Blade Runner’s making.

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Vid Rec: The Expanse- Dream of Peace

bimo — Sat, 21 Oct 2017 10:48:24 GMT

Dream of Peace by Zurik 23 M
Focusing more on the The Expanse’s action elements than on the political angle. But still capturing the general atmosphere and character dynamics rather beautifully, especially that sense of terror and wonder that’s inherent to the show.

Oh, and I just realised the vidder responsible is the same who did one of my all time favourite Black Sails vids.

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Mostly Science Fiction these days (The Expanse)

bimo — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 18:14:27 GMT

Over the last couple of weeks, I got quite a good dose of Sci Fi. New Star Trek, new Blade Runner, plus the first one and a half seasons of The Expanse, a show that I had never heard of until Netflix rather successfully marketed it to Cavendish, who decided to give it a try, watched the pilot, and then, on the very next day, decided to watch said pilot again, this time together with me.

And wow, am I glad that he asked me to join him, because already said pilot left me speechless ~~due to spoilery plot stuff that best remains untold so you can view for yourselves~~ .Not only does the show offer a complex, well-developed and richly detailed universe (you can tell The Expanse is based on a series of novels), it also features nuanced characters and probably the most diverse cast I’ve seen in ages, characters and actors of various ethnic backgrounds and various age groups.

Oh, and on top of that absolutely stunning visuals. Seeing what The Expanse does with its space stations and ships, the newer ones as well as those rundown and falling apart, I immediately thought of Babylon 5, and that B5, a true pioneer back in the 1990s, would look just like this if it had been filmed today and not some twenty years ago. Shiny and gritty and lived in and quite amazing.

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Once upon a Time: Continued Season One Nostalgia, Pinocchio

bimo — Fri, 07 Jul 2017 17:53:21 GMT

Cavendish and I now have progressed up to episode 1.20 “The Stranger”, which shines a light on Pinocchio/August’s backstory, all the dark, winding path, right to the point when adult August is leading an increasingly distressed Emma to the very tree portal through which both of them had originally arrived in the Land without Magic.

What sprang to my mind while rewatching, well, apart from “Wow, this really features Shady Blue at her shadiest! Attempting to change the deal she has made with Geppetto, and when that fails, outright lying to pregnant Snow and Charming… Boo!”:

The portrayals of the child Pinocchio and the man he has turned into seem far more ambivalent in “The Stranger” than in some of the later episodes, where the character is more often than not pushed into the role of a pathetic coward. Of course, adult August’s method of trying to force Emma into believing is questionable. Of course his motivation appears selfish in nature, at least to a certain degree.Thanks to nuanced writing and acting it is impossible to tell how much August’s actions are based on heartfelt guilt and remorse, and how much on hoping to escape his impending fate of turning back into wood.

However it is easy to sympathise with him and to understand how little chance he actually had to turn out any different. After all, he’s a frightened to death kid, who was pushed into a guardian role for which he was far too young, and thus, could not possibly fulfil. Geppetto, what on Earth were you thinking, placing the incredible responsibility of watching out for the newly born Emma on your seven-year-old’s shoulders? No wonder your son ends up running away and staying continuously on the run for the next twenty-eight years.

In addition to liking these nuances of not black and white but shady-bluey grey, I’m also impressed by how effortlessly the writers (in this case Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss) touch upon both the original Collodi novel as well as the Disney version in the most ironical yet also most sense-making way possible:

August: I am not screwing around here. Whatever you believe, or don’t, this is real, Emma. I am sick.

Emma: That’s an understatement.

August: You ever been to Phuket? It’s beautiful. Amazing island, full of pleasures. The perfect place to lose oneself. That’s where I was when you decided to stay in Storybrooke.

Emma: How do you know when I decided to stay in Storybrooke?

August: Because at eight fifteen in the morning, I woke up with a shooting pain in my leg. That’s eight fifteen at night in Storybrooke. Sound familiar? That’s when time there started to move forward again. I was supposed to be there for you. And I wasn’t. Because I was halfway around the world, I got a painful reminder of just how far I’d strayed. If that tree won’t make you believe, maybe this will.

So it’s Pleasure Island all over again.

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Once upon a Time: Revisiting Season One

bimo — Sun, 18 Jun 2017 11:44:52 GMT

Just a bunch of loosely connected and highly subjective observations.

Cavendish did not want our OuaT viewing experience to end with that feeling of irritated frustration left by season 6, so he talked me into going back to the show’s very beginnings when all still felt fresh, new and considerably less convoluted. So far we have progressed up to ep 1.08 “Desperate Souls” and watching those early episodes is quite an eye opener.

Much slower narrative pace.
Almost every episode contains a whole lot of camera shots portraying Storybrooke not as a sterile set, but as a real town populated by all sorts of people. Far more background action going on in any of the street scenes.
Much more time spent on establishing or exploring narrative or visual clues, small stuff that might turn out important a little bit further down the road. S1 basically teaches you to pay attention to even the tiniest aspects and actually rewards that attention by providing you, step by step, with an ever more complete picture of what’s going on. In S6, on the other hand, paying attention is something viewers actively get punished for, because none of the individual pieces seem to fit together or make sense anymore.
All in all, much fresher and happier seeming actors. While Parilla’s portrayal of Regina strikes me as relatively consistent throughout the show, there are worlds between the S1 and S6 performances of Robert Carlyle and Jennifer Morrison.
More complex and nuanced characterisations, characters seem far more well rounded, in particular Snow.
Cavendish actually squeed with joy when he saw how keen Rumple still was on contracts.
Oh, Graham, I miss you.

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OuaT Meme

bimo — Wed, 10 May 2017 09:17:45 GMT

I got tagged by the good folks on Tumblr and thought I'd crosspost :)

1. Who is your fave character and why?

I enjoy OuaT as an ensemble piece, because I think that each of the show’s characters is adding something unique to the mix. But, well, my favourite, yes, definitely Killian Jones /Hook. ;)

I guess could name all his qualities now, starting with the traits he displayed right from the start, such as his intelligence or the cocky way he kept his head high even when hopelessly overpowered or out-magicked.

But in the end, it all comes down to the stuff that unfolded later and made Killian one of the most ruthless, most uncompromising romantics I have ever seen on TV. Whatever dark places this pirate has been in (and I really don’t want to whitewash the fact that Killian butchered quite a number of innocents in his day), I figure he never really lost his innate sense of wonder, his sense for personal freedom (his own freedom as well as the freedom of others) and the ability to be touched and to truly, madly, deeply love against all odds.

2. Favourite recurring character? (Not a main character)

A close tie between Ruby and Whale. (I’m counting Cora as a villain, not as a recurring here, otherwise it would have been her.)

3. What was your favourite S1 moment?

That scene from 1.14 “Dreamy”, when Nova accidentally sprinkles a bit of fairy dust on the yet unhatched Dreamy’s egg. Pure magic. Sweet, symbolic, evocative, plus a lovely bit of world building.

4. Favourite overall moment?

Killian embracing Neal and making his peace with him in 3.15 “Quiet Minds”. Such a perfect episode, such an intense moment.

5. What is something you wish you could change?

Milah being thrown into the River of Lost Souls.

6. If you could see more of a background character, who would it be?

Any of the dwarves. I just love the way they interact with each other and the sense of humour that they add to the show.

7. Who is a character you wish you could like but can’t?

Merlin. Nothing wrong with the character per se, but the actor who portrayed him always felt a bit bland to me. I figure, to convince me of the whole “young, pretty Merlin” concept, I would have needed someone like American Gods' Ricky Whittle. Mid thirties instead of mid twenties and pulling off “charismatic” like whoah.

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Stuff that I read in April

bimo — Mon, 08 May 2017 17:55:14 GMT

Just a note on two very different pieces of fiction that I read in April and can’t quite get out of my head.

The first, the Arthur C. Clarke Award–winning novel Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, strikes me as being the most gentle, most benevolent vision of a (post)apocalyptic society I have seen in while, since Mandel depicts the human need for company, art, civilisation and, yes, also technology in a way that feels optimistic yet at the same time weirdly authentic. Beautifully written, though rather stylised in parts. Plus, in my humble opinion, best use of a Star Trek:Voyager quote ever.

The second piece is a bit of Nice Guys fanfiction that I almost wouldn’t have clicked on because of its straight “E” rating on AO3, which I assure you much is higher than anything I would feel comfortable reading under normal circumstances. However, well…

*takes a deep breath*

It was late at night and some of the story’s tags, good grief, some of the tags just seemed too good to ignore. “Families of Choice”, “Religion”, “California History” and “Christmas”, only to list a few of them. Now, writers usually do not describe their work along these lines if they haven’t got anything to tell that goes substantially beyond whatever their piece got its “E” rating for.

Thus, I kind of trusted the tags and proceeded. If you are remotely interested in Nice Guys fic you might want to inquire which story it was that made me climb over that yellow AO3 warning bar. So here comes the link:

make the rougher places plain by Greywash.
Atmospheric, poignant, intense and touching due to its own kind of melancholia.

Below the cut follow some of the passages which really did me in as a reader. I can only bow to anyone who can write something like this on the basis of one silly movie.

“Yeah,” March says, quiet. March isn’t Catholic: wrong coast, not Irish enough, too young. March is the kind of asshole who keeps steady eye contact while he drinks too much and would deny under torture that he feeds the dog from the table and has a finely-honed system for getting extra money out of old ladies who’ve hired him to help them find heirloom jewelry stolen by their ne'er-do-well grandsons after the bastards’ve already fucked off to Hawai'i, long gone; the kind of prick who just smirks and sucks him off in the big walnut-framed bed a half-block away while Jack chews on his knuckles and tries not to choke to death on weekend mornings when the dog is whining at their door and they’ve slept too late to be sure Holly’s still safely asleep down the hall. Healy hadn’t thought March was religious at all. The church they’d taken him to last Christmas was Episcopal, so basically: Healy’s entire childhood as filtered by a particularly well-crafted episode of The Twilight Zone; Holland’d spent the service looking zoned out and a little too mellow; sunlight streaming through the windows as Holly’s sweet voice lifted up: snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, her hands in their hands at her sides, held down low. The church’d been just around the corner—from the old house, last year—so after the service they’d walked home and then sat out back with their legs dangling over the edge of the empty pool, passing around a carton of freezer-burnt rocky road ice cream from Thrifty: three spoons.

[…]

“Holly’s mom went to church,” March says, quiet. “I guess that’s a thing they still do in England. Christmas and Easter. Her whole life.”

Oh, thinks Healy: Anglican, of course. Still blindsided, somehow.

Stupid.

“So I figure.” March sighs. “I’m a pretty lousy dad, but that’s still one thing I can do.”

“You’re not a lousy dad,” Healy says: instant. Mostly true. “You’ve got a great kid.”

“Yeah, but that’s just Holly being Holly.” Holland’s right hand rises, slides forward: “I just sit back,” a plane soaring to clear air; “let her go.”

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Movie Meme

bimo — Sun, 30 Apr 2017 09:21:00 GMT

As borrowed from selenak . I've been wanting to do this the whole week, but didn't manage until now. :)

A Movie I Love: Bram Stoker’s Dracula

An Action Movie I Love: Jurassic Park (Yeah, I know I’m stretching genre boundaries to the very limit here, but still.)

A Drama I Love: The Ice Storm

A Western I Love: Once Upon a Time in the West

A Horror Movie I Love: The Last Wave (I could just as easily cite Robert Wise’s The Haunting but The Last Wave is the one horror movie which managed to scare the holy scrap out of me when I first saw it as a thirty-seven year-old adult. So brilliantly filmed, so deeply unsettling.)

A Comedy I Love: Groundhog Day

A Romance Movie I Love: Moulin Rouge

A Noir I Love: Chinatown

A Disney Movie I Love: Zootopia

A Sci Fi Movie I Love: Interstellar

An Animated Movie I Love: The Last Unicorn

A Superhero Movie I Love: Goldfinger (Does James Bond count as a superhero? If not, I’m screwed, because I don’t do Marvel.)

A War Movie I Love: Apocalypse Now

An Exploitation Movie I Love: Sorry, but no, just no. There are one or two Tarantinos and Peckinpahs which I’m fascinated by, but I wouldn’t file those under “exploitation”.

A Musical I Love: A Chorus Line

An Historical Movie I Love: Amadeus

A Bad Movie I Love: Flash Gordon

A Childhood Favourite: Star Wars (Star Wars IV: A New Hope)

A Shakespeare Movie I Love: Richard III (1995, the one with Ian McKellen)

A Franchise I Love: Pirates of the Caribbean

A Trilogy I Love: The original Star Wars Trilogy

A Guilty Pleasure I Love: The Day after Tomorrow

A Movie Recently Seen: The Lost City of Z

My Favourite of This Year: La La Land

A Favourite of All Time: The Shawshank Redemption

This entry was originally posted at http://bimo.dreamwidth.org/77669.html. Comment there or here, as you like. I'd be glad to reply to your comments over on DW.

The Nice Guys fanfic: Fool’s Wisdom (The Things We Don’t Tell)

bimo — Tue, 25 Apr 2017 14:22:21 GMT

Fool’s Wisdom (The Things We Don’t Tell) by Bimo (AO3 link), 2442 words
Summary: When Jackson Healy is left alone to deal with an elderly client, quite a few things fall into place
Characters: Jackson Healy, Holland March, Holly March
Genre: Character Study, Aftermath of a Case
Rating: PG-13, Teen and Up Audiences on AO3
Thanks to: The wonderful Ineptdetective (Gotyerback), for fantastic beta and encouragement :)
Author’s Note: I couldn’t write hardboiled detective fic if my life depended on it, so I’m not even pretending to. Please make of this whatever you want and enjoy!

This entry was originally posted at http://bimo.dreamwidth.org/77357.html. Comment there or here, as you like. I'd be glad to reply to your comments over on DW.

Silence (2016, R: Martin Scorcese)

bimo — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 13:12:39 GMT

Went to see Martin Scorcese’s Silence yesterday, which turned out to be the kind of movie that leaves me glad to have watched and doubtful I’ll ever feel the desire to watch again. Intriguing story, amazing acting, capturing cinematography, but for large parts excruciating, painful.

Based on the historical novel of the same title by Japanese author Shūsaku Endō, Silence follows the emotional and spiritual journey of young Portuguese Jesuit missionary Sebastiao Rodrigues, who is sent to 17th century Japan to investigate the whereabouts and possible apostasy commited by his former mentor Ferreira (Liam Neeson).

Since both the Japan-based Jesuits as well as the Japanese Christians are facing persecution and extinction during years in which Silence takes place, it is feared that Ferreira might either have been killed or have sworn off his faith. The conditions that Rodrigues and an accompanying priest, Garupe, encounter once they have landed in Japan are getting increasingly nightmarish. Hiding, betrayal and torture to the death ensue.

Placed within a larger context of identity and faith, the major questions which Silence is posing are questions that are, in one way or another, all related to suffering. How much can a man bear, or is a man possibly willing to bear, for his own sake, for the sake of others? And where to place oneself along the lines of pragmatism vs. idealism?

Very intense, outstanding performances from all of the involved actors. I believe the two that will stay with me for the longest are those of Liam Neeson (so very haunting) and Issey Ogata, the actor playing the Japanese inquisitor in a way that’s nothing but bone-chilling and clearly the stuff that nightmares are born from.

Andrew Garfield embodies the film’s main character Rodrigues wonderfully nuanced, passionate and increasingly desperate but always with an air of distanced, intellectualised (is that even a word in English?) idealism. However I can’t stop wondering what the originally cast Gael Garcia Bernal would have done with the role.

So, all in all, very intense viewing experience. Not sure whether to recommend, though.

Two remaining questions: 1.) Why on Earth did Scorcese feel the need to use so much voice-over narration when more often than not, the visual imagery would have been enough? 2.) Why do I, as a staunch secular humanist, always feel so incredibly drawn to this kind of stuff?

This entry was originally posted at http://bimo.dreamwidth.org/77260.html. Comment there or here, as you like. I'd be glad to reply to your comments over on DW.

That Nice Guys/X-Files story I talked about

bimo — Sat, 04 Mar 2017 12:47:03 GMT

So I decided to take the plunge after all and posted on AO3, after an interesting talk with Cavendish.

His logic: Well if there are only 73 stories for that fandom, there certainly should be more than enough room for my little oddball. Also, how on Earth was I supposed to meet new people to play with if I didn’t go out there… ;)

So, here we go. Posted with a gazillion of caveats, just to see how it floats:

Non Sequitur by Bimo (1567 words, AO3 link)
Oh, Holland March, what on Earth have you stumbled into this time? Just when everything seems lost, Holland March gets a visit from the patron saint of all hopeless causes.

Fandoms: The X-Files, The Nice Guys (2016)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Genre: Gen, Character Study, Case Aftermath This entry was originally posted at http://bimo.dreamwidth.org/76873.html. Comment there or here, as you like. I'd be glad to reply to your comments over on DW.

There ought to be a special hell for those who watch too many Ryan Gosling movies (and write fanfic)

bimo — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 14:12:54 GMT

Just like the header says.

When I watched The Nice Guys this weekend, something in my twisted, crossover-loving brain just went click. So I began to write, and now, three days later I find myself sitting on the finished draft of a 1400 word Nice Guys/X-Files story in which an older Holland March essentially gets rescued by a certain FBI agent. All in all, it’s a classic Bimo, I’d say, if maybe a bit more bizarre than usual.

I like the story well enough. Nevertheless, I must admit I have absolutely no idea what to do with it, now that it’s finished. (At the moment, the most realistic approach seems to never mention it again and let it sink into the darkest depths of my hard drive.)

Simply going ahead and posting an unproofread, unedited version to AO3 is not an option, firstly and mainly because of the good old non-native speaker issue. However, there are also additional concerns lurking around the corner.

1.) I’m depicting issues of mental health (which sort of came with the characters), and while I went out of my way to handle those issues as respectfully, sincere and responsibly as I am able to, I surely screwed up somewhere.

2.) The “Nobody will ever read this” factor. By the time I’m typing, there are exactly seventy-three The Nice Guys stories on AO3, the overwhelming majority of them either slash or pre-slash (Holland March/ Jackson Healy). Nothing wrong with that, but it’s a road I just didn’t take when I wrote myself. What I came up with instead is more or less the aftermath to an X-file. Since the fandom appears so small and so slashy, I have serious doubts anyone enjoying The Nice Guys well enough to go hunting for fic will be interested in reading Gen stuff.

3.) Return straight to the point where I was talking about not posting something unbetaed. I’m afraid, I will never, ever find a beta for this story. Getting a beta for a nice, lovely OuaT story is one thing. But for this baby? Like I said, special hell.

This entry was originally posted at http://bimo.dreamwidth.org/76552.html. Comment there or here, as you like. I'd be glad to reply to your comments over on DW.

Changing with time

bimo — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 13:22:06 GMT

I’ve been re-reading a lot of Highlander fan fiction from the heydays of “Seventh Dimension”, “HL Quill Club” and Mary Galasso’s excellent “Voices” anthology lately, all of these stories being old favourites of mine that I’ve been able to track down, retrace and locate.

The infrastructure of first wave HL fandom collapsed sometime during the 2000s, which essentially means that if an author didn’t transfer their works to AO3, or if you, as a reader haven’t kept up with writers’ changing pseuds, the stories are gone. Even with a good memory for titles and pen names, you’ll have an incredibly hard time finding an accessible online version of *that* particular fanfic ever again.

So I figure the first, rather unsurprising lesson learned from my experience can be summed up as: If you care about a certain story, save it on your hard drive and make sure to create regular back ups, just in case you would like to revisit it someday for whatever reasons.

The second lesson, however, is actually more of a subjective observation.

By the time I first encountered stories such as Kat Allison’s Last Set Before Closing, Parda’s Down to the Bone, or selenak 's Death and the Maiden in the late 1990s (to name only a few, also both Parda and Selena were still writing under their real names back then), I was still a comparative youngster finding herself in fanfic heaven, because, good grief, were those stories amazing. The premises, the characterisations, the imagery, the language… . In short, all those qualities which make a piece of writing pass the test of time with flying colours. No wonder I had expected those stories to age well. What I hadn’t reckoned with, however, was how much my perspective on them and therefore also the reasons for my appreciation would change and grow over time.

Just to give you a few examples:

It’s February 2017 now, which means in real life we must almost have reached the very palpable future depicted in Last Set, since the story is set roughly twenty years after the last HL episode takes place and deals with Duncan visiting his aged friend Joe Dawson at a retirement home. The predictions that Kat Allison made regarding technological and social developments are plain intriguing, because while not every detail is perfect, they hit frighteningly close to home if seen as a whole.

Revisiting Down to the Bone and Death and the Maiden, I couldn’t help noticing how much more susceptive and aware the older me, turning forty-two in a couple of weeks, has become regarding the underlying psychological dynamics and depths, so finely-tuned and hidden between lines of powerful, evocative writing.

Stuff, which has been there all the time, and I was only too young, inexperienced or simply not prophetic enough to see it.

This entry was originally posted at http://bimo.dreamwidth.org/76412.html. Comment there or here, as you like. I'd be glad to reply to your comments over on DW.

OuaT Fan Fiction: Measure of a Man

bimo — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 12:40:27 GMT

Measure of a Man by Bimo (571 words)

Fandom: Once upon a Time
Rating: G bordering on PG-13
Summary: Sometimes the measure of a man is how he copes with being reborn
Characters: Emma Swan, Killian Jones
Notes: Written as a gift for Em, for the 2016 Once Upon a Secret Santa exchange on Tumblr. I've never tried writing a bona fide Captain Swan story before. So I can only hope that everything comes across just right and that you will enjoy! :)
Thanks: Lots of thanks go to Whimsicallyenchantedrose, for kindly volunteering as a beta!

This entry was originally posted at http://bimo.dreamwidth.org/76195.html. Comment there or here, as you like. I'd be glad to reply to your comments over on DW.