She Who Staples

It is possible that I have broken all previous records by going to the cinema twice in one year. But it is only ten minutes' walk away now. This lunchtime I took myself there to see the new West Side Story (one of five people in the screen).

When I was a child, the 'Musicals Collection' version of WSS was one of about four CDs we owned, and two that got played regularly. (The other one was Marlene Dietrich's greatest hits.) We did not have a TV or video player until I was well into my teens. I've seen a few dubious high school productions and one decent professional production (tragically compromised, alas, by the fact that there were no caps in the cap gun and so the fatal moment was marked by a very anticlimactic little click). But of course every one of those resulted in a return to the soundtrack. Consequently I know the score and lyrics very well indeed but am less clear on the dialogue; also it's my absolute favourite musical.

And of course this year I have also got (back) into Romeo and Juliet, upon which West Side Story is based, in a big way.

( Thoughts on the new one )


*not in a 'not queer' sense; there was a little more queer content than I remembered from the last one. Anybody's role seemed to be intact, but there was also a hint that Chino was really interested in Bernardo rather than Maria - which worked very well from a characterisation point of view.

Firstly, my Jukebox effort. I was angling for this request from the moment I heard the song. Many fenland walks went into this fic.

Between the towers (3916 words) by El Staplador
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Marieke (Song) - Jacques Brel
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Marieke/Original character
Characters: Marieke, Narrator, Original Characters
Additional Tags: belgium - Freeform, Trains, Languages, First Love
Summary:

Two people, two cities, and the sky.

A short fic for Summer Spinoff:

Summer love sweet as wine (250 words) by El Staplador
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Mila Babicheva/Sara Crispino
Characters: Mila Babicheva, Sara Crispino, Yakov Feltsman, Lilia Baranovskaya
Additional Tags: Ficlet, Femslash, Summer
Summary:

I was down for the first night
And I’m down for a second try

Mila visits Sara during the summer break

I've been morbidly worried for a while that everything I'm trying to say in the novel I'm currently working on has already been said, better, by Richard Curtis in Four Weddings and a Funeral. So clearly the answer was to write Four Weddings fic.

All these weddings, all these years (1188 words) by El Staplador
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Matthew/Matthew's End Credit Boyfriend (Four Weddings and a Funeral), Matthew & Charles
Characters: Matthew (Four Weddings and a Funeral), Charles (Four Weddings and a Funeral)
Additional Tags: Marriage, Post-Canon, Weddings
Summary:

Fourteen years later, there's another wedding.

Why did nobody ever tell me how good The Red Shoes is? Or that it is right up my street? I mean, infuriating and heartrending, yes, but fantastic.

I'd always avoided it because I'd got the idea from somewhere that it was mostly about romantic love, but actually it's really about dancing and art and integrity and whether it is possible to get away from appalling men and do your thing. And really gripping to watch, with an amazing trippy ballet sequence in the middle. Couldn't look away.

(Icon in honour of the two TN4Hs you see for about two seconds in front of the Opéra in Paris.)

Currently reading

I have at long last embarked upon Les Miserables (Victor Hugo). (For new readers: countertony and I are passing the months of enforced separation in reading each other's favourite French novel. I visited him this weekend and was spurred into action by the sight of a bookmark somewhere near page 10 of The Count of Monte Cristo.) I'm three chapters in so far, which is not really far enough to say anything about it. It'll be a long, slow read, as it's too bulky to take on the train.

Poems, St John of the Cross, trans. Roy Campbell. Gorgeous. Just gorgeous. My Spanish is not really up to it, but I am tending to read a verse of the original, check it against the translation, rinse and repeat until the end of the poem, and then go back and read the whole thing.

Guards! Guards! (Terry Pratchett). I'm reading my way, very slowly, through all of Discworld (all the books belong to Tony and are therefore in Cambridge, so I'm managing one or two a month. No, I haven't read Raising Steam yet.) Dragons!


Recently finished

Strumpet City (James Plunkett) - for HQ book club. Dublin, 1907-1912 or so. I enjoyed this, though there was an awful lot of guilt and misery. All life is here, my goodness.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne Brontë); first one of hers I've ever read. Needed something sensible and rational to read on the train to Cambridge on Friday. I didn't end up reading much of it until Saturday, but it did the trick, and I was very tiresome and wouldn't go to the pub until I'd finished it.

Pyramids (Terry Pratchett) - see above.

On the Road (Jack Kerouac) - for Guildford book club. Unexpectedly got me right in the id. Combination of desire to be on the way to somewhere, nostalgia for places I'd never been, and sense of vague embarrassment very reminiscent of late nights with parents, godparents, other bus crew. Also nice to find someone who over-uses 'great' and 'golden' as much as I do.

Neither Here Nor There (Bill Bryson) did not compare well. I seem to have gone off Bryson; he's not at his best when not in English-speaking countries, and also this one is showing its age.


Up next

Impossible Saints (Michèle Roberts) - which will probably annoy me no end, as it seems to be based-but-not-based on Teresa of Ávila, in the usual Roberts style (why?) - but will probably be worth it. I have Spain on the brain at the moment.


Other media

Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom - rather superficial, which I suppose was only to be expected.

The Musketeers - really, there was no way I wasn't going to love this, was there?

The Bridge - will take a lot of catching up on, but will be worth it.