mollyrealized

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BBC iPlayer is restricted to the UK; I am not sure if "every Whovian" is going to have access.

Doctor Who is celebrating 60 years by releasing over 800 episodes on BBC iPlayer.

The sci-fi fantasy show first premiered in 1963 and has cemented itself as a permanent fixture in pop culture history. This fall, fans will be able to stream the entire 800-plus episode series along with spin-offs like Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood, and Class, and the behind-the-scenes series Doctor Who Confidential.

Each Dr Who episode will be made accessible for all Whovians, with subtitles, audio description, and sign language options available for the very first time.

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The neat thing is that he recently got to meet one of the kids (now grown-up) in the test audience who "voted" for him.

Also, just as an aside - I got to know him somewhat before BC; I was in college with him for a few years. He was (and is still) an unbelievable actor. He did a HOMICIDE episode ("Full Court Press"), for example, which you can find on YT. Don't let his innate humility convince you all the way. There's a tremendous reservoir of talent there.

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reasonstobecheerful.com

Constant bad news doing your head in? Why not read about the fish doorbell instead [theguardian.com]

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I remember watching this and going, "Oh, that's what the psychopath dead eyes look like." Not that Giles is normally a psychopath - but it was interesting to see him just pull out and put on his Ripper part.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer | 3.02 Dead Man's Party

Anthony Steward Head as Rupert Giles

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Hello, if you are checking out my Tumblr because of the transcript thing, I am going to try to do some sort of automated crossposting or something, but I have a newsletter you might like, it is at thinktrove.org. Basically just cool miscellanea and occasional stuff. I am also ancient Gen X but a newly hatched trans, and also doing some personal trauma work, so all of that is maybe something of interest. In any case, glad you guys liked the transcript, was glad to do something small for Neil after all the niceness he does for people with his ask answers and other stuff.

#aziraphale #youtube #transcript #neil gaiman #crowley #michael sheen

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Voting for Ms. Duane's character's name to be Princess Deedee :)

Ms Duane tumblr needs to know how you feel about being a playable character in Write n Fight. Neil Gaiman & Chuck Tingle have weighed in, now we just need you and Seanan McGuire for Blorbo Bingo

https://www.tumblr.com/treemaidengeek/743634729677570049?source=share

I'd happily be a playable character if I could be one who uses a sword. (An Oakeshott Type XIII by preference. A katana would be very much a second choice [even though I have a lot more training with those] since iaido tends to make for very short fights that leave the viewers going "wait, what just happened there??".)

Otherwise I would prefer to be an NPC who leans against the nearest wall critiquing the fighters' style and making side bets on how long they'll last. :)

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I want that option in Google Maps

hey, neil! my sister didnt realize that crowley and aziraphale were in love until the last episode and the scene where he confesses. then she asked me why you went "the gay route" what do i say to her? i love crowley and aziraphale a lot btw

You could perhaps suggest that she watches it all again, and it may make more sense to her.

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Thank you: I put it here: https://www.tumblr.com/mollyrealized/743336736454819840/how-michael-met-neil

So this is not kind of selfish 'can you reach Neil for this personal thing' kind of thing. This is more 'I did this to help him and perhaps you can convey'. Everyone asks him how he met Michael Sheen. He usually refers to a podcast where Michael tells the funny story. So I transcribed it. It's on Google Docs. I can get it to him for a journal entry or Tumblr entry so that he can just point people towards the story. But he has 900 million zillion asks. I don't think I can put URL in an Ask, but l

Hello! I'm not sure what the rest of your message was, or if it was supposed to send me a second half. I only got this one. :(

I'm sorry, but I can't really convey things to Neil for anyone. I know his ask box is crowded, but it's still your best bet to reach him on Tumblr. Or you can make a post with that doc link in it? He might see it if you tag him or if people share it!

And I think the podcast you're talking about is the one with the illegal whale dinner incident and secret car compartment, right? It's very cool that you took time to transcribe it! It does sound helpful.

(You can put URLs in an Ask. I believe the person will just have to copy and paste it to search, is all. :D)

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How Michael Met Neil

original direct link [MP3]

(Neil, if you see this, please feel free to grab the transcript and store on your site; I had no easy way of contacting you.)

DAVID TENNANT: Tell me about @neil-gaiman then, because he's in that category [previously: “such a profound effect on my life”] as well.

MICHAEL SHEEN: So this is what has brought us together.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: To the new love story for the 21st century.

DAVID: Exactly.

MICHAEL: So when I went to drama school, there was a guy called Gary Turner in my year. And within the first few weeks, we were doing something, having a drink or whatever. And he said to me, “Do you read comic books?”

And I said, “No.”  I mean, this is … what … '88?  '88, '89.  So it was … now I know that it was a period of time that was a big change, transformation going through comic books.  Rather than it being thought of as just superheroes and Batman and Superman, there was this whole new era of a generation of writers like Grant Morrison.

DAVID: The kids who'd grown up reading comic books were now making comic books

MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah, and starting to address different kinds of subjects through the comic book medium. So it wasn't about just superheroes, it was all kinds of stuff going on – really fascinating stuff. And I was totally unaware of this.

And so this guy Gary said to me, "Do you read them?" And I said, "No."  And he went, "Right, okay, here's The Watchman [sic] by Alan Moore. Here's Swamp Thing. Here's Hellblazer. And here's Sandman.”

And Sandman was Neil Gaiman's big series that put his name on the map. And I read all those, and, just – I was blown away by all of them, but particularly the Sandman stories, because he was drawing on mythology, which was something I was really interested in, and fairy tales, folklore, and philosophy, and Shakespeare, and all kinds of stuff were being mixed up in this story.  And I absolutely loved it.

So I became a big fan of Neil's, and started reading everything by him. And then fairly shortly after that, within six months to a year, Good Omens the book came out, which Neil wrote with Terry Pratchett. And so I got the book – because I was obviously a big fan of Neil's by this point – read it, loved it, then started reading Terry Pratchett’s stuff as well, because I didn't know his stuff before then – and then spent years and years and years just being a huge fan of both of them.

And then eventually when – I'd done films like the Underworld films and doing Twilight films. And I think it was one of the Twilight films, there was a lot of very snooty interviews that happened where people who considered themselves well above talking about things like Twilight were having to interview me … and, weirdly, coming at it from the attitude of 'clearly this is below you as well' … weirdly thinking I'm gonna go, 'Yeah, fucking Twilight.”

And I just used to go, "You know what? Some of the greatest writing of the last 50-100 years has happened in science fiction or fantasy."  Philip K Dick is one of my favorite writers of all time. In fact, the production of Hamlet I did was mainly influenced by Philip K Dick.  Ursula K. Le Guin and Asimov, and all these amazing people. And I talked about Neil as well. And so I went off on a bit of a rant in this interview.

Anyway, the interview came out about six months later, maybe.  Knock on the door, open the door, delivery of a big box. That’s interesting. Open the box, there's a card at the top of the box. I open the card.

It says, From one fan to another, Neil Gaiman.  And inside the box are first editions of Neil's stuff, and all kinds of interesting things by Neil. And he just sent this stuff.

DAVID: You'd never met him?

MICHAEL: Never met him. He'd read the interview, or someone had let him know about this interview where I'd sung his praises and stood up for him and the people who work within that sort of genre as being like …

And he just got in touch. We met up for the first time when he came to – I was in Los Angeles at the time, and he came to LA.  And he said, "I'll take you for a meal."

I said, “All right.”

He said, "Do you want to go somewhere posh, or somewhere interesting?”

I said, "Let's go somewhere interesting."

He said, "Right, I'm going to take you to this restaurant called The Hump." And it's at Santa Monica Airport. And it's a sushi restaurant.

I was like, “Right, okay.” So I had a Mini at the time. And we get in my Mini and we drive off to Santa Monica Airport. And this restaurant was right on the tarmac, like, you could sit in the restaurant (there's nobody else there when we got there, we got there quite early) and you're watching the planes landing on Santa Monica Airport. It's extraordinary. 

And the chef comes out and Neil says, "Just bring us whatever you want. Chef's choice."

So, I'd never really eaten sushi before. So we sit there; we had this incredible meal where they keep bringing these dishes out and they say, “This is [blah, blah, blah]. Just use a little bit of soy sauce or whatever.”  You know, “This is eel.  This is [blah].”

And then there was this one dish where they brought out and they didn't say what it was. It was like “mystery dish”, we had it ... delicious. Anyway, a few more people started coming into the restaurant as time went on.

And we're sort of getting near the end, and I said, "Neil, I can't eat anymore. I'm gonna have to stop now. This is great, but I can't eat–"

"Right, okay. We'll ask for the bill in a minute."

And then the door opens and some very official people come in. And it was the Feds. And the Feds came in, and we knew they were because they had jackets on that said they were part of the Federal Bureau of Whatever. And about six of them come in. Two of them go … one goes behind the counter, two go into the kitchen, one goes to the back. They've all got like guns on and stuff.

And me and Neil are like, "What on Earth is going on?"

And then eventually one guy goes, "Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven't ordered already, please leave. If you're still eating your meal, please finish up, pay your bill, leave."*

[* - delivered in a perfect American ‘serious law agent’ accent/impression]

And we were like, "Oh my God, are we poisoned? Is there some terrible thing that's happened?"  

We'd finished, so we pay our bill.  And then all the kitchen staff are brought out. And the head chef is there. The guy who's been bringing us this food. And he's in tears. And he says to Neil, "I'm so sorry." He apologizes to Neil.  And we leave. We have no idea what happened.

DAVID: But you're assuming it's the mystery dish.

MICHAEL: Well, we're assuming that we can't be going to – we can't be –  it can't be poisonous. You know what I mean? It can't be that there's terrible, terrible things.

So the next day was the Oscars, which is why Neil was in town. Because Coraline had been nominated for an Oscar. Best documentary that year was won by The Cove, which was by a team of people who had come across dolphins being killed, I think.

Turns out, what was happening at this restaurant was that they were having illegal endangered species flown in to the airport, and then being brought around the back of the restaurant into the kitchen.

We had eaten whale – endangered species whale. That was the mystery dish that they didn't say what it was.

And the team behind The Cove were behind this sting, and they took them down that night whilst we were there.

DAVID: That’s extraordinary.

MICHAEL: And we didn't find this out for months.  So for months, me and Neil were like, "Have you worked anything out yet? Have you heard anything?"

"No, I haven't heard anything."

And then we heard that it was something to do with The Cove, and then we eventually found out that that restaurant, they were all arrested. The restaurant was shut down. And it was because of that. And we'd eaten whale that night.

DAVID: And that was your first meeting with Neil Gaiman.

MICHAEL: That was my first meeting. And also in the drive home that night from that restaurant, he said, and we were in my Mini, he said, "Have you found the secret compartment?"

I said, "What are you talking about?" It's such a Neil Gaiman thing to say.

DAVID: Isn't it?

MICHAEL: The secret compartment? Yeah. Each Mini has got a secret compartment. I said, "I had no idea." It's secret. And he pressed a little button and a thing opened up. And it was a secret compartment in my own car that Neil Gaiman showed me.

DAVID: Was there anything inside it?

MICHAEL: Yeah, there was a little man. And he jumped out and went, "Hello!" No, there was nothing in there. There was afterwards because I started putting...

DAVID: Sure. That's a very Neil Gaiman story. All of that is such a Neil Gaiman story.

MICHAEL: That's how it began. Yeah.

DAVID: And then he came to offer you the part in Good Omens.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Well, we became friends and we would whenever he was in town, we would meet up and yeah, and then eventually he started, he said, "You know, I'm working on an adaptation of Good Omens." And I can remember at one point Terry Gilliam was going to maybe make a film of it. And I remember being there with Neil and Terry when they were talking about it. And...

DAVID: Were you involved at that point?

MICHAEL: No, no, I wasn't involved. I just happened to have met up with Neil that day.

DAVID: Right.

MICHAEL: And then Terry Gilliam came along and they were chatting, that was the day they were talking about that or whatever.

And then eventually he sent me one of the scripts for an early draft of like the first episode of Good Omens. And he said – and we started talking about me being involved in it, doing it – he said, “Would you be interested?” I was like, "Yeah, of course."  I went, "Oh my God." And he said, "Well, I'll send you the scripts when they come," and I would read them, and we'd talk about them a little bit. And so I was involved.

But it was always at that point with the idea, because he'd always said about playing Crowley in it. And so, as time went on, as I was reading the scripts, I was thinking, "I don't think I can play Crowley. I don't think I'm going to be able to do it." And I started to get a bit nervous because I thought, “I don't want to tell Neil that I don't think I can do this.”  But I just felt like I don't think I can play Crowley.

DAVID: Of course you can [play Crowley?].

MICHAEL: Well, I just on a sort of, on a gut level, sometimes you have it on a gut level.

DAVID: Sure, sure.

MICHAEL: I can do this.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Or I can't do this. And I just thought, “You know what, this is not the part for me. The other part is better for me, I think. I think I can do that, I don't think I could do that.”

But I was scared to tell Neil because I thought, "Well, he wants me to play Crowley" – and then it turned out he had been feeling the same way as well.  And he hadn't wanted to mention it to me, but he was like, "I think Michael should really play Aziraphale."

And neither of us would bring it up.  And then eventually we did. And it was one of those things where you go, "Oh, thank God you said that. I feel exactly the same way." And then I think within a fairly short space of time, he said, “I think we've got … David Tennant … for Crowley.” And we both got very excited about that.

And then all these extraordinary people started to join in. And then, and then off we went.

DAVID: That's the other thing about Neil, he collects people, doesn't he? So he'll just go, “Oh, yeah, I've phoned up Frances McDormand, she's up for it.” Yeah. You're, what?

MICHAEL: “I emailed Jon Hamm.”

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And yeah, and you realize how beloved he is and how beloved his work is. And I think we would both recognise that Good Omens is one of the most beloved of all of Neil's stuff.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: And had never been turned into anything.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And so the kind of responsibility of that, I mean, for me, for someone who has been a fan of him and a fan of the book for so long, I can empathize with all the fans out there who are like, “Oh, they better not fuck this up.”

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: “And this had better be good.” And I have that part of me. But then, of course, the other part of me is like, “But I'm the one who might be fucking it up.”

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: So I feel that responsibility as well.

DAVID: But we have Neil on site.

MICHAEL: Yes. Well, Neil being the showrunner …

DAVID: Yeah. I think it takes the curse off.

MICHAEL: … I think it made a massive difference, didn't it? Yeah. You feel like you're in safe hands.

DAVID: Well, we think. Not that the world has seen it yet.

MICHAEL (grimly): No, I know.

DAVID: But it was a -- it's been a -- it's been a joy to work with you on it. I can't wait for the world to see it.

MICHAEL: Oh my God.  Oh, well, I mean, it's the only, I've done a few things where there are two people, it's a bit of a double act, like Frost-Nixon and The Queen, I suppose, in some ways. But, and I've done it, Amadeus or whatever.

This is the only thing I've done where I really don't think of it as “my character” or “my performance as that character”.  I think of it totally as us.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: The two of us.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: Like they, what I do is defined by what you do.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And that was such a joy to have that experience. And it made it so much easier in a way as well, I found, because you don't feel like you're on your own in it. Like it's totally us together doing this and the two characters totally complement each other. And the experience of doing it was just a real joy.

DAVID: Yeah.  Well, I hope the world is as excited to see it as we are to talk about it, frankly.

MICHAEL: You know, there's, having talked about T.S. Eliot earlier, there's another bit from The Wasteland where there's a line which goes, These fragments I have shored against my ruin.

And this is how I think about life now. There is so much in life, no matter what your circumstances, no matter what, where you've got, what you've done, how much money you got, all that. Life's hard.  I mean, you can, it can take you down at any point.

You have to find this stuff. You have to like find things that will, these fragments that you hold to yourself, they become like a liferaft, and especially as time goes on, I think, as I've got older, I've realized it is a thin line between surviving this life and going under.

And the things that keep you afloat are these fragments, these things that are meaningful to you and what's meaningful to you will be not-meaningful to someone else, you know. But whatever it is that matters to you, it doesn't matter what it was you were into when you were a teenager, a kid, it doesn't matter what it is. Go and find them, and find some way to hold them close to you. 

Make it, go and get it. Because those are the things that keep you afloat. They really are. Like doing that with him or whatever it is, these are the fragments that have shored against my ruin. Absolutely.

DAVID: That's lovely. Michael, thank you so much.

MICHAEL: Thank you.

DAVID: For talking today and for being here.

MICHAEL: Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you.

#neil gaiman #michael sheen #david tennant does a podcast with... #good omens #aziraphale #crowley #sushi #whale #the cove #oscars 2010 #coraline #mini secret compartments #howneilmetmichael #howmichaelmetneil

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To be clear, i've neither seen it nor did it, but it can be interesting to see these things as experiments, remixes or just flat-out "play". Someone once put Pulp Fiction in chronological order; that I watched, and although it lost much of what made it special, it was still quite interesting to watch, if you know what I mean.

Star Trek or Star Wars?

And have you seen Chronological Hill House? I don’t want to get anybody in trouble but I watched it and found it fascinating.

If somebody re-edited Hill House, better believe we're gonna have words...

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Given how often iridescence means poison, I am now worried OP is dead.

Sadly the video camera colors are not as nice. But I assure you he is very iridescent

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I have no affiliation with them but I find JustWatch really useful for this. It's a site and an app and you don't need an account to use it (although it can be useful).

Just look up a movie or TV series and you get direct links to where it can be streamed or bought. I'm sure it's affiliate links or something but it's really useful if you're trying to locate the legal ways to watch something.

PS On the off-chance you personally see this and read it, thank you so much for your stuff. MIDNIGHT MASS was my first exposure to your stuff and I'm now checking out other stuff, and it's like never having had steak before and biting in and going "oh my god, this is a REALLY good way to eat meat".

Hi, Mike! Hope all is well. I wanted to ask, where do you find all the movies that you add to your Letterboxd if they're not in Streaming platforms? Do you go and look for a DVD?

Yep - I'll track down titles wherever they exist. Are there specific titles on my Letterboxd that you're looking for? I can probably point you in the right direction. I strongly prefer physical media. 4k UHD, Blu-ray, or DVD if there isn't a better option. If we rely solely on streaming platforms, we are falling for a con - while it may seem convenient to have so many titles available on streaming, it is ultimately not great for the consumers, the filmmakers, or the industry. So if there's a title I love and it's available on physical media, I will always go that way. Some titles I love are only available on physical media, which underscores the biggest risk in streaming exclusivity - if they decide to pull something off a streaming platform, and it's not available anywhere else, it is essentially gone. Doesn't matter if you "bought" it - with streaming, you don't own a damn thing. There are other issues too - the streaming compression is certainly not amazing quality - but philosophically, I really believe that physical media is by far the best. Most studios are already realizing that having their titles exclusively available on a streaming platform is not even a good long-term business strategy, and are taking care to make their stuff available on multiple platforms. Eventually - inevitably - Netflix will do this too, and I hope that when they do, the work I've done that is currently exclusively available on Netflix will be available on physical media.

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Try going to your Activity Log at https://www.facebook.com/(username or number)/allactivity/ and then looking for a 'Violations' filter in the left sidebar. It may be under the 'Posts' or 'Comments' expandable.

Facebook just sent me notices that it removed two of my posts for violating its rules. It won’t show me what those posts are so I don’t know how I violated the rules, therefore I can’t modify my behavior to be more in line with Facebook terms of service.

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Wil, you are seen, you are heard, you are valued.

“In a long essay about the televised incident, Wheaton makes a lot of salient, emotionally vulnerable points about his reaction to David’s stunt, tying it in to memories of parental abuse he suffered as a kid—pointing out, among other things, that, within the agreed-upon fiction that we all adhere to pretty fervently around all things Muppet or Muppet-related, Elmo is a child. Writing, Wheaton notes that “Elmo is an avatar for children all over the world. Children who are too small to understand Elmo is a puppet will know that a man attacked someone they love for no reason, and that will frighten and confuse them.””

—

Wil Wheaton condemns Larry David for his Elmo-based violence

This story is a week old, and has blown up today. The right wing smoothbrains are out in force, doing their usual thing, until they get distracted by the existence of a successful woman somewhere in the world and have to go rage against that.

I don’t know why this is happening today. I don’t know why right wing clout chasing incels have decided to make this their Thing today. It’s all very confusing, especially a week after the fact.

But I want to put something here that I added to my post on Facebook, that those dudes (it’s always dudes whose entire personality is “MONSTER ENERGY DRINKS!”) need to hear but won’t understand:

A lot of us who had the same visceral reaction to a grown man putting his hands on a child (Elmo is 4 years old) in anger, without consent, and then laughing about it all share an experience that you should be grateful you don’t share with us. And when you say your shitty little toxic and cruel thing, when you reduce the whole thing to a puppet and a joke, you’re doing to us what the adults around us did when we were kids. And it hurts all over again. Are you really someone who wants to hurt another person simply because you can? Maybe take the impulse to be a jerk and redirect it into being grateful you have no idea why this is so upsetting to so many of us.

Larry David put his hands on another performer, without consent, in a segment he was not part of. That, alone, is not okay. It is not EVER okay. The fact that so many people don’t get that, or are deliberately choosing NOT to get that, is telling.

But as I said, Elmo is a child, and he is a friend to children, so all the kids whose parents were watching the Today Show with them, because Elmo was on to talk about sharing big feelings and caring for your mental health, got to watch this man storm into a set, and angrily attack Elmo.

That’s indefensible behavior, and calling me names doesn’t change that.

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@alarajrogers on his page for those photos he says "the light you see is a crabbing boat"

Blue sunrise on the Oregon Coast

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... Principal Strickland.

"This is my only chance. I've planned for months. I have eight backup contingencies."

Leverage S04E09 The Cross My Heart Job.

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Can't wait until he gets into absurdism ... Dada Data.