Greensweetie - A Green Sweet

Dear everyone who is currently working on a Thing, whatever that Thing may be,

Good luck with the Thing. You can do the Thing. You will do the Thing. You just have to do the Thing.

Best wishes,

Someone who is also doing a Thing

River + The Doctor + text posts pt. 4/?

This is peak comedy

"You don't expect the sunset to admire you back!"

and the best "Hello, sweetie"

Two hearts, stupid clothes, you can’t miss him! Go on, scan the whole parsec, he’s not here! God knows where he is right now, but I promise you he’s doing whatever the hell he wants and not giving a damn about me, and I am just fine with that! DOCTOR WHO — The Husbands of River Song (2015 Christmas Special) directed by Douglas Mackinnon | written by Steven Moffat ››› Peter Capaldi as The Doctor ››› Alex Kingston as River Song

At their core aziraphale and crowley are just two employees trying to get away with as little actual work as possible. Working class heroes

Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton: A Tempestuous Triple Feature by Kimberly Lindbergs

Decades before high-profile celebrity couples like Kimye and Brangelina dominated the spotlight, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton ruled the red carpet. The two actors made headlines around the world after their extramarital affair on the set of CLEOPATRA (’63) ignited a flurry of scandalous news reports. Taylor and Burton eventually married, but during their turbulent 12-year relationship they were hounded by the paparazzi wherever they went. Liz and Dick, as they were often referred to in the press, graced countless magazine covers and every move they made was analyzed by gossip columnists and overzealous fans. Audiences loved seeing them on screen and the two actors enjoyed collaborating so it’s not surprising that they starred in 11 movies together before their relationship ended.

FilmStruck currently has three of the films Taylor and Burton appeared in available to stream. If you’re unfamiliar with their work or are just eager to see two acting legends go head-to-head, this triple feature provides a peek at one of Hollywood’s most glamourous, tempestuous and talented couples.

THE V.I.P.S (’63)

THE V.I.P.S centers around a group of wealthy jet-setters whose flights have been grounded due to foggy weather. It also features an all-star cast including Orson Welles, Maggie Smith, Rod Taylor and Louis Jourdan. The central story focuses on an actress, played by Taylor, who is fleeing her wealthy husband (Burton) to run off with her lover (Jourdan). This glossy melodrama borrows heavily from GRAND HOTEL (’32), which you can also view on FilmStruck, and is one of two portmanteau films directed by Anthony Asquith and written by Terence Rattigan. Slight and soapy, THE V.I.P.S is not one of Liz and Dick’s most memorable outings but Taylor does look stunning in her Pierre Cardin costumes and luxurious jewelry, which was mostly owned by the actress herself thanks to the generosity of wealthy paramours including Burton as well as previous husband, producer Mike Todd.

THE COMEDIANS (‘67)

Based on Graham Greene’s political thriller of the same name and boasting a screenplay by the author, THE COMEDIANS offers a harrowing look at Haiti during the repressive reign of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who ruled the nation from 1957 to 1971. Much like THE V.I.P.S, THE COMEDIANS features another star-studded cast that includes Lillian Gish, Peter Ustinov, Cicely Tyson and future STAR WARS costars Alec Guinness and James Earl Jones. Taylor plays the discontented wife of the Uruguayan ambassador to Haiti (Ustinov), who is having an affair with a pessimistic hotel owner (Burton) under a looming cloud of government intrigue and upheaval. Like many political films of its ilk, THE COMEDIANS is rather slow-moving and talky, but it does contain some stunning cinematography provided by Henri Decaë. Taylor and Burton deliver surprisingly lowkey and effective performances and the background players, which include talented black actors such as Roscoe Lee Browne, Gloria Foster, Raymond St. Jacques, Zakes Mokae and Georg Stanford Brown, are uniformly good and lend the film much of its emotional gravitas.

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (’66)

Much has been written about this award-winning film directed by Mike Nichols and based on the critically acclaimed play by Edward Albee. Despite its notoriety, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA? still packs an emotional wallop for the uninitiated. Taylor and Burton star as a discontented middle-aged married couple named George and Martha. George is an associate professor of history at a New England college and Martha is the daughter of the university president. Following a colleague cocktail party, the booze laden twosome invites a much younger couple (Sandy Dennis and George Segal) over for more drinks and small talk. But the get together begins to unravel when George and Martha engage in a verbal sparring match intended to berate and belittle one another. Taylor and Burton brought much of their own personal conflict to this shockingly frank and fearless film that literary analyst Christopher William Edgar Bigsby rightly called an attack on “the false optimism and myopic confidence of modern society.” Taylor and Burton, along with their costars, are in top form and deliver two of the most powerful performances of their careers in this grim, gloomy and deeply moving portrait of an American marriage in disarray.

When Actors Do A 180 by Greg Ferrara

I grew up watching films in the ‘70s. In that time, I saw Robert Duvall quite a bit. I saw him as Tom in THE GODFATHER (’72); as an angry, ballsy network exec in NETWORK (’76); as a crazed colonel in APOCALYPSE NOW (’79); and as a mean, hardcore colonel, again, in THE GREAT SANTINI (’79). He also played cops in BADGE 373 (’73) and TRUE CONFESSIONS (’81). Basically, by 1982, I was pretty sure I had Robert Duvall pegged: Urban, hardcore, mean, angry, tough guy. And then…

In 1983 Robert Duvall starred as Mack Sledge in TENDER MERCIES (available on Filmstruck) and turned every stereotype about him as an actor on its head. Here he was, a down on his luck country music singer trying to get back on his feet after giving up alcohol. The Corleone’s council, the do-or-die Lt. Colonel Kilgore, the heartless, bottom-liner network executive was now playing a country singer?!? What?!

He was, of course, superb. And it not only won him the Oscar, deservedly so, but it opened up roles for him no one could have imagined a decade before. By the turn of the century, there was no longer a “stereotypical Robert Duvall role.” He had broken himself free from his early days so thoroughly, so conclusively, all I could see was what he was all along: One of the most versatile actors in the history of cinema.

But he’s not the only one. Here are some other actors and the films that showed they could do a whole lot more, all available on Filmstruck.

Warren Beatty, BONNIE AND CLYDE (’67)

This is going to sound harsh but I’m just going to say it: By 1967, Beatty’s career was going nowhere fast. The only two big movies he had even done both showcased the lead actress in them (Natalie Wood in SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS and Vivien Leigh in THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS. STONE, both ’61) and the other movies he had done were non-starters. He was destined for a short career as a pretty boy that would morph into guest shots on TV in the 70s as playboy murderers. But Beatty knew he could do so much more than that. With director Arthur Penn, he put everything into a risky move: Glamorizing two mid-Western bank robbers in a commentary on the celebrity of tabloid culture. It worked and Beatty became a force in the movies for the rest of the century.

Katharine Hepburn, BRINGING UP BABY (’38)

It’s well known by now that in the mid-30s, Hepburn was considered box-office poison by a bunch of short-sighted distributors (spoiler: she never really was). Up until 1938, every movie she made fit nicely into the schemata of theatrical drama with little venturing outside the formula. A couple of movies, like ALICE ADAMS (‘35) and STAGE DOOR (‘37), had some comedy in them but nothing over the top. No, Hepburn was destined to be the actress that got cast in stodgy dramas and stage adaptations for the rest of her career until she and Cary Grant teamed up for one of the all-time great screwball comedies, BRINGING UP BABY. No one knew she had it in her but boy did she ever. A short trip from there to HOLIDAY (’38), THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (’40) and WOMAN OF THE YEAR (’42) changed the course of her stunning career forever.

Elizabeth Taylor, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (’66)

This is a case of an actress whose career was already long established and doing just fine. She even had an Oscar already, and had she done nothing else after CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF in 1958, her legacy would have been secured. But no one thought Taylor could pull off the role of Martha, the bitter, resentful, angry and tattered wife of academic George (Richard Burton) in the film adaptation of Edward Albee’s searing drama, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF. Well, Taylor proved them all wrong and no one would ever think of her again as an actress limited to only one kind of role.

Frank Sinatra, FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (’53)

This one changed it all for Sinatra. Without this one, he’s a singer stuck in lightweight musical roles for as long as his voice holds out. But with this one, a role he fought hard for, he not only snagged an Oscar, but was able to make movies like THE MAN WITH GOLDEN ARM (’55) just two years later without audiences thinking, “Why is the guy from ANCHORS AWEIGH (’45) playing a heroin addict?” Sinatra was now free to make musicals all he wanted, knowing that he was also readily accepted in dramatic roles too.

Marilyn Monroe, THE MISFITS (’61)

It’s obviously a tragedy in countless ways that we lost Monroe so soon but adding to that tragedy is the fact that her performance in THE MISFITS showed she was ready to move into middle age and take on roles outside of what studio executives thought of her. It was already clear that Monroe could play a wide range long before this, but THE MISFITS really put into perspective just how wide-ranging her future career would be. This one hurts more than most because it shows so much potential without leading to anything else.

These are just a handful of performances that turned the idea of what was expected of an actor on its head and they’re all available on Filmstruck. It makes you wonder how many other actors never got the opportunity to show off what they could do.

Jane Austen & the South Downs cottage...

I know the idea of Aziraphale already owning the South Downs cottage is a pretty commonly-discussed thing but I don't know if this aspect of it has been. Apologies if it has. I think S2 might possibly be hinting at the idea of the South Downs cottage maybe having ties to Crowley & Aziraphale's past a bit via Jane Austen and the timeline and backstory they established for her.

In real life, Jane Austen lived the last 8 or so years of her life in the village of Chawton in Hampshire in the South Downs. She died pretty young, even for the time, in July 1817. Her books only became successful a few years prior to her death so much of her literary fame is posthumus. One of the reasons Crowley doesn't know she's a writer (still, somehow lol) is that it sounds like the era in which he knew Jane personally was prior to her becoming a famous writer.

Crowley says that he knows her as the brains behind "The 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery"-- an event that Good Omens made up but gave a year to that's kind of specific on the timeline of Jane Austen's real life history. Even though Clerkenwell itself is part of London, Jane Austen was living in the South Downs in 1810 when she was crossing paths with Crowley and Aziraphale, as she lived in Chawton from 1809 until her death in 1817. Since Aziraphale associates her with regency balls so quickly (and because there's no way that if we ever get a Jane Austen flashback after Aziraphale's whole ball/meeting in S2 that the flashback won't involve a Regency-era ball lol), it's likely that even if Jane was running her criminal empire through London, at least some of the setting of a flashback would be at a ball at a cottage (estate) in the South Downs.

This would then help to fill in how both Crowley and Aziraphale knew Jane Austen and know the other knew her (implying they were around her together at one point.) By 1810, Aziraphale is a wealthy London land owner and businessman. Does he get invited out to one of Jane Austen's balls or go with her group to one of her neighbor's ones, where he crosses paths with rakish Regency diamond thief Crowley? Does he spend half the night pretending not to moon over him, pining for a dance he doesn't get until 2023? (Probably safe to assume yes lol.)

Did he and Crowley have some romantic moment that night on an old estate in the South Downs-- or some significant near-miss of one-- and then Aziraphale just went and bought the cottage at some point a billion years ago and didn't tell Crowley because this is Aziraphale's 'maybe someday' pipe dream and he was never going to tell Crowley unless they'd evaded all possible Armageddons and there was a chance they could have this? Why disappoint Crowley more, right? And he doesn't tell him after S1 because they both know it's not really over so he just still hasn't as of S2 and that would set it up for being part of the end of S3.

It would be very sweet if the cottage isn't a new idea and was actually a place that has significance to them.

Crowley's been through a lot. Let him find out Aziraphale bought Pemberley for him in 1810.

kyaa we’re late for the conclave