Links

[moon_custafer]

ETA:A few weeks ago I sent sovay  a link to an article on Henry V (1944), which among other things suggested that Olivier had cast old music-hall song-and-dance man George Robey as Falstaff in order to emphasize that the character was a relic of more playful and happier times. Now I realize that Ken Branagh did exactly the same thing in his movie of Hamlet (1996) by casting Ken Dodd as Yorick. 

An intro to Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, hosted by John Cooper Clarke who is the most appropriate and also hilarious person to do it. Clarke looks like a walking thistle, and I’m sort of charmed by how openly he loathes the Lake District (“No wonder De Quincey took dope!”) I’d call him the missing link between music-hall and punk, but I think that’s Ray Davies. And also neither of them are missing.

Spiderweb top. Very burlesque. 

Yesterday one of my coworkers was talking on the phone, and I heard her saying, in the driest, weariest tone imaginable: “Laugh Out Loud. Laugh Out Loud. Laugh Out Loud.”

ETA-- Today at work:
Salesman: (on the phone) So do you have the copper already or do you still need it? (cackling) I’VE GOT LOTS OF COPPER!

Hey everybody, I think my coworker is Ea-Nasir 

Comments

[sovay]

Now I realize that Ken Branagh did exactly the same thing in his movie of Hamlet (1996) by casting Ken Dodd as Yorick.

Hah! I wouldn't have been able to recognize that when I saw his Hamlet in high school.

Hey everybody, I think my coworker is Ea-Nasir

Oh, I hope so.

[moon_custafer]

I wouldn't have been able to recognize that when I saw his Hamlet in high school.

I think I might have noticed that Yorick was played by the same actor I’d seen as an intergalactic tollgate official in the Doctor Who story ‘Delta and the Bannermen.’ Which also has Stubby Kaye and Hugh Lloyd (oh, and Richard Davies) as cast members, so again, somebody was probably leaning heavily on the nostalgia angle.

[sovay]

Which also has Stubby Kaye and Hugh Lloyd (oh, and Richard Davies) as cast members, so again, somebody was probably leaning heavily on the nostalgia angle.

I saw Delta and the Bannermen for the first time last fall. I really enjoyed it. Stubby Kaye was more unexpected than the others.

[moon_custafer]

Stubby Kaye was more unexpected than the others.

I realized upon the last rewatch that the American-agents plotline never actually connects up to anything else that goes on in the serial, but if it took me that long to notice, it’s not exactly a dealbreaker.

[full_metal_ox]

Does pre-Hayes Code Hollywood cinema know the lady in the spiderweb bra is missing?

If you’ve ever heard certain of David Bowie’s juvenilia (“The Laughing Gnome” and “Please Mr. Gravedigger” come to mind), we might have another degree of connection between music-hall and punk.

[moon_custafer]

Help, I've fallen into the Wikipedia entry for Anthony Newley. Am becoming more and more convinced that music-hall never died, it just evolved into britpop.

[full_metal_ox]

Which prompts the further thought that Paul McCartney, with his unironic love of what John Lennon dismissed as Granny Music, has the peculiar distinction of being a rock musician who matured into his youthful work rather than outgrowing it—-he wrote “When I’m 64” at fifteen!