rose_griffes

( one of my first posts about Gaby Teller: a whole buncha questions )

( a lot of chatter about Gaby and languages )

( still more about Gaby and languages (and Napoleon Solo as well) )

edited to add: this list of German idioms is NOT mine, but I want to put it where the other Gaby posts now reside. ( yay, language! )

I shouldn't have started looking at my tumblr reblogs for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. this close to bedtime, but here we are. So:

1) I like this behind-the-scenes glimpse at the score for the movie.


2) Tumblr-ite canardroublard has an incredibly detailed reblog about how Illya Kuryakin is not clueless when it comes to men's fashion. That's one of those fannish beliefs that got passed around: the idea that Kuryakin is good with women's fashion--witness the flattering mod clothes he chose for Gaby--but he's hopelessly outmatched when it comes to men's fashion. Given what the reblog says, it's more about how our views on men's fashion have changed; Illya dressed in trendy clothes for men in the early 60s, but Harrington jackets and turtlenecks don't scream "mod" anymore, unlike Gaby's color-blocked mini-shift dresses.

(Canardroublard goes on to explain that Solo's fashion sense is much more about enduring style than fleeting fashion: he picked Chanel-inspired women's suits for Gaby, and wears well-fitting* men's suits with small nods to then-current trends with his understated plaid.)

*Seriously, all the awards to whoever fitted that blue plaid suit to Henry Cavill's tush.

3) When I had the fourth chapter of Birthday Girl finished, I made a moodboard to go with it:

(click on the image to see a larger version)
With her childhood in Germany, she would almost certainly have had a birthday wreath used on her birthday; it's a wooden candle-holder that goes up to age 10 or 12. The chocolates are a reference to a specific moment in the story. The young ballet dancers reflect Gaby's canon ballet experience; and finally, the young girl in the top left picture is meant to represent young Gaby. I chose a photo of actress Natalie Wood; she was born the same year as fictional Gaby, and we have lots of images of her as a child actress in the US.

(This is one of the stories that I would like to continue; I have more ideas for birthday-centered vignettes. Too bad I'm not feeling the writing inspiration... no new material makes it hard to keep a fannish focus on something.

4) A photo found on tumblr of Armie Hammer in character and costume as Illya Kuryakin:

(thumbnail again, click for large version)
The repressed hair! Very important. (For real, though: Armie Hammer has gorgeous, bouncy, fluffy hair in real life. I can only guess at the industrial-strength hair gel they used for him during this film.)

I'm in the usual frenzy of grading now that the semester is rapidly drawing to a close. Thankfully the checkoff list requiring signatures is smaller than in years past, so I can spend more time trying to grade rather than trying to fulfill an obscure requirement so that someone else can initial my checkoff list.

Still importing some of my original posts from tumblr. This one from two years ago was about Person of Interest. It's short, so I'll just copy the text.

It’s possible to appreciate that Person of Interest didn’t resort to the “Kill your lesbians (and bisexual women)” trope to deal with Sarah Shahi’s unexpected pregnancy--keeping the character of Shaw alive even without knowing whether she would return during the show’s run--and still acknowledge that Carter’s death played into the trope that characters of color are somehow more affected by bullets than white characters.

I can be grateful that the show hasn’t erased the impact Carter’s death made on the characters, and still be angry at the bad writing that framed her death.

I’m impressed that Person of Interest made a canon f/f ship that includes a woman of color. That doesn’t make PoI’s ongoing problems with people of color disappear. One form of positive representation doesn’t trump the absent and negative representations.