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[personal profile] igenlode
I've just come across the Romanian version of the film "Ma-ma", or the tale of the wolf and the five little goats (made as a tri-lingual production, from which I've seen clips in Russian of Boyarsky as the Wolf, and about half the film in its BBC English version); it is noticeably different not only in the soundtrack but in the lighting, timing and composition of each shot. So it's true that they really did re-shoot the film three different times on the same set, exactly as in the days of early sound films when stars like Anna May Wong or Buster Keaton were required to repeat their performances in multiple languages -- and apparently with different directorial choices to suit the target audience...! Read more... )

Dear Yuletide Author

Oct. 14th, 2025 08:59 pm
evandar: (Default)
[personal profile] evandar
Dear Author,

Hello! Thank you so much in advance for writing for me. I can't wait to see what you create.

This letter contains a list of Likes and DNWs as well as a couple of prompts. If none of the prompts catch your eye, then write whatever you like. As long as it doesn't hit any of my DNWs, we're good.

Read more... )

Okay! So that's it, that's the letter. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you create for me <3

Bozbash with quince

Oct. 13th, 2025 10:12 pm
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
Since I now have another batch of real quinces (after making japonica jelly last week) I made a recipe from my Russian cookery book -- technically speaking now a Soviet cookery book, I suppose, since it takes it for granted that you will be interested in recipes from all the now independent parts of the Soviet Union!

Azerbaijani bozbash bears a probably not coincidental resemblance to Persian cookery and to lamb plov, Read more... )
(Similar recipe online: https://bestrecipes24.com/recipe/azerbaijani-style-lamb-bozbash-soup-with-chickpeas )


"Little Gentlemen" is coming along quite nicely, although the style is in danger of becoming stilted and verbose -- not very Dumas!
I have now successfully introduced my young OC Venya (playing the 'Nat Blake' role, with Raoul taking on the role -- and vocabulary -- of the cheerful Tommy Bangs who introduces him to everyone and everything) into Athos's house, which is at least fifty per cent of the material envisaged, and am attempting to finish the scene in which Athos reads the accompanying letter (also establishing AU material). Read more... )

A new category

Oct. 13th, 2025 06:07 pm
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
Done! I managed to negotiate the email request system and get a new category on fanfiction.net created expressly for my three "Yellow Poppy" fanfics (and any that might theoretically be written by someone else in the future), so that they no longer need rest in the faceless limbo of "Misc.Books".
Should be visible here: https://www.fanfiction.net/book/Yellow_Poppy/
(although not to me, because after that brief window of access I am unable to view any part of the site again!

New bulbs

Oct. 11th, 2025 05:47 pm
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
I have been given half a dozen tulips ("Plant from August onwards") which need to go into the ground as soon as possible and be planted 4 inches deep, which rules out most of my available pots, especially since I still have tomatoes in seven of the biggest of them. So I decided to empty out the wildflower trough as previously planned, even though the feathery thing there was still green and growing despite having been taken indoors last week to dry out -- it was definitely the right decision to start all over again with this, since after I had cut down all the top growth the remainder came out of the pot as a single tightly-packed ball of roots with almost no earth left between them! I ended up putting the whole mass into an empty compost bag to dry out and ideally break down a bit over the next few months, and then emptying all sorts of other pots as a result in order to put their earth (and the accompanying wildly jerking worms) into the now-empty trough around the tulip bulbs.

Swan River daisies, rudbeckias and evening primrose )

Rocket )

Kale and basil retained )

Dates

Oct. 9th, 2025 07:00 pm
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
In Chapter 79 Dumas is rash enough to risk some actual dates (probably constrained by historical record :-p)
Aramis and Athos arrive at Boulogne on the first of February, after supposedly having been out of France for about six weeks in all (which as usual doesn't really match up with the amount of time recounted about their stay in England, unless the journey back to London with the captive King or the wait between the King's arrival in London and his execution occupied much longer than the events actually described by Dumas would imply -- probably the latter period lasted for more than the two or three days mentioned in the novel).

Publishing

Oct. 8th, 2025 10:39 pm
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
Another Big Name Content Creator (naming no names) has published a novel tying in to his channel content, and again, while I enjoy the source material, going by the preview the actual writing just isn't that good. Read more... )

And yet these books are selling just based on the author's existing following; it just goes to prove that publicity and name recognition is everything. If people know you and like you then they will buy your book, and probably like it.

(On the other hand the non-knitting lady came back, and actually appeared to have improved since last week; I had her knitting garter stitch on her own by the end of lunch...)
scripsi: (Default)
[personal profile] scripsi
I haven’t read that much in September, or rather, not finished much. I don’t even want to know how many books I have started…

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno Garcia. I’ve enjoyed everything I have read by this author, and I enjoyed this one as well. It has three timelines, but I found those easy to keep apart, and the three protagonists each with their own voice. There is a young Mexican woman, Minerva, who in the 1990 studies at an old New England university. She writes her thesis on a mostly forgotten horror author, Beatrice Tremblay who attended the same university in the 1930s. The second timeline is her diary Minerva gets access to, where Beatrice describes the disappearance of her best friend. And last there is the story Minerva’s great grandmother Alba told her about what happened on the family farm in the 1910s. All the stories are linked, and like all of Moreno Gracia’s books I have read there is something supernatural in action. Here it is witches. Even though I guessed from the start who the antagonists were, i still found this a very interesting read.

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold. I’m not a big fan of true crime, and I’m not especially interested in Jack the Ripper. But The Five isn’t about him, but about the five women he killed. Rubenhold is a historian and she has made a thorough research into their life. The only thing she doesn’t describe is their murders, she cuts away at the last sighting, and returns to talk about their families reaction. Because most of them had families who cared deeply for them. And what I found very interesting was that she could find no proof any of them, apart from the last victim, was a prostitute at the time they were killed. Most of them were homeless, and all of them poor and alcoholic. Evidently Rubenhold has received a lot of flack, even outright hate, for daring to claim Jack the Ripper didn’t kill prostitutes. She has also received critique for not describing the actual murders, but personally I liked that. I thought it was a good book, and I found her descriptions of the five women thoughtful and interesting.

Story of A Murder by Hallie Rubenhold. Because I liked The Five, I went on to read her book about the Crippen murder. I knew the basic fact about it, mostly because Agatha Christie was inspired by it in Mrs. McGinty Is Dead. Again I thought Rubehold did a good job describing Belle Elmore, the victim, Crippen and his mistress Ethel Le Never, and she has clearly done her research. But I just can’t find this murder interesting, even if it was deeply tragic, so I can't say I enjoyed this book much. But if you are interested in true crime, I think you might like it.

The turning of the year

Oct. 5th, 2025 10:41 am
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
After the brief biannual period of wearing my short-sleeved jumpers I am now considering doing the full changeover to winter clothing; I am wearing dressing-gowns (albeit summer ones) in the morning and snuggling down under an eiderdown and two blankets at night, which thinking about retrieving the third one from upstairs! And I really need more vests, even if not quite full thermals as yet.

Swan River daisy and marigold seed, and pink Linaria )
Chives and spring onions )

Poppies )

Wildflower trough and tomatoes )

Chillies )

Basil )
thisbluespirit: (reading)
[personal profile] thisbluespirit
I will try and make a post again soon, but am now recovering from parental visit (due to me and the ME/CFS, not any fault of said parents). Yesterday, though, I got lucky at the BNA while searching for a newly-discovered address for an ancestor's siblings and found him accidentally involved in a plot to steal a painting by Petrus van Schendel. (London ancestors are v hard to find, especially when they have common names, but the joy of London is that every so often your relatives are briefly entangled with someone or something famous).

Anyway, the fraud was discovered, I was rewarded by a description of two rooms in a relative's house (29 St Mary-at-hill) and I thought some of you might enjoy the resulting magistrate's hearings:

A Cunning Plot )

They translated me into Russian

Oct. 3rd, 2025 07:30 pm
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
I have been watching the excellent (and moving; it starts off as romantic comedy and acquires considerable thought and depth) 2020 film "Elsa's Land", probably Veniamin Smekhov's final screen role -- unless someone else comes up with a project sufficiently compelling to entice him away from his own preferred pursuits -- and so far as I can see very probably, at the age of 79, his debut as romantic lead ;-)
I think I originally learned of the film's existence when YouTube started showing me its (subtitled) trailer:

Read more... )
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