Anyhoo yeah Lost Hearts tonight which I'll no doubt watch later in the week and I don't love the liberties or the treatment so much
― it isn't even a Fraktion (Noodle Vague), Monday, 15 November 2021 21:54 (two years ago) link
I did believe it hadn't been shown since the 70s tho cos the tape was not in good nick
― Fizzles, Monday, 15 November 2021 21:57 (two years ago) link
Not so keen on them changing Paxton to an older man, it removes the possibility of the WWI readings, with Paxton's elders and mentors unable to save him as James was unable to help those he mentored who went off to die in the war - or more sinisterly Paxton following those he believes to be his elders and mentors to his death. Sounds a bit crass condensed like that maybe but the podcast goes into more detail on James' wartime role and how it plays into those readings.
― namaste darkness my old friend (ledge), Tuesday, 16 November 2021 10:10 (two years ago) link
incidentally my own reading of the story -- based on the chiming descriptions of ager and paxton (young very solitary men of obsessive tendency) -- is that the final terrible face he sees is his own
this isn't remotely canon lol -- and it occurs to me now (reading ledge's post but w/o checking the podcast) that it could certainly be elaborated, via earthworks-trenches and the wartime clash and sacrifice by the old of so many younger men on both sides, and the "martello tower" and the broken face with sand in it…
as for that mysterious train: "'The First World War had begun - imposed on the statesmen of Europe by railway timetables. It was an unexpected climax to the railway age" (A.J.P.Taylor)
ffs i have actual work to do this morning
― mark s, Tuesday, 16 November 2021 10:54 (two years ago) link
not helped by having a whacking great BBC ident in the upper left-hand corner of the picture
― Critique of the Goth Programme (Neil S), Tuesday, 16 November 2021 11:13 (two years ago) link
"Over on BBC Two, M.R. James’ The Mezzotint, adapted by Mark Gatiss, stars Rory Kinnear, Robert Bathurst, Frances Barber, John Hopkins, Emma Cunniliffe, and Nikesh Patel. This haunting tale, set in an old English college in 1922, it is guaranteed to bring some eerie fear to the audience."
(new years eve ish)
― koogs, Wednesday, 24 November 2021 13:52 (two years ago) link
it is guaranteed to bring some eerie fear to the audience
great copywriting here
― mark s, Wednesday, 24 November 2021 14:25 (two years ago) link
bbc christmas press release, bound to be a bit florid
also, xmas eve is the more traditional time for this. stop doing james wrong.
― koogs, Wednesday, 24 November 2021 14:55 (two years ago) link
Gatiffs
― huile about oeuf (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 November 2021 15:30 (two years ago) link
moffe growing upon the scrapbook of a canon
― mark s, Wednesday, 24 November 2021 16:09 (two years ago) link
Further to the discussion of Jamesian authors some way above, I really enjoyed both collections of Women's Weird. Sometimes stretching fairly standard horror to fit 'weird fiction', perhaps, but they're great anthologies, and there are a few antiquarian spooks in there to get a James-like fix.
― emil.y, Wednesday, 24 November 2021 16:36 (two years ago) link
Those look great. Might actually lose a fair bit of cash on that publisher in general, looks like they have loads of interesting stuff.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 24 November 2021 16:41 (two years ago) link
those do look good, thanks for the link
― Brad C., Wednesday, 24 November 2021 18:25 (two years ago) link
Yeah will give that a go.
Mezzotint an interesting choice for televising, all the action happens in a picture which makes no difference in the reader's imagination but hard to imagine it having a high spook factor on the screen.
― namaste darkness my old friend (ledge), Wednesday, 24 November 2021 19:27 (two years ago) link
very high risk factor making an artwork the centre of yr visual fiction!
itt: paintings that are plot-points in movies and TV that are terrible paintings (or excellent ones if there are any)
― mark s, Wednesday, 24 November 2021 20:10 (two years ago) link
Aha, I was sure that I'd seen a version of 'the Mezzotint' before, and I had! BBC Classic Ghost Stories, 1986: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3389680/reference
― emil.y, Wednesday, 24 November 2021 21:01 (two years ago) link
I recall liking it a lot, too. I don't have an anti-Gatiss kneejerk reaction like some people do, but I do kind of wish he wasn't the only one reviving these stories.
― emil.y, Wednesday, 24 November 2021 21:04 (two years ago) link
Thanks for the link emil.y, hadn't heard of that publisher before. Wonder if there's much crossover with the British Library's anthologies of proper old ghost etc stories
https://shop.bl.uk/collections/british-library-fiction/products/a-phantom-lover-and-other-dark-tales-by-vernon-lee
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 24 November 2021 21:19 (two years ago) link
tbf it's not full-blown kneejerk with Gatiss but he usually winds up disappointing me
― huile about oeuf (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 November 2021 21:41 (two years ago) link
I'm not sure any of the adaptations past or present have been that great tbh. The original Oh Whistle was about seven hours too long, the keystone cops chase at the end of A Warning to the Curious was pretty disappointing.
― namaste darkness my old friend (ledge), Wednesday, 24 November 2021 21:52 (two years ago) link
Nooo, lies, ledge, lies. Both of those are wonderful. (My favourite Xmas ghost story adaptation is The Signalman but that's not James so doesn't count on this thread, I guess.)
― emil.y, Wednesday, 24 November 2021 21:58 (two years ago) link
I want full on CGI monsters & gore not flapping sheets and a bloody nose.
― namaste darkness my old friend (ledge), Wednesday, 24 November 2021 22:13 (two years ago) link
none more goth!
https://norfolktalesmyths.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/lost-hearts-lost6.jpg
― mark s, Wednesday, 24 November 2021 22:21 (two years ago) link
That made me think of Our Mutual Friend - "come up and be dead!" - which made me think of "I'll hold you living and I'll hold you dead" from the same - which made me think of the climax to A School Story.
― namaste darkness my old friend (ledge), Wednesday, 24 November 2021 22:36 (two years ago) link
bbc4 are showing these weekly on Mondays. last Monday was The Treasure of Abbott Thomas which i missed
next Monday is The Ash Tree
― koogs, Thursday, 25 November 2021 07:14 (two years ago) link
― it isn't even a Fraktion (Noodle Vague), Monday, 15 November 2021 21:52 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink
Nope, reshown in 2004 and 2005.
Jesus, last on 16 years ago. Where did my life go?
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?order=-last&filt=bbc_four&q=A+Warning+To+The+Curious
― "Spaghetti" Thompson (Pheeel), Thursday, 25 November 2021 19:26 (two years ago) link
dickens' Signalman tonight, followed (oddly) by an MR James documentary
― koogs, Monday, 6 December 2021 18:30 (two years ago) link
The Signalman is really good, a psychological story that works better with the vfx and sensibilities of 70s TV than James' jump scares of the imagination.Stigma next week, an original story, not well received at the time.
― namaste darkness my old friend (ledge), Tuesday, 7 December 2021 20:49 (two years ago) link
The Signalman was excellent - properly creepy with some great scraping drones on the soundtrack.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Tuesday, 7 December 2021 21:46 (two years ago) link
The thing that sticks with me most about the Holden Oh Whistle is the portrayal of the solitary walker. It captures that lonely, bumbling madness beautifully.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Tuesday, 7 December 2021 22:03 (two years ago) link
It's the landscape as well, Miller uses the stark East Anglian coastline incredibly well to depict the character's total isolation, all those endless flat pebbly peaches stretching on to infinity. No better place to go slowly mad through loneliness.
Re: The Signalman, Denholm Elliot's best performance maybe? A strikingly haunting portrayal of the aftermath of trauma (the story inspired by Dickens' own traumatic experience surviving a train crash of course).
― "Spaghetti" Thompson (Pheeel), Tuesday, 7 December 2021 23:51 (two years ago) link
Stigma next week, an original story, not well received at the time.
They weren't wrong.
― big online yam retailer (ledge), Tuesday, 14 December 2021 09:07 (two years ago) link
I thought Stigma was ok, though it has been a while since I saw it.
I enjoyed the other original story in the series, The Ice House, more - though that isn’t well regarded either.
― Scampo di tutti i Scampi (ShariVari), Tuesday, 14 December 2021 11:02 (two years ago) link
The Ice House is on next week. Stigma was just devoid of atmosphere, suspense, horror, historical depth or characterisation, and the acting was dreadful (including a 13 year old girl played by an actress who must have been 18 at least).
― big online yam retailer (ledge), Tuesday, 14 December 2021 11:35 (two years ago) link
The Ice House is v good iirc, with more of an Aickmanesque atmosphere than Jamesian, looking forward to that. Agreed on Stigma, bit of a will-this-do box ticker
― ignore the blue line (or something), Wednesday, 15 December 2021 22:48 (two years ago) link
new Mezzotint tonight on 2, and classic Whistle later on 4 (after turn of the screw)
― koogs, Friday, 24 December 2021 10:31 (two years ago) link
The Ice House - Aickmanesque or not (and awful hammy acting or not) these kinds of stories full of signs and suggestions and not a shred of narrative logic do nothing for me. The Mezzotint - better than I was expecting! I am fully in support of the additional story element and ending.
― two sleeps till brooklyn (ledge), Tuesday, 28 December 2021 11:34 (two years ago) link
Yeah didn't much care for The Ice House at all, thought it was much too arch and silly.
Here's a good and quite rare short that turned up on youtube starring TP McKenna, "A Child's Voice". Not a Ghost Story For Christmas but would fit that strand very well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zwQ6_KyHao
― "Spaghetti" Thompson (Pheeel), Tuesday, 28 December 2021 12:18 (two years ago) link
mezzotint was simply done and i thought p strong* right up to the end, when it went very gerald's game (in a bad way)
*solo performance from rory basically
― mark s, Tuesday, 28 December 2021 12:25 (two years ago) link
5 minutes into Whistle and it's got that great b&w look that i don't think you'd get today even if you tried. a friend's daughter caught him watching a b&w film and asked him why it was all silver and that's how this feels.
wonky angles galore too, and i don't think there's been a shot so far that hasn't had something in the foreground, or this one that's in a mirror.
― koogs, Tuesday, 28 December 2021 14:59 (two years ago) link
The Ice House - Aickmanesque or not (and awful hammy acting or not) these kinds of stories full of signs and suggestions and not a shred of narrative logic do nothing for me. The Mezzotint - better than I was expecting! I am fully in support of the additional story element and ending.― two sleeps till brooklyn (ledge), Tuesday, 28 December 2021 11:34 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink
― two sleeps till brooklyn (ledge), Tuesday, 28 December 2021 11:34 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink
Yeah on rewatch it wasn't as good as I remembered, not v good at all tbh
― ignore the blue line (or something), Friday, 31 December 2021 00:37 (two years ago) link
Mezzotint was pretty well done, all quibbles are minor, Barber feels like violence but that's nobody's fault but hers really, closing bit could've stopped with his first/second sight of the new picture, the degrees for women bit felt like boilerplate Gatiss straining for the wrong note of relevance and flubbing it. it were good tho.
― Khafre's clown (Noodle Vague), Friday, 31 December 2021 16:13 (two years ago) link
Christopher Lee reads the Ash Tree on bbc4 tonight at 10
― koogs, Sunday, 22 May 2022 11:28 (two years ago) link
http://www.urbanfantasist.com/uploads/1/0/3/4/10341498/christmasashtree-copy_orig.jpg
― mark s, Sunday, 22 May 2022 14:56 (two years ago) link
this book just *terrified* me as a kid and as a result i totally recommend it (70s YA was a thing other imo)
Considered one of the best novels in the M.R. James tradition and long unavailable, a reprint of John Gordon's THE HOUSE ON THE BRINK (1970) is coming soon. Preorder now on our site and read more here: https://t.co/JkOTW8IalW pic.twitter.com/56iIQK3aXl— Valancourt Books (@Valancourt_B) August 31, 2022
― mark s, Wednesday, 31 August 2022 18:22 (two years ago) link
clearing out old bookmarks, and making a note of this book and reminded just *how good* (and often terrifying) the puffin plus imprint was.
― Fizzles, Saturday, 8 October 2022 07:56 (one year ago) link
Summer email---this may be sold out by now, but more affordable second hand some day---is this a good bet? I'm not familiar with the publisher or contributors.
NEW TITLE NEWS: THE GHOSTS & SCHOLARS BOOK OF FOLLIES AND GROTTOESSarob Press is spookily delighted to present thirteen eerie spectral tales (eight are wholly original to this volume) where the authors have taken, as inspiration, the theme of follies and grottoes. In her introduction Rosemary Pardoe tells us: ‘Follies may be fake temples, belvederes, pyramids, obelisks and towers, sham castles and ruins, eyecatchers, faux druid circles and hermitages (with or without fake hermit!), and many other things besides. Folly grottoes are often cut out of rock, and decorated, frequently with shells (such as the one at Margate, which is famously often claimed to be genuinely pre-Christian).’And the dark and ghostly stories ... ‘range widely, from mysterious towers and classical temples to hidden grottoes; from revivals of the worship of ancient gods to unexpected distortions of space and time’.All five of the previous Sarob Press (and Rosemary Pardoe edited) Ghosts & Scholars anthologies sold out very quickly … so get your order in early to avoid disappointment as this one will, surely, quickly go the way of the others.Contents: “Introduction” by Rosemary Pardoe, “Baines’ Folly” by Christopher Harman, “Lady Elphinstone’s Folly” by John Ward, “The Ptolemaic System” by David Longhorn, “The Crooked Rook” by Rick Kennett, “Sweet Folly” by Gail-Nina Anderson, “Branks’s Folly” by C.E. Ward, “Folly” by Sam Dawson, “Minter’s Folly” by Chico Kidd, “Mothrot Hall” by Katherine Haynes, “‘Father’ O’Flynn and the Fressingfold Friezes” by Tina Rath, “Mad Lutanist” by Mark Valentine, “When I Heard My Days Before Me” by John Howard & “And Music Shall Untune the Sky” by S.A. RennieTHE GHOSTS & SCHOLARS BOOK OF FOLLIES AND GROTTOES is a Hand Numbered Limited Edition Jacketed Hardcover. Bound in Wibalin Cloth (Fine Linen Style), Foil Blocked to Spine, Lithographically Printed on Quality 80gsm Cream Bookwove Paper, Coloured Endpapers, Section Sewn Binding & Head/Tailbands.Approx 192pp including prelims etc. Fabulous wrap jacket art by the ever brilliant Paul Lowe.Publication currently scheduled for mid September 2022.PRICES ... (inclusive of Postage and Packing)UK: £38.00 EUROPE : 45,00 EurosUSA & Rest of World: USA $60 / USA $65 (Tracked)
Sarob Press is spookily delighted to present thirteen eerie spectral tales (eight are wholly original to this volume) where the authors have taken, as inspiration, the theme of follies and grottoes. In her introduction Rosemary Pardoe tells us: ‘Follies may be fake temples, belvederes, pyramids, obelisks and towers, sham castles and ruins, eyecatchers, faux druid circles and hermitages (with or without fake hermit!), and many other things besides. Folly grottoes are often cut out of rock, and decorated, frequently with shells (such as the one at Margate, which is famously often claimed to be genuinely pre-Christian).’
And the dark and ghostly stories ... ‘range widely, from mysterious towers and classical temples to hidden grottoes; from revivals of the worship of ancient gods to unexpected distortions of space and time’.
All five of the previous Sarob Press (and Rosemary Pardoe edited) Ghosts & Scholars anthologies sold out very quickly … so get your order in early to avoid disappointment as this one will, surely, quickly go the way of the others.
Contents: “Introduction” by Rosemary Pardoe, “Baines’ Folly” by Christopher Harman, “Lady Elphinstone’s Folly” by John Ward, “The Ptolemaic System” by David Longhorn, “The Crooked Rook” by Rick Kennett, “Sweet Folly” by Gail-Nina Anderson, “Branks’s Folly” by C.E. Ward, “Folly” by Sam Dawson, “Minter’s Folly” by Chico Kidd, “Mothrot Hall” by Katherine Haynes, “‘Father’ O’Flynn and the Fressingfold Friezes” by Tina Rath, “Mad Lutanist” by Mark Valentine, “When I Heard My Days Before Me” by John Howard & “And Music Shall Untune the Sky” by S.A. Rennie
THE GHOSTS & SCHOLARS BOOK OF FOLLIES AND GROTTOES is a Hand Numbered Limited Edition Jacketed Hardcover. Bound in Wibalin Cloth (Fine Linen Style), Foil Blocked to Spine, Lithographically Printed on Quality 80gsm Cream Bookwove Paper, Coloured Endpapers, Section Sewn Binding & Head/Tailbands.
Approx 192pp including prelims etc. Fabulous wrap jacket art by the ever brilliant Paul Lowe.
Publication currently scheduled for mid September 2022.
PRICES ... (inclusive of Postage and Packing)
UK: £38.00
EUROPE : 45,00 Euros
USA & Rest of World: USA $60 / USA $65 (Tracked)
― dow, Saturday, 8 October 2022 17:52 (one year ago) link
as some will know rosemary pardoe runs the *impressively* old-school (and usefully scholarly) m r james fansite http://www.pardoes.info/roanddarroll/GS.html as well as a site devoted to the 60s underground magazine GANDALF'S GARDEN: http://www.pardoes.info/roanddarroll/GS.html
(sad to note her husband and co-sitehost darroll pardoe passed away last year)
so i'd say bet on it yes
― mark s, Saturday, 8 October 2022 18:36 (one year ago) link
oops i gave u james twice, here's gandalf: http://www.pardoes.info/roanddarroll/GG.html
― mark s, Saturday, 8 October 2022 18:37 (one year ago) link
Noticing good pix there right away, thx!
― dow, Saturday, 8 October 2022 19:27 (one year ago) link