working nights once more

[peck72]

I've been staying awake tonight largely thanks to the film 'The life and Death of Peter Sellers'. Its a film I've been wanting to see for a while now and it narrowly beat out 'Constantine' at Blockbusters this afternoon.

Unfortunatly though, it's not as good a film as I'd hoped it might be. I had expected it to be a warts and all bio of Peter Sellers and so the overriding message that he was a complete shit who couldn't relate to anyone close to him wasn't that big a surprise. I think it may have been more the structure of the film, with it switching between showing scenes from his life to him talking direct to camera, that meant that I didn't really pick up the rhythm of the film.
The performances in the film are incredible though. Geoffrey Rush is wonderfull as Sellers, showing him aging over the 30 odd years the film takes in as well as all his film incarnations and also as many of the supporting cast in a device used to gain their opinions of him (or in some cases his opinions of their opinions of him). Charlize Theron looks perfect as Brit Ekland, Sellers's second wife. Miriam Margolyes is excellent playing his domineering mother Peg.
It seemed to pick up on all the 'important' milestones of his career but still left you wondering about who he really was. I don't know that I quite believe Sellers's assertion that he really had no personality of his own and that was how he was able to let all the characters he played just fill him up to the point where he didn't exist and it was just them there. I just think that he didn't like who he was and so let it get drowned in the silly voices and walks that where his stock in trade. And that is a little of what happens in this film, the man gets lost in the happenings of his life. I think I was looking for something a bit deeper about him and didn't find it. Although, if he was right then there was nothing deeper to find.

I have definitly been reading too much online about the shipping wars within the Harry Potter fandom. It has become a source of wonderfull incredulity that people could really be getting so upset about an author doing whatever she wants with her own characters. I have obviously been underestimating the amount of passion the fans have regarding these characters.

But this has got my mind to wondering if this is just a recent phenomenon or if it has been around a while. It also made me wonder if another bestselling book out at the moment isn't actually a shippers fantasy made text. Does Dan Browns 'Da Vinci Code' owe itself to some Jesus/Mary Magdalene shippers from the '50s and did they fight it out with the Mary Magadalene/John shippers or was there even Jesus/Judas shippers? The amount of Harry/Draco fanfiction thats out there shows that that kind of pairing does appeal to peoples minds (plus he does kiss Jesus, which if the Da Vinci code is to be belived (highly inadvisable), was enough to see Jesus and Mary married in the Apocryphal Gospel of Philip).

Please excuse me if I have offended with these ideas but they've been buzzing around my head for the last 3 days and I needed to set them down somewhere. I'm sure there is enough of an idea here for a short story (definitly not of the smutty internet fan fiction kind though) I just need to get enough of a handle on it and find a place to start. Well, here's to a beginning, maybe.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I have no idea what you are on about wrt the shippers, but the sellers film was pretty depressing when we saw it - for someone who was so funny in the film, it was sad to see how poor his real life was.
As to constantine - I wouldn't bother - its even worse than the matrix3 (or was it 2 that was soooo boring - the one with the long chat in the white padded room (or was that just wishful thinking that I was in the white padded room?))