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Post by Virgil Reality on Sept 4, 2008 15:52:08 GMT 8
www.youtube.com/watch?v=snhZ_flom1QThe trailer - quick glimpse only of Alec. The trailer on the BBC site no longer says "not available in your area" but now "something seems to be wrong - try again soon" Is that the same for others? End result of course is it doesn't show so thank goodness for Youtube Beauty And The BeastInformative article about the production which also has the trailer.
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Post by Virgil Reality on Sept 7, 2008 8:23:56 GMT 8
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zita
Hans Afficionado
If I was in pain I know you'd sing me soothing songs...
Posts: 210
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Post by zita on Sept 7, 2008 20:50:32 GMT 8
Wow, wow.... looking good really! Wish I could see this production soon!
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Post by starkiller on Sept 9, 2008 0:36:21 GMT 8
I have no words. Well, I do, but they aren't really suitable for a family friendly environment. *eyedart* God that man is stunning. |
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Post by Gg on Sept 9, 2008 5:36:22 GMT 8
star you make me giggle  |
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Post by Virgil Reality on Sept 9, 2008 7:47:10 GMT 8
Tess meets Alec - video clip   Captures kindly donated by Gemma Arterton OnlineAnd more footage - the actual strawberry feeding incident - in BBC Newsnight Review from last Friday. The verdict is positive - a "rich feast awaiting". One thing I found a bit distracting - most of the panel seem to have a speech impediment. And this article actually refers to "Tess of the D-Urbervilles" with Hans Matheson! 5. Tess of the D’Ubervilles with Hans Matheson. Sure, the 1998 adaptation featuring Justine Waddell and Jason Flemyng doesn’t seem that long ago. But with The Street’s David Blair directing and The Tudor’s Matheson starring as evil Alec, I’d tune in.
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Post by Gg on Sept 9, 2008 23:45:05 GMT 8
ew, interesting! He's so schmarmy, feeling her up with his eyes, puffing away arrogantly. Very good. ;D
but I've got to say as often as its been mentioned lately that he plays the noble I would have to ask have it been forgotten that "Eddie" was hardly a saint, that "Mordred" was in fact evil, however damaged and justified, that "Angus/Patrick" did begin his curve as an offender (still want to know what he "was doing when we met"...), and "Nero" takes that journey in reverse -- always has had this going on, range wise. That darkness part of what makes his performances so interesting to watch really.
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Post by starkiller on Sept 10, 2008 0:04:45 GMT 8
star you make me giggle He's a very sexy man. That purple cravat he's wearing in the promo shots brings out his eyes. As I said to Virgil, he can feed me strawberries any day of the week, oh yes. (This post brought to you by the letters S-L-E-E-P-Y.) |
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Post by starkiller on Sept 10, 2008 0:09:55 GMT 8
Hee! He's all swaggery! Okay I swear, bed time now! But nice dreams, yes. ;D |
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Post by Virgil Reality on Sept 10, 2008 20:56:51 GMT 8
but I've got to say as often as its been mentioned lately that he plays the noble I would have to ask have it been forgotten that "Eddie" was hardly a saint, that "Mordred" was in fact evil, however damaged and justified, that "Angus/Patrick" did begin his curve as an offender (still want to know what he "was doing when we met"...), and "Nero" takes that journey in reverse -- always has had this going on, range wise. That darkness part of what makes his performances so interesting to watch really. Totally agree- not to mention the characters in "The Bill", "Wycliffe", "Family Money", Jake in "Comfortable Numb", our friend the Earl of Essex. Even Yury was not wholly a "good person", adulterer and deserter that he was. Check out the site for heaps of new pics - screen captures from The Sun's preview video "A Taste of Tess" , donated for us, as usual by Gemma Arterton Online. Please check out their site for heaps more info on the production. Most of the promotion is about Gemma,but in this case, she is the main character and the title and story is about her. Not like in "Doctor Zhivago", when the promotion was all about Keira. |
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Post by lynette on Sept 10, 2008 21:20:30 GMT 8
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Post by starkiller on Sept 11, 2008 0:06:12 GMT 8
Totally agree- not to mention the characters in "The Bill", "Wycliffe", "Family Money", Jake in "Comfortable Numb", our friend the Earl of Essex. Even Yury was not wholly a "good person", adulterer and deserter that he was. I'd have to say that Yuri Zhivago was actually a very weak man when all was said and done. I mean, in terms of contemporary Russian Literature, Doctor Zhivago is one of the great romantic tragedies of the 20th century, but that doesn't make Yuri any more strong as a person. He fell for another woman (Lara), which okay, war time, these things happen. (The BBC has an awesome site about the lives of men and women during war time and how they coped with separation from their loved ones, it frequently wasn't a case of adultery as a case of needing to feel connected to another living being, to feel alive in the face of the horrors of war). Also, the Bolshevik Revolution and Communist Russia were not exactly big on love and poetry, just look at all the writers and artists sent to the Gulags. At any rate, Yuri followed his heart or his lust, depending on how you read the character, and hid things from Tonja, when she and her family were removed from Moskva, neither he nor she made any effort to find each other, which in the book is because she knows he's too fickle to stick it out with her and because he's just too ready to give up because he's too busy fixating on Lara. The women are the truly strong characters, Lara does what she does to protect herself, her mother and her children, Tonja does the same. Yuri just faffs along writing poetry and daydreaming and wondering why the world sucks so bad. Having said all that, I love Doctor Zhivago, it's one of my favourite books and the Keira/Hans production is truly the best one I've seen and the most textually accurate to the book. Pasternak would be proud, I think. And from what I've seen of the snippets of Tess, and having read the novel, even though I am not a fan of Hardy and could go on for pages of tl;dr about that, (I'll spare you, lol), it seems very in keeping with the novel and the point that Hardy was making, being a jab at the restrictive nature of Victorian society and that the rich always get away with things while the poor are made to suffer more and more for the foibles of those in social circles above their own. That swagger when Alec comes out of the pavillion to meet Tess for the first time is really a perfect scene of just how confident and how full of themselves the noble class were at the time. My mother loves the book, but I hate it. But we're both very keen to see the BBC adaptation even if it is for different reasons! |
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Post by Gg on Sept 11, 2008 6:02:30 GMT 8
I guess that was what I found interesting about the comment about playing all these "goody-goodies" or whatever the quote was. I can't think of a character that I consider fully developed that is completely good or completely bad. No one is unwaveringly wholesome or for that matter evil without some cause. Generally of course, I've met more good guys than bad, luckily. Are we easier on good guys and more judgmental of bad? Even Austen's beloved female characters make their mistakes. Marius behaves horribly to Valjean by the end of the novel, though repentant - too late; of Hans' performed characters, he seems the prince. The film has him more heroic than the novel, less complex in some ways, but there was still a decision to made when the moment came. We are all made more interesting by our moral ambiguousity, by our bad choices, by our rebellions. And where "drama" is concerned -- often the "bad" choice is a whole lot more interesting... or we wouldn't be watching it. And our hero is particularly good at playing the dark and the light in a character -- the strength and vulnerability. He makes decisions to make the characters real in both directions, without compromising the drama of the decisions. that's right that's right, shovel in my hand...but its true. Virg, when you mentioned Jake I almost gave a little "aww". I see him as profoundly damaged, but not a villain persay. Alec will be interesting, just from what has already been said from the interviews. Not surprising, of course. Sometimes you read about a performance and you see it and you're thinking -- wow that was publicity rooted in pure fantasy -- but not where he's concerned. I also felt a bit protective of Yuri and the passions that compell him to Lara. He makes love not war. And I love Tonya, but I never get past the semi-incestousness of marrying someone who was basically your sibling as a child. Maybe I've been through the mill enough to have dropped "morality" in the traditional sense (I am not saying I am a hussy, by the way) where romance versus "love" is concerned, but please, Star, we are stronger, in general, aren't we...  Would God really have made the stronger sex with their tenderest bits on the outside?? |
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Post by starkiller on Sept 11, 2008 22:33:15 GMT 8
I think it's interesting how we each read the text and the characterisations, how we each interpret the story and the role of that character. Some think Mordred is evil incarnate, for instance, and until I saw Hans in the role, I would have agreed. But Hans gave Mordred more layers than the traditional cardboard villain, he made him to be quite a bit more sympathetic, a pawn in the game of politics, trying to make his aunt proud of him while wanting his father's love as well as hating him for being so estranged. I read a Mordred novel recently by a friend of mine, called 'Mordred - Bastard Son', which is probably the only version of Mordred as a sympathetic character outside of the 'Mists' portrayal by Hans I've ever seen. (If you're interested in the novel and I highly recommend it, it's www.amazon.com/Mordred-Bastard-Son-Trilogy/dp/1555839878/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221142886&sr=8-1 here. I think he'll do Alec very well. He's got that 'devil with the face of an angel' thing that the character has in the book. And the character really is quite a nasty-pasty, far more than any of the cads in Austen's novels (even though I love Austen) or the dark and brooding awesomeness of Mr. Rochester in 'Jane Eyre'. He's also likable, unlike imo, Heathcliff, who I can't stand. That didn't bother me at all, actually - it was quite common in Pasternak's time around the world for the rich and noble to intermarry in terms of family. So Yuri is essentially Tonja's cousin and marries her, that was very much the way of things in order to keep the line 'pure.' I think it's obvious in both book and film that she loves him more than he loves her, his head is very much in the clouds for all he is a scientist and works with theories that can be proved/disproved through rational discourse and experimentation rather than the idea of 'I believe it so it is true for me', the lack of critical thinking. The real tragedy there and Pasternak wrote it so beautifully is that Tonja was his intellectual equal if not superior in some respects - she was at uni and smart and intelligent - but she was not his romantic equal and the poet within Yuri required a partner that was more on parr with that part of him, being Lara. Tonja wouldn't have lived in Varakino living on potatoes and slowly starving, with love being the only thing to keep them going, but Lara would and did. If there had been no meeting of Lara, Yuri would have lived with Tonja, writing poetry and dreaming daydreams and probably ended up in the Gulag and/or dead. As it was, he did meet Lara, and she was more his ideal of a perfect partner (as evidenced when he returns to Tonja after one of his meetings with Lara, then changes his mind and turns the horse around to return to her only to be snapped up by the Bolsheviks to fight in the civil war against the Belorus). If he'd chosen Lara over Tonja in the first place, their lives would have been very different, and probably, considering the times and Stalin's hatred of all things creative or different, very much shorter. *snickersnort* Not bloody likely, but then, men always turn into delicate fragile petals when they catch the tiniest of colds! Women suck it up and do what needs to be done and men generally moan and whine about how they're dying and their woes are great and terrible, hahahaha. Sorry, men! |
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Post by starkiller on Sept 11, 2008 22:41:20 GMT 8
Also, I'm really enjoying this discussion, Gg! ;D
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