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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 14, 2021 19:02:55 GMT
Apparently Mark Gatiss has already filmed "The Mezzotint" for next Christmas. It looks like we're never going to see his take on "Count Magnus". However, if he does do it, I think he'll probably be in it too. I've only got a minute for this. Radio Times has put preview shots from "The Mezzotint" online. You can find them yourself. |
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 15, 2021 11:02:10 GMT
Apparently Mark Gatiss has already filmed "The Mezzotint" for next Christmas. It looks like we're never going to see his take on "Count Magnus". However, if he does do it, I think he'll probably be in it too. I've only got a minute for this. Radio Times has put preview shots from "The Mezzotint" online. You can find them yourself. Is everyone else still in bed? Here's a picture of the mezzotint itself. It's the second from the left.  The link for more information is: www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/the-mezzotint-mark-gatiss-first-look-newsupdate/ |
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Post by andydecker on Oct 15, 2021 18:05:41 GMT
Considering how meh Martin's Close was, I guess The Mezzotint stands and falls with the visual handling of the picture.
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Post by helrunar on Oct 15, 2021 20:09:27 GMT
Andreas, I agree with you about Martin's Close. It just was not my idea of a good time.
I avoid commenting on these now because on social media one gets roundly scolded for being "negative" about these things--though I don't live in the UK and only get to watch if there's a youtube upload. I guess I'll only bother with this "Mezzotint" if I read a glowing review by somebody who seems to have at least somewhat similar guidelines of taste as me.
The story itself is so perfect--one of my favorites.
Steve
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Post by andydecker on Oct 15, 2021 22:09:23 GMT
I avoid commenting on these now because on social media one gets roundly scolded for being "negative" about these things- The story itself is so perfect--one of my favorites. Steve First: who cares? Maybe contemporary entertainment would be better if they stop producing badly made "relevant" crap and concentrate more on narrative. Second: It is also one of mine favorite James stories. A good idea to re-read it later. |
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Post by humgoo on Oct 16, 2021 7:06:02 GMT
The story itself is so perfect--one of my favorites. Have you also watched Robert Powell's telling of the story (BBC2, 1986), Steve? The engravings in it (done by Barry Wilkinson, according to Rosemary's G&S site) left a big impression on me. A pity I found only one of them on the net. |
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 16, 2021 10:18:48 GMT
So far, Mark Gatiss's MRJ adaptations have been as good as the originals. His first is thus okay, his second less so. I thus expect "The Mezzotint" to be good and hope he gets the budget for "Count Magnus".
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 18, 2021 11:09:02 GMT
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Post by andydecker on Oct 18, 2021 17:12:44 GMT
I read The Mezzotint yesterday again. I really had forgotten how anti-climactic and "cosy" the ending is. Rather a "club" story without the club.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 27, 2021 11:22:19 GMT
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Post by dem on Nov 4, 2021 10:34:58 GMT
BTW, I've seen a complete contents list for Damnable Tales using Am*z*n's "Look Inside", and it looks like Ringing The Changes has been replaced with Bind Your Hair. Oh, that makes it all right then. The TOC. Benjamin Myers - Foreword
Sheridan le Fanu - Laura Silver Bell
Edith Nesbit - Man-Size in Marble
Robert Louis Stevenson - Thrawn Janet
Thomas Hardy - The Withered Arm
Grant Allen - Pallinghurst Barrow
H. B. Marriott Watson - The Devil on the Marsh
Fiona MacLeod - The Sin-Eater
Arthur Machen - The Shining Pyramid
Bernard Capes - The Black Reaper
M. R. James The Ash-Tree
A. C. Benson - Out of the Sea
E. F. Benson - Damnable Tales
Mrs Baillie Reynolds - A Witch Burning
Saki - The Music on the Hill
Algernon Blackwood - The Tarn of Sacrifice
Margery Lawrence - How Pan Came to Little Ingleton
Walter de la Mare - All Hallows
Eleanor Scott - Randall's Round
H. R. Wakefield - The First Sheaf
L. T. C. Rolt - Cwn Garon
Shirley Jackson - The Summer People
John Collier - The Lady on the Grey
Robert Aickman - Bind Your Hair
Acknowledgements
Supporters
CopyrightBulk of contents are familiar from Peter Haining and Hugh Lamb antho's of 'sixties and 'seventies. The reference to Mark E. Smith in the Foreword made me so wish he'd lived long enough to take the piss out of the whole, *ahem* "movement" and accuse everyone of ripping off the Fall. |
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Post by helrunar on Nov 4, 2021 19:14:58 GMT
This is a gem--Peter Cushing reads Lost Hearts for a late October BBC Radio 4 broadcast in 1978. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM4Rq7PCCR4I love his skill with all the different voices. His Mrs Bunch is a treasure. H. |
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Post by Michael Connolly on Dec 6, 2021 12:24:34 GMT
I've filched this from the M. R. James Facebook: Julian Critchley "The ghost stories of M. R. James", from The Illustrated London News, 3 December 1973. Who was the Cambridgeshire parson writing a biography of M. R. James mentioned on p.61?   |
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Post by ropardoe on Dec 6, 2021 17:45:21 GMT
I've filched this from the M. R. James Facebook: Julian Critchley "The ghost stories of M. R. James", from The Illustrated London News, 3 December 1973. Who was the Cambridgeshire parson writing a biography of M. R. James mentioned on p.61? That’s what I was wondering too. Clearly that particular biography has never seen the light of day. It’s a rather lovely article overall, except for the mistake over Livermere, and the fact that Critchley doesn’t know why Herefordshire was so close to MRJ's heart. |
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Dec 6, 2021 18:23:28 GMT
I've filched this from the M. R. James Facebook: Julian Critchley "The ghost stories of M. R. James", from The Illustrated London News, 3 December 1973. Who was the Cambridgeshire parson writing a biography of M. R. James mentioned on p.61? That’s what I was wondering too. Clearly that particular biography has never seen the light of day. It’s a rather lovely article overall, except for the mistake over Livermere, and the fact that Critchley doesn’t know why Herefordshire was so close to MRJ's heart. Could he have gotten his information confused? This man wrote a biography that came out in 1980: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_William_PfaffIt seems a long period to have written it though if he was the same man. I looked in the preface and he says: Of the briefer printed accounts of MRJ's life, the most incisive is that of Sir Stephen Gaselee in the Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936), 418-33. This is the only memoir to deal in any degree (and that in but a few pages) with his scholarship. In December 1936 the Council of King’s College reprinted three substantial obituaries of that year: those in The Times of 13 June (anonymous, of course, nor will the author be revealed even now; Geoffrey Dawson is a distinct possibility), in the Eton College Chronicle of 25 June (by A. B. Ramsay), and in the Cam¬ bridge Review of 9 October (by J. H. Clapham). The special obituary number of the Eton College Chronicle for 18 June contains a number of appreciations (two of them reprinted from The Times) and a brief memoir by (Sir) Henry Marten, then Vice-Provost. Finally, A. F. Scholfield, the University Librarian at Cambridge, who in 1935 had compiled a useful, if incomplete and confusingly organized, bibliography (printed separ¬ ately in that year and subsequently at the end of Lubbock’s memoir) wrote a brief account for the Dictionary of National Biography volume for 1931-40. Also: Around 1964 Sir Shane Leslie, at the end of a long and vigorous literary career, tried to compile a lengthy memoir of MRJ, to be called Monty. It would be uncharitable to speak harshly of a work which would almost certainly never have been published; it should be sufficient to say that what value his efforts have is due to his collecting of a few groups of letters, especially the full correspondence with Mrs McBryde, and of a number of anecdotes, not all of them true. A distillation of his approach is to be found in a brief article published in the Quarterly Review 304 (1966), 45-56. The materials he collected are now at King’s, and while I am most grateful for having been allowed the use of them, I have tried to accept no fact nor refer to any document solely on Sir Shane’s authority. And: Some family papers are in the possession of Mr N. J. R. James of Tib- shelf, Derbyshire, MRJ’s great-nephew and present literary representa- tive, through whose kindness I have been able both to use these papers and to pursue my work as in some sense an ‘authorized’ biography. A few of MRJ's friends have published memoirs, or have been subjects of biographies, in which he appears. These will be cited as they seem rele¬ vant, but it should be mentioned here that I have had the benefit of access to unpublished memoirs and notes by Gordon Carey, Ronald Norman, Oliffe Richmond, and Nathaniel Wedd. |
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