New acquisitions
1 June 2025 02:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI leafed through a copy of Robert Sellers' "Hellraisers" (strapline: enjoy reading about it -- they enjoyed doing it), which is basically a collection of film star anecdotes of possibly dubious reliability. (It left a taste in my mouth rather like Charles Higham's biographies, save that Sellers does at least seem to *admire* his subjects as well as searching out saleable scandal about them.)
Oliver Reed is one of the four famously drunken actors featured, and somewhere in the middle of the volume I stumbled across a starry-eyed description of his approach to swordplay while filming the Lester "Three Musketeers", which was apparently to skip the rehearsals, ignore the intended choreography and flail away violently 'for real' once the cameras started rolling, to the extent that the stuntmen all tried to avoid having to be the ones to fight him because he was likely to do someone an genuine injury. (And, apparently, somebody eventually got tired of this behaviour and put a sword through his arm intentionally in return.) Which, contrary to what the author appears to believe, is not the sign of a great movie swordsman but a shockingly bad one, and confirms me in my existing dislike of that performance. It's not only incredibly unprofessional behaviour, but completely out of character for the part he was supposed to be playing; Athos is known for his sang-froid and calm control ([il] s'escrimait avec autant de calme et de méthode que s'il eût été dans une salle d'armes), not for wild and reckless attacks.
Allegedly Christopher Lee (who had of course himself been fencing on screen since the 1950s) as Rochefort reprimanded him during one of their fights with the words "Let’s get the sequence straight, shall we. Who taught you to use the sword?" to which Reed dutifully replied "You did". However, I couldn't find any mention of this in Lee's autobiography... which, however, says very little about the film, save that he found it demanding to keep up daily with the sheer physicality of the routines against actors twenty years younger than he was, and got his revenge during the filming of the belated (and bad) sequel when it was the others' turn to hit middle-age and realise for the first time that all this jumping about wasn't quite so easy any more :-p
On my second expedition I successfully managed to purchase a new slide buckle of the right size to fit my secondary clothes line, thanks to a very helpful Indian lady whose haberdashery stall turned out to be well-stocked with all sorts of components as well as the glittering sari fabrics and accessories. I tested it out this afternoon on a batch of washing, and it seems to function exactly as effectively as its predecessor (which is to say that it is no longer bar-taut after a few hours when you take the washing down again, but doesn't sag enough to cause a discernable problem while the weight is on it).
I also managed to buy and fit a replacement cycle computer after losing my old one (the very old one, which I eventually had to refit to replace the new wireless model). It was already loose in its mount back in May 2022, and had been coming off with increasing frequency over the last few weeks. It dropped off while I was picking elderflowers, and I noticed it on the grass and refitted it yet again; at some point in the next ten minutes it dropped off once more and either disappeared into the undergrowth or rolled down the embankment into the river, and this time I couldn't find it despite retracing my steps for an extensive search. The chiefly annoying thing is that, despite thinking that I ought to do so on several occasions recently, I had failed to record the mileage, which I believe was somewhere around 700 miles since I acquired my new (second-hand) bike last September.
There was a choice of precisely one 'wired' cycle computer in the shop, and it was marked down to £4 from £20, which presumably means that they will shortly be entirely unavailable :-( This one is rather bigger than the old model without putting the extra size to any useful purpose; it simply displays the current speed in an elongated double-height font by default which makes it hard to read. (It also adds the ability to display the current *temperature* in degrees Fahrenheit or Centigrade, which is a novelty feature but probably not top of my desires for cycle computer info....)
Pressing one of the buttons will drop the speed data down to normal proportions and display one of the other values underneath, which are the normal defaults of real-time clock, trip time, trip distance, odometer total, average speed, and maximum speed, plus in this case total accumulated riding time and current temperature. Frankly I don't particularly care how many hours in total I spend on the bike over a period of several years, so that's just an extra value to button-push past :-p
The big issue for me is that for some reason the software is set up to only display this information when the bicycle *stops*; while it is in motion it will only display the elongated speed display, which I suppose is fine if you are using it to undergo time trials or something but less than convenient if you are trying to reach an appointment and need to keep track of how many minutes you have left to get there, or simply want to gauge the elapsed distance so far. You *can* override the default by pressing a button, but this requires you to make an active manual intervention (and take your hand off the handlebars and your attention off the road) every time you want to do so -- and it also tends to advance the display to the next setting, so you then have to rotate all the way round through multiple button-pushes. Very poor user interface, and with no clear rationale.
I was very disgruntled to find out on my first test run (to buy a new buckle; see above) that the speed reading appeared to be wildly inaccurate, informing me that I was doing 40mph at one point. However it did eventually dawn on me that I had neglected to take the old magnet off the wheel when fitting the new sensor, so the unfortunate detector was registering multiple magnet pulses per wheel rotation and grossly over-estimating how fast the wheels were turning as a result :-D With this once corrected, the readings went back to a more normal level. I also managed to work out how to reset the current trip data without performing a full 'data clearance', which the (translated from German) manual appeared to be suggesting was required.
So it is now usable in practice, although less than ideal. I can of course simply look at my wristwatch to keep an eye on the time, but this again means taking my eyes off the road and is less than convenient, especially in winter when my wrists are hidden under gloves and multiple layers of sleeve. If I depended on hauling out my mobile phone, as so many people seem to do nowadays, I should be pretty stuffed! (Mind you, they probably mount their mobiles on the handlebars and use them as satnav devices...)
I currently seem to have two videos on Venjamin Smekhov queued plus two on Igor Starygin, having watched four on Valentin Smirnitsky (Porthos: the fourth Beatle in terms of fame) which were only very tangentially connected to his actual role in the film(s). The trouble was that when I actually searched for material on Smirnitsky only one search result showed up on the whole of YouTube, and that was an interview about the art of dubbing; once I had watched that other things started showing up, but if you don't mark them there and then there is no way of finding them.
And then there are the group interviews, which tend to be much more relevant (most of the other stuff I just let flow over me, picking up enough of the gist from time to time to know that it is not what I'm looking for), of which there is one ("The Musketeers 27 Years After") I'd like to rewatch with pause and dictionary because I could understand enough of it by just sitting there and listening to tell that it seemed to have some fascinating production anecdotes in, and another one ("Still Together: Musketeers 40 Years After") that showed up in somebody's dedicated Smekhov-playlist: the Athos actor has a cult following even now. The Kino-panorama one was fascinating simply because it is so *early* and they are all so young compared to the later 'reunion' videos... and so very 1970s in their fashion sense :-p
The one that Smekhov himself hosted in his own flat ("Theatre of My Memories: 17 Years After"... there is a certain lack of originality in the Dumas-based programme names!) was fascinating not in terms of anecdotes from the cast, but as a glimpse of their off-screen friendship, including Mikhail Boyarsky (D'Artagnan) being given a sword as a present -- which is then visible lying on Smekhov's couch for the rest of the meal :-D And then there is the random other material in Russian that YouTube decides to suggest to me: "Musketeers in Vegas" (three Musketeers wake up in a hotel room with no memory of how they got there...) was actually laugh-out-loud funny at times if you have watched the original material often enough to recognise the lovingly specific spoof references, which, disturbingly, I apparently have.
I just wish I could feel that this is in fact improving my Russian; what I think it is actually doing is finally reconciling me, by means of sheer volume of material, to the experience of having to pick out a handful of relevant words from a mass of general uncomprehended background verbiage, which I remember finding acutely distressing when doing German listening practice. They would give us real-life recordings with people mumbling and rambling and tons of vocabulary we didn't know, and then ask us specific factual questions ("what time was the train supposed to leave? Why did Helmut come to work at the museum?") which we had to answer despite the fact that we hadn't understood vast swathes of it. As opposed to the practice dialogues, where one expected to understand pretty much every word and phrase employed.
What I *haven't* done, having been submerged in documentaries, or at least having had them playing in the background while engaged in other things, is actually finish watching "Twenty Years After", which I have already encountered 'spoilers' for in places ranging from TV Tropes (yes, the Soviet Musketeers have their own TV Tropes page...) to random Aramis fanvids and AU fan-fiction. Although I did, on my first (pedestrian) expedition to try to buy buckles, manage to start that third "Twenty Years After" Porthos-fic of my own...
Apart from anything else I got caught up in rereading the earlier parts of the book in the French version to see what else was missing in terms of detail, which turns out to include little scenes like the one in which d'Artagnan gives Raoul a fencing-lesson during his visit and praises Athos on the boy's swordsmanship (C’est déjà votre main, mon cher Athos, et si c’est votre sang-froid, je n’aurai que des compliments à lui faire) -- this entire conversation being omitted from the English edition, which cuts straight to Mazarin's recall message!
Oliver Reed is one of the four famously drunken actors featured, and somewhere in the middle of the volume I stumbled across a starry-eyed description of his approach to swordplay while filming the Lester "Three Musketeers", which was apparently to skip the rehearsals, ignore the intended choreography and flail away violently 'for real' once the cameras started rolling, to the extent that the stuntmen all tried to avoid having to be the ones to fight him because he was likely to do someone an genuine injury. (And, apparently, somebody eventually got tired of this behaviour and put a sword through his arm intentionally in return.) Which, contrary to what the author appears to believe, is not the sign of a great movie swordsman but a shockingly bad one, and confirms me in my existing dislike of that performance. It's not only incredibly unprofessional behaviour, but completely out of character for the part he was supposed to be playing; Athos is known for his sang-froid and calm control ([il] s'escrimait avec autant de calme et de méthode que s'il eût été dans une salle d'armes), not for wild and reckless attacks.
Allegedly Christopher Lee (who had of course himself been fencing on screen since the 1950s) as Rochefort reprimanded him during one of their fights with the words "Let’s get the sequence straight, shall we. Who taught you to use the sword?" to which Reed dutifully replied "You did". However, I couldn't find any mention of this in Lee's autobiography... which, however, says very little about the film, save that he found it demanding to keep up daily with the sheer physicality of the routines against actors twenty years younger than he was, and got his revenge during the filming of the belated (and bad) sequel when it was the others' turn to hit middle-age and realise for the first time that all this jumping about wasn't quite so easy any more :-p
On my second expedition I successfully managed to purchase a new slide buckle of the right size to fit my secondary clothes line, thanks to a very helpful Indian lady whose haberdashery stall turned out to be well-stocked with all sorts of components as well as the glittering sari fabrics and accessories. I tested it out this afternoon on a batch of washing, and it seems to function exactly as effectively as its predecessor (which is to say that it is no longer bar-taut after a few hours when you take the washing down again, but doesn't sag enough to cause a discernable problem while the weight is on it).
I also managed to buy and fit a replacement cycle computer after losing my old one (the very old one, which I eventually had to refit to replace the new wireless model). It was already loose in its mount back in May 2022, and had been coming off with increasing frequency over the last few weeks. It dropped off while I was picking elderflowers, and I noticed it on the grass and refitted it yet again; at some point in the next ten minutes it dropped off once more and either disappeared into the undergrowth or rolled down the embankment into the river, and this time I couldn't find it despite retracing my steps for an extensive search. The chiefly annoying thing is that, despite thinking that I ought to do so on several occasions recently, I had failed to record the mileage, which I believe was somewhere around 700 miles since I acquired my new (second-hand) bike last September.
There was a choice of precisely one 'wired' cycle computer in the shop, and it was marked down to £4 from £20, which presumably means that they will shortly be entirely unavailable :-( This one is rather bigger than the old model without putting the extra size to any useful purpose; it simply displays the current speed in an elongated double-height font by default which makes it hard to read. (It also adds the ability to display the current *temperature* in degrees Fahrenheit or Centigrade, which is a novelty feature but probably not top of my desires for cycle computer info....)
Pressing one of the buttons will drop the speed data down to normal proportions and display one of the other values underneath, which are the normal defaults of real-time clock, trip time, trip distance, odometer total, average speed, and maximum speed, plus in this case total accumulated riding time and current temperature. Frankly I don't particularly care how many hours in total I spend on the bike over a period of several years, so that's just an extra value to button-push past :-p
The big issue for me is that for some reason the software is set up to only display this information when the bicycle *stops*; while it is in motion it will only display the elongated speed display, which I suppose is fine if you are using it to undergo time trials or something but less than convenient if you are trying to reach an appointment and need to keep track of how many minutes you have left to get there, or simply want to gauge the elapsed distance so far. You *can* override the default by pressing a button, but this requires you to make an active manual intervention (and take your hand off the handlebars and your attention off the road) every time you want to do so -- and it also tends to advance the display to the next setting, so you then have to rotate all the way round through multiple button-pushes. Very poor user interface, and with no clear rationale.
I was very disgruntled to find out on my first test run (to buy a new buckle; see above) that the speed reading appeared to be wildly inaccurate, informing me that I was doing 40mph at one point. However it did eventually dawn on me that I had neglected to take the old magnet off the wheel when fitting the new sensor, so the unfortunate detector was registering multiple magnet pulses per wheel rotation and grossly over-estimating how fast the wheels were turning as a result :-D With this once corrected, the readings went back to a more normal level. I also managed to work out how to reset the current trip data without performing a full 'data clearance', which the (translated from German) manual appeared to be suggesting was required.
So it is now usable in practice, although less than ideal. I can of course simply look at my wristwatch to keep an eye on the time, but this again means taking my eyes off the road and is less than convenient, especially in winter when my wrists are hidden under gloves and multiple layers of sleeve. If I depended on hauling out my mobile phone, as so many people seem to do nowadays, I should be pretty stuffed! (Mind you, they probably mount their mobiles on the handlebars and use them as satnav devices...)
I currently seem to have two videos on Venjamin Smekhov queued plus two on Igor Starygin, having watched four on Valentin Smirnitsky (Porthos: the fourth Beatle in terms of fame) which were only very tangentially connected to his actual role in the film(s). The trouble was that when I actually searched for material on Smirnitsky only one search result showed up on the whole of YouTube, and that was an interview about the art of dubbing; once I had watched that other things started showing up, but if you don't mark them there and then there is no way of finding them.
And then there are the group interviews, which tend to be much more relevant (most of the other stuff I just let flow over me, picking up enough of the gist from time to time to know that it is not what I'm looking for), of which there is one ("The Musketeers 27 Years After") I'd like to rewatch with pause and dictionary because I could understand enough of it by just sitting there and listening to tell that it seemed to have some fascinating production anecdotes in, and another one ("Still Together: Musketeers 40 Years After") that showed up in somebody's dedicated Smekhov-playlist: the Athos actor has a cult following even now. The Kino-panorama one was fascinating simply because it is so *early* and they are all so young compared to the later 'reunion' videos... and so very 1970s in their fashion sense :-p
The one that Smekhov himself hosted in his own flat ("Theatre of My Memories: 17 Years After"... there is a certain lack of originality in the Dumas-based programme names!) was fascinating not in terms of anecdotes from the cast, but as a glimpse of their off-screen friendship, including Mikhail Boyarsky (D'Artagnan) being given a sword as a present -- which is then visible lying on Smekhov's couch for the rest of the meal :-D And then there is the random other material in Russian that YouTube decides to suggest to me: "Musketeers in Vegas" (three Musketeers wake up in a hotel room with no memory of how they got there...) was actually laugh-out-loud funny at times if you have watched the original material often enough to recognise the lovingly specific spoof references, which, disturbingly, I apparently have.
I just wish I could feel that this is in fact improving my Russian; what I think it is actually doing is finally reconciling me, by means of sheer volume of material, to the experience of having to pick out a handful of relevant words from a mass of general uncomprehended background verbiage, which I remember finding acutely distressing when doing German listening practice. They would give us real-life recordings with people mumbling and rambling and tons of vocabulary we didn't know, and then ask us specific factual questions ("what time was the train supposed to leave? Why did Helmut come to work at the museum?") which we had to answer despite the fact that we hadn't understood vast swathes of it. As opposed to the practice dialogues, where one expected to understand pretty much every word and phrase employed.
What I *haven't* done, having been submerged in documentaries, or at least having had them playing in the background while engaged in other things, is actually finish watching "Twenty Years After", which I have already encountered 'spoilers' for in places ranging from TV Tropes (yes, the Soviet Musketeers have their own TV Tropes page...) to random Aramis fanvids and AU fan-fiction. Although I did, on my first (pedestrian) expedition to try to buy buckles, manage to start that third "Twenty Years After" Porthos-fic of my own...
Apart from anything else I got caught up in rereading the earlier parts of the book in the French version to see what else was missing in terms of detail, which turns out to include little scenes like the one in which d'Artagnan gives Raoul a fencing-lesson during his visit and praises Athos on the boy's swordsmanship (C’est déjà votre main, mon cher Athos, et si c’est votre sang-froid, je n’aurai que des compliments à lui faire) -- this entire conversation being omitted from the English edition, which cuts straight to Mazarin's recall message!