Richard Chamberlain passed away on Saturday night in Hawaii. He is survived by his husband.

www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/richard-chamberlain-tv-actor-who-starred-in-dr-kildare-dies-at-90/ar-AA1BWxkn

I was inspired by the "Moment of Silence" series done by Ysabetwordsmith ( ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/ )

ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/tag/moment+of+silence

My persona for the Galactic Journey, George Pritchard, has a crush on his portrayal of Dr. Kildare, and owns his EP.

(I plan to add more onto this later.)

Gone to Earth is the most Changeling work I have been through, or at least most tied to my perception of the Changeling. I can well understand how Webb was hugely popular at the time, and how her stories (like Kingsley's political writing) dropped off the map. The reason these immediately tie together in my mind is their shared imagery of the fox-hunt, displaying it as the ultimate destructive example of how squires (and, by extension, the upper class) treat the lower classes and the land they are sworn to protect.

The film and book diverge the most with the character of Reddin. Quite frankly, the book has an approach to sexuality, and even gender, that I don't know if a mainstream film made at the time could have pulled off. Or, well, the film that the filmmakers wanted to make. I'm not going to call Gone to Earth equivalent to Some Like It Hot (not to mention, the latter came out almost a decade later), and Glen or Glenda is closer to grindhouse or outsider art than anything else. The book is allowed to be more explicit, although it's still "1917 non-porn" explicit. But it's definitely unsettling in a way that's very similar to Tess of the D'Ubervilles, where the rapists can make your skin crawl over a century later (horror lasts longer than sexy, I think -- for all its impact, Las-Bas is more of a reference than something that's actually sexually appealing).

Gone to Earth (1950) is, in my opinion, a very good film, and the alterations/direction choices fascinate rather than anger me. In 1950, the highest-grossing film in English was still Gone With The Wind, and the film often seems like an attempt to make the film into a lower-budget British version of Gone With the Wind. From the change of hair color and style to the way Reddin is played, it seems like there was an attempt at that from behind the scenes. At the same time, it was also seen as being so incredibly (rural) British that it was apparently recut for a USAian version not long after. Which also makes sense, because the accents are especially noteworthy, and may be nearly extinct in the wild. It's easy enough to locate a clipped posh accent, or standard London, but the wording and stresses in Gone to Earth are definitely region-specific (this is less significant in the book, as written accents are common throughout Isles writing).

In the book (as the narrator almost relishes in stating), Reddin is a pathetic piece of work, a forty year old manchild and almost wholly incapable of love. His family home is falling apart and he seems to take as little notice of that of anything else. Scenes with him feel like a cross between dealing with an abusive boss/creepy teacher, and that one roommate/boyfriend everyone seems to have had in their lives, who somehow got old enough to drink while not otherwise changing from who he was at 13. It is Hazel that allows him to feel something resembling love, although it is mostly based around confusion. In the movie, however, there's a very different base character concept at play, especially given that Reddin is played by David Farrar.

Now, you should always get your Clark Gable at a reliable breeder of Clark Gables. Farrar played bad boy antihero sex magnets (especially in Black Narcissus, which had only been a few years prior), and so it seems like it would make him a good Clark Gable type. In Black Narcissus, he's a mountain man tempered and tempted by the world around him, his will rubbing up against that of the sisters. In class and behavior, he comes off as an early sketch of Han Solo, the world-weary traveler drawn to the fiercely determined princess. But the essential adhesion point between the love interests in Gone With the Wind and Black Narcissus are absent in Gone to Earth. Sister Clodagh and Scarlett O'Hara are determined, ambitious, sexually engaged, and willing to be jerks to get what they want. Meanwhile, both in book and film, Hazel is most certainly not those things.

When I was eleven, I considered myself, as many eleven-year-olds do, highly urbane. Oh, I didn't have cable, but I had our local newspaper's Arts&Music section, and "the part of the news with the comics" -- political editorials. And the best part about the Arts&Music (yes, it was typed as one word) section, of course, was the movie reviews, which were only on Thursdays, but what a treat to look forwards to!

Living in a retirement and tourist town, our theaters didn't show a lot of children's movies, or fantasy movies, and definitely not science fiction, but the paper generally reviewed films that would eventually hit the Oscars. Since I wasn't old enough to see most of them, this meant I would get all my information on the Oscar contenders from these reviews, as well as the clips shown on Oscar Night. Despite this thin amount of information, my interest continued. The following paragraphs show the thought processes of an 11-13 year old, so, fair warning.

One Thursday, in December of 2009, I opened the newspaper to the movie reviews, and saw, on the first page, what looked to be an Elf (I had only recently seen the Lord of the Rings films), except painted with beautiful colors. I flipped to the next page, which had a review of Did You Hear About The Morgans?, before thinking:

Wait, did I see that right? There's a movie, with an Elf, and it's playing HERE? RIGHT NOW??? I don't care what else happens in the movie, I just want to know who that Elf is with the beautiful blue-and-green colors. And I think she's a girl and surrounded by fire.
And that was the beginning of my years-long love of the film Avatar. As indicated, it didn't hurt that the still my local newspaper picked for the film seems to have been designed to attract people attracted to lesbian monster/elf warriors. I think there could have been a lot less hate for the film, long-term, if that particular marketing had followed through. The more I learned about it, the better the movie seemed -- so good, in fact, that I was willing to get over my long-time fear of theaters to watch it! It was the first film I ever saw all the way through in an enclosed theater. My dad and I got ice cream afterwards, too, which was really nice.

My love of the film continued for at least a year and change, and it was one of my top-10 interstellar destinations I wanted to reach. I thought it just seemed like such a lovely place! Who wouldn't want to be somewhere where everything is bioluminescent?
Not only that, but by being a Na'vi, you get:
- a free, telepathically joined horse
- a free, telepathically joined dragon
- barbecue shrimp every night, except for the nights where you get venison.
- a free hammock/sleeping bag combo that you get to by stairway and ladder, like a treehouse version of the bunk bed your parents won't spring for.
- your own tail. And not an ugly vestigial tail, a long sleek cat-dragon tail, with a beautiful plume!
- being able to be in a simultaneous library AND chatroom with anyone you want to talk to, ever (if they want to talk to you), while hiking. This way, your mom would never get on your case about spending all your free time on fanfiction.net
- a tiny pet dragon (if you so wish, and who wouldn't?!)
- to only need to wear the most sensible of clothing: jewelry, weapons, a sports bra if you need it, and pockets. No pants, just pockets. And maybe a robe, if you're feeling fancy.