I'd pay to see that

Excerpt from Peter Woodward: Straight from the Shoulder, text of a 2002 interview by Alex von Thorn.

You have such a diverse body of work that during my research, I had trouble getting a handle on it all. If we could imagine a definitive Peter Woodward magnum opus, what would it look like?

I would be stark naked. I would be carrying a very large sword, on a stage, being filmed, and with a History Channel executive fretting in the background.

Snippets of Woodwardian Goodness

My sincerest thanks to a good friend in Australia, who pointed me in the direction of this video on au.youtube.com.

It took a LONG time to finish buffering the video (I guess the interwebs were slow from Australia tonight). But for a Peter Woodward junkie like m'self, it was well worth the wait, since it includes a few snippets of his work that I hadn't seen before.

GleeeEEeeEEeEEEeeee!!!

Pssst... There's a very little tiny bit of swearing in one of the clips. Just so you know.

dvd eve

I spent the evening watching The Patriot on DVD. I guess it was the whole Mel Gibson film, caricature of good and pure heroes vs. sadists and buffoons impression I got of the story that put me off since it's in a pseudo-historical context. I dislike historical fiction that wanders so far off into the "fiction" department that it comes off like a skewed propaganda film. So I'd avoided it until now.

That said, I decided it was time to watch it since it's a film with Peter Woodward in it that I hadn't seen yet. And to my surprise, I quite liked it, despite it's living up to my initial pessimistic impressions of the plot. I had to decide going into it that I was going to watch it as a "fantasy" film, rooted in no way in actual history, which helped.

Of course I enjoyed Peter Woodward's performance as General O'Hara. That's a no-brainer. But how is it I'd never heard before that along with Mr. Woodward, it also has Jason Isaacs in it? Or Adam Baldwin, Rene Auberjonois and Heath Ledger? That's what I get for ignoring it based on it being a Mel Gibson flick.

And as for Jason Isaacs... his performance as the vile and dastardly Colonel Tavington was yummy... er I mean very well done. Can't really root for Tavington... he's too good at being dag nasty evil for that, but he makes you love to hate him.

I would have liked to see where the heck the film was trying to go with Adam Baldwin's character, Captain Wilkins. Wilkins seemed to be rolling along on a trajectory toward a climax of character development of some sort, but it felt to me like that ride never quite made it to its destination.

So for the film in general, how to rate it? Out of 5 points I'd say it gets negative 3 for historical accuracy. The plot is predictable and disappointing, so no points there. But for yummy villains it gets a 5. So if my math is right that ends up with a final score of 2.

teh mad suxxor

I was scheduled to fly to Boston in two days to attend the Jumpcon convention. I have been looking forward to it for months, especially because I'd paid extra to have a ticket to be seated at Peter Woodward's dinner table (as one of 12 guests). And on my birthday no-less.

I just got an email from Jumpcon announcing they were issuing refunds due to the cancellation of the event. They posted to their website yesterday to notify attendees that it had been canceled (3 days before the event was supposed to take place) and sent out the email notices today.

I'm angry and seriously disappointed. And now I've learned that this isn't the first event they've had to cancel.

I've been told that if I can produce receipts for my airline tickets they will refund what I spent on them. Same goes for my room at the hotel (which I booked directly through Jumpcon so no receipts should be needed.) So now I have some phone calls to make, and some paperwork to come up with in order to get my refunds.

Their messages on the website today read as follows:

Message from Shane Concerning JumpCon Boston
Submitted by admin on Tue, 07/15/2008 - 13:36

* Boston

Announcement to fans coming to JumpCon Boston:

I regret to announce the cancellation of our Boston event. Many factors that needed to come together
to make it happen simply did not. We tried everything humanly possible and
were unable to overcome the insurmountable obstacles. This is not to say
that I don't take the blame myself, I do. I wanted to see this succeed so
badly that I was blinded to some warning signs that should have been
obvious. If I have learned anything through this process it's that running a...
(Read the rest at their site)


A Message from Fernando Martinez
Submitted by admin on Tue, 07/15/2008 - 13:47

* Boston

To all fandom:

Please be advised that despite all my efforts to try to salvage Jumpcon, as of today - I see absolutely no chance of this event happening.

When I was hired by Jumpcon, I was assured that the Boston event would happen and that the funding was all arranged. I spent countless days and hours negotiating new appearance contracts with the stars and their agents to try to save the event, only to find that Jumpcon was unable to fulfill it's financial obligations to the stars after all.

I regret that the stars were financially harmed by not being paid their appearance fees or cancellation fees.
I regret that the stars representatives, who were so nice and gracious, were not paid for their time and ended up looking bad to their clients. And I especially regret that the fans were harmed financially and (although not intentionally) were betrayed when they placed their trust in Jumpcon. I have been promised by Shane at Jumpcon that he would return every penny to the fans, I hope that is one promise he can keep. (Read the rest on their site.)

Moving up on Google

I just did a Google search on Peter Woodward, and to my surprise the Peter Woodward Photo Collective (of which I am co-admin) came up on the first page of hits.

At 13th from the top we came in after PeterWoodward.com (as it should be), IMDB.com, Wikipedia, some hits for unrelated people by the same name, a YouTube link, some bios on various film sites, and an article in The Galactic Inquisitor Online asking whether or not Peter Woodward can sing.

So, we're in good company.

Random pondering on names

Just found out Peter Murphy is going to be in Minneapolis on June 16th, so my coworker and I are going to go see that show. I haven't seen him in concert since the Bauhaus reunion tour. I get to see my two favorite (living) people named Peter in two months. Peter Murphy in June, and Peter Woodward in July. How lucky is that?!?

How is it I'm so often fascinated by men named Peter? Peter Woodward. Peter Murphy. Peter Cushing. Peter Lorre. I have a few photos of each of these men in my celeb folder on my computer, and framed photos of P. Lorre and P. Murphy on my walls (the latter is autographed).

I can't think of any other celebrities who interest me enough to have saved a photo or two here and there who have names that repeat. A quick inventory turns up:

• Adam Baldwin
• Alan Rickman
• Boris Karloff
• Christian Bale
• Christopher Lee
• Derek Jakobi
• Frank Langella
• Gary Oldman
• George Takei (primarily a voice fixation)
• Hugo Weaving
• Ian McKellen
• James Callis
• Jeremy Irons
• Johnny Depp
• Ken Watanabe
• Liam Neeson
• Nigel Bennett
• Richard Armitage (the actor, not the former US Deputy Secretary of State)
• Rutger Hauer
  
• Yul Brynner

Add a couple of random photos of Milo Ventimiglia, Sendhil Ramamurthy, David Bowie, and Anthony Bourdain, and one single shot of Jason Isaacs. That list covers all of the male faces of interest in my photo files... No name repeats except for Peter.

Note: Of all the above mentioned photos, the only ones I took myself are the shots of Tony Bourdain. I'm no paparazzo. I just click and save the occasional photo off the intertubes.

Zero G interview part 2

I'm tuned in again to Aussie radio thanks to the wonder of the internets, listening to the Zero G show on 3RRR FM. They've just wrapped up an interview with Peter Woodward, part two of the interview they aired last week. I especially enjoyed Rob Jan and Gail Adams' questions, as they avoided the usual set that interviewers default to when they catch Peter. Rob and Gail had obviously done their homework and kept the dialog flowing in a variety of interesting directions the whole length of the interview.

I particularly enjoyed listening to them discuss the ways Hollywood rewrites history in movies that are presented as "historical" films. They mentioned The Patriot and U-571 in particular, and I'd've been delighted to hear an entire hour of where that conversation could have gone if they'd had the time to run with it.

(edit: Did I say an entire hour? I think that could've been interesting for the better part of an evening, at least.)

RRR

Listening to the second half of the Zero G show now as I type.

The Peter Woodward interview was delightful! What a delightful and animated interviewee Peter was. One thing he talked about was his appreciation of scifi-fantasy fans and history buffs who get out there and go to cons, reenact battles, and such, rather than just sitting in front of a television. Being one of those geeks from time to time myself, it was nice to hear a star not snubbing such fans as a bunch of nuts.

Rob Jan and Gail Adams did a great job of interviewing Peter. They asked some really intelligent and interesting questions. I may just become a regular listener, now that I know the show is on at a humane hour here. Quite a fun show!

Looking forward to next week and the second half of the show. Have to remember that we'll be doing the daylight savings time thing next week, so I'll need to tune in an hour later.

Zero G on Triple R FM

I'm logged in to the website for Triple R FM to listen to this week's Zero G program. I have it on good authority (i.e. a post by Rob Jan on the Peter Woodward Photo Collective) that there will be a two part interview with Peter Woodward aired this week and next. Lucky for me, Monday afternoon there is a reasonable hour Sunday night here, so I get to listen to it via the magical tubes of the interweb.

Ack! It's starting! Gotta go.

Peter Woodward Photo Collective

GAIL & GALEN: THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY....!!!
Originally uploaded by zero g

My friend, who's flickr id is Scandaldancer, came up with the brilliant idea of putting together the first (and only that I know of) flickr pool in honor of Peter Woodward. The pool is called the Peter Woodward Photo Collective. We're co-admins, but she did much of the work behind the scenes to get the pool up and running.

The above photo is from the pool's first member, Zero G.

It's been fun flitting through searches on flickr and my already found favorites to find photos to invite to the pool.

Busy week

Zathras (and Talia's tail)
Originally uploaded by Pockafwye

Zathras has moved into the B5 Girlies' home now. The lady rats have been busy sniffing him and making sure he knows he's at the bottom of the pecking order. Lots of squeaks, sniffing and jumping around happening. Pretty normal getting to know each other stuff. Even with the girlies asserting themselves, he's obviously much more comfortable in the new cage than he was on his own. In the smaller wire cage on his own he was pretty timid about exploring. Now, in the big rattie habitat, he's actively checking out his surroundings and roaming around, as well as coming out to meet us when we open the doors.

On the sleep front, I've gotten pretty tired (no pun intended) of the constant nightmares and disturbing dreams. It makes the sleep I get a whole lot less restful.

I've started taking Qigong classes again. I'm happy to say I hadn't forgotten all of what I learned before. And this time something started to click. I could finally feel myself understanding on a physical level. I still say I had no idea how hard it could be to do so little. But my legs shook a little less this time, and I didn't feel so much like I was fighting to relax in the right spots without falling over. I'm really looking forward to practicing, now that I'm kind of "getting it."

My Honey was "downsized" at the end of December. He lost no time getting his resume out, and has been taking calls from potential employers and interviewing left and right over the last two weeks. He got his first job offer today. It's for a short contract, which isn't really what he had in mind. But it was a boost for the morale to get an offer before he'd even received his severance check. More interviews tomorrow.

In other news, I've decided to spend my birthday at a sci-fi convention this year; Jumpcon. It's not until July, so I have time to test my very rusty costuming skills to see if I'm still up to coming up with something fun to wear. I've got some ideas, and a brilliant friend with l33t costuming skillz way beyond mine has been helping me brainstorm. The plan is to...

ok... have to pause here for a minute... Jebeker is laying stretched out on the floor in front of me, pink tummy as cute as can be, fast asleep... have to pause to appreciate the adorable flopped kitty.

[pause]

Ok. I'm back. The plan is to keep things simple. Not so much a full out costume as a sci-fi-esque outfit. The wheels are turning.

Did I mention that Peter Woodward will be at this convention? Does this have anything with my excitement about the con this many months out? Just a little bit excited?

Yup.

Ok, it's getting late, but this post wouldn't be complete without a nod to the weather. According to NOAA we're going to have a high tomorrow (Friday) of 1°F (-17°C). Expected wind chills of -17° F or even -25° F. Here in the Twin Cities. And according to the local weather experts it's going to get quite a bit colder on Saturday. It's going to be one of those weekends that really reminds me that I'm not in California any more. Brrrr!

Yeah, yeah. I know. There are lots of colder places. But even the locals are talking about the cold with excitement in their voices. Comparing notes about which cities in the state are already much colder than the others, with obvious pride. I may have to make a forray out into public during the coldest part of the weekend just too see what Minnesotans dress like when they willingly admit that it's actually gotten cold.