Kate & Leopold (2001) dir. by James Mangold
“All this time I thought that I had pretzled fate and it had to be untwisted. But what I never considered is that the whole thing is a pretzel. A beautiful 4D pretzel of kismetic inevitability … I was supposed to go back. He was supposed to come forward, then he was supposed to go back again and … so was she.”
KATE & LEOPOLD (2001)
HUGH JACKMAN as LEOPOLD || Kate & Leopold (2001)
(for @madamewriterofwrongs and @oneawkwardcookie)
[Image ID: seven gifs of Hugh Jackman as Leopold from Kate & Leopold:
GIF 1: Leopold blinking twice with a tight smile as he meets one of his potential suitors.
GIF 2: Leopold talking to Kate about Stuart’s warning that she’s dangerous.
GIF 3: Leopold telling the kid a story, a forlorn look in his eyes as he talks about a boy who had never met any girl, even his mother.
GIF 4: Leopold on the camera screen as he films the advertisement for diet butter.
GIF 5: Leopold looking away from JJ as the other man fumbles with the opera references, laughing to himself before turning to look at Kate.
GIF 6: Leopold telling Charlie that he is the man who loves his sister, a small, contented smile flitting across his mouth.
GIF 7: Leopold calling Kate’s name, his throat and jaw working with nervous energy.
/end ID]
Before writing Les Mis, Hugo’s beloved 19-year-old daughter Leopoldine tragically drowned. As a result Les Mis is full of drowning imagery— drowning as a a symbol of impossible grief and loss, drowning as a symbol of being left behind by a society that doesn’t care about protecting your life, drowning as a method of suicide.
The les mis letters chapter today is the first chapter where Hugo highlights the drowning imagery that becomes central to the rest of the novel. The horrible symbolic death Valjean suffers as a result of being entirely isolated and forgotten by a society that doesn’t value his life is also foreshadowing of Javert’s eventual death.
Throughout the novel, Eponine also frequently talks about her desire to drown herself in the Seine; Thenardier monologues about how “the river is the true grave” and when bodies fall in it “justice makes no inquiries;” later Valjean escapes prison by faking his death by drowning, and so on and so on. There’s this emphasis that drowning doesn’t just mean death, it means erasing yourself from existence. It means you’re forgotten.
One of the saddest references to the death of Leopoldine is the way Valjean and Javert learn about the other’s death (or “death.”)
Hugo learned about his daughter’s death not from a family member/friend, but by reading about it in a newspaper. He was on vacation away from his family at the time. He was reading the news in a cafe and happened to stumble on an article about Leopoldine’s horrible tragic drowning, which was how he first learned that she was dead.
When Javert learns about Valjean’s “death” in prison (when Valjean pretends to drown in order to escape), he learns about it by reading it in the newspaper. When Valjean learns about Javert’s death by drowning, he learns about it by reading it in the newspaper.
So…yeah :(. Les Mis is full of all these agonized metaphors around drowning (as a metaphor for death/grief/being entirely forgotten by the people around you) and part of that comes from Hugo’s own deep personal trauma around the death of death of his daughter.
I'm kinda, in the need of an interaction between Monte Cristo and Jean Valjean. I need to see Valjean's face when Edmond is explaining his vengeance plan like, "and then I scaped prison and pretended to be someone else, and then I became wealthy as hell, and then I was going to kill the son of the man who put me in prison and also happened to be son of the love of my life, but then I didn't kill him, and then..." while Valjean is just like, "what the actual hell????"
Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy - Jean Valjean et Cosette (ca. 1879)
The Louvre, or the Louvre Museum, is the world’s most-visited museum, and a historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo.
Source: tumblr.com
A priest, a Baptist minister, and a rabbit walk into the Red Cross to donate blood
The nurse asks, what’s your blood type?
The rabbit says, “I’m probably a Type O”
Saddest thing ever is reading an academic paper about a threatened or declining species where you can tell the author is really trying to come up with ways the animal could hypothetically be useful to humans in a desperate attempt to get someone to care. Nobody gives a shit about the animals that “don’t affect” us and it seriously breaks my heart
“No I can’t come out tonight I’m sobbing about this entomologist’s heartfelt plea for someone to care about an endangered moth”
This is how I learn there's a moth whose tiny caterpillars live exclusively off the old shells of dead tortoises.
[Image description: text from a section titled On Being Endangered: An Afterthought that says:
Realizing that a species is imperiled has broad connotations, given that it tells us something about the plight of nature itself. It reminds us of the need to implement conservation measures and to protect the region of which the species is a part. But aside form the broader picture, species have intrinsic worth and are deserving of preservation. Surely an oddity such as C. vicinella cannot simply be allowed to vanish.
We should speak up on behalf of this little moth, not only because by so doing we would bolster conservation efforts now underway in Florida, [highlighting begins] but because we would be calling attention to the existence of a species that is so infinitely worth knowing. [end highlighting]
But is quaintness all that can be said on behalf of this moth? Does this insect not have hidden value beyond its overt appeal? Does not its silk and glue add, potentially, to its worth? Could these products not be unique in ways that could ultimately prove applicable?
End image description]
because we would be calling attention to the existence of a species that is so infinitely worth knowing
I was so inspired by this I made it into a piece of art for a final in one of my courses for storytelling in conservation
Thank you so much for creating this. One thing I really love about this website is that when any traditionally unlovable species in danger of slipping into history as a barely acknowledged footnote, there are always people here who will take the time to learn about them and love them. To me, that is the internet at its most beautiful.
If you didn’t already send this to authors Dr. Mark and Nancy Deyrup I have a feeling they would really love to see it. I would be happy to email it to them and credit it you if you are comfortable with that, though of course I completely understand if you would rather keep it here on Tumblr. Thank you so much for sharing it with all of us!
I’ve been watching Good Omens for ’ll of about ten minutes and I have to say, I do like the poetry between hell’s most angelic demon and heaven’s most demonic angel coexisting
Through watching the rest of the show I went from “worst demon and worst angel- a demon that is too kind and an angel that is too hedonistic”, to “best demon and best angel- a demon so rebellious he can’t even cooperate with the rebellion and an angel so angelic he was ordered to love humanity and now refuses to stop”, and having finished, now, I’ve found myself resting on “two beings who are in fact very very human and love each other very much”
Yes this is exactly it
I’m not anti-technology, I just think there’s something deeply sick about a society where robots make art and children work in factories.
The golf links lie so near the mill That almost every day The laboring children can look out And see the men at play.
(Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn, c. 1910.)
Plus ça change.
