Dorinda (adnirod)

Finding the 1980s classic The A-Team available for download the other day has got me in a sharing mood, so if you're interested in checking out the first fandom I wrote m/m romance for over 20 years ago (christ on a bike), the first season is available for download here and the second season should be uploaded in the next couple of hours. After that, I'll have to rotate through the other seasons but I'll reblog when I have 3/4 up (and 5 if I can get it in).

What is the A-Team? Well, there's a thorough breakdown of the premise and main characters here if you like, but long story short there was a spate of one-hour action shows in the mid-Eighties that tried to make the American Vietnam War vet into a hero. Yeah, I know. If you can get past that (and fair play if you can't), this one always struck me a little differently.

When I was watching it in its original run at fourteen (and perving over George Peppard), I didn't pick up on just how much the show was aware of its own OTT-ness. In a lot of ways, it's a cartoon - but everyone involved knew it was a cartoon, and played to that in a hundred different ways. There were a lot of jokes and laughs and nods and winks. As an example, here's George in drag showing the baddies who's the boss ass bitch:

Not only that, it was surprisingly anti-establishment and left-wing for an American action show during the Reagan years. The enemies weren't 'street scum' as was standard at that time, but evil capitalists and rednecks. In one ep, for example, the Team goes to the aid of protesting migrant farm workers by robbing the rich landowner's banquet, pelting his minions with cabbages, and helping the workers all over the valley organize a union. The show was utterly ridiculous, but it wasn't without merit, and it was definitely smarter than it looked on the surface.

And then there are these two. Templeton "Faceman" Peck (Dirk Benedict) and HM "Howlin' Mad" Murdock (Dwight Schultz). The stars of the show were definitely Peppard and Mr. T, but as the show went on and it became clear they hated one another's guts, the writing featured Face and Murdock more than I think it would have otherwise. This worked out well for some fans, because these two had chemistry up the wazoo. When I first watched it, I couldn't quite figure out why I loved watching them so much, but when I stumbled across some fic nearly 20 years later, I finally got it. And then I wrote some of my own.

North Algona Wilberforce, Ontario, Canada

“We have a word for that in Japanese,” he said. “It’s called ma. Emptiness. It’s there intentionally.”

Is that like the “pillow words” that separate phrases in Japanese poetry?

“I don’t think it’s like the pillow word.” He clapped his hands three or four times. “The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it’s just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.”

Which helps explain why Miyazaki’s films are more absorbing and involving than the frantic cheerful action in a lot of American animation. I asked him to explain that a little more.

“The people who make the movies are scared of silence, so they want to paper and plaster it over,” he said. “They’re worried that the audience will get bored. They might go up and get some popcorn.

But just because it’s 80 percent intense all the time doesn’t mean the kids are going to bless you with their concentration. What really matters is the underlying emotions–that you never let go of those.

— Roger Ebert in conversation with Hiyao Miyazaki