Not About to Freak Out

Okay, so I skipped a few days in my A to Z blogging. So what. It seems I never got on the official A to Z board, so I don’t think they give a damn what I’m doing.

Do you want the truth of why I haven’t blogged in the last few days or a nice story?

Okay, a nice story it is!

I woke up on Thursday morning last week, and not only did I realize my income tax return was as close to zero as I’ve ever gotten it ($12.00) — yeah, that’s where I don’t have to pay, and the damn government doesn’t get to keep much of my money interest free — but I also made a trip down to the local convenience store where I purchased a lottery ticket. I have not done that in, oh never mind, I just haven’t done it in a long time. Last time I did it, I bought five tickets, and when none of them were winners, I stuck them above the radio in my car where they stayed for about three years so I wouldn’t be so stupid to pay a voluntary tax ever again.

Ever again came the other day and there I was buying a ticket, but this time I got lucky. Yeah, that’s right. I won some money. How much? Enough that I can do whatever I want now. I may even go to London to watch a performance of Richard Armitage in The Crucible. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled by that. And the good news is that I can buy like two weeks or maybe even a month’s worth of tickets in case he happens to get sick for a few nights while I’m there. Wait. That doesn’t sound quite right. Don’t tell SO I said that or that I just can’t stop looking at this:

WCRich3wm
click for the big version

Rich,

I know you’re smiling just thinking about my coming to London. Yeah, c’mon, I know it. :D

But I have some bad news. I really didn’t win anything, and I haven’t been around because I’ve been sick as a dog. I’m not sure how sick dogs can get, but it must be bad ’cause this has been a real ass kicker.

Maybe I’ll be fit by the time Comic-Con rolls around — if you’re going. If you’re not, then I might get sick again.

Enough of my bellyachin’, I hope WonderCon was a kick for you. If that picture is any indication, it was. Oh wait. I happened to see a video that I may razz you about later. I think a few bloggers have already, but I may need to weigh in as well. :D

Signed,
A crazy fan who is not crazy about the flu.

P.S. I hope sometime in the near future I can smile like you.

P.P.S. I’ll bet the Crinkle Zone has wet their pants over this photo.

Candid shot courtesy of Heather (that girl needs a website. :D).

April 21, 2014
Categories: Black Sky (Into the Storm), Interviews . Tags: , , , , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 12 Comments

Know Surprises

Richard Armitage with bedroom eyesNow that we’re reasonably sure Richard Armitage will be starring in The Old Vic’s version of The Crucible, this probably means no RA at Comic-Con in San Diego. Yep, I’m thinking that may be what it means. Unless he got two days off to make a jaunt across the pond. If he does come to the Con, he probably won’t be there on Saturday but rather Thursday, since Saturdays are big days in the theater. Or am I wrong about this?

Yeah, I think the group in London will try to accommodate a trip to Cali — at least mid-week so he can promote Into the Storm. Unless his last minute appearance at Cinema-Con in Las Vegas was a trade-off for not appearing in San Diego.

Then again, I could be so out in left field, because last time I checked, Peter Jackson is no pushover, and he’s not going to have a skeleton crew at Comic-Con and certainly not doing his thing on Thursday. It will be Saturday for PJ and company, and not to mention that Richard Armitage seems to be the point man for pushing The Hobbit. But maybe that was also a trade-off, so that Richard is getting it out of the way and will be free all summer. I kind of doubt that.

Or maybe it’s either/or. He gets to be there on Thursday or Saturday but not both. Or maybe both PJ and Todd have their promotions running on Saturday. I’m so confused.

My gut: if he made an agreement with Peter Jackson to be there for The Hobbit, he will be. How can I say that? Hmm, Peter Jackson, the West End, Peter Jackson, the West End. Uh yeah, it’s Peter Jackson. Whether fair or not, that’s probably reality.

Whatever happens, it’s probably not a good idea for fans to buy tickets to The Crucible from July 23-28.* Can you imagine how pissed off you would be if you did and he was an ocean away? Yeah, consider this post a public service.

Other than that, the photo above is an interesting pick for The Mail. Is he a deer caught in the glare of the paparazzi or are those the bedroom eyes that get John Proctor and the rest of Salem in trouble? ;-)
‘

And a thank you to Baz Bamigboye for the latest ripple effect. Now if he could just put his ear to the ground and answer my musing…

edit: it just occurred to me I may have made an error in this piece because The Old Vic is not technically in the West End. It’s not even in the area known as Theatreland. I’m doing this entirely from memory, so if anyone knows, educate me please. I don’t have time to look it up! :)

* those blackout dates are subject to change based on the confirmed news we hear; however, it’s good to keep in mind that the Into the Storm premiere will be coming up not long after Comic-con. The world premiere will be less than two weeks after Comic-Con ends.

April 13, 2014
Categories: Movies, Rumors, Stage Productions . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 35 Comments

A Hole in the Ground

How is it that a person who a little more than a year ago was holding a LEGO in his hands…

200px-thOrinlego

…is now the lead in a history play which is a veiled reference to the hysteria in America during the 50s? Ahh yes, I get it. Ask and ye shall receive. I said Daniel Day-Lewis one too many times. ;-)

Daniel Day-Lewis in The Cruible

Go ahead and click on that photo. You get to see a pretty good “love” scene and back when people still knew the name Winona Ryder. Whatever happened to her anyway? Yeah, I know she had sticky fingers, but what happened to her after that? No, don’t answer. It will just take us off of this serious topic. Other than that, DAMN! that Daniel was hot. He’s still hot in my opinion.

Wait! I just realized there will be no screencaps like this from Richard Armitage’s performance at The Old Vic. Help! I’m already starting to have withdrawal!

Seriously, I understand this move. It is how a person washes the taste of Hobbits out of his psyche.

And that’s my H entry for this April challenge thingy.

April 11, 2014
Categories: Stage Productions, The Hobbit . Tags: , , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 15 Comments

Richard Armitage, the Salesman

I’m pulling a page out of Guylty’s book and doing an image analysis but doing it Frenz style. That’s where my bullshit peddler/detector (you decide) is in overdrive.

Photos do not always convey reality, but whatever they convey, the effect can be profound. Take this photo for example:

Embed from Getty Images
[viewing tip that’s legal: increase the view in your browser. The original image is such a large format, that you can blow this up quite a bit to see the detail]

If I were a betting person, I would bet this photo does more to entice most of you to go see Into the Storm than any trailer ever will. :D

Yes, that’s the end of my analysis. Do I have to spell it out? Seriously, do I have to connect the dots? I didn’t think so.

Additionally: Poor Steve Quale out there trying to be serious.

And now a letter to Todd Garner:

Dear Mr. Garner,

If you want the Army to turn out en masse, ensure more photos like this make it to the public’s eyes. Remember what you said about Richard Armitage being dreamy? Well, Sarah is certainly doing her part to respond, and I can hear the collective sighs as I type this.

Signed,
A Crazy Fan who is ready to take the ride come August

new tag: the dreamy factor

edit: another one. Not with quite the impact, but you get the idea.

Embed from Getty Images

second edit: oh dear lord, this is how rumors get started. I can practically feel the heat coming off this one.

Richard Armitage Sarah Wayne Callies Cinema Con
Courtesy of the Anglophile Channel

March 29, 2014
Categories: Black Sky (Into the Storm), Fandom, Movies . Tags: , , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 94 Comments

Juxtaposition in the ‘Hood

A new Richard Armitage photo surfaced from @UrbanAtShedCrew, and I have all kinds of good vibes about this.

Richard Armitage Urban and the Shed Crew

Thoughts of Richard playing the scruff, out of his element — or is he? I absolutely adore this. Can hardly wait even though I realize it may not play in the U.S. quickly. Since when has that ever stopped any of us? And for anyone reading who may be alarmed by that statement, I always buy the DVD and usually more than one. It’s my understanding that many, many fans do this. But best of all, we are willing to talk and talk and talk about these vehicles.

Meanwhile, just one of the tweets inuring us to the culture of Urban and the Crew:

Interesting stuff to read as I wait for my book to get here.

And the Into the Storm trailer!

Yeah, Rich!

All of a sudden we have a few things to look forward to. I knew it. I knew it. Yes, I’m gloating. I knew you weren’t sitting on your duff. Have you ever been able to do that? Seriously, man, have you ever been able to sit still?

Somehow I doubt it, and I would bet there’s some really fine looking home improvements created in between all of these theatrical offerings when you were supposedly having your “down time.” :D

Signed,
A fan crazy about damaged characters.

P.S. You have always done a wonderful job with redemption stories. I really cannot wait to see this. Sue me if I’m getting ahead of myself.

March 21, 2014
Categories: Black Sky (Into the Storm), Movies, Urban and the Shed Crew . Tags: , , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 7 Comments

If You Can’t Lick ‘Em, Join ‘Em

Sharing is a fairly new business model, and it’s one that takes some outfits awhile to embrace. Guylty has a very significant post at her blog about Getty Images finally coming around to the 21st century in its thinking. They have changed their policy about the availability of their images. And for this blogger, it’s very welcome news.

I have had Getty Images go through my entire blog on two occasions in the last four years. The first time was early in the life of this blog. The second time was just a few months ago, which I talked about as a potential pitfall of blogging. The good news is I didn’t infringe. But if I even thought about it over the years, I had only to remember that once over I received early on to know I was not going to do something that even came close.

An embed using the instructions from Guytly’s post:

Embed from Getty Images

This was easy. Thank you, Guytly for the heads up!

March 6, 2014
Categories: Fandom . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 2 Comments

RA’s Diary — Gluteal Dreams

Whenever I think of Richard Armitage these days, I mostly think what he may be doing about his career. I also remember he’s a sly one at times as he was when he was shooting Captain America. No one knew about that until he was in the middle of it, and I chuckled to myself at the time and then I wrote this:


RA’s Diary

Entry — On Location with Captain America

The afternoon before my shoot:

I finally got to Manchester and met with the production people. It was fantastic to be back on a movie set. Much different from “Frozen.” So much has changed in just a few years, and this picture has some serious money behind it. When I was younger, I’m not sure I cared about that, but now? I understand the importance of capitalizing these things after all of the legwork I’ve done on Richard III. I will definitely be taking notes. Wonder what Dad would think of a comic book version of RIII? No, no, I could never do that, but damn that would be funny. Visions of Monty Python run through my head.

My only real irritation right now is the potential for a gaggle of women to show up on the fringes of the set. Please God don’t let that happen. I already have too many friends trying to take the mickey out of me about that, and it’s hard to be taken seriously when a bunch of middle-aged women indulging their fantasies are standing around. And I just want to work without having to be cordial. But I will be polite if need be because it’s my middle name. I’ve certainly had that beat into my head. As it is the hair on the back of my neck was on end at one point when I was standing in the street getting instructions about my shoot tomorrow. Thankfully, I saw no women and only a couple of guys taking video from their cameras. I almost hate video cameras.

20100921-video1-620x414-captainamerica-hobbsy
[click to enlarge]

The next evening:

One of those guys put video on YouTube, and there I am in the middle of it. I tried to make myself smaller when I caught them in my peripheral vision, but I’ve never been able to scrunch down enough to hide. What was I thinking? And I felt like I was 16 again and couldn’t decide between embracing my size and wanting to be invisible. Even if I could have made myself shorter, I guess my arse is recognizable and some make a study of it. There is that one blogger who goes on about my thighs, which I guess are part of my arse, and yeah, when I wore black leather there were a lot of flattering comments. Maybe it’s not so bad, and I didn’t really mind my prison scene or my boiler suit scene. That did make me feel good for a while, and of course there was my scene with Julie. But those were my naked arse and not my covered arse. Shit! Why did I have to wear that stupid jacket? I need some long coats and a few more hats.

Sorry but I had to get inside Richard’s head again. It helps me stay in touch with my X chromosomes.

For some who have no sense of humor or who are action fans, YES, this is a fake entry.

Disclaimer:

At no time in the writing of this entry did I imagine I was really speaking for Richard Armitage nor did I deceive myself into thinking I really know his thoughts. Therefore, there is no need to involve his agent or publicist in what is supposed to be humorous. Of course I realize tone on the net is not always properly conveyed, and hey, I’m not a writer (I just have lots of crap I want to say), so I’m not taking the chance of being misconstrued.

Have a nice day. :D

Note: I’m blaming my lack of inhibition about posting this on my cold medicine and having just read James Franco’s Actor’s Anonymous. ;p

Photo courtesy of Hobbsy and his video from whence the photo was taken, if you’re interested. :D

February 21, 2014
Categories: Captain America, Fandom, Movies . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 24 Comments

You All Are Great!

There have been so many lovely notes about the RAflash event. Thank you for that, and thank you to all who are participating! People are finding it very gratifying to write out their stories. Good! I hope that is a wonderful exercise for everyone. Who knows, we may get a blog or two out of this. :D

In the last few days I’ve received quite a few notes from people wanting to participate but unable to make the deadline. They have also sensed it would be gratifying. So here’s my response to them, screw the deadline. If you want to submit your Richard Armitage story, do it! Submission information is here.

And for those on the fence about it, you can publish anonymously to the RAFlash site, or you can publish to the RAflash site and link your blog. Some blogs are not a good fit for these pieces, so just because you have a blog doesn’t mean you have to publish there. You’re welcome to publish directly to RAflash. Also, if you have already written your story elsewhere, it can be linked from the RAflash site, or you can put an update on it and link the previous article or just republish. It doesn’t matter. It’s your choice. Just remember the point is for us to share our stories of what we’ve seen that’s moved us with some particular emphasis on what moved us initially.

There will be many more posts coming today and probably tomorrow and more thank yous on Monday to those who have helped pull this off, but for now I wanted to acknowledge readers and writers and possible writers.

And if someone slips in a post or two about the Pinter/Proust reading, I’ll probably give that priority. But the order of these posts for the most part doesn’t really matter. They are timely thoughts others can read and feel a good about what they see as well no matter when they read.

Speaking of feeling good, I would have loved to have seen this live!

Richard Armitage - Swann
[click to enlarge]

January 19, 2014
Categories: Fandom, Stage Productions . Tags: , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 7 Comments

There Will Be Pictures or Aspiring Armitage Part II ?

December 24, 2013

Richard Armitage YowzaA year ago I gave my opinion of the marketing of Richard Armitage. I still feel that way as the deluge of photos of him are released on the Web, but I’m a realist and figured if I didn’t want to just dig my heels in about my opinion, I could have some fun with this. Obviously, I chose the latter, and I’m probably always going to choose the latter, and when I don’t choose the latter, it would be just one continuous bitch session. That’s no fun.

But while I’m on this subject, I think I will vent just a wee bit.

I hope after four years (January 2011 to December 2014) of his life being invested in The Hobbit, that Richard Armitage gets some really fine roles. I long to see him in roles like Daniel Day-Lewis plays or Russell Crowe plays or roles that any number of actors of that caliber often play. Yes, I’ve said this before, but I’m compelled to say it again. This means I welcome him playing ugly and damaged characters, and he could shave his head and truthfully, it wouldn’t make me drink. I think it would some fans, and I understand that. When I was first a fan (too long ago to admit at the moment), I didn’t want to see him like that either although Sparkhouse was the role that sold me as a fan for life, and honestly, they could have ditched the makeover and it would have been a better show. Anyway, I’m long past needing to see the heartthrob, and I’m in the minority. But I can’t change the fact I’m ready for him getting down and dirty in some roles about the human condition.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to laugh and have fun with the plastic period and hope that he’s still in the mode of thoughtfully assessing what to do next.

And yes, I’ve wondered at times if Richard Armitage really is about 10 years or more behind in terms of life’s experiences. It’s hard to believe that, but sometimes I do think he’s naive and is more like a 20 something coming into notoriety instead of a man in his early 40s. That is not a criticism of him. Not at all. It’s merely an assessment, and most of the time he is so level headed. I guess I just really do hate to see him succumbing to something much younger actors succumb to and then have to work their way out of — the marketing of shallowness that others seem eager to foist on us.

If I had wanted to just be a fan of someone who had some really fine beefcake, or who was drop dead gorgeous, there was plenty to choose from. Plenty. I don’t see him that way or rather that’s not all there is to him, and it’s not the best part, but it seems to be mostly what we’re seeing lately. To his credit, he does try to elevate most discussion. I realize that and do give him tons of credit. I just hate like hell he has to go through the Hollywood machine to find great roles. Does it have to be that way? I really wonder.

edit: I started to call this “Becoming Jane.” :D No offense, Jane. I’m just teasing, but I also feel more as you do as I go on.

I will try to limit my criticism of the marketing ’cause I really do know it’s not fun to read this.

December 24, 2013
Categories: Fandom, Movies, The Hobbit . Tags: , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 49 Comments

Richard’s Wish

I was watching this the other day, and I literally (yes, I mean literally in that I really) laughed out loud. :D

I understand Richard would like for the Army to get drunk. If he happens to be researching, I have some news about this desire. A cocktail won’t do it, but I have just the thing to make us get completely blitzed, and I started to second guess this idea until I saw this:

Richard Armitage Yowza

No second guessing now. I know there’s a way to make us all get drunk.

Dear Rich,

If you want to ensure we get blasted, I have a tip. Merely shave your head. You do that, and I guarantee you will drive most of the fans to drink.

I’m trying to imagine this picture with you sans hair. Phew. Even the thought of that makes me want to reach for some alcohol.

Signed,
A crazy fan, who adores your hair! :D

P.S. It would be a total hoot if you really did shave your head. I expect it one day if you’re a serious actor and especially if you want to make good on going ugly and damaged. ;-)

P.P.S. Leaving the snark for a moment. As much as I love your hair, I would love to see you in the ugly and damaged roles. Something real. Bring it on.

December 23, 2013
Categories: Fandom, PHWOAR! . Tags: , , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 12 Comments

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