This photo popped up again yesterday on Twitter in a convo with Mark Atkins himself, Richard Armitage’s scale double in TH and a man with his own army now–Atkins’ Army. I love this picture on so many levels: the camaraderie visible between these two hard-working actors, the joie de vivre we see on those faces, Mr. Armitage’s big goofy grin and those giant thumbs (Servetus surely approves); the knowledge they are taking part in a charitable fundraiser and clearly having fun while doing good.
And it doesn’t hurt that they are a couple of hotties, either. Double your pleasure, double your fun.
Our word for the day isDon Juan (noun): an obsessed womanizer. See Lee Preston, lifeguard, (very) personal trainer and total flirty-girty in series 5 of ColdFeet. Lee has never met a woman he wouldn’t be happy to seduce, methinks. And he’s very good at it, with that deceptively angelic face, those puppy-dog eyes. engaging grins and the killer bod.
The original Don Juan was, of course, a legendary 14th century Spanish nobleman, who devoted his life to seducing women. His story has been portrayed by many authors and composers, amongst them Moliere, Mozart, Byron and Shaw. But did any of their incarnations of the legendary lover wear midnight blue Speedos and look like this?
I think not.
One of the things I find delicious about this character is that the actor behind it is so gorgeous, sexy and charismatic he could have been a very successful womanizer, a veritable Don Juan, like Lee, if he so chose that road. But he isn’t and he didn’t and I love him all the more for it.
As for Lee, I do think he could be a heck of a good time for a girl–as long as she took proper precautions and never expected more than a good time. Mr. Preston is not marriage or long-term partnership material.
But he is awfully pretty (even if I prefer the more mature beauty of Mr. Armitage these days).
I’ve been listening to a song by Gin Wigmore which is being used in the promos for the new season of “Dallas.”
Even though it’s sung by a woman with a female POV, some of the lyrics really remind me of some of you-know-who’s ChaRActers:
Make me mad, I’m not here to please Paint me in a corner but my colour comes back Once you go black, you never go back I’m a black sheep I’m a black sheep
And those words dancing in my head led me to do some photo editing with some of RA’s sexy “bad boy” blokes who love to dress in black. And we, of course, love them in their black shirts and black leather . . .
It’s a blustery, cold, wet day here in Lower Alabama. Upper Alabama just may get some wet snow out of this massive storm system moving across the Southeast.
A day to stay in with a big mug of coffee and do some Richarding! Last night I was joking on Twitter about feeling like Pavlov’s dog. You know, any sight or hearing or mention of a certain TDHBEW, and I practically start drooling.
So what did I see in my inbox this morning? My A.Word.A.Day email. And what was the word, you ask? Heeheehee.
Salivate: (verb) (1) to show great relish in anticipation of something desirable. (2) to produce saliva. From the Latin salivare (to salivate). Earliest documented use: 1669.
Let me say I laughed aloud. Coincidence? Fate? Who knows. But it’s a perfect word for the effect Mr. A and his chaRActers have on me. I can feel my eyes light up, my lips part as I softly, rapturously exhale, a fatuous grin crossing my face when I see images like this:
So, do you salivate when you see/hear/contemplate Mr. A and his sensational selection of alluring, adorable, amazing ChaRActers?
Just in time for the holidays, the nice people over at Muvee Reveal Technologies got the grinches out of their system and allowed me to upload the Retro video style pack to this computer (thank you so much, Patrick Bello, for your able assistance. I hope Santa was good to you). And then my Christmas angel allowed me to not only make a vid, but to upload it from home without a single hitch! So here’s another little Christmas treat for RA fans. It’s very tongue-in-cheek fun featuring our reluctant sex symbol himself. I hope you enjoy!
WARNING: This “Catwalk” styling does feature flashing lights, stars and other effects that may bother some people
It’s now past 12 here in Lower Alabama and Christmas morning has officially arrived. Alabama was the first state in the U.S. to make Christmas an official holiday. We have always loved our celebrations here–families gathering to feast from sideboards groaning from the number of dishes upon them, houses decked out festively, people decked out just as festively in their Christmas ties and appliqued cardigans. We like to do it up right!
Small town Christmas parades, folks getting out at night just to drive around and enjoy all those pretty lights . . . church pageants with children sporting tinsel halos and cardboard wings, bathrobes and yarn beards. Even if they fluff their lines, it doesn’t matter. They delight us.
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a blessed, happy, healthy, inspiring year to come. And Happy Hobbit-viewing to our friends Down Under as TH arrives in theatres for Boxing Day!
I don’t know that I will get much posted in the morning before leaving for Prattville, so let’s get into some holiday feasting tonight. I’ll share our experiences watching The Hobbit with you later tomorrow. Have a wonderful Sunday/Monday, everyone!
Maybe tomorrow. Definitely Sunday. But soon. And from all the lovely comments I am seeing on Twitter and here at the blog, I think it’s going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
I started off this morning with a dream about Richard Armitage. I kept floating in and out of consciousness. My conscious mind kept telling my unconscious mind to take over again because, quite frankly, I didn’t want the dream to end. Richard was wearing his Glamour UK photo spread outfit. He never took off a single piece of clothing but it was an incredibly. sexy. dream. Oh, Richard–you do know how to stir a woman.
Literally, my dream man this morning.
I’d had a night where pain mimicking an unhappy gall bladder kept me awake longer than I’d hoped (couldn’t have been the gall bladder since I haven’t possessed one for years and the pain was on the wrong side of the body anyway). Let’s say that dream was very, very welcome.
And it was just the beginning of welcome events. I opened up my e-mail and discovered my dear friend Leigh was going to get to see The Hobbit in English after all! A couple of days ago it appeared as if it just wasn’t going to happen. Now it seems she and Noemi will see Thorin in all his big screen glory in lovely Sevilla next week. Happy, happy, joy, joy indeed!
And then before you know it ( I had slept in rather late) I was tuning in to the live stream from the red green carpet in London. And it was working. OK, the picture quality wasn’t great, but the lack of stutters and almost non-existent buffering was simply heavenly for me. I was seeing and hearing what fellow RA aficionados on Twitter were with no delays or missing pieces. Hurray!
Of course, I was simply dying to see our Richard . . . and he was drop-dead gorgeous, too. I loved his latest designer threads, an impeccably tailored tux with a shawl collar, crisp white pleated shirt and nice, big bow tie (as the latest incarnation of Doctor Who will tell you, bow ties are cool).
Judiang loved it so much she named the tux Francois. I simply call it devastating. Mr. Movie Star.
We got a nice interview with some new tidbits–a little longer than some of the other actors got, I do believe–with the emcee Alex Dane. And we discovered RA had a dream last night, too, although his was all about getting lost and not being able to find the premiere venue. Bless his heart.
Well, you did find it, RA, and this night was all true. You may not be a great warrior or noble dwarf, but you are an incredible actor, lovely man and undeniably a movie star, my dear.
And then Richard stood in that long, long line of folks who got to shake hands and chat with royalty–Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge.
As with everyone else, I longed to know just what the Handsome Prince of Players and the Handsome Prince talked about.
I was so proud of Richard in that moment I could not resist shedding a few tears. It didn’t help matters any when I realized that sweet-looking white-haired lady standing behind him bore a striking resemblance to Richard. Yup, it would appear his mum was there for that unforgettable moment.
I thought of my mother’s own beautiful silver-white locks, and how I enjoyed taking her to special events with me. Of how proud she was of my accomplishments, which were chicken feed compared to Richard’s. And so I cried some more–tears of remembrance, of joy and gratitude for Richard and his family and this celebratory occasion. I’m just a big ol’ sentimental fool.
What an amazing two weeks you’ve had, my dear Richard. You’ve globe-trotted around this world, done umpteen interviews, been asked some of the same questions just a little too often, yet always managed to remain patient, modest, good-humoured and gentlemanly about it all. And how could you look so fresh at times on what had to be insufficient sleep? And when you’ve shown us your flirtatious side–oh, mercy me!!
You’ve dazzled us with your designer duds, you clotheshorse, you. You’ve worn the clothes, they haven’t worn you, and you were polished, confident, elegant and yet edgy. We couldn’t look away. But then, why would we want to?
Oh, yes, Mr. A, more and more people are taking notice, taking an interest in you. There’s a good reason my viewing numbers shot up more than 45 percent, why your rank at IMDB keeps rising; the world is finally waking up to the gem that is Richard Armitage.
I know your family has to be immensely proud of you. I know I am.
Oh, and one more thing–I also won four IMAX tickets via Twitter and Air New Zealand today and the vouchers don’t expire until Dec. 31, 2013. So it really has been a great day for this RA fan. I hope yours has been, too.
(And Richard, if you’d like to revisit my dreams tonight, please, be my guest.)
I borrowed some quotes by Richard from dear Ali at Richard Armitage Net pertaining to his transformation into Thorin Oakenshield.
“I started to have Thorin’s dreams, I had dreams of entering Erebor for the first time because that’s what he dreams about — so I had dreams of that.”~~Richard Armitage
Once again, Richard became totally immersed in his character, to the point of dreaming Thorin’s dreams, just as he once dreamed John Porter’s.
Richard being transformed into Thorin, a process that took several hours each morning.
“The first time I was ever created into a dwarf, it was quite shocking. I remember they did like a time-lapse photography of the process and it took something in the region of 4 1/2 hours,” Armitage — who stands 6-foot-2-inches in real life, but was shrunken through movie magic for the film — told UPI at a recent New York news conference.
“I actually kept my eyes shut because I didn’t want to see how it worked and just opened my eyes at the end. It’s very strange when you don’t recognize yourself. And, actually, at that point, it was quite extreme. But they went through a process of sculpting many different kinds of face. I had an amazing sculptor …. who I used to visit at WETA, so he could look at my face and it would help him with his work.
“They eventually found something, which was invisible, but it was still there, still dwarf. And that is down to how amazing WETA is and also Tami Lane, who is an Oscar-winning prosthetics artist, her work is completely invisible. In terms of getting into character, it’s always brilliant when you look in the mirror and don’t really recognize yourself. So, I really enjoyed that side of the process,” said Armitage, who plays dwarf leader Thorin Oakenshield.
Richard had this to say about Thorin’s gritty character:
Whenever I play characters that are grubby and grungy it just feels better maybe because I’m a Northerner and always meant to have dirty hands.
All I can say is, Richard, you manage to look so divine when you are grubby, dirty, and grungy. It’s amazing . . . sort of like the way you look in this photo. This is only–what–the third or fourth time I’ve posted it, right?
“Interestingly…the translation of Thráin (Thorin’s father) is ‘yearner’ and Thorin is ‘darer.’ Thráin is the one that yearned for it, but wouldn’t achieve it. Thorin is the one that would dare to do it.”
Let’s see . . . how many days now until we see The Hobbit?
Last night I was joking on Twitter about feeling like 
