miscellanium (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
miscellanium) wrote2022-09-08 09:04 pm
miscellanium) wrote2022-09-08 09:04 pm
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mission impossible: commandante (1969)
if i could buy this photo it would go up on the wall with all my others so fucking fast
the "is it worth watching this for lawrence dane" rating: 3.5/5
yeah, it's mission impossible again, but dane plays the main antagonist this episode and he plays it well. this is right around the time he started really maturing as an actor and it shows; it's more than five years before he filmed rituals, so it's still not quite the best he could be but there's a world of difference between this and his performances in the virginian that would have been broadcast just a year prior.
the plot: the gang are tasked with sabotaging an anti-american communist movement in south america. lol. dane plays one of the leaders of this movement and he plays the role with great panache.
i don't formally subscribe to the auteur theory of filmmaking since i feel like it diminishes the amount of collaborative effort that goes into film/television, but actors like dane go a long way in demonstrating the importance of a decent director. i touched on this in my post about dead on target - with a good director, he's absolutely phenomenal. with a crap director, it depends on the source material and/or his chemistry with the other actors. (so, for example, in the clown murders, he does well even though it was released the same year as his unfortunate turn in dead on target. the script of the former is pretty lackluster but he gives it a solid performance. is it because of the more serious source material, a pedestrian-yet-decent director, or something else? food for thought.) i think this is also when we see him finally internalize how to use small details to develop a character and act with his face/eyes versus acting with his whole body as though he were still on a stage. much as william shatner is a douchebag, i think people are a little too hard on him for his acting in star trek: tos - if he had acted like that on a stage at the time he would have been fine. the problem is that the television camera can get a lot closer than a theater audience, lol, so more nuanced performances are ideal for filmed productions.
the content of the episode itself is what lowers the rating; there is SO MUCH dane it'd merit at least a 4 (my heart and loins want to say a 5) but the rest of the episode is more cold war bullshit and boys dicking around with their toys, of course, made weirder by them putting leonard nimoy in yellowface. so on the one hand it's interesting since they've got two people who would be viewed as ethnic minorities by their dominant cultures playing different, more widely-demonized minorities (at the time anyway) in the same room, but on the other, man. yeesh. geez. all they really did to nimoy was make him squint and give him and dane different warmths of brown/grey to make him look more sallow and dane more ruddy in comparison, which is not as bad as it could have been, i guess, though it's still pretty fucking uncomfortable. at least neither of them is forced to ham up the accents - dane kinda tries to put on a vague latin-american accent but it's pretty half-assed and honestly i think that's for the best here, lol. i also love leonard nimoy so it's a little disappointing that this is the only episode where they share screen time.
mission impossible's handling of dane in general is a good illustration of how he was treated as ethnically ambiguous - he was considered "dark" enough to be pigeonholed into playing baddies, but if he made his hair straighter it was easier for people to believe he was "white enough" depending on the episode. (he was born to a lebanese family in quebec, and someone on imdb, discussing a 1975 movie where dane plays a character with an italian name, wrote "Lawrence Dane is exceptional. He must be of Italian origins. Canada has a huge Italian population." and i find this very amusing.) this episode is one of the rare times we get to see his natural hair - we know he straightened it/used product to make it look less curly because in rituals it gets progressively curlier every time it's wet - and while he looks good no matter what i do think the wavy/curly hair is extra cute uwu
we get to see a lot of him in this episode and his body language is extremely sexy - swagger but in a way that feels comfortable, confident, not just posturing. he's in a well-fitted uniform and gets to play with a knife and has a lot of fun little details for the character. truly a pleasure to watch. the rest of the episode is okay. it's not as interesting as the one where the gang builds a fake submarine in a warehouse, alas, but there's enough dane (and nimoy!) content to get us through.
highlight: sir. sir. please. why did you put your hand there and shift your hips like that. sir. please
he was SO CUTE with his little fan i'm foaming at the mouth just remembering it. also.... s..sweaty......
you KNOW what i am thinking about with his mouth like that. please contemplate it for yourself. you're welcome
the other day i saw someone online claiming that the property brothers are chinless and 1) nothing wrong with having certain jawlines and 2) i don't think they're chinless, because to me that implies a receding chin and when you look at them in profile that's not what's going on. they can be a little soft in the neck but if we're talking actual chin, it's there. lawrence dane is the same way - i guess i could understand someone calling him that from certain angles but from the side there's no argument.
he was adorable with the birds even though i don't like birds but the scene just didn't screencap well because he was moving too much. still, you get a sense of how they were foregrounding the cage, and i'm probably giving them too much credit here after the heavyhanded use of the chess set but it's fun to think of this as a little visual foreshadowing.
his thighs are like BUSTIN out of those trousers god i wish i were there. also very sexy of him to eat fruit with a dagger
it took a little sleuthing because the text isn't easy to make out and it's not on screen long but i identified this book as being by paul courteault, a french historian, titled "the revolution and the theaters in bordeaux" - despite being a history major twice over i didn't encounter this guy, though perhaps if i had specialized more in french history i might've. he died in 1950, so he still would've been a recent enough name for scholars of the french revolution that it'd make sense to feature him in this episode. i wonder if dane could actually read this since he grew up in quebec and all. but the point is, dane's character is reading this in the original french so that's an early signal of one of the things the imperialist assholes end up using against him. fuck those ivy tower elites, amirite? lol
i know i said i was trying to limit this to useful/interesting screencaps but. the way he's sitting here is interesting to me ok. let me have this, the same way i wish i could've had him over that desk if i'd been on set and. yknow. alive
i'm uploading these pics while crossfaded so if i seem more chatty than usual that's why. anyway i just. man. look at his face. his bone structure. he could've been a star. he should've! but in a way it's fine like this, since he had enough success to be recognizable in his home country and die happy and loved but still be obscure enough that i can effectively have him all to myself. though if you too would like to lust after him please. be my guest.
lads i have rabies again. his TUMMY his BUTT his SMILE. i think i touched on this in the first half of my rituals review but truly it is cathartic to realize he is attractive and internalize him as such. i struggle with [personal details redacted] but finding him attractive helps me remember that i too can be considered attractive. i know there's something of an ongoing joke among trans men about unrealistic gender-envy idols and in one sense dane fits into this since he's stupid tall and handsome but in the other sense, he's not unrealistic. if anything he's incredibly realistic. he's not horribly buff or cartoonishly hairless. he's very average, height aside, and i think it does us good to consider returning to the days of average pinups. as elvis costello would say, you're some mother's daughter, or is it immaterial, girl?
okay. i assume he had a valid reason for sniffing his hand after handling the gun. something about the quality of the gun oil or whatever. but i can only think of him sniffing his hand after doing something else. LOOK A GIF FOR GOOD MEASURE
you remember what i was saying about realistic gender goals? yeah? i am going to slurp up his arm hair like spaghetti
i think it's reasonable to assume the framing here was intentional to make it look like rays coming from behind his head like a savior and if not? y'know what? he's the savior of my heart.
PLEASE SIR PUT YOUR HANDS ON MY SHOULDERS SIR
this is just that pose people ridicule for being unrealistic. tits and ass. look how fucking tight his trousers are. i'm losing my mind
for some reason the episode director decided to get this shot through a fountain and it's not great but i respect the creativity and wanted to acknowledge it here.
dane tumby.... nimoy hands.... if i had posted this on star trek tumblr back in 2012 or so people would have gone fucking insane and with good reason.
and then he's shot (not by nimoy) and that's the end lol.
bonus: look at his goddamn body language in this otherwise entirely unremarkable establishing shot of him being driven back to base. as they say, king shit
he was SO CUTE with his little fan i'm foaming at the mouth just remembering it. also.... s..sweaty......
you KNOW what i am thinking about with his mouth like that. please contemplate it for yourself. you're welcome
the other day i saw someone online claiming that the property brothers are chinless and 1) nothing wrong with having certain jawlines and 2) i don't think they're chinless, because to me that implies a receding chin and when you look at them in profile that's not what's going on. they can be a little soft in the neck but if we're talking actual chin, it's there. lawrence dane is the same way - i guess i could understand someone calling him that from certain angles but from the side there's no argument.
he was adorable with the birds even though i don't like birds but the scene just didn't screencap well because he was moving too much. still, you get a sense of how they were foregrounding the cage, and i'm probably giving them too much credit here after the heavyhanded use of the chess set but it's fun to think of this as a little visual foreshadowing.
his thighs are like BUSTIN out of those trousers god i wish i were there. also very sexy of him to eat fruit with a dagger
it took a little sleuthing because the text isn't easy to make out and it's not on screen long but i identified this book as being by paul courteault, a french historian, titled "the revolution and the theaters in bordeaux" - despite being a history major twice over i didn't encounter this guy, though perhaps if i had specialized more in french history i might've. he died in 1950, so he still would've been a recent enough name for scholars of the french revolution that it'd make sense to feature him in this episode. i wonder if dane could actually read this since he grew up in quebec and all. but the point is, dane's character is reading this in the original french so that's an early signal of one of the things the imperialist assholes end up using against him. fuck those ivy tower elites, amirite? lol
i know i said i was trying to limit this to useful/interesting screencaps but. the way he's sitting here is interesting to me ok. let me have this, the same way i wish i could've had him over that desk if i'd been on set and. yknow. alive
i'm uploading these pics while crossfaded so if i seem more chatty than usual that's why. anyway i just. man. look at his face. his bone structure. he could've been a star. he should've! but in a way it's fine like this, since he had enough success to be recognizable in his home country and die happy and loved but still be obscure enough that i can effectively have him all to myself. though if you too would like to lust after him please. be my guest.
lads i have rabies again. his TUMMY his BUTT his SMILE. i think i touched on this in the first half of my rituals review but truly it is cathartic to realize he is attractive and internalize him as such. i struggle with [personal details redacted] but finding him attractive helps me remember that i too can be considered attractive. i know there's something of an ongoing joke among trans men about unrealistic gender-envy idols and in one sense dane fits into this since he's stupid tall and handsome but in the other sense, he's not unrealistic. if anything he's incredibly realistic. he's not horribly buff or cartoonishly hairless. he's very average, height aside, and i think it does us good to consider returning to the days of average pinups. as elvis costello would say, you're some mother's daughter, or is it immaterial, girl?
okay. i assume he had a valid reason for sniffing his hand after handling the gun. something about the quality of the gun oil or whatever. but i can only think of him sniffing his hand after doing something else. LOOK A GIF FOR GOOD MEASURE
you remember what i was saying about realistic gender goals? yeah? i am going to slurp up his arm hair like spaghetti
i think it's reasonable to assume the framing here was intentional to make it look like rays coming from behind his head like a savior and if not? y'know what? he's the savior of my heart.
PLEASE SIR PUT YOUR HANDS ON MY SHOULDERS SIR
this is just that pose people ridicule for being unrealistic. tits and ass. look how fucking tight his trousers are. i'm losing my mind
for some reason the episode director decided to get this shot through a fountain and it's not great but i respect the creativity and wanted to acknowledge it here.
dane tumby.... nimoy hands.... if i had posted this on star trek tumblr back in 2012 or so people would have gone fucking insane and with good reason.
and then he's shot (not by nimoy) and that's the end lol.
bonus: look at his goddamn body language in this otherwise entirely unremarkable establishing shot of him being driven back to base. as they say, king shit