Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts

Thursday, 27 August 2009

Only two weeks to go.....

...until we can all rush to the cinema to see the September Issue (yay)....unless of course you're reading this in America (or at least New York) where you get to see it much sooner. Grrrr, damn you all (i'm shaking my fist angrily!)
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I saw the trailer for the first time today and it looks like it's going to be awesome; reality tv that is actually real, a sneak peek in the most important magazine and the most important person in fashion, and lots of laughs (because you have to laugh at all these people who take themselves sooo seriously!)
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Check it out for yourself:





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I love the way the movie unquestioningly positions AW (yup, i'm giving her initials!) as a demi-god; all together now, swoop and bow! Oh, and what the hell does "September is the January of Fashion" actually mean??? Either way, I can't wait to watch the movie and find out!
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Love, Tor x

Wednesday, 4 June 2008

Sex and the City - the review, the clothes, the bunions.

Hello blogosphere,

Well, I'm back home from the Odeon, still bedecked in my sequinned finery and sipping daintily on a G&T. Friends, I'm here to tell you that where liquor is concerned, never stray from the classics. I say this as a woman who drank her very first Cosmopolitan this evening. Why would you ruin gin by dumping a fruit cocktail in there?



Check it: me and beloved co-blogger Tor, drinking our fancy £3.90 cocktails. The cinema bar lady took a looooong time to stick the little straws to the side of the glass. I am given to understand that this kind of gesture denotes a joint that is well classy. Still, all her effort was for naught as we were running late and had to quaff our pink ladydrinks like sailors. You see Tor in her tough leaher jacket and Carrie Bradshaw tribute corsage. Underneath was a very fetching green plaid prom dress from Primark. The concept was "Carrie Bradshaw if she was English and all rock-slash-emo." I decided to honour the Pat Field look with a waist belt and the artful juxtaposition of charity shop daisies and gold chains with 1920s-style chiffon miniskirts.



Ah, it wasn't styled with the artfulness of the show or indeed with the elan that other bloggers display, but hey...I felt thin, I felt sexy and if I bent over the world was my gynecologist. Thematic, right? What's not to love?

Now, the film itself.... I don't want to spoil it for anyone who's still looking for the time to go. Instead I shall present you with ten abstract promises of what awaits you:

1) A young Judy Garland
2) Nipple count of 3 vs. Penile Count of 1
3) A gypsy curse
4) Head bird
5) 2.5 seconds of glorious Andre Leon Talley offset by an awful 1.25 of Plum Sykes's SMUG FACE.
6) Poopie pants
7) Glorious alien-queen 1980s dress montage


You won't see this. This scene was not in the movie. Please do not anticipate this scene.
If you expect this scene you will be disappointed. Thank you for discounting this scene.


8)David Eigenberg in multicoloured plaid.
9) Hilarious product placement for Pret a Manger of all bloody things.
10) Two words: Bear attack.

I enjoyed the movie. I thought that the finest moments were in the first 2/3rds of the plot and that there is a noticeable drop in momentum in the third act. People have said that it's just 3 episodes strung together but honestly the structure on the TV eps is waaay tighter. The year timespan felt like a imposed structure on which to hang plot. This is a story, baggier than Samantha's cooch with little set pieces for all the women (Kristin Davis = angry hobbling comic genius) but with the men (with the exception of David Eigenberg as Steve) totally sidelined and wasted. Don't tease a half drunk Becky with one fricking scene with Evan Handler. Dude's a bald Jew king with a New York stage career and charisma up the yin-yang and the movie gives him nothing but a neutered teddy-bear bit? That's some class A b.s. in my book. Also? Smith got old. Again, the narrative gives him nothing and reduces his character to insubstantial prettyboy. But onscreen and blown-up twenty feet, his skin.... oy. Ever slung a leather handbag in the washing machine? All I'm saying.

There are some ace moments and some great dialogue (what other summer movie is going to reference Diane Arbus in a throwaway line?) and yes, it is genuinely moving. I also have an enormous amount of respect for Sarah Jessica Parker's willingness to look like genuine, absolute shit: no make-up, middle aged skin, puffy bags and bad hair. When you've seen as many shitty rom-coms as I have where the heroine's little upset is signified by two mascara streaks and a cute pyjama'd bum, you appreciate an actor taking a risk, putting aside vanity and making an emotional moment real. SaTC is a total fantasy, no question, but it's always put a premium on theatre-trained New York actors and in amongst all the puns and outfits and associated whatnots, there's a commitment to genuine emotion. Jennifer Hudson is wonderful an instinctual actress rather than a NY trained true blue but, much to my dismay, her character was wasted - a plot point with staggering cleavage. She does what she can and looks luscious but she's written off as arbitrarily as she arrives.


Look at her - how was she not in every scene?

Ah, but it's okay. Tor will rip me a new one for being too critical. Some things are sacred and god knows the viewing experience in the cinema was like a big boozy slumberparty with 100 strangers. That's what the shared experience and character investment of 6 years of loyal viewership will give you. It was a feeling unlike any other experience I've ever had at the cinema. I didn't even go ballistic at the girls in the front row texting during the movie or at the pockets of chatter all throughout the screening room (believe me -- usually I'm a Nazi). I was serene - we were all there for the shoes.

Love,
Becky.

PS - Inquiring minds wanna know. Favourite outfit? This one. Gotta love bling and a trailing sleeve. Thanks for asking.


Tuesday, 3 June 2008

Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul but it's bad for the heart

Hello blogosphere,

The piece of advice my mother most often gives me is as follows: "Beck, you've got to get your finger out." Well, mum, blogosphere, consider my finger vehemently extracted as, despite the many procrastinatory tools the internet offers, I have much blogging to do. Especially now that "I'd Do Anything" has finished. I don't know about you but my productivity dwindles to nothing in the face of musical theatre. Add a shedload of tack to that equation and you've got me almost comatose with glee.


I'm powerless to resist this. It is my nature.
I also love their shitty 'signature' petticoats and Tyra-branded "catalogue" pose.
Incidentally, this competition was all about the emotion behind the eyes as well. If you wanna be a model or a musical star, ya gotta have the mad retinal skillz of a Streep or a Lady Pacino.

Anyway, like every other blogger in the free world, I'm going to see the Sex and the City film. Me, Tor and my boyfriend are hitting the Odeon tomorrow night and it goes without saying, does it not, that we are dressing up in all our Pat Field-inspired tranny glory. I'm wearing a skirt that is flappy, chiffony and thoroughly too short for me and I'm stealing a pair of whorish shoes from Tor, who will be dressed as a Primark prom princess. Tristan, my endlessly tolerant beloved (who actually loves SATC and demands marathon binges), will be dressed in one of the 5 combinations he wears his clothes but as he's never without a suave jacket, we'll just tell everyone he's Mr Big. Unless he pisses me off, in which case I'll tell everyone he's that dude who kept pooing in front of Miranda in Season Four.



I'm clenching my stomach muscles and floral vagina accessories in anticipation! A review and fashion editorial will follow. Predictable posting, I know but rest assured, There Will Be Jokes.

Your absent friend and People's Nancy,
Becky.


Wednesday, 9 April 2008

Hero: Isabella Rossellini

Hello blogosphere,

I've been preparing this post for a little while because I wanted to do justice to my subject. Isabella Rossellini is beautiful, no duh. She's a wonderful actress with an eclectic career and she was a successful model with a famous Lancome contract and a bazillion Vogue covers to her name. This is not why I'm featuring her. No, Isabella Rossellini gets a whole post to herself not just because she's super stylish but because she is batshit crazy in the acest possible way.


Not in the diva way, unfortunately. This is an old Dolce and Gabbana campaign.

I am always on the lookout for obscure fashion-related literature so when Francine Prose alerted me to Rosellini's autobiography in her neato how-to book "Reading Like a Writer" (books about writing/reading are my porn), I cyber-schlepped over to Amazon Marketplace, paid a teeny £3 fee and lo! "Some of Me" appeared on my doormat two weeks later.



"Some of Me" as any person of substance will, know, is a play on Katherine Hepburn's autobiography "All of Me." It's so called because the author acknowledges, she ain't telling the truth for no-one:

It's a habit of mine to embellish and colour events until I lose sight of what really happened. Even when I was a child my grandmother had to say: "Verita o fantasia?" ---- "Truth or fantast?" If you want to eliminate my grandmother's kindness and to put it more bluntly, I lie. I always did.

Friends, this is the finest celebrity memoir I have ever encountered. Better then that one Groucho Marx tried to ban because he was old and drunk and bitched and libelled up the ying-yang. This book is chock full of glossy photos, famous ex-boyfriends, philosophy and batshit conversations she has with her dead father.

Even the glossy stuff of Rossellini as super-gorgeous model is undercut by humour and a sense of the macabre.



Caption: The first advert where I did not have to use the wax from the undertakers to fix my broken teeth.

Oh god, oh god, I love the beauty industry. And I love Isabella Rossellini even more. On reading in the New York Times about the pristine condition of Lenin's head as preserved by Doctor Sergei Lubov (the doctor was quoted: "If a pathologist looked at samples of skin from Lenin and a fresh corpse, he could not tell which is which, it is so well preserved."), Rossellini cut out the article and sent it Lancome with a note: "Doctor Debov may be of some use to us." But, she adds, I got no response.


Bitch has 28 Vogue covers to her name. 78% have surprised eyes.

And have we even talked about Martin Scorsese and David Lynch? She married Scorsese and dated Lynch for about 7 years. How would we even deal with that in our celebrity-obsessed culture? If it happened today, we'd be forced to refer to them by some awful amalgamation of their names. Scor-bella or Isnch or some shit.


Scorbella


Isnch


I really really have to do a "David Lynch Women" post - there's an insane amount of fashiony stuff to talk about in his films, his collaboration with Christian Louboutin and his latest adverts for Gucci perfumes. Still, this ain't his post, it's Isabella's and that bastard broke her heart. However, h did give her a couple of kick-ass roles in the meantime.

Dorothy in Blue Velvet - the film with "the severed ear in the heart of suburbia" as my A-Level film studies tutors were fond of saying INCESSANTLY



Perdita Durango in Wild At Heart



In addition to all of this eyebrow work, Lynch also gave Rossellini several pieces of his art. This one is my favourite - it's called "How to Assemble a Chicken"



I mean, don't you instinctively warm to a women who lovingly displays a rotted chicken carcass in her home? THAT'S frickin' style in my book.

However, among the many awesome attributes of "Some of Me,' one of the standout chapters concerns Isabella's obsession with insects' sex lives. Truly, I was edu-tained reading about spider masturbation, earthworm self-impregnation and snails that change gender.

"Don't think it was the frequent divorces, the homosexuality, the extra marital affais with the creation of half-brothers and sisters around the world all taking place within my family that forceme into being disrespectful of tradition and adopting unconventional attitudes. My pets helped a great deal. Once you've lived with dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, pig, you've seen it all.... Pets make you face the darkest, most hidden facts of nature. There have been sex crossings, species crossings, even sex with inanimate objects. Spanky, my pig, humped the living room furniture every night."


Isabella with Spanky and his canine companion.

This obsession this the sex lives of animals has taken a completely ace turn recently as Rossellini has just turned director and produced a number of shorts subtitled 'Green Porno' where she stars as a series of insects looking for love. The entire shorts aren't online but you can see an interview with clips here:






If this doesn't convince you that this woman is worthy of worship, then I don't know what to say to you. She dresses as a giant spider and simulates sex with a paper cut-out. What moe do you want? She's fearless, weird, cinema royalty* and she has a sensible haircut. A total out-and-out style hero.

Bug-out, friends,
Becky.


*if I have to tell you she's Ingrid Bergman's daughter, I'll cry.

Monday, 28 January 2008

Attend the tale...

Hello blogosphere,

Brace yourself for cliche albeit one well meant: going to the movies used to be an event. When there was no internet, TV or glossy multi-narrative strand based American crime dramas, people used to look most often to the Picturehouse for their Big Night Out.

Yes, yes. I know you know this. You're very smart. I was just writing preamble - it can't all be gold! Damn your black hearts. Anyway, my point (and I do have one) is that on the occasions I can afford the shocking British multiplex/independent smugfest cinema prices (seriously, what's the point of being highbrow if it's not dirt cheap? Those Philip Seymour Hoffman films aren't going to watch themselves) I always dress up. Sometimes I theme it, cause y'know, with all my anger issues, I rarely get invited to fancy dress parties. Also, I think it's genuinely cheering to make all outings, even fairly commonplace ones, little events in themselves.

Two days ago I went to see Sweeney Todd.




Nice poster. Johnny Depp IS Sweeney Todd. Our focus IS his crotch. Anywhoo, I am a huge musical theatre nut and have an especial squidgy spot for Sondheim so I was almost foaming at mouth with excitement to see this particular motion picture Event. Did I block out out the fact that Tim Burton cast non-singers in two of the most difficult musical theatre roles. Yes. Yes I did. I blocked hard. It wasn't too difficult because at least ol' reliable Burton had the good sense to cast Helena Bonham Carter, whom I love very tenderly.

Yes indeed, despite her pipey- girly no power singing, I love her and her crazed fashion sense/hair. Her Sweeney costumes (designed by the ever-present Colleen Atwood) and general off-duty aceness were the inspiration for my cinema-goin' outfit.




Behold my mood boards o' inspiration:




Colleen Atwood's costume sketches



Scruffy hair, black eyes, mismatching Victoriana and eccentric/psychotic attitude with underlying vulnerability. 'kay:


Chiffon sleeved velvet dress: early 90s Laura Ashley, filched from mum
Ratty wool hoodie: filched from sister
Dirty yellow rose top: New Look
Purple tights: M&S
Boots: Nine West
Kitsch heart ring (just seen): Gift from my beloved co-blogger Tor

I tried not to be too costumey so it was goth-lite all the way. I didn't enjoy the movie - I firmly believe that a musical should be populated by actors who can actually sing the material. Call me a snob, but I need my moment of transcendence and Johnny Depp's growlly puppy rock voice, close miked and pitch corrected as it was, is no substitute for the fury and richness of George Hearn, Michael Cerveris or Len Cariou. I'm a broadway girl and I like a little belt.


Scene from the 2007 Broadway revival of Sweeney Tood w/ Michael Ceveris (left) & blessed Patti Lupone (centre,top). See lovely Wendy's blog for more Patti-fied 70s fashion goodness.

Wow. Our last two posts were on musical theatre and Disney. Maybe this is why we're not invited to frickin' Chanel. We have got to get cool somehow.

Maybe I'll take up smoking....that's still cool, right?

Love,
Becky.