xoxoxo e

have you tried pinterest yet?

2012-01-28T19:28:00.000-05:00

As stated on the site,

"Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests."

Basically, Pinterest is a collection space. You can collect and share all sorts of things — beautiful images, recipes, links to websites, links to your blog, book and movie reviews — just about anythng you can think of or run across. It's like having a multi-themed tumblelog.

It is also completely addictive.

I have just created a few boards so far, but I think this is only the tip of the iceberg. Not only is it fun creating your own collections of things, but checking out what everyone else has pinned and then liking or re-pinning it to one of your own boards is a great feature, too. It can very quickly become a six degrees of Kevin Bacon of tastes and desires.

my favorite idiot — karl pilkington — is back!

2012-01-27T09:00:00.002-05:00

Ricky Gervais's and Stephen Merchant's social experiment series is back, An Idiot Abroad: Bucket List. Their semi-willing victim and presenter is Karl Pilkington, he of the interminable (but often hilarious) complaints, and perfectly round head.

Last time we saw Karl, Ricky and Stephen were sending him all around the globe, testing his limits and reaping the rewards. Karl never disappointed in An Idiot Abroad, whether he was at the Great Wall of China (complaining about how far it was to walk), the Pyramids (moaning about how big the stones the Great Pyramid of Giza were to climb), Machu Picchu (complaining about how far up it was to the top.)

In season 2, the first episode has Karl being sent to a desert island (Vanuatu, in the South Pacific), but not before Ricky and Steve present him with some other challenges on the way — bungee jumping in New Zealand and "dirt jumping" with a Vanuatu tribe that worships Prince Philip of England. Karl's trademark witticisms are still evident. This season is destined to be another winner.

Future episodes will see Karl traveling on the Trans-Siberian Express and swimming with dolphins (and sharks — thanks, Ricky). The show airs Saturdays at 10 p.m. on the Science Channel, and is a bona-fide hit, already garnering even greater ratings for the second season than its impressive debut last year.

Karl discovers that the desert island doesn't have much of a beach, or even sand.

For all of Karl's complaining, he does get into the spirit of things, going "arse-boarding," which is essentially sliding down he side of a volcano on little more than your arse, and donning a grass skirt and dancing with his host tribe before he sets off in a dugout canoe for his Robinson Crusoe experience. I'm not sure how many more challenges and torture chambers Merchant and Gervais can devise for Karl, but I hope they try, as it makes for extremely entertaining viewing.

not a cinderella story

2012-01-26T09:00:00.002-05:00

A story that as been all over the internet is haunting me. Baraa Melhem, a 20 year-old Palestinian girl was locked in her bathroom or other small rooms by her father for ten years. An Associated Press story, "Palestinian woman escapes father's dark captivity," by Diaa Hadid, catalogued the atrocities Baraa was forced to endure at the hands of her father Hassan Melhem and her stepmother, including beatings, threatens of rape and impregnation, and starvation. The pair also gave her a razor blade, encouraging her to kill herself.

AP Photo by Maya Levin

"She survived the ordeal by listening to the radio, dreaming of seeing sunshine again and finding small pleasure in an apple she was fed each day."

Baraa's aunt finally alerted police and she was freed last Saturday. She is now living with her mother, who had tried to see her over the years since she had divorced Baraa's father. He always denied her access to the girl, and was told her daughter wasn't available. It is wonderful that this young woman is finally free, but it is also so tragic to think of a future that may be just as scarred as her childhood.

"When asked if she hoped to marry, Melhem was visibly upset. 'If the violence I experienced was between a father and a daughter, what happens between a man and a wife? No, I never want to marry,' she said."

Baraa's story also bears disturbing similarities to the a story we have all grown up with, the Cinderella fairytale. Her father and stepmother kept her dressed in rags and would only let her out of the small bathroom at night — to clean the house.

There is a ray of hope. Baraa seems to have kept her mind active while listening to radio programs, many of them about mental health. It's hard to imagine how starved her mind must be, as she has not been in school since she was ten years old.

"Although she has nothing more than an elementary school education, she said she hopes to study psychology and one day treat people who had similar fates."

Hopefully she will be able to attend school and see the sun and eat candy and indulge in all of the day-to-day things that she wasn't able to enjoy during her years of captivity and that children all take for granted. I also hope that after the shock value of what happened to Baraa passes, the story isn't lost. I'd like to be able to keep up with her story. I'm curious as to how Palestinian law will treat her horrible father and stepmother. I'd like to know how Baraa does in the future. If she is able to reach out to others successfully. That would be the real happy ending.

it's hard getting old — about schmidt and everybody's fine

2012-01-25T09:00:00.050-05:00

I recently watched two very similarly-themed movies that feature older, recently widowed men and their tenuous attachments to their families, About Schmidt and Everybody's Fine. Both feature great actors getting to play something very rare in Hollywood movies — their age.

In About Schmidt, from 2002, Jack Nicholson is wonderful as Warren Schmidt, a man who has kept life at a distance. As the movie opens he is retiring from a job as an insurance actuary. The opening shots of Omaha's Woodmen of the World building, where Schmidt worked, are fantastic and set the tone for this "life viewed from a distance" film. Schmidt himself has lived most of his life at a distance, void of emotion. He may or may not have liked his job, but he has certainly spent most of his time involved with it rather than his wife and daughter. A few days into his retirement he is already bored and resenting all of his wife's routines and tics. But almost as soon as he starts to catalogue her faults, she dies, suddenly. His daughter Jeannie, played by Hope Davis, comes for the funeral, but she clearly doesn't care much for him and can't wait to get back to her life in Denver and planning her upcoming wedding.

Awkward airport goodbyes, L-R: Dermot Mulroney, Hope Davis and Jack Nicholson

Schmidt isn't sure what it's all about anymore.

Schmidt, "I know we're all pretty small in the big scheme of things, and I suppose the most you can hope for is to make some kind of difference, but what kind of difference have I made? What in the world is better because of me?"

Schmidt decides to sponsor a child from Tanzania, Ndugu, and the film includes voiceover narration of his informative and inappropriate letters to the young boy. As he tells Ndugu, Schmidt strongly disapproves of Jeannie's fiance, waterbed salesman Randall (Dermot Mulroney). But she won't listen to him and has no desire to come home to Omaha and take care of him. Scenes of Schmidt rambling around his house and life after his wife has died couldn't help but remind me of my dad after my parents' divorce. Whether he was happy in his marriage or not, Schmidt clearly feels rudderless without his wife around.

Kathy Bates is hysterical as Randall's randy mom, Roberta.

In the hot tub with Kathy Bates

Roberta, "You already know how famously they get along as friends, but did you know that their sex life is positively white hot? The main reason both of my marriages failed was sexual. I'm an extremely sexual person, I can't help it, it just how I'm wired, you know, even when I was a little girl. I had my first orgasm when I was six in ballet class. Anyway, the point is that I have been always very easily aroused and very orgasmic, Jeannie and I have a lot in common that way. Clifford and Larry, they were nice guys, but they just could not keep up with me. Anyway, I don't want to betray Jeannie's confidence, but let me just assure you that whatever problems those two kids may run into along the way, they will always be able to count on what happens between the sheets to keep them together. More soup?"

Schmidt, "Eh... no, I think I'm fine now."

And Nicholson is fine as Schmidt. The camera spends a lot of time on his face, and we get to suffer along with him as he travels the open road, trying to connect with his daughter, with life.

Robert De Niro takes a road trip to visit his kids

Robert De Niro plays a similar character, Frank Goode, in Everybody's Fine, which came out in 2009. It's a remake of an Italian film, Giuseppe Tornatore's Stanno Tutti Bene, which I haven't seen. Frank has four children, and none of them want to visit him after their mother dies. One by one, he tries to pay each a visit, some interactions more successful than others. Frank realizes that his kids were able to tell his wife anything, and that now it is easier for them to lie to him. Three of the grown kids, Robert (Sam Rockwell), Rosie (Drew Barrymore), and Amy (Kate Beckinsale) are equal parts suspicious of his motives and grief-stricken. Each has some substantial issues or secrets to work out with their father, but they aren't as disconnected from Frank as Schmidt's daughter Jeannie is in About Schmidt.

Rosie, "We could just talk to mom."
Frank, "Oh, but you couldn't just talk to me?"
Rosie, "Well she was a good listener, you were a good talker."
Frank, "Well so that's good, we made a good team."

De Niro and Drew Barrymore

Everybody's Fine doesn't strike as deep a chord as About Schmidt does, but it is still a nice little film. There is some added drama, as De Niro's Frank has a heart condition and spends most of the movie without some of his necessary medicine, but viewers only have to look to the title to be reassured of the outcome.

As much as aging is depicted as difficult — it's always hard to be on the other side of youth and promise — both men in these films are doing the best they can and are trying to live their lives with dignity. Both films are ultimately uplifting, and definitely worth a look.

the long and the short of it — hair, that is

2012-01-24T09:00:00.007-05:00

I just got a very short haircut, very similar to how I wore it in college, and I feel so free. Like a ton of weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I am getting lots of compliments and even shock, at my "bravery" to cut my hair. It got me thinking about different hair lengths that I have had through the years.

Sitting in the playground watching my daughter swing (with her luxurious long locks) I see that she is also free, and soars. But maintaining her hair, keeping it free from tangles, is admittedly, a chore. As I look around at the other women, moms, in the area, every single one of them has shoulder-length or longer hair. And every single one of of them also has their hair tied back in a ponytail or a twist or some other way to keep the hair out of the way, out of their face.

"Of course, the only people who like it are gay men and my girlfriends. Straight men across the board are not into this hair!" Michelle Williams, who embodies the modern pixie cut, (Huffington Post, "Do Most Men Prefer Long Hair On Women?")

Long hair is so tied to ideas of femininity. I got my haircut last week, after thinking about it for quite a while (I had a '20s-style bob, with long locks in the front, shorter in back, but still far above the shoulders. It's been quite a few years since I've had really long hair.) I wanted a change, a noticeable change. When I picked my daughter up from school after the salon visit, she didn't hide her disapproval of my new look. Normally I'm her idea of perfect (I'm going to enjoy this state of being for as long as it lasts), so I have to admit I was a little hurt at first. When I asked her why she didn't like my new 'do she said she liked my hair better long. Why? She couldn't really answer.

Halle Berry and Charlize Theron

It's hard not to relate her reluctance to see her mom with a short hairstyle as something she has been programmed not to like. Although I have avoided spoon-feeding her Disney princesses, Ariel's long red locks are pretty hard to avoid. She barely remembers when she had an adorable pixie haircut a few years ago (she's almost eight years old), but she hasn't wanted to have short hair since.

Only Snow White has "short" hair

When I was pregnant and had very long hair one of my friends predicted I would chop it all off as soon as I had my kid. I resented the implication that being a mom would mean that I had to change everything. I had already made some hairstyle sacrifices, not dyeing or highlighting my hair for nine months. Did she expect me to start shopping for mom jeans immediately, too? I actually kept my longer locks for quite while, and since my daughter was born, have experimented with different looks, lengths, and styles. My recent chop has more to do with my Florida lifestyle and desire for a change. I love being outdoors, walking on the beach, and I was tired of tying it back or brushing it out of my face. Now it's no muss, no fuss.

Emma Watson and Audrey Hepburn

An ex-boyfriend once told me with authority that I looked best with shoulder-length hair. You can guess what length it hovered around throughout most of our relationship. Do men really prefer long hair? Are long-haired women sexier? Is it a biological preference as some have said, that longer hair, because it takes longer to grow, somehow imparts the message that a woman has better health (might be a better mate)? Or is it all the centerfolds viewed since boyhood featuring long-haired beauties that cause men to think long hair is where it's at? Women and men seem to want long hair on our heads, but nowhere else on our bodies.

Hair is time. Women with short hair always look as if they have somewhere else to go. Women with long hair tend to look as if they belong where they are, especially in California. Short hair takes a short time. Long hair takes a long time. Long hair moves faster than short hair. Long hair tells men that you are all woman, or a real woman, or at the very least a girl. Short hair always makes them wonder. Short hair makes children ask each other — usually at the school-yard gate, when parents are late — "Are you a boy or girl?" Men married to women with short hair should not have affairs with women who have long hair kept up with many little pins and combs. Once you have cut your hair you have to remember to wear lipstick, but you can put away the brush, elastics, and the black barrettes in the form of shiny leaves with rhinestone hearts. When you cut your hair you lose a nose and gain a neck. A neck is generally better than a nose. It does not need to be powdered, except on extreme occasions. It does, however, need to be washed more often. Joan Juliet Buck, ON SHORT HAIR (c1988)

Michelle Williams and Marion Cotillard

There are tons of pop culture examples of short-haired beauties, but the tyranny of long hair remains. I don't know if I will get the urge to grow it out again after having it short for a while. But I don't feel I need to have it any particular length to feel pretty. If anything, I feel even more feminine. People can really see my face now. I like my new hair. It's fun and flirty.

Since my initial shock at the kid's lackluster reaction, she has gone around telling everyone we know, "My mom got her hair cut!" It's not exactly an endorsement, but she is at least enjoying celebrating and advertising the change, if not the style.

photo [Flickr]

2012-01-23T16:49:53-08:00

xoxoxoe posted a photo:

photo [Flickr]

2012-01-23T16:49:14-08:00

xoxoxoe posted a photo:

New do [Flickr]

2012-01-23T16:48:38-08:00

xoxoxoe posted a photo:

best movies ever — rear window

2012-01-23T09:00:00.000-05:00

I've always been a huge fan of Alfred Hitchcock's movies. Vertigo is probably the ultimate expression of his recurring themes of mistaken identity and the ultimate unattainable female. The Birds and Psycho are both terrific horror movies, depicting monsters from without and within. But Rear Window is not only a great artistic achievement, but it is also one of his most entertaining films.

Thelma Ritter, Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart look out the window, "I'm not much on rear window ethics."

The blatant voyeurism in Rear Window is the perfect metaphor for what it is to go to the movies. Hitchcock's hero, Jimmy Stewart, plays L. B. "Jeff" Jeffries, a photographer who specializes in far-flung travel and exciting assignments — the more remote and dangerous the better. But after deciding to shoot a high-speed auto race from within the track (and being hit by a race car and sidelined with a broken leg), the itinerant photographer is stuck, going stir crazy in his New York City one-bedroom apartment, during a long hot summer with nothing to do. He begins passing his time by spying on his neighbors for entertainment, through the zoom lens on his camera.

His visiting nurse Stella, played by Thelma Ritter, tells Jeff, "We've become a race of Peeping Toms." She is initially bothered by Jeff's curiosity, but luckily for the audience her own desire to know what's happening across Jeff's courtyard matches ours. She joins Jeff in watching the neighbors and even gives them nicknames, like "Miss Torso" and "Miss Lonelyhearts". Tuned in regularly to everyone's daily routines, Jeff begins to notice that one of the couples, a middle-aged husband and his bedridden wife, may be acting in a peculiar manner. "I've seen bickering and family quarrels and mysterious trips at night, and knives and saws and ropes, and now since last evening, not a sign of the wife. How do you explain that?"

Miss Lonelyhearts is an unhappy single woman who Jeff watches go on unsuccessful dates

Miss Torso

Stella and Jeff's girlfriend, Lisa Fremont, played to the hilt of 1950s allure by Grace Kelly, at first try to persuade Jeff that he is imagining things, but they can't help looking and getting caught up in all of the rear window dramas. It's all fun for Jeff, Lisa and Stella to play a guessing game of unraveling the mysteries of their neighbor's lives — until they realize that they have stumbled upon a murder, and then the game becomes deadly serious.

Middle-aged couple with dog they treat like a child

Middle-aged couple without dog or child - the Thorwalds

Hitchcock captures the close quarters that come with city living - the proximity, the curiosity, and the assumptions we make about our neighbors - the feeling that we "know" people that we have never spoken to simply because we see them every day. He created the entire apartment complex in a single set, complete with action on the street beyond Jeff's camera's line of sight. It's an amazing achievement. As he told François Truffaut, "It was a possibility of doing a purely cinematic film. You have an immobilized man looking out. That's one part of the film. The second part shows what he sees and the third part shows how he reacts. This is actually the purest expression of a cinematic idea."

Jeff's summer is spent sweltering while he watches his neighbors in the heat and intimacy of their lives. Lisa gently presses him to heat up their own relationship, while he continues to push her away, afraid of commitment and losing his life of adventure. In Jeff's eyes Lisa and he are completely mis-matched. Anyone looking out their rear window and in at them would see that she is perfect for him. Stewart and Kelly have wonderful chemistry.

The Composer (with Hitchcock making his cameo, winding a clock)

The Sculptor

The movie could be viewed as simply a suspense thriller with a romantic subplot and it would still be top-notch. But I see Rear Window as an elaborate mating ritual between Lisa and Jeff, with the emphasis on their romance and Jeff's fears about their future. I think Hitchcock is most interested in the interplay between all the couples, with the thriller plot a perfect structure to tell their stories of loneliness and search for love. Jeff is not only watching his neighbors from his window but trying on each of their identities as a possible outcome with Lisa.

"Miss Torso" and "Miss Lonelyhearts" are two extremes of the lives led by single women. A male songwriter and a female sculptor are each channeling their romantic energies into their art. There are three couples - the young sex-crazed newlyweds; a couple, not far from the age of Jeff and Lisa, but whose lives are distinctly less glamorous, with a dog they treat as their baby; and Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) and his nagging, bedridden wife - the couple no one would want to become but Jeff fears he and Lisa might.

The Newlyweds

As Jeff tries to decide which of these scenarios best fit his romance with Lisa, she decides to toss out all of Jeff's potential relationship stereotypes, and goes into action. She enters his view by leaving the apartment and their theorizing behind and crossing the courtyard to actually investigate. "Why would Thorwald want to kill a little dog? Because it knew too much?" She proves herself as adventurous and risk-taking (if not more so) than Jeff, by sneaking into Thorwald's apartment and stealing Mrs. Thorwald's wedding ring, helping to prove Jeff's theories about the woman's murder and symbolically securing a ring for herself and Jeff.

Jeff becomes so wrapped up in watching the drama being played out, so excited by her audacity, that even when Lisa puts herself in an extremely dangerous situation, he can't keep himself from looking. And neither can we. The only thing that finally breaks his view out the window is when Thorwald himself comes over for a visit ...

Rear Window is just as thrilling to watch today as it must have been when it was initially released in 1954. Hitchcock uses the murder mystery format to tell deeper stories about loneliness, city life, fears of intimacy, and the good and bad places where love might lead. No matter what your views are on "rear window ethics" as Lisa refers to them, the viewer will be immensely grateful that Alfred Hitchcock created this glimpse into others' lives, before the neighbors got wise and pulled the curtains.

François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock, Helen G. Scott, "Hitchcock", Google Books

Previously published on Yahoo!

This is the another in a series on some of my all-time favorite movies. Feel free to comment or share some of your favorites in the comments.

surf's up ... and so's dinner

2012-01-22T15:29:00.000-05:00

There have been a ton of gulls lining the edge of the water every morning lately. Must be some good things running through the waves. Today's special? Jellyfish. Mmmm ...

Gulls on the beach [Flickr]

2012-01-22T12:18:45-08:00

xoxoxoe posted a video:

poetry in motion

2012-01-21T17:47:00.000-05:00

Fred and Ginger, from CarolineAlice

stephen king's duma key

2012-01-20T09:00:00.045-05:00

I've been reading a bit of Stephen King lately and picked up Duma Key because it was about an artist (I was a painting major in college) who relocates to Florida (I live in Florida) with some supernaturally creepy results. Duma Key started off slow, picked up a bit, and then started to slow down again. It's clear that King was more interested in the trials of the artist, which are the best part, the central section, of the book. When the bodies started to pile up in the last third of the novel it became a less compelling read. I began to wish that he had an editor who wasn't afraid to wield a red pencil — and get bloody with it. I didn't want to abandon the book. I wanted to finish it and see how things came out, but I have to admit that it got tough at times to hang in there.

"How to Draw a Picture. Start with a blank surface. It doesn't have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing. Black is the absence of light, but white is the absence of memory, the color of can't remember."

Cover art by Mark Stutzman

Duma Key evokes The Flying Dutchman and King's own The Shining, as it follows protagonist Edgar Freemantle as he tries to recover from a devastating on-the-job accident — the loss of his right arm and a head injury — and nurture his artistic talent by relocating to a remote location, Duma Key, off the west coast of Florida, near Sarasota.

Stephen King's writing always evokes a wonderful sense of place. He can write about a location, a house, an atmosphere, so well that no matter how creepy it may turn out to be, you still want to be there with the characters. This is not touristy Florida, but an old-world, isolated, overgrown with vegetation, Florida. Edgar's house, "Big Pink," in Duma Key may be the port of call for all sorts of not-so-nice psychic energy, but I still got into its relaxed, beachy vibe.

The more Edgar paints, the more he gets in touch with the supernatural forces that seem to surround Duma Key. He discovers that his inspiration to paint is tied directly to his missing right arm when he experiences a phantom limb sensation whenever he is working. His paintings begin to tell him things about people, and by painting specific objects and scenes he finds he can affect people's lives. His paintings pack such power that just owning them may be dangerous.

King does a wonderful job describing Edgar's work process and his body of work. In fact he describes Edgar's surrealist Dali-influenced paintings and drawings so well that the reader can see the Edgar's step-by-step progress and visualize the finished artwork. We even get wrapped up in his first art show and crowning as the next great thing to hit the Sarasota art scene.

Edgar befriends former lawyer Jerome Wireman, the caretaker of an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease, Elizabeth Eastlake, who also happens to own most of the real estate on the island. The three are all linked inextricably to Duma Key, which has a special attraction and affection for damaged goods. They are three people who have escaped death by receiving some sort of head injury, and have been granted psychic powers.

“I felt it and knew: the three of us were here because something wanted us here.”

Edgar's injuries are never far from the surface of the story or King's mind. It is hard not to relate Edgar's struggles to King's own long road to recovery after being horribly injured when he was hit by a van in 1999. His exploration of mind and memory also resonates. As the daughter of someone with dementia (who also was a painter who dealt with primarily Florida-themed subject matter), I found it difficult to read about Elizabeth's failing health as she slipped further and further into her disease. King has either done his research here, or been directly affected by someone he loves with memory issues.

As much good as there is in the novel, it also had some disappointments. There is so much foreshadowing of both past and future spooky events, that the secrets as ultimately revealed, and the monster, feel rushed and disappointing. When Edgar, like in a classic Twilight Zone episode, finds whatever he paints he can make happen, I immediately began to wonder why he didn't start to manipulate his talent more. He is able to help one character who is near and dear to him by painting their portrait, so why doesn't he try to help another who is very much in need of help? Why does he seem in control of his gift at some times, and at others his talent is just a tool, a conduit for some evil force?

I can't say that I loved the ending. It may have worked, fit the road that the book was relentlessly following, but I still wasn't satisfied with what happened to many of the characters. But despite its problems, there is a lot to enjoy in Duma Key, especially the description of Edgar's process and the obsession of the artist. Edgar's paintings are so vividly described that it is a shame to realize that we can only attend his grand art opening and visit his painting studio in our minds.

joyful noise

2012-01-19T09:00:00.043-05:00

What is it about Queen Latifah? She has such a warm, pleasant screen presence. She plays against that natural glow a bit in Joyful Noise, as she plays a harried and cranky single mother, Vi Rose — single by circumstance, as her husband (Jesse L. Martin) has re-upped in the Army to escape a bad economy and his own guilty feelings at not being able to provide for his family.

Queen Latifah shines

Most of the internet chatter about this movie has been of the guilty pleasure variety. Critics have claimed to not want to like it. The plot is predictable, but then they admit to being swept away by the great music. And the movie is 75% music. Joyful Noise may be predictable, but most underdog movies are. Whether they are about high school football or basketball teams (The Replacements, Hoosiers), cheerleading squads (Bring It On), or church choirs — the protagonists will either win their competition or not. Either way lessons will be learned and romances will bloom.

My major hesitation in seeing this movie was Dolly Parton, who has been fighting gravity and age and anything resembling reality for a long time. But Dolly and the scriptwriters seemed well aware of such hesitations, and even worked it into her character, G.G., who is the only one in the choir who has her robes tailored to fit her voluptuous figure, and wears mile-high wigs and more make-up than the entire combined county population. She jokes about it herself, "Who cares if I've had a few little nips and tucks? God didn't make plastic surgeons so they could starve!" G.G. (and Dolly) may have had their faces lifted too many times to remember, but that's part of who they are, and they do it with such verve and humor it's hard to protest for long. Dolly did seem a little disconnected onscreen when she was in a scene where she was just one of the members of the chorus, but when she was the featured singer, her voice is as beautiful and affecting as ever.

Dolly Parton and Kris Kristofferson

Beneath all the crazy Dolly glitz and sentiment (a scene featuring a waltz with her deceased husband Kris Kristofferson was equal parts sweet and weird) there is, not surprisingly, a lot of heart and some great music. The pop tunes chosen for a much-needed update to the staid choir's repertoire are still appropriately inspirational (Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror and Sly and the Family Stone's I Want to Take You Higher). Both Dolly and Queen Latifah are in magnificent voice, as are the supporting players. There is young romance provided by Vi Rose's daughter Olivia (Keke Palmer) and Dolly's nephew Randy (Jeremy Jordan). The pre-requisitely quirky choir members also each get moments to shine.

The movie's characters seem a little more real than we are used to seeing in movies. Besides Dolly, the make-up is appropriately subdued for small-town folk. The town where they live, like towns where many of us live, have a lot of closed and bankrupt businesses. Vi Rose's son Walter (Dexter Darden) has Asperger's syndrome. Nothing gets too heavy, because it's main purpose is fun, and it's all about the music. But Joyful Noise does seem less crass than its cinematic predecessor (which is also an enjoyable guilty pleasure) Sister Act.

By the time the last note is sung it is impossible not to smile. Joyful Noise is just that. You may not have been a fan of gospel or church music when you walked into the theater, but Queen Latifah and company will surely have you tapping and humming along to the music on the way out.

blackout

2012-01-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

Today is a good day to be a Luddite.

Will you be taking part in Internet Blackout Day to protest the proposed SOPA/PIPA legislation?

p.s. I scheduled this post yesterday. See you tomorrow.

the zen of Steve Jobs

2012-01-17T09:00:00.004-05:00

Article first published as Graphic Novel Review: The Zen of Steve Jobsby Caleb Melby, Forbes LLC and JESS3 on Blogcritics.

The Zen of Steve Jobs is a graphic novel that presents a possible history. It depicts Steve Jobs's friendship with Zen Buddhist priest Kobun Chino Otogawa in different periods of his life, and how that may have had a direct influence on Apple product design. The comic presents different key moments in both men's lives, including:

- A teenage Jobs and Kobun meeting in Los Altos, California in 1971;

- Jobs in 1997, after his return to Apple, and his changing its course by simplifying its approach to its products;

- Jobs In 1986, in a one-on-one session with Kobun at the Tassajara Zen Center discussing calligraphy and the space around things;

- Kobun teaching Jobs the walking meditation kinhin, its circular simplicity a direct correlation to Apple design, such as the iPod's circular navigation.

The design of The Zen of Steve Jobs reflects its subject matter. The drawings are streamlined, sometimes even suggesting calligraphy. The color palette is limited to muted greens, blues and purples, printed in two colors on a cream stock. It's an attractive piece.

Jobs is presented as both visionary and prickly, two aspects of his personality that the public has become familiar with through biographies and apocryphal accounts. The book has come out posthumously, but it doesn't eulogize Jobs. It keeps things clean and simple. It packs its most emotional punch in its depiction of Kobun, who, like Jobs was a bit of a rebel, and who tragically, drowned while trying to save his five year-old daughter (who also drowned) in Switzerland in 2002.

There is a nice "making of" section in the back of the book, which includes storyboards and potential cover artwork, as well as short biographical material on Steve Jobs and Kobun Chino Otogawa.

A collaboration between Forbes Publishing and creative agency JESS3, The Zen of Steve Jobs will have its biggest appeal for Apple fans, but anyone interested in computers or intellectual and spiritual approaches to deign will also enjoy it. It's a fitting tribute to Steve Jobs and a nice introduction to a man who may have influenced Jobs (Jobs named Kobun NeXT's spiritual guru) and the products many of us can't live without today.

best movies ever — casablanca

2012-01-16T09:00:00.014-05:00

If some Hollywood hotshot scriptwriter or director thinks Casablanca is ripe for a remake I hope there's another writers' strike, because Casablanca is unique. For its time, its stars, its general attitude. They don't make 'em like this anymore. They can't.

When Casablanca came out in 1942 the United States was at war. The characters that populate the Casablanca of the film were mostly war refugees, trying to escape their invaded homelands for a better life in America. The film takes place right before the United States stepped into the fray. War in the 21st century is an entirely different proposition. We live in such a global world these days that wars are at once not so very far away and just far enough to be forgotten as we cruise the Internet for the next viral video.

"I stick my neck out for nobody."

But that wasn't the case for Rick Blaine (Humphey Bogart, in his first major romantic role). We first see Rick in the remote Vichy France outpost of Casablanca, with local French Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) lording it over the inhabitants. Casablanca is a way station for anyone trying to escape the Third Reich or their demons. Rick has opened Rick's Café Américain, and everyone comes to Rick's — to get new identity papers, make illegal transactions, gamble, or just have a drink (or two or three.) But Rick is a lone wolf, and won't sit down to drink with his customers.

Woman: What makes saloonkeepers so snobbish?
Banker: Perhaps if you told him I ran the second largest banking house in Amsterdam.
Carl [waiter]: Second largest? That wouldn't impress Rick. The leading banker in Amsterdam is now the pastry chef in our kitchen.
Banker: We have something to look forward to.

Rick's has a truly international clientele, and every table at Rick's has someone trying to work some deal to get out of Casablanca, including everything from selling jewels to sexual favors. Bogart as Rick interacts with some of Hollywood's best character actors, including Peter Lorre as Ugarte, who has stolen letters of transit and asks Rick to hold them for him, and Sydney Greenstreet as Signor Ferrari, a rival nightclub owner who also runs the local black market. The letters of transit are one of the most famous of film MacGuffins. They are key to the plot, and practically every character mentions them or wants to get hold of them. Some even die for them, but they are so unimportant by the end of the movie, as the only thing anyone watching cares about is whether Rick and Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) will end up together.

The divide between what was happening at Rick's and what was going on in the real world outside the theater when the film was first released was a very slender one. Many of the extra and bit-part actors in Casablanca were actual Jewish and/or European refugees from the Nazi occupation: Peter Lorre (M), Conrad Veidt (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall, Marcel Dalio (The Rules of the Game, Grand Illusion), and Helmut Dantine, to name just a few.

Louis, "The waters? What waters? We're in the desert." Rick, "I was misinformed."

Casablanca starts off like many other pictures of the period, with a spinning globe, stern narrator, and the announcement that two German couriers bearing letters of transit have been killed. Nazi Major Strasser (Veidt) lands at the Casablanca airport, greeted by Louis, who assures him not to worry as he expects to apprehend the perpetrator that evening at the local hotspot, as "Everyone comes to Rick's." Rains as Louis is wonderful and complicated, and practically steals the movie from its top stars. He enjoys his authority and the illicit pleasures it brings as perquisites, but he is no fool. He kowtows to the Germans and Vichy government when necessary. He has a fondness for Rick, but not so much so that he wouldn't turn him in to the Germans if he was pressed and it would save his hide. He is first and foremost out for himself, and could easily, if more charmingly, have echoed Rick's famous line, "I stick my neck out for nobody."

Rick is the ideal role for Bogart. He combines the steel edge from gangster roles like "The Roaring Twenties" with a world weariness that makes him the perfect romantic hero. He also looks pretty dashing in his white dinner jacket and later, trenchcoat. He is emotionally raw and vulnerable. The audience gets to see him run the emotional gamut - in love, closed off, maudlin and drunk, angry and nasty, noble and determined to do the right thing. But he is still a man of mystery. We're never told exactly why he's an expatriate.

Louis: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Louis: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.

A broken heart led Rick to Casablanca, and he is trying hard to remain detached from everything around him. He doesn't interact with customers or anyone if he can help it, he doesn't cut anyone a break at the casino, and he isn't particularly friendly with Nazi officers.

Major Strasser: Are you one of those people who cannot imagine the Germans in their beloved Paris?
Rick: It's not particularly my beloved Paris.
Heinz: Can you imagine us in London?
Rick: When you get there, ask me!
Louis: Hmmh! Diplomatist!
Major Strasser: How about New York?
Rick: Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade.

Casablanca has some of the most famous quoted and misquoted ("Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By'") lines in movie history, but all of the dialogue is excellent. When Major Strasser tries to intimidate Rick by rattling off his vital statistics and facts from his past, Rick's response is, "Are my eyes really brown?" No one can shake up Rick. At least, not until Ilsa walks in.

"Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By'"

Now all his rules get thrown out the window. He joins Ilsa and her traveling companion, Czech Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), a hero and leader of the Resistance, for a drink, surprising and intriguing Louis and raising Major Strasser's suspicions about him even higher than they were before.

Victor, the third side of this triangle, as played by Henreid, is a bit of a stiff, but somehow it works for the movie and his character. He plays his part as if he's the star of the movie, not Bogart. Victor may be a hero in the war and in the world, but he's clueless when it comes to Ilsa. He has his mind on bigger things and would agree with Rick that "the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

Rick, now in friendly saloonkeeper mode, is putting on a show for Louis and Victor and the Nazis, but mostly for Ilsa. As soon as she leaves the club with Victor he crumbles. Ugarte is grabbed for the murder of the German couriers, but Rick doesn't care. Only his past romance is on his mind, "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine."

Roll the flashback to Paris ... we learn about their love affair and why "As Time Goes By" and Sam (Dooley Wilson) were such an important part of their lives. "Here's looking at you, kid." They plan to flee Paris and the Nazis together, but Ilsa leaves without him, Sam handing him her goodbye note, ink running in the rain. As Rick wallows in his old heartbreak, Ilsa picks that moment to come back to the club and speak to him privately and it doesn't go well, for either of them.

So much light and pattern

The film is a classic because it can be enjoyed on so many different levels. It is the ultimate movie romance. It is also a thriller and a war/propaganda film. It is film noir, with director Michael Curtiz in top form. The cinematography, sets, and lighting are superb. Black and white lines and shadows recur repeatedly throughout the film, echoing the trapped, caged-in atmosphere of life in Casablanca. In one of the only outdoor scenes, Rick and Ilsa meet in the market and are both in stripes — Rick in a striped tie, Ilsa a striped blouse, still bringing up past hurts and betrayals. Ilsa finally tells Rick that Victor is her husband — and has been all along, even when they knew each other in Paris. She had presumed him dead, but was informed that he managed to escape from a Nazi concentration camp right before she and Rick planned to leave Paris. So many secrets, so many stifled emotions.

Everything has changed for Rick. That evening at the club a young Bulgarian girl approaches him and begs for him to help her husband, who is losing heavily at the roulette table. She promised Louis sex in exchange for passage for the two of them out of Casablanca, but if her husband can come up with cash, she won't have to offer herself. If the girl had approached Rick before he saw Ilsa again, would he have even considered helping her? Not very likely. But Rick is thinking a little differently about love and life these days, and he fixes it so the young couple can get what they need and get out of town (sorry, Louis.) News of his act of generosity goes like wildfire through the club, thrilling and inspiring all of his employees. Like the Grinch, his heart has begun to grow a few sizes.

When Ilsa comes to him again, this time armed and demanding the letters of transit, the scene plays as if from another Bogart film, The Maltese Falcon, with Rick at first treating Ilsa as Sam Spade did Brigid O'Shaughnessy — like a conniving, two-timing dame. But this is a different movie and a very different romance. Angry words soon melt away and Rick and Ilsa rekindle their romance in the back room, while Carl (Sakall) and Sascha (Leonid Kinskey) smuggle Victor in the front door, trying to escape the local authorities, who want to arrest them for attending a Resistance meeting. The Vichy police arrive and take Victor prisoner, and Rick momentarily seems happy, thinking that circumstance may help remove this romantic obstacle from his life. But the next day he's in Louis's office, wheeling and dealing to get Victor released. To help him, or get rid of him? Casablanca is about love and choices and honor. Can Rick truly get past his feelings of betrayal to forgive Ilsa? To help her and Victor? Can he and Ilsa rekindle their affair and run away together? What about the Nazis?

"Here's looking at you, kid."

Casablanca only gets richer with multiple viewings. Once you know whether Ilsa will get on that plane with Rick or with Victor you can relax and just watch the actors do their stuff, drinking in all the little details in the settings and nuances in the script. Rick and Ilsa have some of the best romantic close-ups in the movies, pulling the viewer "into" their romance. It's a shame Bogart and Bergman never made another movie together, as they had wonderful chemistry. But the chemistry doesn't stop there. Rick and Louis may be cinema's best bromance, solidified by one of the best closing lines in any film, "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Round up the usual suspects and watch "Casablanca" again. You'll be glad you did.

"Casablanca: Cast," Wikipedia

Previously published on Yahoo!

This is the another in a series on some of my all-time favorite movies. Feel free to comment or share some of your favorites in the comments.

dash and the rope of yarn

2012-01-15T18:02:00.001-05:00

knitting as a hobby in Florida may not be such a crazy idea after all

2012-01-14T18:49:00.000-05:00

Today was brrr ... Luckily the cold weather is coinciding with a sweater project. And if I can get this one done, I have another cool pattern I just downloaded on the back burner ...

photo [Flickr]

2012-01-14T15:45:23-08:00

xoxoxoe posted a photo:

why i stopped painting (and drawing)

2012-01-13T10:18:00.000-05:00

I love drawing, especially intricate line drawing. It's what I am immediately drawn to in a piece of art and what I loved most to do as an artist. But now, when I look at nature, it's hard to get excited about making marks on paper that can compare to these beautiful lines ...

I was always attracted to color in my work. Nature, of course, has plenty to offer in this regard as well ...

I am still composing, I still have an eye, but now my primary visual artistic medium is an iPhone.

Art is everywhere, not just in the galleries or museums.

still scary after all these years — 'salem's lot

2012-01-12T09:00:00.001-05:00

Article first published as Book Review: 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King on Blogcritics.

The recent paperback release of 'Salem's Lot, Stephen King's second published novel, is a wonderful old-school vampire story, where the vampires aren't sparkly, or romantic, or James Dean cool — they are rampant, foul-smelling, and very, very evil. 'Salem's Lot is also a vampire novel where the vampires aren't exactly secondary, but a symptom of what King poses is going wrong in the world.

The Nosferatu-influenced Kurt Barlow, from the 1979 television miniseries directed by Tobe Hooper, based on King's novel.

The town of Jerusalem's Lot, or 'Salem's Lot, for short, is, by its isolated nature, the perfect breeding-ground for evil. King asks the reader, can a place draw evil, due to its own moral corruption? In an interview with Highway Patrolman magazine, King said, "In a way it is my favorite story, mostly because of what it says about small towns. They are kind of a dying organism ... I have a special cold spot in my heart for it!"

King takes his time sketching out the town's geography, inhabitants, and history, until the reader has as much invested in 'Salem's Lot as protagonist Ben Mears. Ben is a novelist who lived in 'Salem's Lot as a child. He has come back to town to exorcise a childhood memory of a frightening supernatural experience at the local haunted house, the Marsten House. He hopes to turn his bad memories into a best-selling novel.

Ben quickly gets sidetracked when he meets and falls in love with local girl Susan Norton, but also when he starts to notice that something very wrong is going on in the town — and that all roads lead back to the house of his nightmares, the Marsten House. Two young brothers, Ralphie and Danny Glick, have disappeared. It at first seems like there may be a child-murderer in the area. Ben and Susan team up with young Mark Petrie, a schoolboy friend of the Glicks with an encyclopedic knowledge of movie monsters, high school teacher Matt Burke, doctor Jimmy Cody, and local Catholic priest Father Callahan to investigate the growing number of deaths — and disappearing corpses.

King does his usual wonderful job of quick-sketching memorable characters. The eccentric, laid-back, and sometimes cantankerous people who live in the Lot come easily to life. Unfortunately for them, and thanks to the other newcomers to the Lot, the mysterious Mr. Straker and his unseen partner Mr. Barlow, they are also as easily dispatched.

King's take on contemporary (1975) politics, like Watergate and the gas crisis, which he believes have eroded people's values, is an undercurrent throughout the novel. The mysterious and possibly infused-with evil Marsten House, which physically presides over the town, provides another level of corruption. He also explores the exponential possibilities of vampire creation. Their ranks keep growing, and growing and growing ...

'Salem's Lot is a time capsule of sorts. So many of the main characters are working in the dark from one another. King could never have written the novel in the age of cell phones. Clearly a product of the '70s, it is no less a scary read today. 'Salem's Lot packs the same punch, the same apprehension, whether read late at night or in the clear light of day. As scary as it is, there is also something incredibly sad about the novel.

King pulls 'Salem's Lot apart piece by piece. We watch the town disappear. The horror the reader experiences, the inevitability of the story and the characters' fates, is in exact correlation to Ben and his friends' dread at their eventual confrontation with Kurt Barlow.

King spares no one. The elderly, children, animals, and even main characters are all up for grabs where the vampire is concerned. There are thrilling scenes, but the true horror takes place between the lines, with the reader imagining the worst — which usually proves to be true. Before settling down with 'Salem's Lot, you might want to check your windows to see if they are securely locked, and look through your jewel box for a cross or religious medal to keep on hand while you are reading. Just in case.

best movies ever — some like it hot

2012-01-11T09:00:00.001-05:00

Some Like It Hot is one of the funniest movies ever made. It was voted the #1 comedy by the American Film Institute. It has probably the most famous closing line in movie history. Its plot is simple. In 1929 Chicago two down and out musicians, Joe and Jerry (played by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) are witnesses to the Saint Valentine's Day massacre. The rest of the film has them hiding out and on the run from gangsters Spats Colombo (played by George Raft). Joe's brilliant idea is for them to hide in plain sight, in an all-girl musical band, which is on its way to a booking in Florida. For this to work, they will have to disguise themselves as women — hello Josephine and Geraldine (a name Jerry hates, so he changes it to Daphne). They intend to ride to Florida and then run, but a curvaceous complication in the name of Sugar Kane (played by Marilyn Monroe) causes both of them to want to stick around with Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators a little longer. It's probably the best gig they've ever had.

Jack Lemmon as Daphne and Tony Curtis as Josephine

Some Like It Hot is a sex comedy, with gags that are always teetering on the brink from being just full of innuendo to crossing the line. But Marilyn's breathy innocence and all of the actor's wonderful timing with Wilder's and I.A. L. Diamond's funny dialogue keeps everything rollicking along to its punchline finish. As Wilder has said, "If you hit on a thing, which works, there’s that snowball effect of laughter. You get the audience in that rare mood when everything is funny ... The audience doesn’t have a chance to sober up. The picture just keeps going and going."

What makes Some Like It Hot really work, is that for one reason or another, Curtis and Lemmon don't want to get out of drag, which Wilder and Diamond cannily built into the script, "We have to find the ironclad thing so that these guys trapped in women’s clothes cannot just take the wigs off and say, ‘Look, I’m a guy.’ It has to be a question of life and death.' And that’s where the idea for the St. Valentine’s Day murder came."

There are amazing comic bits throughout the film — Curtis and Lemmon's fabulous drag personas, millionaire Osgood Fielding III's (played by a brilliant Joe E. Brown) unexpected affection for Daphne, Curtis's alter alter-ego of "Shell Oil Jr.," done with a right-on Cary Grant impersonation. Also peppered throughout are some really great musical numbers, the highlight Marilyn singing "I Want to be Loved by You" in a gown that is for all intents and purposes see-through (as are many of her costumes in the film), a spotlight, forever threatening and promising, to reveal all.

The movie has fun with its drag elements, but it also plays on the behavior of men and women. Joe has always been a hound, loving and leaving countless women without even a glance back or a single regret. His putting on a dress doesn't affect him at all. His first instinct is to bed the beautiful Sugar. He actually uses the girl talk between Sugar, Daphne, and Josephine to help create the perfect guy to seduce her. He's still a jerk, doing anything he can to get a girl into bed. He's lucky that Daphne has attracted the attention of a bona fide millionaire, Osgood, so he can use his yacht to impress Sugar while Daphne and Osgood are out on the town.

Jerry, on the other hand, is changed by his putting on a wig and heels. He is also attracted to Sugar, "Look at that! Look how she moves. Like Jell-O on springs. She must have some sort of built-in motor. I tell you, it's a whole different sex." But Jerry also listens to her, and empathizes with her stories of always getting "the fuzzy end of the lollipop" in romance. He sees how his and especially Joe's behavior have affected the women in their lives. He's not happy when "Junior" starts to romance Sugar under false pretenses, "What do you think you are doing to that girl, putting on the millionaire act, and where did you get that phoney accent from? Nobody talks like that." Jerry enjoys his role-playing so much that at times he truly becomes Daphne at moments. He considers marrying Osgood, and becomes upset when Jerry takes his gifts from Osgood and passes them along to Sugar.

Joe, "You're not a girl! You're a guy! Why would a guy want to marry a guy?"

Jerry, "Security!"

When Spats and his minions arrive at the hotel to attend the "Friends of Italian Opera" meeting, Joe and Jerry's deception is revealed. It looks like curtains for the pair, but for the first time, Joe is reluctant to just run out on a girl. Sugar has gotten to him. He wouldn't have seen the aftermath of his dumping her if he hadn't been Josephine. Her rendition of "I'm Through With Love" opens his eyes. As Josephine, he kisses her, "None of that, Sugar. No guy is worth it." Even with Spats hot on his heels, he's willing to risk his life for love.

With the help of Osgood, Joe, Jerry, and Sugar take off together. As they ride off into the sunset towards Osgood's yacht, there is still the matter of Daphne. Jerry can't seem to get through to Osgood that things would never work between them. Finally, in exasperation, he pulls off his wig, "I'm a man!" Osgood glances at him and smiles, unperturbed, "Well, nobody's perfect."

There are plenty of stories surrounding the making of Some Like it Hot. Marilyn's notorious difficulties in nailing a simple line. The possible casting of Frank Sinatra instead of Lemmon. But no matter how difficult filming conditions may have been, it is undeniably a classic, and Wilder had good things to say about his lovely star, "She had a kind of elegant vulgarity about her. That, I think, was very important. And she automatically knew where the joke was. She did not discuss it. She came for the first rehearsal, and she was absolutely perfect, when she remembered the line." Some Like it Hot is as funny today as it was when it first came out. To paraphrase Sugar, it's a real diamond, worth its weight in gold.

Quotes:

Billy Wilder, Conversations with Billy Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond [Part 7]

Billy Wilder, Billy Wilder Trivia and Quotes

for the love of marilyn

2012-01-10T09:00:00.001-05:00

My post yesterday about Marilyn Monroe and our enduring fascination with the woman, her weight, her life, made me realize that I hadn't really written much about her talent as an actress. Marilyn cultivated a kewpie doll persona — both deliberately and thrust upon her — of breathy voice, wide eyes, wiggling hips, and voluptuous curves. Her personal tics have been imitated ad nauseum by so many would-be starlets and drag queens that it is easy to forget how driven an actress she was, and how talented.

With Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot

Marilyn was a product of her time. Her dyed blonde hair and bright red lips epitomized the '50s. She was hardly the only blonde bombshell out there. She was the most successful, because she brought that something extra, that ineffable "it" factor and smarts. Yes, Marilyn was smart. She was a troubled, even haunted woman. But she also had an insatiable curiosity and a desire to improve herself. She was also an adept comedienne, and she knew how to showcase her considerable assets.

"My illusions didn't have anything to do with being a fine actress. I knew how third rate I was. I could actually feel my lack of talent, as if it were cheap clothes I was wearing inside. But my God, how I wanted to learn, to change, to improve!"

The facts of Marilyn's life have become the stuff of legend, and they have also provided a blueprint for many young women from difficult backgrounds who wanted to make it big in Hollywood. Her father left her mother before she was born. Her mother, who worked as a film cutter for RKO, spent her life in and out of mental institutions, leaving Norma Jeane to be raised in foster homes and even for a few years, an orphanage. She married her first husband at 16, clearly trying to escape an unstable life. The marriage only lasted four years, and Marilyn became a blonde and started her modeling career, which eventually led to a screen test with 20th Century-Fox.

She played a femme fatale in Niagara

Marilyn was far from an overnight success. She made an impression in a small part in All About Eve. Good film roles started to trickle in, including Niagara, where she played the unfaithful wife of Joseph Cotten. She may not have wanted to be typecast as the sexy girl, but she effortlessly exuded sex on camera. Her beauty and ability to poke fun at her previous "dumb blonde" roles made her a star in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which led to How to Marry a Millionaire and The Seven Year Itch. Marilyn could have continued to play musical comedy roles forever, and become quite successful, but she wanted to delve deeper. She began studying with Lee Strasberg at the famous Actors Studio, which led to more serious roles (and her being taken more seriously) like Bus Stop, Some Like It Hot and The Misfits. Her career achievements were overshadowed by her dependency on drugs and alcohol and her unhappy romances with high profile men, like husbands Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, and alleged affairs with John and Robert Kennedy. Her death by barbiturate overdose has created a mythology and industry of speculation — was it a suicide, accident, or even murder?

So much gossip still surrounds Marilyn, so many questions as to why she was so troubled. She became not only dependent on drugs, but also handlers — acting coaches, psychiatrists, husbands. It is easy in hindsight to criticize her, question her, but so many people forget that she was constantly fighting for the things she wanted in her life. She was underpaid for most of her career, even once she became a star. She desperately wanted to have a child, and suffered at least two miscarriages while she was married to Arthur Miller. Just that, the inability to have a child, can do a number on a woman. She was abandoned by a mother with mental illness and a father she never knew. She was blessed and cursed with her beauty. what must it have been like to wake up, either alone or with someone and confront "Marilyn?" In the later years of her career she was chronically late and difficult to work with. A lot of that was definitely the haze from the previous night's sleeping pills, but maybe it took her that long to also become Marilyn. Our ultimate images of her are plastic. With red lacquered lips and shiny sculpted hair, bedecked in jewels, she is almost a statue of sex. Looking at her in later films and photos, she kept the trademark blonde hair, but she was trying to soften her make-up, her hairstyle, her image.

Marilyn in the 50s and 60s

The persona of Marilyn endures through all of her melodrama and in some of her best roles. When you look at her filmography, it is amazing to see how she struggled to get to the top, how many movies she made before she had her first truly memorable role as Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Her entire film career only spanned 15 years. As Lorelei Lee, both the camera and the audience love her antics with Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell), but they are not just two pretty girls served up by director Howard Hawks as visual candy. They are two women in charge and on the loose, on the hunt for men and fabulous jewelry. It's the traditional romantic chase, inverted. Many of the male characters in the film fear that Lorelei is predatory, a gold-digger, but she cleverly counters, "Don't you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn't marry a girl just because she's pretty, but my goodness, doesn't it help?"

Marilyn quipped about her own ife in a similar fashion, "Wouldn't it be nice to be like men and just get notches in your belt and sleep with the most attractive ones and not get emotionally involved?" Hawks, known for more male-centric fare like Red River, Sergeant York and To Have and Have Not, tapped into that feeling and made a girl power musical.

Lorelei, contemplating a tiara, "How do you put it around your neck?

Modern viewers might feel that Marilyn is a parody of herself in this film, but Gentleman Prefer Blondes, from 1953, was really her first starring role — it's where she became the woman we now associate with sex bomb Marilyn. The movie is loaded with sexual entendres, mostly voiced by Russell, who in an unusual twist, is the character who is doing most of the ogling. At one point she contemplates the entire Olympic swim team, who are just presented, chorus girl style, for her and the rest of the gals in the audience, to appreciate. She has a great rapport with Marilyn, who plays Lorelei, the ultimate material girl, who can be ditzy or self-aware, but has never met a diamond she doesn't like:

Lorelei, contemplating a tiara, "How do you put it around your neck?"
Dorothy, "You don't, honey, it goes on your head!"
Lorelei, "You must think I was born yesterday."
Dorothy, "Well, sometimes there's just no other possible explanation."
Lady Beekman, "It's a tiara."
Lorelei, "You DO wear it on your head. I just LOVE finding new places to wear diamonds."

Marilyn as Lorelei is fun and perplexing and sexy — a completely memorable character, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is still one of the most enjoyable movies out there. It's a shame she was never paired again with Russell, as the two are such a winning combo.

As Chérie in Bus Stop

Three years and four movies later, after working with The Actors Studio and Lee Strasberg, Marilyn appeared in Bus Stop. It was the perfect transition piece for her, from musicals to drama. She played a saloon singer, Chérie, a woman of little talent who dreams of making it big as a way to escape her current good-time girl life. It's hardly a female empowerment piece. Actually it's more of a caveman clubs woman and carries her off story. But there's no denying how lovely Marilyn is in the film, nor how heartbreaking is her rendition of "That Old Black Magic." Bus Stop taps into Marilyn's vulnerability and parallels what outsiders have come to believe as her own unhappy search for true love.

In 1959 Marilyn appeared as the ukelele-playing Sugar Kane in Some Like It Hot, one of the great American movies. Marilyn, according to director Billy Wilder, was more than a little difficult to work with, but none of that shows on screen. She is at the height of her voluptuousness, as well as being sweet, funny, and of course, vulnerable. As the singer in a 1920s all-girl band, she shares some wonderful scenes with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, dressed in drag as they hide out from some Chicago mobsters led by George Raft. Marilyn plays a more world-weary version of Lorelei Lee. Sugar is someone who in love has always got "the fuzzy end of the lollipop." She is a half-hearted gold-digger, and hopes that teaming up with Daphne and Josephine might help change her luck and snag her a millionaire, "I don't care how rich he is, as long as he has a yacht, his own private railroad car, and his own toothpaste." Some Like it Hot is a hilarious sex comedy, with hints that walking a mile in someone else's heels may have had a real effect on Joe and Jerry. Womanizer Joe may have found true love with Sugar. He has at least found, for the first time in his life, it impossible to just love her and leave her. As for Jerry, well, nobody's perfect.

A color still from The Misfits - Marilyn with Clark Gable

Marilyn's last film, The Misfits, is sometimes difficult to watch, as it is so closely tied to the real life struggles of its stars. Marilyn's marriage to playwright Arthur Miller (who wrote the screenplay) was falling apart.

"Arthur did this to me. He could have written anything and he comes up with this. If that's what he thinks of me, well, then I'm not for him and he's not for me. Arthur says it's his movie. I don't think he even wants me in it."

The Misfits was Gable's last film. He died of a heart attack after filming ended. Watching Marilyn in The Misfits is watching the ultimate Method actor. It's virtually impossible to sparate Marilyn from her character, even when Miller's lines verge on the clunky. Marilyn lets it all hang out. She's an open wound. At times it's heartbreaking to watch the emotions cascade across her face. But she and Gable have undeniable chemistry. She is beautiful, sexy, at times broken, and natural in the scene where she dances first with Gable, and then Eli Wallach.

"I'm a failure as a woman. My men expect so much of me, because of the image they've made of me and that I've made of myself, as a sex symbol. Men expect so much, and I can't live up to it."

Marilyn may have fought her battle with her image and lost, but she has become an enduring image of beauty and sexiness. But she is far more than the girl with the white dress over the subway grate or the bombshell in the pleated golden gown. She was also a very entertaining actress.

All Marilyn quotes are from imdb.

why marilyn monroe ('s size) still matters

2012-01-09T09:00:00.013-05:00

A recent Slate article by Simon Doonan on Marilyn Monroe, "Marilyn Monroe’s Two Secrets," aroused the ire of many readers for its hidden title, "Was Marilyn Monroe Fat?" Doonan claimed to know the answer (No) because he was on hand (as an employee of Christie's auction house) to view some of her last possessions, including clothing:

"Right away, I discovered that Marilyn was shockingly and unimaginably slender. She was sort of like Kate Moss but fleshier on top. Didn’t see that coming, did you?

When it came to finding mannequins to fit her dresses, I simply couldn’t. M.M.’s drag was too small for the average window dummy. Smaller “petite” mannequins existed, but I could not bring myself to place Marilyn’s iconic garments on these perky fiberglass dollies."

Doonan stacks the deck, because he writes about Marilyn being a size 12, but women's off-the-rack dress sizes have radically changed over the years. What he doesn't address is that most women, Marilyn included, are hardly the same dress size throughout their lives. We put on weight, lose weight, fill out, get pregnant, lose the baby weight, etc. Our teenage bodies are different from our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, etc. bodies. If Marilyn had lived past 36, she would have continued to fluctuate in weight as many women do, and most likely in an upward trajectory. Case in point — Elizabeth Taylor. The author implies that Marilyn's curvy Some Like It Hot body would have been wearing the same little black dress she wore when she as Mrs. DiMaggio entertained troops in Korea. Photos show that this probably wasn't the case.

"When you look at Marilyn on-screen and — armed with the information I have just provided — you realize that the busty, ample gal brimming over Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot is literally one-third your size, you have every right to become suicidal. If she looks like that — zaftig, almost chubby — what on earth would you look like under similar circumstances?"

Way to reinforce body-shaming, Doonan. Just look at the black and white photo. She's gorgeous. Chubby? Why does that word even come up?

He also repeatedly calls her "tiny," based on the dresses he found among her belongings, but Monroe's measurements, according to her dressmaker, were 35-22-35 inches, with a bra size of 36D, and height of 5 feet, 5½ inches. I'm a shade under 5 feet 7 inches and people have always considered me medium height to tall. Marilyn was a classic hourglass, which would have been even more accentuated if she wore a girdle. The Fat Nutritionist has an interesting article about Marilyn, which points out that her "small" dresses might have been a bit of an illusion:

"Also, I’d like to note that a reason occurred to me why Marilyn’s dresses would seem so tiny when viewed in person: Marilyn’s dresses were often sewed onto her and, as Lena Pepitone asserts, her clothes were often so tight that they required regular mending of split seams and zippers. To get her clothing onto a dressform without ripping out seams and re-sewing them, they would have to choose smaller-than-Marilyn dressforms so that the dresses would maintain a normal amount of ‘ease’…though in Marilyn’s lifetime, she wore them without that ease. If you stuffed them as tight as sausage-casings, as she wore them, you could have an accurate 3-D depiction of her nude body size/shape (since it is reported that she didn’t even wear underwear [Lena Pepitone], let alone girdles and other shaping garments popular at the time.)"

But the real question about Marilyn is why oh why should it matter what size dress she wore when? Marilyn was beautiful, unique, and wonderful. No matter how many pounds this way or that. Why are so many people so concerned with the size of a woman instead of the shape? And why do we continue to put up with this sort of discourse? In the article Doonan talks about being gay, and generalizes on how gay men love tragic women, etc., etc. He also claims that gay men are just as obsessed with women being thin as women are. This isn't exactly news, as the fashion industry seems to push a thinner and thinner "ideal" woman every year. Why can't we ignore that pressure?

It is such a difficult situation. I have to admit to wanting to shed a few pounds myself. Who doesn't? We can never be too rich or too thin, right? But where does the simple desire to want to shed a few pounds to be able to get into some old jeans that are now feeling a bit tight, turn into looking at photos of actresses and models and feeling inadequate?

Hollywood and fashion have always favored thinner than thicker. Actresses have always been pressured to diet. Marilyn Monroe, who this year will have been gone 50 years, is still a female icon. She is being mimicked in magazine shoots and portrayed in current movies. Why it would matter to Doonan or anyone so many years after her death what dress size she wore shows how much the Marilyn mystique endures. And how much Marilyn is still viewed as an iconic female. She may really be the modern goddess.

As important as Monroe still is to us, her look, her hourglass figure, is not. Styles inevitably change, but we still seem stuck in the '60s. The fashion industry wants women to aspire to a Twiggy look, which is virtually impossible to achieve without the right bone structure. At the same time, we still seem endlessly fascinated by Marilyn, who had a look that can be more easily achieved — curves can be accentuated, waists can be cinched to approach an hourglass. Yet stick-thin is in, and people are talking about whether Marilyn Monroe was fat.

grandpa was a looker

2012-01-08T12:04:00.000-05:00

I forgot that this week was also my grandfather's birthday. He was British and here looks the ultimate school boy with that tie.

one good tern ...

2012-01-07T15:22:00.000-05:00

The royal terns were having a blast on the beach ...

Ring-billed gull eyes me thoughtfully, lower right

once upon a time ...

2012-01-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

Winter break is winding down, but there's still some time to dream ...

happy birthday (and twelfth night) grand-mère

2012-01-05T09:00:00.001-05:00

My grandmother was always the epitome of elegance. Here she is hostessing three different Christmas celebrations with her Uncle Gydie and his wife Grace.

tintin (yawn) goes on an adventure

2012-01-04T09:00:00.001-05:00

The Adventures of Tintin was ... OK. I am SO glad I didn't spring for 3D or IMAX or any of the other wallet-gouging gimmicks, because then I would be really pissed. It has a nice beginning, and then a really slow and frankly boring middle, a great chase scene which could have wrapped up the movie, and then it continues for at least another half hour — it's just too damn long for a cartoon.

And no matter what skill went into creating Tintin (and they are formidable), the bottom line is that it is a cartoon. And a strangely disjointed one at that. The animation of our hero Tintin is incredible - the care taken to make his skin, hair, and even fuzzy sweater look real. Some of the same care is exhibited in the creation of the mise-en-scène. And then there are the other characters — Captain Haddock, Tintin's intrepid terrier Snowy, the comic police duo of Thomson and Thompson — all very cartoony and exaggerated in their looks and movement. Did Spielberg want to remind us we were watching a cartoon, or did he just have his animators spend extra time on Tintin?

Motion capture has come a long way since the creepy characters of Polar Express, but for the most part, we are still looking at cartoons, which, the more 'realistic' they become, somehow become even less and less human. A line-drawn Bugs Bunny can still express more personality with a stylized smirk and eyebrow than the exquisitely rendered Tintin. I couldn't help but wonder why anyone involved in making the movie didn't step back a moment and ask themselves — why are we hiring tons of computer geniuses and animators to do what we have already done in live action movies — thrilling chase scenes? As cool as the scene is with Snowy and Tintin dodging cars as they try to pursue a pickpocket through busy traffic, wouldn't that have been three times as thrilling if they had pulled that off with stunts and live action?

Daniel Craig on his motion capture experience (from Esquire Magazine): "Craig reports that he's pleased by the final product, though he says it's hard to remember what he expected, since they filmed his part two years before. 'We shot it in mo-cap. Which is like: Fuck me, I'm literally in a leotard with a fucking helmet on, and a camera strapped to it. It's Steven Spielberg, so every fucker in the world comes to visit. Fincher comes to visit. Clint fucking Eastwood comes to visit. It was just like, are you kidding me? I'm gonna meet these people dressed like this? Playing a pirate, wearing a leotard and a camera? Really?'"

The plot of The Adventures of Tintin concerns search for treasure involving an ancestor of Captain's Haddock. Tintin, who can't resist a good story, pursues answers while constantly exposing himself to danger on the sea, in the air, and on land. I found the story and mystery pretty lacking and uninvolving. I know it was just an excuse to create some set pieces, but this is Spielberg and Peter Jackson and Steven Moffat. They should have come up with a better mystery. And they didn't "dumb it down" for kids. the movie is hardly for kids at all. Tintin has gunfights and gets into some real peril that little kids would find quite frightening.

Good points: There are some very funny moments and some great risky chase scenes, especially featuring Snowy who really steals the show. The voice talent is also good. Jamie Bell does a nice job with Tintin, as does Andy Serkis and Daniel Craig, with Captain Haddock and the villain Sakharine. The opening credit sequence is fun and full of original Tintin images, and there is a nice homage to illustrator Hergé in the first few moments of the film.

There also was not one significant female character. An opera singer is brought on near the end, but she is clearly a figure of fun and not a character anyone could relate to. Little girls might feel a bit left out with this movie. The only character they might get excited about would be Snowy. This is of course not Spielberg's fault, as he is staying close to Hergé, and Tintin is the ultimate boy adventurer. Girls do love Tintin comics, so maybe this won't be such a problem.

So who exactly is The Adventures of Tintin for? Fans of the comic may have a problem with all of the "realistic" animation. Kids younger than seven are really too young for it. Kids seven to eleven might be bored by the mystery (I have to admit that the over-long sequence in the dark and not very visually appealing ship's hold had my eyes closing and my head nodding at times. Kids eleven and up are probably at the latest Mission Impossible.

The chase scene set in Morocco is of course making everyone compare Tintin to Indiana Jones There are some Rube Goldbergian aspects to the chase that bring those movies to mind, but it also made me immediately think of Kung Fu Panda 2's recent rollercoaster-like chase scene. I guess it's hard to be original, even for Spielberg.

My take-away:

Two hours is way too long for an animated film (especially one without much of a plot).
Motion capture can be cool — in very small doses. The longer you look at it, the creepier the characters become.
Why did Spielberg feel compelled to release two family films around the holidays that can't really be viewed by the whole family?
I am looking forward to viewing the Tintin DVD I got my mom — with animation that looks more like the original Hergé illustrations.

I asked the kid critic, which did you like better ...

Tintin or Arthur Christmas? She answered Tintin. For me it's Arthur Christmas, hands down.
Tintin or Sherlock Holmes? Sherlock.
Tintin or Tangled? Tangled.

xoxoxo e

have you tried pinterest yet?

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it's hard getting old — about schmidt and everybody's fine

the long and the short of it — hair, that is

photo [Flickr]

photo [Flickr]

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