sundries

[rm]

Coco Before Chanel -- well, I found it very moving, but this was even more explicitly about my own neuroses and sense of failings than usual. The class issues, the gender issues, the matters of being pleasing and loathing the burden of it, the bad at sex-work factor (and don't mistake it, this is a film about sex work)... etc. Or maybe, maybe it was just the driving that got me. No, really.

Problems (and I hope Patty will review it as well, as she had more problems with it than I did, and they were largely different than mine, and I think a lot of people's viewing experience will be closer to hers):

- it was ridiculously ungrounded when it came to time, which seems an absurd complaint for a bio pic... but there's a mention of the war, a jump in time and has it happened or not?

- I found the story of this woman's life compelling in and of itself, not because she was Coco Chanel, so I found it a little tedious whenever something would happen and you would see her suddenly observing a piece of clothing in a certain way. We get it! We're smart. Stop hammering.

- A tragic event happens towards the end of the film, and from there it cuts to her making dresses which then evolves into the film's final moment of a big Chanel fashion show... and I thought "are you trying to tell me the iconic Chanel suit came out of something she made to wear to a lover's funeral?" If so, that's fascinating... but I don't know if they were telling me that or not -- which was a big misstep.

That said, I thought the performances were wonderful, and the subtitles were remarkably better than they usually are and it was lovely to look at. I think, it's an angry-making film though -- in ways that are both intentional and not. It is certainly not a victorious film, it leaves us with that idea of a woman only being something is she is alone and enduring pain to great acclaim! A notion I find even more troublesome than the whole dead, gay and beautiful thing (which has certainly been a hot topic around other media properties I'm engaged with lately).

You know what I never noticed before? There's a photo of Luhrmann working with Nicole Kidman during Moulin Rouge shooting as the first thing you see when you walk into the DGA theater. I think maybe it's new? Or I just forgot? I dunno, but it pleased me anyway.

It's fall! We're too busy. I just want... time to do nothing! I suppose this is why we take vacations.

Ambivalence about my birthday continues, although Patty is helping me figure it out.

Apparently Gareth David-Lloyd from Torchwood is going to be in some straight-to-DVD Sherlock Holmes thing. Aside from the fact that this is breaking my brain... does anyone know what role he is playing?

From the department of old news: I really need to actually learn how to swing dance.

Westboro Baptist is planning to protest at Brooklyn Tech. As a NY science high school graduate (we have three science high schools, it's a thing), this hits close to close to home. I am unamused.

Speaking of high school, last night, I got my alumni newsletter and discovered someone who graduated the year before me was murdered by a man obsessed with his fiancee. Two days later, the fiance killed herself. I can barely call the guy to mind because my high school was huge, but how awful -- not what you expect in Class Notes.

We've booked our hotel for the night before the cruise. It's not glamorous (hello, airport hotel!) but it has a restaurant and Internet, which as non-drivers at an airport hotel, were the main criteria. Hilariously, it also has a nightclub, which I think means drunkity drunk drunk flight crews, which is one of those things that always possesses a sort of tawdry (and horrific) charm for me.

Comments

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

From the department of old news: I really need to actually learn how to swing dance.

Hand to god, this is the only kind of dancing, and it is FANTASTIC. I can't even waltz, but I can do this. YOU NEVER STOP LAUGHING.

[moizissimo.livejournal.com]

YOU NEVER STOP LAUGHING.

I'm glad I'm not the only one! :D

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

GDL is going to be in Holmes adaptation?!

For reals!?

*goes googling*

[idunn.livejournal.com]

I don't understand how the shit Wetboro Baptist pulls doesn't constitute harassment and thereby is illegal.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Also, a high school! CHILDREN.

[idunn.livejournal.com]

Apparently homosexuality is more damaging to children than harassment and threats of violence. The more you know ...!

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Dontcha' know that by scaring the bejeezus into them, they're saving those would be sinners from the evul-full homoseckshuality!

Like, duh...

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

The greasy little clan of bigoted lawyers that calls itself a church, makes its money by suing people who assault them after having been provoked, suing communities and police for not protecting them from people they've provoked, infringing on their civil rights to provoke people, infringing on their civil rights to be protected from people they intend to provoke...

When they found out Canadians wouldn't put up with(different laws, you know) they fled in horror.

It's a fine line between disturbing the peace, and constitutionally protected freedom of expression, and the U.S. has historically chosen to err on the side of protecting free expression, which I find completely admirable, in a way that I have no wish to emulate.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

They ride right on the line of the First Amendment, and are as annoying as possible in the hopes that someone will take a swing at them, at which point they sue.

It's a combination harassment and moneymaking gig, basically, with bonus attention from press releases.

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Apparently Gareth David-Lloyd from Torchwood is going to be in some straight-to-DVD Sherlock Holmes thing.

My glee cannot be rendered texturally.

Google turned up this:

Production has already begun on The Asylum's Sherlock Holmes starring Gareth David-Lloyd of "Torchwood" and Dominic Keating of "Star Trek: Enterprise" with a January 27th, 2010 DVD release date already set for the film's release. So what great mystery will The Asylum have Holmes unravel? Probably the mystery of how he went from being the world's most famous detective to a Van Helsing-style monster fighter. At least that's what the one sentence plot synopsis makes it sound like.

"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective faces the ultimate challenge when enormous monsters attack London."

Sherlock Holmes, monster slayer. Who wants another snooty Sherlock Holmes mystery when you can have him and Dr. Watson make like Buffy and Angel? Maybe they can take it a step further and have Holmes' cocaine habit affect him in much the same way as Popeye's spinach.

So, GDL as Holmes or Watson, battling nineteenth-century kaiju. Awesome.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Or a monster... I mean... who knows!

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

For years — wow, nearly decades, now — I have wanted to see an adaptation of the first novel, A Study in Scarlet, starring actors in their early to mid-thirties performing awkward new-roommates moments between Holmes and Watson (“Has the post come?” “Oh yes, it’s on the mantelpiece.” “...May I ask why there’s a knife through it?”) This may be the closest I ever get.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Huh. Very good point. (also, now that I've finally seen a photo of the other dude cast, the casting does seem rather obvious).

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I guess profile trumps height when it comes to casting Holmes. (I was going to site Peter Cushing, but according to IMDb he was 5'11-1/2" — holy shit, really? I was thought Cushing was fairly short, but that may just be because I tend to picture him next to Christopher Lee and David Prowse.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

I'm almost entirely ignorant of all things Holmes, but even I know he has to have sharp features.

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Maybe they’ll have Gareth in a trench whenever he’s in a shot with Dominic Keating.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

That's what they did to make Ewan McGregor look so much shorter than Liam Neeson in The Phantom Menace...

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Holmes is a least 6ft. Watson says over 6ft. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A772274

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

True, but it’s probably easier to make someone a couple inches taller than to give them an aquiline profile. Heck, John Barrymore played Holmes, and he was 5' 10".

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Gareth David-Lloyd of "Torchwood" and Dominic Keating of "Star Trek: Enterprise"

This makes me so happy I can't even speak.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

HOLY SHIT. This is from the fine people who brought us Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. This may be direct-to-bit-torrent quality.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Man, this is SO MUCH MORE AWESOME than initially anticipated.

I'd almost feel bad for the guy, but work is work, and it's probably stupid fun.

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

HAHAHA! that... that is better than i had expected!
i kinda hope GDL is evil in the, i really do

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

I'm really hoping the kids at the Sci. H.S. figure out some cool something to bother the annoying bastards from Westboro Baptist. I'm thinking solar reflectors to blind them or magnifying glasses to fry them like ants. Yes, I do have a vicious side. Religious bigoted loonies bring it out.

It weird when someone from your class dies and dies unexpectedly. A friend from my drama classes seems to have commited suicide about 4-5 years ago. I say "seems" as the obit. didn't list anything in particular as the cause, no rampant cancer, no car accident, no gun shot, nothing. It was all very circumspect and amorphous.

It didn't bring home how life is short and unpredictable life is (my mom's death when I was almost 14 did that) but more how people change from who they were in HS. She was bubbly and friendly and outgoing and outrageous. Never the person I would have thought would have died early.

What made it worse was that she was one of the one's that had escaped. She'd left our little farm community and was working in casting in greater L.A. Some of the people she'd worked with had pretty big names. She was successful by most counts but not enough or not it the right ways. I miss knowing that her light is still out there, making people laugh.

[cozzene.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking a bottle-rocket appropriately placed would be more fitting.

[cozzene.livejournal.com]

A friend on mine--a former director on the Pride Twin Cities' committee--actually has a restraining order against their group due to a physical confrontation during our Pride Festival from several years ago. They are seriously frightening.

[maryling.livejournal.com]

WBC is also going to be in the town directly next to mine on Friday because it's home to a lot of Jewish people. Our local Congressman is encouraging people to just ignore them.

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Queens) said, "These are very wacky people. It's a cult. . . . Don't be there. Don't, even out of curiosity, walk by to see what they are doing." Without public and media attention, he added, the group would lose its ability to be heard. (Newsday)

I can't decide whether to listen to him, or if I should go there in support and protection of the locals as they go to temple on Friday night.

[fragiletender.livejournal.com]

I've often thought the way to deal with them is either for a huge crowd to simultaneously turn their back on them and pointedly ignore the hell out of them (probably too subtle for them!) or to make fun of them.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

The fastest way to make them run is to pledge-a-picket. I'm serious; it's worked before. Find a charity that they'd hate (not hard) & have people either pledge $x per 15 minutes they're there. Or pledge $x per picketer, or both.

Bonus points for having a big whiteboard with "Thank you for making $$$ for..." with the number constantly going up. It makes them apeshit to know that they are literally coining it for causes they picket.

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, nice.

[fragiletender.livejournal.com]

Haha, yes, I'd forgotten about that option. I bet it turns their little brains inside out.

[maryling.livejournal.com]

Brilliant. I've donated via Phelps-a-thon.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

OMG, BEST WEBSITE EVER! I didn't know about that.

[elainasaunt.livejournal.com]

A few days ago my stepsister, a lawyer in Indianapolis, sent me a link to a Facebook page about WBC coming to her former high school there day after tomorrow to harass the school over a student production of The Laramie Project. The FB is about a peaceful counterprotest that's being organised. Anyone in that area: do go if you can.

In unrelated news...

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Hey, weren't you asking about cufflinks a while back?

Mini REAL Working Vintage Lighter Cufflinks:

They are REAL Working vintage cufflinks in a silvery color that were once dispensed in gumball machines approximately 50 years ago. The lighters are now collectors items. They are unused condition and in working order! I have attached them to matching cufflink findings and made sure the flint and wheel still works but I did not light them. (since these are vintage, if for some reason you get one that doesn't work, please contact me for a replacement). The lighters have a screw bottom to (re)fill with lighter fluid - the screw has an o-ring to keep fluid from evaporating. Sorry postal regulations say I have to ship them without fluid...

[modpixie.livejournal.com]

According to a Coco Chanel bio I read a while ago, she'd made the first LBD before the death of Boy Capel, but it went down the catwalk not long after he died. Her comment was something like "I put all of France in mourning for Boy."

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

This is my favorite way of dealing with WBC.