June 2012
2 posts
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SALLY/SUZY
After last night’s episode, I really hope something like this happens:
Hayward, who has been a member of Mensa since she was nine, will likely be courted by Miu Miu and invited to audition for Mad Men. Coincidently, time wise, Moonrise occurs almost in tandem with Mad Men’s current season: Suzy Bishop, Sally Draper’s freewheeling, blue eye-shadowed foil. Go-go boots vs. Saddle shoes....
May 2012
11 posts
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DERs
When the Manhattan bound 3 train stops at Clark Street, women with diamond engagement rings step in. You can bet on it. Sometimes the ring’s band will clink against the pole—one woman steadying herself as the train jerks forward, another woman, flipping her hair as she readjusts her purse, eyes darting once to survey the other passengers. These women are the last ones to get on before...
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THE KIDS TABLE
From above, it’s easy to imagine Wes Anderson’s production of Moonrise Kingdom resembling a fine scale model railroad: coastal New England homes landscaped with ferns and red cedars, with nearby inlets and a pebble beach, and flanked of course by a series of rails for tracking shots. As per Anderson’s request, trailers were not allowed on set and actors were expected to show up camera-ready. The...
MM/FNL:
The most Mad Men moment of Friday Night Lights is when Julie Taylor crashes her Chevrolet Aveo into the neighbor’s mailbox so that she doesn’t have to return to college and face humiliation.
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Chris Paul Postgame Pressers FTW
1. “Blake face”
2. CP3 on Nick Young’s shirt: “You gotta feel pretty good about yourself to wear that shirt”
<3 you ESPN, “odd shirt”=Versace
Kelly Reichardt on Adam Yauch
“From the very start, Adam was involved and excited to weigh in on all things. He’d offer up ideas and be extremely cool about letting those ideas go if I had something else in mind. I basically had my way with all the artwork, the trailer, I got to put the emphasis on a theatrical run and even chose the theater I wanted to open in. What film company lets a filmmaker do all that? Adam,...
MD on MCA and Oscilloscope
“Later in 2009, when my colleague A.O. Scott and I asked him about the momentous change that were rocking this world, and whether independent cinema had any kind of future to speak of, Mr. Yauch wrote another e-mail: “I believe that there is some middle ground. That you can make interesting, creative, informative films that will appeal to a wide audience. Maybe I’m an idealist, but I don’t...
BIG TIME GOOD
CH-CHECK IT OUT’
One Goat, on Account
To the Editor:
I had the great pleasure of reading your unsolicited critique of the “Ch-Check It Out” music video [“Licensed to Stand Still” by Stephanie Zacharek, May 16]. It took some time to get to me, as it had to be curried (sp?) on goatback through the fjords of my homeland, the Oppenzell. And in the process the goat...
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re: Cat Daddy
Like Kate Upton, “Stretch Armstrong was in the shape of a well-muscled blonde…wearing a pair of swimming trunks.”
Like Kate Upton, “Stretch Armstrong is made of latex rubber filled with gelled corn syrup.”
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April 2012
13 posts
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"It's a massive project, though, sort of a... →
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Distant Voices, Still Lives
While I am especially drawn to father-daughter relationships in books and film, Terence Davies’s Distant Voices, Still Lives has one scene that continues to resonate as the ultimate image of mother and child—partly due to the unnamed “Mother,” mostly because it relates to the panic of loss instead of the panic of love.
In the scene, Mother is sitting on the sill washing...
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Danes/Janney
Likely forgotten for their roles in The Hours, Allison Janney and Claire Danes as Sally and Julia, are by all means essential—absolutes in Clarissa’s (Streep) near-threadbare (hidden, of course) life.
We first meet Danes’s character and Janney’s character in the exact same way: from outside, in the winter, as they hurry up a quick flight of West Village brownstone stairs....
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More KD:
Probably the most KD performance, near-parody: MONA LISA’S SMILE. Dunst outdoes herself. She really works herself up. Her face is incredibly stubborn, waxy near greasy, as if she’s concealing a pimple on her chin, spiking Wellesley girls drinks with her mind.
Joined by Julia Roberts (with her trademarked laugh), Julia Stiles (her cocktail of ‘mid-Atlantic’...
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"They want to be with Leo like 24-7."
Mistakenly thought I spotted David Blaine sitting next to Lukas Haas and DiCaprio in a picture court side at the Lakers/Hornets game. Remembered their “posse” and read Nancy Jo Sales’s 1998 NYMag feature, “Leo, Prince of the City.”
Best bits:
“I didn’t find Leo at Jet 19, reportedly one of his hangouts, but I did meet a stockbroker named Ted who said...
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Whit Stillman on:
Failure:
“…the failure we talked about in Metropolitan. Here it is! Charlie was right!” In the film, I sort of made fun of Charlie but actually he was right—failure does come later.”
Niceness:
“…you have to admit, some of that niceness has that trace of the condescension, and people hate condescension. You know they say that “No good deed goes...
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March 2012
22 posts
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It’s Different for ‘Girls’ →
longformorg:
A profile of 25-year-old Lena Dunham, showrunner and star of HBO’s Girls.
Emily Nussbaum |
New York |
Mar 2012
“I tell her that I’m intrigued by the scene in Tiny Furniture in which Charlotte tells Aura that because their mothers are so successful, they must be assholes. That dialogue came straight from a conversation with another childhood friend, says Dunham. “I...
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MIKE LEIGH:
Nearly two years ago, I interviewed Mike Leigh. I had been warned that he was tough and less than generous with answers, and that most of all, I should come prepared, that the conversation might hit jams. That said, minus a slight stumble near the end, he was incredibly pleasant, sweet even—talkative yet precise.
I wonder if my impression has much to do with how we started off. I was...
J. Hoberman: "The Inner Light of Terence Davies"
“Indeed, both grew up in provincial cities (Leigh in greater Manchester, the son of a doctor, and Davies in Liverpool, the youngest of ten children) and both are in some way outsiders. Leigh is a Jew, Davies is gay; neither man will ever be mistaken for Sirs David Lean or Richard Attenborough. Although the irascible Leigh did accept an OBE in 1993, Davies went out of his way to insult the...
Arguably, a bad habit:
Whenever someone walks into the theater late, I lose my concentration until that person finds a seat in the dark. Instead of becoming frustrated though, I take extra notice of the screen, trying to perceive it as the latecomer might, entirely out of context. This image is the first that he or she will see, no matter how warped or unclear. While momentarily viewing alongside this person...
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Richard Brody & Kenneth Lonergan:
One of Margaret’s best qualities is its logical mapping of actions and events: the proximity of school to subway to a parent’s work to home, from a friend’s apartment to the park, is to a degree, what matters most in adolescence. Lisa’s geography is familiar and marked in such a way that it motivates the manner in which she walks or flirts after school. But when she is...
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"Whit Stillman and the WASPs" by CHIP BROWN
“Stillman remains as adept at confounding expectations as he was in 1969, when, a Harvard freshman, he escorted a debutante to the Junior Assemblies ball at the Plaza Hotel in New York with a Students for a Democratic Society button tucked under the lapel of his white-tie-and-tails. His preferred place to write is Dunkin’ Donuts. He says he has no assets but finds having no assets to be...
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Nancy Jo Sales' 2010 "Bling Ring" VF story:
“At her lawyer’s office, a week before her arraignment, Neiers denied any involvement in the burglaries. “I’m a firm believer in Karma,” she said, “and I think this situation was attracted into my life because it was supposed to be a huge learning lesson for me to grow and expand as a spiritual human being. I see myself being like an Angelina Jolie,” she said, “but even stronger, pushing...
Daphne Groeneveld:
Meringue, cartoon fish, o umlaut, Hayden Christensen, pink pearl apples, Calla lily, hand-blown glass bong, Seven of Nine, Verner Panton S Chair
Ha!
“If F. Scott Fitzgerald had been born in 1966 instead of 1896, his predilection for heroic sports fantasies, his familiarity with the cruelties and joys of prep school life, his keen sense of social stratification, his chronic financial woes and his reliance on the monetary rewards of commercial fiction and Hollywood might well have led him to write a movie like ”D3: The Mighty...
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The Dancing Pavilion
On this first, truly warm day, without hesitation my mind wanders to Book Two of Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, “The Hired Girls”:
That impatient type of anticipation I only associate to seasons changing (summer ranking first, of course) or retrieving someone at the airport (I haven’t in years), is landscaped exactly in this passage. So much so that ever since reading it five...
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February 2012
17 posts
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My 2¢ on the 1/2 Cent for GQ →
“Oh Los Looo-bos! I guess you goin’ for the big numbers tonight…I’m sensing a triple-double here…Penny, Penny, I want you to say hello to my man, Kevin Garnett. We went to high school together. Tell him Lil’ Penny from the science club says hello.”
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