Awe and Despair

Watching To the Wonder was a confusing experience. Leaving the cinema I was elated and dizzy from two hours of intensely beautiful imagery, but I was also left feeling pretty cold. The love story is sad and horrible because it seemed so banally doomed, and the characters were very hard to like or empathize with. That could be blamed on the scene structures, which were fleeting, sometimes only mere moments, and layered upon each other in the same unending rhythm as waves against a beach. Each contain very little dialogue and are hard to grasp. But then it can be blamed only in small part. I couldn't understand anything about Ben Affleck's character or why these two women loved him, but then again I'm not sure if I was supposed to, he was one of the main mysteries (along with like, God).

Luckily for my blog the obvious success of the film is visual, and so the obligatory screencaps. Scrolling through them quickly will produces a similar effect as watching the film, I swear.

P.S.

By the way, I saw The Place Beyond the Pines and as I suspected, the costumes were great! Unexpectedly the best ensemble involved Bradley Cooper, a sports jacket, and mom jeans.

However.

It was the worst movie I have ever seen. Ever. It was even worse than The Town. Only go and see it as an exercise in reminding yourself not to take good movies for granted. I will concede something other than the costumes though, and it was this dude. Man was he great. He will make you want to puke so bad!

Moonrise Residence

From what I can gather from the myriad of interviews I've read, the art director and production designer of Moonrise Kingdom seem particularly proud of the Bishop Family Home set - and you certainly don't have to have more than a passing interest in architecture and design to appreciate how incredible it is in the film's opening sequence. Now I've never been to New England, and really don't know too much about its aesthetic beyond hurricane lamps and adirondack chairs, but that first 3 1/2 minutes seemed like a crash course in New England style. Well it turns out that the influence for the house was an amalgamation of five New England houses of varying iconic status. 

Thanks to a great piece on the film's official website (shout out to Focus Features!) I could learn all about the most important of these house inspirations. The first one, Conanicut Light on Rhode Island, was used solely for the exterior, and has been replicated almost exactly: (set house on left, real house on right)

Another great influence was Clingstone house, the inspiration for interior shingles, which literally sits out in the bay off Newport, Rhode Island. The New York times has a detailed piece on the house, but I'll just steal some of their photos:

From Comfort Island house, which sits on the St. Lawrence River right on the cusp of Canada, the designers took the Alson S. Clark impressionist wall murals and the kitchen and inserted them into the Bishop family home. And apparently they even rented furniture from the house itself!

Clingstone house images by Erik Jacobs from The New York Times

Comfort Island images from here

Erin ya Legend

My sister, when trying to get me to watch Blue Valentine, would always argue that while technically it should depress you a lot, it doesn't because the clothes in it are just too good. I eventually got around to seeing it and now wholeheartedly agree. Most girls probably spend half the movie admiring Michelle Williams' threads, and half the time feeling sad, which is a pretty good result overall really. Another movie whose sartorial side I spend a lot of time thinking about is Drive (RyGos again!), and so it makes total sense that both films should have the same costume designer. It was a real 'ah!' moment when I stumbled upon an article on Erin Benach, the genius in question, and her small yet shining resume was revealed.

For Blue Valentine, and I do not say this lightly, the costumes truly helped me understand Williams' character. Good and sweet and vulnerable, but also a bit battered and working class and damaged. Here my words can't really explain it, but the clothes can!

Now for some Drive! A lot of chambray, a lot of sweet-heart necklines, a lot of anguished faces.

The films all have a lot in common, RyGos, bad boys (well, bad RyGos's), vulnerable/tough leading ladies, difficult situations (to put it mildly). But what ties them together in that rather more intangible way, in terms of aesthetic and vibes, are the costumes. Oooh and what do we have here? Another RyGos turn as a bad boy? More Benach? Only the trailer and a few screen shots are out, but I already feel with The Place Beyond the Pines we've got another film to sit quite nicely alongside these other two.

boy these images are from all over the show, uhhh...

a couple from Erin Benach's own website

lots from this great hi-def screen cap site

Karl Lagerfeld Film Challenge

I have nothing against Karl Lagerfeld, but his short films are the absolute worst. I mean worst, and I do not say that lightly, I have seen a lot of bad stuff in my time. Having said that, there is a special kind of enjoyment in experiencing something like "Remember Now", an enjoyment akin to watching a particularly scary horror film or eating a particularly sour gummy worm. It's all about how much you can take, how long you can keep your eyes open, how long you can last. The longest I have been able to watch a Karl Lagerfeld movie straight is 2 minutes. I challenge you to beat that.

Honorary Big Sister

As a girl, it's a real relief having Sofia Coppola around. It's gender-affirming to watch one of her movies, they're absolutely, positively feminine and about women, which is actually pretty rare. And I know that Somewhere's protagonist is a dude, but his daughter is also there, and she's like the driving life-force of the movie which really counts for more. Anyway, having movies about girls are so rare that they get classified as girly movies, rather than just, you know, movies. How come The Shawshank Redemption doesn't get called a dudey movie huh? One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? No-one's ever like "son you should really watch it because it's about men and I think you'd relate". People are going to recommend it to anyone, because it's a movie and it's good. Same should go for Sofia Coppola! Boy now I'm getting myself mad, and slightly off-topic, I should get back to my point. My point which is that Sofia Coppola is great, the movies are great, and should really just be considered as such, but since us girls have such slim pickings we are going to hold them close to our hearts, write about them in our journals, put them on our mood boards, and watch them with our little sisters.

Aiding Sofia's place as the figurehead of all that has ovaries is that fact that she embodies that particular kind of big sister cool. I'm sure many girls feel she'd be an ideal big sister, aiding you in the ways of the world, but remaining so super hip that she will always be way out of your league. In this way she makes an ideal aspirational figure. Such is Sofia's legacy and reach that even Vogue recently acknowledged this. Janelle Brown wrote a 'Nostalgia' piece in the December 2012 issue about buying and falling in love with her first home, and it was framed by the story of her young self reading a spread about Sofia Coppola and Spike Jonze's "chic modernist abode", to which she aspired. What I love about this is that I was able to seek and find the very spread she fantasized over back in 2000, and let me tell you, it will make your girly heart swell for Sofia even more.

Man since Sofia and Spike divorced this doesn't exist anymore, it's just gonna have to sadly exist in my imagination. Or maybe it's still there, intact, stuck in the limbo that is the divorce settlement. Maybe that ping pong table sits there today, weathered from the rain and the wind and receiving no warmth from the cold light of the winter Californian sun. Also of note is the amazing font used for the featured quotes. Eight years ago I wondered what visuals would define the early 2000s. Without a doubt we've got a member here.

If you want a nice large image so you can read the article, just ask and I'll e-mail it to you!

Let My Cameron Go

This pop editorial is called "Bad Moon Rising" but I'm getting more Ferris Bueller vibes. Could this actually be Cameron's house? It was on the market a few months ago. These are just some musings which really add to the viewing experience of Valerija Kelava and a gorilla getting domestic. Ooooh and listen to this if you really want to enhance your viewing.

I can't help myself.