The Royal Tenenbaums

Today I watched the Royal Tenenbaums for the first time.  Have you seen it?  There were parts I liked, and parts I didn't (at times it felt quite contrived) but one of the things I loved was the city around them.
In documentary filmmaking (which is something that my darling brother is reading a lot about these days) there's a type of film called a "sensory autograph" - a movie that gives you the idea and the feeling of a place and the people.  It's something that he and his friend J will try to accomplish when they go to Rwanda (now in August), and it's something that I think Mr Anderson does very well with New York, or at least his version of the city.
In this piece on Flavorwire (the post that inspired me to watch the movie in the first place), they talk about how Mr Anderson, originally from Texas, had a picture of New York City that he'd pieced together from the New Yorker and the like - a New York that wasn't exactly New York, but was his own version that he then tried to recreate in the film.  So in a way, The Royal Tenenbaums isn't just about a dysfunctional prodigal family but also a sensory autograph of this other New York, a place that Texas kids dream about when it's too hot out sitting in air-conditioned hallways with their bare feet against the other wall (at least, maybe, in my overactive imagination), a place that is pieced together from Talks of the Town and movie reviews and the captions beneath cartoons.  I get that.  I've been to New York properly just once, on a class trip in eighth grade (the other times I've been through catching a bus to Philadelphia), and since then my picture of New York is also mostly New Yorker articles and vague recollections from June when I was thirteen - a restaurant with flowers on the table and a tour of a tenement house reenactment on the Lower East Side.  And I combine those pictures with "The Shitkickers of Madison Avenue" (one of my all-time favourite Talk of the Town pieces) and reviews of restaurants and other people's blogs who happen to live in New York.
So, real New Yorkers, is your New York City like the Royal Tenenbaums?  Do you find your city in magazines and on the Sartorialist and Salinger novels?  What is the city like?
(photo from here)

Harry Potter and the Architectural Digest

So... not a book title, but still.
Have you seen this article on the sets of the Harry Potter films?  It's so cool!  I love all the Gothic designs present in the boathouse and the Headmaster's Office.....

Brave

Words cannot describe how much I want to see this movie.

Or go to Scotland.

Maybe my darling little sister will go see it with me next summer, when it comes out?  Come on, Urs!  It's about a princess in Scotland who apparently is pretty awesome.  Who's with me on this?

(picture from here)

This is one of my favourite movies

picture from here.

Last summer, before I went to Switzerland, Kuzu and I had this thing that every Tuesday (I think it was Tuesday) we would get together and talk and watch movies and hang out before she went off to college and I went off to Europe and we didn't get to see each other as much.  It was a little ironic that the second I didn't have school anymore, she - who had been home-schooled - started having school (college, rather, way off in Pennsylvania).  Anyways, one of the first movies we watched was Whale Rider.
Those of you who have not seen Whale Rider, go out and see it.  It's now a little old - something like seven years old?  Maybe ten?  - but it's still one of the most incredible movies I've ever seen.  It's about a young Maori girl named Paikea Apirana and gender issues and ancestry issues and whales... we both cried for the better part of the second half of the movie, and it was generally a good crying.
Please go see it and let me know what you think of the film in the comments!  I would love to hear what you have to say about it, and if you love it as much as I do.

Hello Monday Morning

I'm sorry about not posting much, but all weekend and most of the week I have just been astonished by the devastation in Japan - and so soon after the Christchurch earthquake!  My heart goes out to all those affected...  Here are links to the Red Cross and MSF if you want to help.
Also if you worry about nuclear things (I wasn't alive when 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl happened, so researching them turned out to be scary and rather a surprise) you shouldn't read "On the Beach," okay?  But you should still watch "Dr Strangelove" because it's one of the most interesting films out there.
Speaking of films, my family and I were talking yesterday about how we don't watch enough movies.  Seriously, I've not seen any of the films that were Oscar-nominated this past year and since we got to Paris (about a month and a half ago) I haven't seen any films, either....  So we will start of our film-watching with either "Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain" or "The Seventh Seal."  Which would you recommend?
I hope you have a good upcoming week!

Movies

I have a couple of really silly movies that I absolutely adore, and those I love have often been very accommodating and let me see them more than once in their presence.
I'm not talking about the kind of movie that the whole family wants to watch (Love Actually, Casablanca, Dr Strangelove, Being There, Out of Africa) or well-made but girly movies (the six-hour-long Pride & Prejudice) or even popular geeky movies (the Lord of the Rings extended editions).  I'm talking about movies that no one else likes that I do.

We can start with the one that's least offensive to everyone else, and that's Say Anything.

(via)

I love Say Anything.  I love how the father uses the phrase "to champion mediocrity" as an insult, I love that In Your Eyes is played throughout the film, I love that Lloyd Dobbler says that his father wants him to go into the army but "I can't work for that institution."  I love that Diane Court is afraid of flying.  I love that she gives him a pen when they break up, and then gives the same pen to her father.  Oh, and I love that he serenades her plays a song on the radio outside her bedroom window.

I first want to say that I know one other person (Kuzu!) who likes this movie, but my family, my other best friend, and my ex-boyfriend have all watched this with me, and that takes endurance and true love.  There is one word for this, and it is Stardust.

This happy face on Claire Danes describes my emotion when I watch this film.  (via)

I love that Take That plays the credits song.  I love that they made a Neil Gaiman book into a movie (not Coraline, but still, Coraline was good too).  I love that the story is somewhere between geeky adventures and true love.  I love that Robert deNiro is in this film as a cross-dressing sky pirate.  I have seen this at least three or four times, and I'm not going to stop now.  Because it is excellent, and I don't care what other people say.  They still watch it with me (thank you, family and Mike and WW)

Okay, the last one is Labyrinth, and that's the one that polarizes everyone.  Because seriously, either you love David Bowie as the Goblin King or you don't.

This is one of my favourite scenes.  (via)

It's not even that, though.  You can like David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust or as a cocaine-ridden genius without liking this film.  I will be the first to admit that the film is not very well made or anything.  It's not cinematographically ground-breaking or incredible.  It's David Bowie singing songs and dressed up strangely.  Either you like this or you don't.  It's like dark chocolate - either you like it or you don't.  There isn't a lot of middle ground.  But I still adore this movie.  I saw it when I was about eleven at my friend Miriam's house and fell head-over-heels for the Goblin King and just never stopped.

So... those are the films I'm embarrassed about liking but still adore.  Do you have any movies or books or music like that?

The Golden Globes and other things

So, I didn't see the Golden Globes (I was watching Reilly, Ace of Spies with my family - more on that later) but I did see the dresses online, which is really what's important, right?  Also Ricky Gervais making a fool out of himself and everyone around him... anyways, here are my two favourite dresses:

Photo from here

The site I looked at described this as the "best reinforcement in the quality in our nation's youth, with the reminder of "Taylor Momsen, look at what you could have been."  I don't really know about that, but it makes me want to slick my hair back and smile all the time.  She looks lovely, no?

photo from here

And here is the ever-lovely Olivia Wilde in a dress that looks like the night sky.  As far as I can tell, no one liked in enough for her to be best-dressed or anything, but I think she looks lovely.  Do you know that fairytale about the girl who wants a dress that looks like the moon and a dress that looks like the sun?  This could be one of those dresses.... the dress that looks like the stars, perhaps.

Anyways, we didn't watch the ceremony.  We watched Reilly, Ace of Spies, the series that James Bond was based on.  My mother remembered it as dashing and exciting, but this time around Reilly didn't actually seem like that nice of a guy.  Kind of awful, actually.  Has anyone seen Reilly, Ace of Spies?  Did you do anything exciting over your long weekend?  Let me know!