Curio: The Conde Nast Collection

Alexa here. In searching for holiday gift ideas this year, I keep coming back to The Conde Nast Collection. For a reasonable price (under $150), you can buy photographic prints of the work of some amazing photographers, including Edward Steichen, Cecil Beaton, Horst P. Horst and others.  Their collection from Vanity Fair is especially fine when it comes to the world of cinema. I've chosen some standouts to entice you if you feel like beautifying your walls or someone else's for Christmas... 

Click to read more ...

Uma. She'll Be Your Girl For All Seasons...

You should play this song while reading this post.

We haven't seen Uma Thu --- no seriously. People. Click play on that song while reading this post.

Ready? okay good. Hum along while you gaze at the pretty pictures of Uma Thurman. Sure you're listening to a more Pfeifferesque theme but it's still appropriate as you'll soon see.

We haven't seen Uma in so long! Mysteriously her career kind of fizzled out post double-hitting Kill Bill, Volumes 1 and 2, which you'd think would have restored her luster for non-Tarantino filmmakers but instead led to things like My Super Ex Girlfriend (oops). Still, there's hope for a third act what with her "Mrs H" role in Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac coming. And she's still presumably raking in the big bucks for gigs like the one which has prompted this post, modelling for Campari for their 2014 calendar shot by Koto Bolofo (first spotted at Tom & Lorenzo), which thematically invokes celebrations around the world.

I don't know what all the celebrations are but since TFE has such a strong international readership I trust you'll tell us in the comments. 

Let's gawk at all twelve months of this calendar girl 

Click to read more ...

Curio: Vivien's Many Faces

Alexa here, weighing in with some curios for TFE's Vivien Leigh Centennial Celebration.  It seems unbelievable that Vivien made only 19 films, with her face leaving such an indelible mark on the cinema landscape.  And, oh (as Kendra's book celebrates), that face! I think only Cate Blanchett can today approximate the expressive prisms that were Vivien's eyes.  With that in mind, here are some lovelies that celebrate her cinema career.

Three costumes from Caesar and Cleopatra, painted by C. David Claudon, available in print form here.

Click to read more ...

Beauty Break! Which would you find most (artistically) flattering...?

We're having daily nooners with the supporting actresses of '52 in preparation for this weekend's Smackdown. But I hope I'm not burning out all our comment juice with these lead-up posts. So today, an "artistic" detour. Though we sometimes lament that movies are made by committee or that artistic decisions are determined by bank ledgers at huge corporations, it's always been true that the movies have been been hybrid babies, born from both business decisions and artistic concerns. Still, even for the fame-craving, what draws (most) people to showbiz is some kind of creative urge or spirit. So the movies have more than their share of artistically inclined characters within them. Moulin Rouge (the 1952 version) is about a famous artist, Singin in the Rain is about (singing & dancing) actors, and The Bad and the Beautiful is about all sorts of creative types: actors, writers, directors. Which led me to this train of thought...

Gloria Grahame's character in The Bad and the Beautiful gets a Pulitzer winning novel written about her and Colette Marchand's character in Moulin Rouge gets her portrait painted by Henri Touluse-Latrec.

Which would you find most flattering: your portrait painted by a great artist or a book written about you by an esteemed writer? OR...

Are you the type who'd rather do the immortalizing yourself for someone else? That's what Terry Moore does as almost-horny college student "Marie" in Come Back Little Sheba when she brings Turk (Richard Jaeckel) local star jock home for a bit of live modelling.

Lola: That's a beautiful drawing Marie!"

CONFESS IN THE COMMENTS! Painting, Novel, or Do It Yourself?

P.S. After the jump we have to talk about that scene in Come Back Little Sheba cuz it is everything.

Click to read more ...

Curio: John Stezaker's Forgotten Faces

Alexa here with some art for your Tuesday. John Stezaker has been a conceptual artist in Britain for more than 40 years. His most recent series mines studio images from cinema's golden age, and resulted in his winning the prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. Stezaker collects old studio portraits of long-forgotten actors and actresses, juxtaposing two images to create new identities.  Or, as he puts it...

 

when they got broken up and recombined, real people seemed to emerge."

Click to read more ...