Beauty Break: Cool Riders

We hope you enjoyed National Bike to Work Week. We didn't make too big a thing about it but for Tim's trip back to The Triplets of Belleville, Nathaniel's childhood awe at seeing Kermit ride a bike, Lynn's recall of the kid's bike fantasy channeled in E.T. The Extraterrestial, and two instant watch recommendations with gays quite attached to their cycles.

RDJ showing off. What else is new?

I wanted to play along physically but I couldn't bike to work because I work from home and that would be highly impractical going from bedroom to work station. 

To close out this little detour, please blast some Stephanie Zinone while you lust after these cool riders aka beautiful actors on bikes. Which of these bikes would you hop on and whose handlebars would you ride?

Many more beauties and hot wheels after the jump...

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Crawford Week Finale: To Those Who Can't Blend In!

This week's Joan Crawford mania, sparked by back-to-back best shot eppys (Mommie Dearest and Johnny Guitar) and a coincidental shout out to Mildred Pierce on Mad Men / reader question about Golden Age actresses, made this week something of an accidental theme week. For those who weren't feeling it, too bad! [Glenn Close voice]

Joan's not going to be ignored, Dan."

Joan cannot be denied. Nor can she blend in. Which is the topic of this final Joan post, my very late pick for that Best Shot party (I wasn't the only latecomer!). Let this one serve as a toast not only to the two time Oscar-winning cinematographer Harry Stradling Sr, but the costume designer Sheila O'Brien.

Best Shot. Joan, glowing like the sun in the center of the frame where she belongs.

There are many things to love about this western oddity but the single most amusing detail is that Joan has three costume changes during the extended climax. There's no time for a costume change like that time when you're running for your life! In the scene which really caught the Best Shot club's attention she is playing piano calmy in the center of her saloon (and the frame, naturally) in an enormous fluffy girly white gown. This change comes late enough in a picture in which she's only ever otherwise worn pants, that you know it's an in-your-face move meant to make a statement. (With the added benefit of pissing off her equally butch rival, Mercedes McCambridge). It's also the first time in the picture in which things go really wrong for her. Her lover Johnny Guitar momentarily rescues her from certain murder and they flee into the darkness. He's worried that she's like a great big lantern with that white dress on in the nighttime. So Crawford switches it out for an outfit that's.... wait for it... Bright red. Way to be inconspicuous Joan. A very brief time later, while still trying to avoid taking several bullets she switches that one out for... BRIGHT YELLOW. 

You will never catch Joan Crawford in camouflage. She will only spend time in the shadows if she can be beautifully lit emerging from them (see the whole of Mildred Pierce). A true star will not / can not blend in. Go ahead and put her in the center of the frame in shockingly bold colors, with nothing else to distract us. All eyes will stay on her regardless.

P.S. Curiously, though the costume designer Sheila O'Brien lived to be 80 years old, dying only a few years after Joan herself, she only served as lead Costume Designer on six Hollywood pictures, after a promotion from the wardrobe department. Five of the six were Joan Crawford vehicles so the Star obviously liked her, or Miss O'Brien worked very hard to appease the Star. Either/Or.  In fact, her first non "wardrobe credit" was "gown executer: Miss Crawford" (such a violent title!) on 1949's Flamingo Road, after which she became a lead designer. She was Oscar nominated for the popular Crawford picture Sudden Fear (1952). Her last Crawford picture Female on the Beach (1955) carries the immortal tag line:

She was TOO HUNGRY for love... to care where she found it!"

Weirdly O'Brien only has two credits after her time with Crawford and they're both years later. Did she upset the tempestuous diva? What happened to her? I'm suddenly desperate for a biopic on her. I bet there are skeletons in that wardrobe closet. 

Exit Music. Play us off, Joan!

Mad Men @ The Movies "Hey, Mildred Pierce!"

Please welcome new member of Team Experience, Lynn Lee (who you may remember from the Reader Spotlight and Furlough Guest Blog) here to continue our unofficial Joan Crawford week - Editor 

Lynn here, filling in for Nathaniel as Mad Men – and with it, Mad Men at the Movies – returns for the final seven episodes.  The show has had a good run but from a filmgoing perspective I'm sorry we won't get to see what Don would make of the weird and wonderful cornucopia of movies in the ’70s, from gritty crime sagas to paranoid conspiracy thrillers to, well, “Star Wars.” 

Curiously, the only obvious movie reference that popped up in tonight’s episode was to a movie from decades earlier – Mildred Pierce (1945), the half-soap, half-noir blockbuster that revived Joan Crawford’s flagging career and won her the only Oscar of her career.  Fittingly, the shout-out comes from Roger Sterling, our most senior character now that Bert Cooper is gone.  Even more fittingly, it’s delivered as slightly derisive banter wrapped around an order to an underling: Roger’s in a diner with Don and three ladies, all decked out in evening wear, and he wants the waitress to bring him the bill.

Hey, Mildred Pierce, can I get the check?”

It's not exactly a flattering sobriquet...

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "Johnny Guitar"

Tru-Color meets True Star-Mojo in this fever dream of a gender-bending Western, this week's "Best Shot" topic. Herewith some shot choices around the web (click on the pics for the articles) and a few of my thoughts as well, as your host. 

Director Nicholas Ray, too little known today, was on a real roll in the 1950s, and between his best loved films, noir classic In a Lonely Place (1950) and ur teen angst drama Rebel Without a Cause (1955) came this divisive oddity Johnny Guitar (1954).

We'd call Johnny Guitar a feminist Western except that the women have basically switched roles with the men rather than proven their equals. Sterling Hayden and Scott Brady as "Johnny Guitar" and "The Dancin' Kid" are, despite their considerable masculine attractiveness, essentially the passive "girls" of the picture, romantic objects or helpful companions who would rather not get caught up in bloody showdowns. Joan Crawford, at her butchest, definitely wears the pants in this movie literally and figuratively. Further complicating the highly discussable gender dynamics (the secret to why the movie had a second life if you ask me) is the inimitable Mercedes McCambridge as Emma Small. She's styled not unlike Joan's twin and she may or may not be in love/lust with The Dancin' Kid or Johnny Guitar or Vienna but she's definitely harboring repressed passions! 

BEST SHOT CHOICES FROM OUR LITTLE AWESOME CLUB
(which you may join at any time - Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver is next Wednesday!) 
8 shots chosen by 11 blogs 

Crawford strikes her movie star pose every single chance she gets."
-A Fistful of Films

I wasn’t completely sold on Johnny Guitar as a movie. I am sold, however, on Joan Crawford as a movie star."
-Coco Hits New York 

Sterling Hayden, epitome of masculinity, holding a dainty, PERFECTLY CLEAN, bright blue & white teacup."
-Dancin' Dan 

An image of things that shouldn't go together being forcibly wedged into one place...
-Antagony & Ecstacy 

Hilariously takes her enemies to task seemingly without a care in the world...
-Sorta That Guy 

A quick glimpse of the frame could be easily mistaken for a shot from, say, a Quentin Tarantino film, or perhaps a Russ Meyer film."
- The Entertainment Junkie

As if having her rival be dragged out and hanged wasn't enough, Emma's gotta be all small about it and make sure that everything is destroyed..."
-The Film's The Thing 

 It's a rare Western where two women are given the meatiest roles... and I loved how the central conflict boiled down to a showdown between them."
- Film Actually

[Paul Outlaw actually chose the piano shot but his runner up is this - love his comment on it!]

 There's no time for three costume changes like that time when you're running for your life...
-The Film Experience 

'It' their fight. Has been all along.' "
-The Spy in the Sandwich 

NEXT WEEK:
Taxi Driver (1976) which you have no excuse not to join in on. It's easy to find!
 [Amazon Instant | Netflix Instant | iTunes]

April Showers: Joan Crawford & "The Man Who Seduced Hollywood"

waterworks, some weeknights at 11

The danger of the "Best Shot" series is that sometimes the film consumes me for a whole week when I need to be focusing on other articles and behind the scenes duties (Oscar Prediction Charts coming soon!) But let's wash Mommie Dearest (1981) out of our systems with one last post by way of kicking off April Showers, our annual misadventure of gawking at shower scenes.

Mommie Dearest does practically begin with one. And not just any shower scene. It's funny. It's weird. It's glamorous. It's expensive. It's monogrammed. It turns wildly inappropriate during the dismount! 

Surrender to Joan's pink after the jump...

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