Curio: Stanley Chow's Curvilinear Caricatures

Alexa here. UK illustrator Stanley Chow is one of my favorite pop caricaturists.  It's great fun to follow his flickr as he is quite prolific, adding posters and portraits weekly, all in his signature modern, curvilinear style.  His Mad Men character tributes were so successful that the Lions Gate lawyers forced him to stop selling them. Here is a selection of his film portraits, many of which are for sale at his shop. Snap 'em up before more lawyers get involved!

Click for more, including Michael Caine, The Great Escape and Margot from The Royal Tenenbaums

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Q&A Pt. 1: Sexy Time, Big Scares, Grace Casting, Favorite Kubrick

As an apology for always taking so damn long with these Q & A columns, I'm doing two this week, but shorter just so I can get some questions done. I'm glad the feature is so popular so thanks for your patience when your questions aren't selected or delayed a week. Here we go. You asked. I select eight to answer... for now. Part Two in a day or three.

MARK: Do you think the success of The Help and Bridesmaids will get more female oriented films made, black or white?

Sadly I do not. It's actually not that rare for a female-driven film to become a big success. Everyone in positions of power just has collective amnesia about it the following year or assumes that it's a novelty even though novelty should imply "one off" and not something that occurs pretty much a couple of times a year. ;) 

KOKOLO: What is your favorite Kubrick film?
I haven't been a completist about everyone's favorite director but mine. But of those that I've seen my preference is The Shining. I don't like the ending very much but otherwise I love everything about it and I think it's spectacularly creepy. But this could be because I saw it in a spectacularly creepy way for a first time in (wait for it) a cabin in the woods without another house around for miles, surrounded by the pitch black of a forest. I was SO scared. And don't you think that the circumstances in which you first view a movie have a real longlasting impact on you (provided it's a great movie to begin with)?

As for Kubrick in general, I find his films somewhat alienating which I suppose is the point but he's just not a favorite of mine. We're all allowed our off-consensus feelings about "the masters" aren't we? I actively dislike Eyes Wide Shut (1999), hate its faux shocking orgy sequence and cheesy-ass pay cable looking fantasies and the molasses performance beats drive me utterly wild... not in the good way. No, I don't even like Kidman in it very much. I keep meaning to give it a second chance but... every time I see a scene out of context I hate it all over again. I do however worship the opening sequence with Nicole Kidman stripping in front of the mirror.

But because I have never written about Kubrick I will now allow of you to choose one of the following (I skipped ones I didn't feel like writing about) and I will rent and write about whichever one you choose before the end of November. Drum roll... GO!

poll by twiigs.com

BIA: Which actresses would you put on a shortlist for this new Grace Kelly movie?

Please god no. We don't need this movie! Unless it's an alternate reality fantasy in which Kelly loses the Oscar to Garland. Hee. But in all seriousness, I did look at my list of actresses in the right age range -- yes I keep age range lists like I'm some casting director! I am an actress nerd. I couldn't come up with anyone suitable - Grace Kelly was 25 at the peak of her movie fame and 27 when she married the prince and retired. [If you're curious some blondes in the 20something age range -- I'm not endorsing them just listing them...

Grace casting, Sexy & Scary movies and more after the jump...

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Curio: Crafty Kubrick

Alexa here. Today would have been Stanley Kubrick's 83rd birthday.  Of course the myth of the man is alive and well; stories of David Fincher's filming 99 takes of Rooney Mara still seem to pale in comparison to the master of meticulous craftsmanship. (I wonder if Fincher will leave behind boxes as painstakingly catalogued as Kubrick's.) So in the spirit of craft, here are a few handiworks you can buy in celebration of Kubrick's wonderful madness.

First, for play: an Alex DeLarge as a sock monkey, available here.

And though I've blogged them before, I still can't resist Sébastien Lepitre's Grady sister dolls.

Click for wearables, including party masks and necklaces...

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Mix Tape: "We'll Meet Again" in Dr. Strangelove

Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr here, to talk about one of the most infamously ironic song choices out there. And spoiler alert -- if you care about such things for 47 year old movies -- it's all about the ending.

As Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb reaches its bleakly absurd denouement, everyone is plotting for an imagined future. The Soviet ambassador is snapping photos of the "Big Board," the hawkish General Turgidson is predicting a post-apocalyptic "mineshaft gap," and even the title character, an eccentric ex-Nazi, is rising from his wheelchair and crying out, "Sir! I have a plan!" before adding, "Mein Führer! I can walk!" All of their paranoid schemes are self-evidently ridiculous, and ultimately futile, because that's right when the world ends.

But it doesn't end with a whimper, or with a bang: it ends with British songstress Vera Lynn singing her WWII-era hit "We'll Meet Again" over a minute-and-a-half-long montage of mushroom clouds. In a single blow, Kubrick and editor Anthony Harvey (reputedly working from a suggestion by British comedy legend Spike Milligan) render all of the film's frantic negotiations pointless and greet Armageddon with a smile. It's about the most superficially cheery response to annihilation this side of Life of Brian's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," and like that song, it hides bitterness in its whimsy.

The power of this satirical finale lies in the song's historical roots...

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