My Illustrative Life

I spoke of The Legend of Billie Jean before, but I didn’t (couldn’t) do it (her) justice. I can’t believe Pat Benatar anecdotally refers to it as “the worst movie of all time” when she performs the theme at her concerts. Gosh darn this movie is inspiring!

Billie Jean Davy is seventeen and lives with her mother and her brother in a trailer park in Texas. When a massive jerk steals her brother’s bike she asks the police to bring it back, and is told that Hubie (the jerk) was “probably just trying to get your attention” because she’s “a pretty girl”. When she arrives home, the bike is trashed - and her brother is too, after trying to get it back.

Billie Jean takes Hubie a bill for the scooter’s repair, and his father tells her to come on upstairs for the money (he doesn’t keep that much in the till) after disparaging his son. She goes, and he gives her fifty dollars and expresses his intent to rape her. When she flees, Binx (her brother) accidentally shoots the bastard with the “unloaded” gun that’s kept in the till.. and Billie Jean and co are on the run.

The policeman Billie Jean originally went to is the one assigned the shooting case and realises, as soon as he sees her picture, that it’s his fool fault that it went so far. The story continues with Billie Jean (and Binx, and their two friends) on the run as outlaws, refusing to give themselves up until they’re paid the six hundred and eight dollars that they’re owed for the scooter’s repair. Hubie’s father refuses to pay, because he is an enormous jackass, so the whole thing goes on for ages, with Billie Jean becoming more and more clearly aligned with the ideas of justice and taking a stand. She also naturally blossoms as a leader and a carer and I love this movie please excuse how dry I am making it sound.

Anyway, at one of the peaks of her journey Billie Jean is introduced (by a kid she clearly finds mondo foxy (above)) to the story of Joan of Arc. She watches the black and white film to the end, and when it’s done she expresses her decision to make a video - answer the media’s accusations. She stops running, and starts to fight. When the video equipment is set up, Billie Jean emerges from the bathroom having gone from this:

To this:

Let’s lay aside for a moment that fact that BJ2 here reminds me fiercely of Amber from the Tribe, who is the only fourteen year old I might call “a personal hero”. The music for this scene is an instrumental section of the Benatar theme, and it’s perfect. Stirring, badass, a little on-edge; Billie Jean’s clearly a bit shy about her new hair, but the kind of shy that means I look amazing, I feel so good, so good it makes me vulnerable. The cutting of hair is so symbolic even apart from the Jeanne d’Arc ref (and it’s one of my favourite tropes, actually, as I quite strongly indicated in this post at BSB). It can mean so many different things.

The extreme removal of (head) hair has a pretty strong tradition of meaning “brutal”. The type of brutality varies with context, of course, but very very rarely is it a gentle thing of joy and wonder.

For a western man, shearing/brutality usually mean “this is an act of power”. Skinheads have a semiotic reputation of violence (violence that they hypothetically commit). Draft-based fiction usually has a ‘we all get our heads shaved’ scene; male soldiers in real life have buzz cuts. That Taxi Driver/Heat Guy shaving is an act directly prior to an assassination.

For western women, on the whole the connotations are quite different - there are many stories of post WW2 women who were thought to have ‘dallied’ with enemy soldiers or betrayed their country in other ways being forcibly shaved and paraded through the streets or beaten. Girls sent to nunneries had their hair cut, numerous stories for or about girls feature the removal of somebody’s hair to their great dismay: the section of A Pack of Lies set in India, Berenice Bobs Her Hair, Little Women, and a book I read in the infants that I can’t recall the name of (it also featured a pair of green P.E. shorts stuffed up a drainpipe, if that helps?), off the top of my head.

One pro-power female example is the flappers’ bobs; “I can be independent if I want to, you can’t make me your Rapunzel”. Just as relevant. Oh, and George from the Famous Five.

Sudden removal of long locks essentially means one of two things, in western storytelling: “I have the power” or “I have not any power”. On Billie Jean, it means both and that is why I adore it so. She’s an outlaw through another’s fault and direct maliciousness and she really has NO power over the situation - she’s a girl, she’s underage, she’s poor; he’s a man, he’s an adult, he’s a businessman. But she’s not going to just sit back and let it happen. FAIR IS FAIR, after all, and that’s the sort of factual statement that is power unchallengable. Just ask Sirius Black, the only sane man in Azkaban.

There’s more to Billie Jean’s makeover than the hair, of course, but you can watch the movie and dissect or absorb that for yourself. It’s worth it, Guide’s honour. There’s no DVD as yet (veoh has it..) but I got myself a VHS copy from Amazon Marketplace. Not expensive. You HAVE to see how the Joan parallels play out, too.

The reason I rate this Makeover Movie so highly is the depth of emotion and resonance with the rest of the film the physical “make-over” has (waaaatch iiiiit). The Legend of Billie Jean is the kind of movie that causes me an amount of physical pain to imagine how hard I would have clung to it had I seen it as an a teenager. A ferocious and noble inner life matched with a faultless, no matter how eighties, outer style? My wagon is hitched, for life.

The Pat Benatar song with scenes from the film is below - and watching it now I notice how extremely Billie Jean’s body language changes with her haircut. From the determined but swamped good girl, to the fierce as all heck, much much looser Warrior for Right! The scene at the very end is her watching Joan of Arc.

Three days left of February and I still haven’t found the time to read this:

My SPOILERS! challenge started to well! The first and even the second posts were finished before Feb. even started.. and Tank Girl (numbuh three) followed.. actually, now I check, that one was on January thirty-first. Darn! It started SO well!

Oh well. It’s still coming! I WILL find a way to squeeze it in.

To compound my folly though, I hereby declare the start of another SPOILERS! Month-challenge!! Hurrah!

This time it’s films. And this time, I’m giving you warning - homework, if you will. I’m going to tell you what I’m going to write about, so that you can watch them first if you feel like it; you’ll know if you agree with me or not when you read what I write.

There’s even a theme! As I mentioned on twitter: Greatest Makeover Movies. As I also mentioned on twitter, every girls-are-pink site ever has also done this list, of course. But you know what? Mine will be better!! Because I read their reasons, and they were a load of old conkers, I tell you whut.

I know it runs against the Davina/Oscars method of reveal, but here’s my list:

• The Legend of Billie Jean
• Gigi
• Clueless
• Desperately Seeking Susan
• Oldboy

I’m telling you that now (and in no particular order) because it’s not the which that matters to me, but the why. And if you’re thinking “that’s not a makeover movie!” then you may be correct, in the general sense! But you are wrong QUITE WRONG in the “to me” sense. And this is my domain, cowboooyyy. So: watch these movies, if you please, and then come back here and see if we agree or if I can posit something you hadn’t considered. Or don’t watch them, and then come back here and see if I make them sound intriguing! It’s a big ole challenge!

I recommend doing Billie Jean first, because that’s the only one without an English DVD release. If you’re Spanish, then lucky you! You can own it on a shiny disc and love it forever! If you aren’t, then veoh has it. Or you can do what I did, which was fall for it so hard that I amazon marketplace’d a vhs copy (with what may be the greatest cover ever, I WANT THAT POSTER).

The rest are all available on DVD. Clueless, Gigi and Susan should all be pretty cheap; Oldboy is probably more expensive. But it’s worth it.

Go on. Tell me what I’ve left out.

I don’t want to change my hair. I like it a lot how it is. And I don’t really tend to envy people - just approve of them, because I am a Queen and thus imperious. But, here is an exercise: If I had to change it. If a villain was holding the world to ransom, and their only demand were that I MUST get a hair transplant.. Here is what I would choose. Three choices, in case they don’t have many scalps for me to pick from.

I like hair with texture and rhythm and impact. The hair I have now allows it its optimum.. boosh, if you like, and it holds my face like pincers. It’s short in the back, which lets me feel punchy, and it’s swishy in the front which makes me feel serene (but not too swishy, so I remain controlled). These three also have that mix of KA-POW and gliiiiide, I think. Don’t you? Or maybe you read them differently, that is the interesting thing about opinions! Do share.

My fourth choice - which doesn’t really count, because It’s more of a “style” than a “do”, if you see - is the hair I saw on a lady in the Jimi Hendrix documentary my sister and I watched on the train on the way back from her last uni visit. I didn’t see the start so I didn’t know her name! But I had to show her cool, cool hair to my beloved, and so: I found her. Fayne Pridgon. Here are a very bad picture and a link, because for some reason the clip has embedding turned off! Bah!

This documantary!

What about you? Got back-ups?

I don’t actually know if there is/is going to be a softcover of this book.

Jennifer’s Body, first-off, was a horror movie out last year. Written by Diablo Cody, starring Megan Fox (jennifer) and Amanda Seyfried (Needy); about a pair of teenaged, highschool friends who give up pretending that they don’t feel like enemies once Megan’s character, titular Jennifer (and no, I’m not taking that pun out - it was accidental and I don’t feel like redacting it to avoid rubbish jokes), becomes some sort of demon. I hated it when I saw the posters, I resented it when I saw Megan Fox being used for sexyface yet again, I rolled my eyes and sneered at it when I heard the “HELL IS A TEENAGE GIRL!” tagline. But when I read the coverage it got on Jezebel - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (’6 reasons to love Jennifer’s Body’)) I started to think it might actually be really fantastic.

I still haven’t watched it, though. I’m a rubbish cinema-goer (I still haven’t seen Where the Wild Things Are, for goodness’ sake!).

I was and am super-keen on the idea of a horror movie about teenage friendships full of resentment and stangancy (not a real word?), about how objectification and patriarchy turn people against themselves and each other, and a deeper examination of high school/teenage problems than “my parents don’t understand or listen to me” or gender-divided court hierarchy. Not that those things aren’t interesting and true and painful, but that isn’t all that sucks so hard about growing up. I was-am also super-keen on examination (& debunking) of sexism within horror movies. And how that comes from, reflects and focusses sexism and gender-based assumptions in ‘real life’.

But like I said, I haven’t seen the movie yet! So I should shut up about it, and talk about the comic which I HAVE read!

They were still shooting when I was writing so I haven’t seen the film but I got to read the screenplay. It was kinda crazy writing characters that were being changed on set and in the editing process. - Rick Spears, author of the compilation, to Atomic Comics

I mentioned that I bought my copy in a regular book shop rather than a specialist comic shop - this meant that I got the Cho-drawn cover:

Now, I twitter’d this before, but the fact that this comic came wrapped in cellophane makes me go HAH and then EWW.

When I started writing this today I decided I should check good ole wikipedia to see if it had any interesting facts I had missed. it didn’t, but it did provide me with this paragraph synopsis of the book:

The novel features less of Jennifer than the film, but does capture her “going in for the kill” several times. It focuses heavily on following her soon-to-be victims and provides information on their personalities not elaborated on in the film so that readers can better conclude whether the boys deserved to be murdered. The novel consists of four chapters, with a prologue and an epilogue, with art provided for each by different artists. Each one follows a different boy and what is happening in his life just before Jennifer kills him.

I’ll just day that “conclude whether the boys deserved to be murdered” is not what I did when I was reading. Why? Oh! That’s right! Teenage boys DON’T deserve to be murdered! You nutter, anonymous wiki editor.

I don’t actually think that that was what the author intended me to do either though - I got much more of an impression that this was a book written out of a funny sort of sensitivity. Boys don’t deserve to be murdered, but horror movies need victims.. but victims mean nothing if they weren’t people first. I leave the room when Luke’s rebel friends are being burst like fireworks as they’re all assaulting the Deathstar, because it’s sad. Phelous often mention that the films he reviews miss the mark because the characters who get skewered (or whatever) are so irritating or vapid that the viewer doesn’t care or is glad when they pop their clogs - the more a victim matters, the more of a reaction will be gleaned from their demise. Or from any trouble they meet, really.

Just like in Nation X there are four stories, and just like in Nation X the first one is the best.

Chapter One: JONAS follows a jock who vaguely wants to bone Jennifer despite his girlfriend’s presence, and who’s feeling the strain of staying the sports hero he’s always naturally been whilst living the life of sofa-riding and snack-scoffing that he’s also inclined towards. It’s drawn by Jim Mahfood, who is great.

Second-page in and Jonas is getting a Strickland-esque dressing down from the headteacher - Jonas is never going to go anywhere, his life’s peaked already, he’ll end up hating his whole life and his whole life caving in on him. Jonas shrugs it off, but he can’t.. quite.. ignore it..

He gives it a good try though.

Spears keeps adding little extra bits of pending doom onto Jonas - ones that are unrelated to Jennifer.

Then he figures out his girl isn’t quite all his, then classmates are lost to a mysterious fire, then Jonas can’t keep it all in any more when the school’s grief councillor schedules a visit.. Jonas knows his life’s not what he wants. He knows his story is supposed to be better than this. And then, beautiful powerful popular Jennifer appears, and Jonas knows she can make the right things happen.

Jennifer’s not so into making out or hooking up any more though, so she whacks his head off.

Jonas’s story is over, and Jennifer was really only the end of it.

Chapter two: COLIN is about a kid who wears a shirt with an anarchy symbol on it, who has been “in love” with Jennifer since childhood, and who cannot bring himself to buy music from a mainstream record shop in a mall.

He can’t even speak in front of Jennifer, even after they become lab partners (is this really such a romantic appointment as the movies suggest?). Until..

So he can talk to her, but when he decides to overcome the dismissals of his sub-culture peers and ask Jennifer out, DISASTER STRIKES.

Don’t worry! Jennifer isn’t going to let him get away so easily. Romance may blossom after all! In an building site. Nice, Jennifer. But Colin’s not so impressed.

Jennifer looks like she’s hoping for some naked time, and Colin’s thinking of backing out because he’s a kid with emotions, you know? I’m not making fun Colin, I think that’s nice.

Sorry, Colin. Jennifer wants your body.

Chapter three: Ahmet from India made me ask “What the fuck is this?”. Is this dialogue straight-up racist, or is it just me?

What’s up with the sentence construction?

Also, is circumcision that common? Really? Uncommon enough that a team of baseball players will taunt their new expert bowler off the team based upon his present foreskin?

Really??

I don’t know if there was a Bollywood scene in the movie, but either way its inclusion here makes me feel uncomfortable. Ahmet is at the club everyone goes to, a band plays, the music is SUPER AWESOME and Ahmet gets Bollywood vision, rainbows and bare-chest-waistcoat and all. Dance routine time.

???

I liked the character that came through from Ahmet. He seemed like a decent kid. It’s interesting to get a view of a character whose international schooling year goes terribly, what culture shock feels like, and it’s true that food from ‘back home’ can be immensely comforting to someone in a place that feels hostile. For example, I started eating courgettes having hated them previously because I was glum in my uni town, and our crop at home had just ripened. It’s good to be reminded how extremely unkindness can effect people - you really never know how much other stuff someone’s dealing with as well. I am just completely baffled by the way that this section is written. The art’s pretty good - it’s just not used entirely for good, I think!

I considered that the odd dialogue might have been an author’s technique to bring home how culturally out of place Ahmet is or seems to the other kids at school. But if it is it is SO badly applied.

This last couple of panels was smart though, I think; Ahmet starts his story by talking about grasping his own American Dream, and ends (doubly) by quoting an American film classic.. about his ‘foreign’ home.

The last story is Chip’s. Chip is the boyfriend in the movie, Needy’s boyfriend. He wants to have sex with her, a lot, she’s intimidated by her body (Chip’s words) and doesn’t want to do it much. He fantasises about Needy, and sometimes about Jennifer too. Eventually Jennifer kills him and it is sad. I thought this was the most straightforward of all the shorts, which is why I didn’t include any pictures.

The four short stories are bookended by Jennifer, at (I assume) the beginning of her rampage and at the end of the film. The caption boxes show her inner monologue.

Start:

End:

And they say it all, really - there’s zero insight into Jennifer in this book. No more than I got from the trailers, anyway, or the exchange between her and Needy:

Needy: You’re killing people!

Jennifer: No, I’m killing boys.

She knows boys want her, and partly because of that she disdains boys. She knows she’s hot, and partly because of that she disdains her body. This book was about the boys, and it causes me slight to middling pause that they went ahead and called it “Jennifer’s Body” on the cover.

Jennifer’s body wasn’t what killed them, and the stories show that. What killed them was Jennifer’s actions. What led up to Jennifer’s actions were the pressures upon her, and upon the boys. and their reactions to these pressures. Oh, and of course, what caused Jennifer to start “killing boys” was the demonic entity which possessed her, after she was murdered in a misogynist ’sacrifice to Satan”. Thanks wikipedia.

It’s true that each of the boys in these stories are sexually attracted to Jennifer and her body, but in no story does the kid in question simply want to fuck her. They think she’s ‘hot’, but they also want what she (with personality, standing, artifice) represents. Jonas wants the comfort and potential of a partnership with her. Colin wants to spend time with her doing things he likes that it turns out she might enjoy too. Ahmet wants someone to be his friend - a bond, maybe even someone he can share love with. Chip is the only one interested in Jennifer’s body, and even he rejects her because he doesn’t want her body. He just responds with boners to the sexual interaction that she flaunts as a possibility. Maybe all this is why they kept the title, I don’t know.

It’s all over pretty fast, anyway. I was left with that feeling oh “oh.. huh” that I also got from the Buffy season six/seven tie-in comics I read years ago. It does feel like a tie-in, I think is the problem, and I think the psychology of the various attractions to Jennifer (and her reactions to them) are set out a bit simplistically. Or maybe I mean straightforwardly? In Colin’s story, particularly, I felt like I was reading the bad sort of soap opera webcomic, where relationship dramas are settled by enormous speech bubbles of self-help book join-the-dots. This was a really bad comparison to draw, because I can;t link to a comic that I think does this sort of thing because that would be terribly rude. I think what I’m saying is that I felt that some of this book were too neatly drawn. And when I say ‘drawn’, I mean ‘written’.

Apart from the baffling aspects of Ahmet’s chapter, I think I recommend this book. It is, at the very least, an interesting artifact: the “but what about us?” response to a feminist slam of internalised misogyny’s effect on teenage sexuality. What about you, boys? You matter too, of course! And that’s why you should be on our side.

Oh, pee ess, the reason that I actually did turn out to write a review with no mention of the character design or wardrobe choices? Because it was apparently no-one’s priority here at all, and I barely noticed what anyone was wearing ever. Bah.

Sorry this got so long.

Ugh ugh ugh, sorry for the multiple edits! >_<

I just recently ate this:

It was delicious. As well as being an excellent shade of green, pistachios are an excellent flavour!

Having written yesterday about “what I have bought this month”, naturally today I went out and made four more purchases. You’re ruining it for me, I hear you cry! My predictions are all thrown off! Well, that will teach you to make assumptions based in consumerism. But I know, I know, it’s all my fault.. So to make up for it, I’m going to have a go at saying I will do this in a blog entry and then actually doing “this”. It’s not that I’ve given up on all the posts I’ve said I’m going to do - these things just take time! And sometimes, equipment.

Anyhow. Coming up in February (or maybe a bit before), four separate reviews of four separate books.

First, because it’s smallest, this single-issue floppy. I picked it up after finding neither of the trades I wanted in the comic shop that’s technically local to me, but ridiculously tricky to get to, and then having seen both Jubes and Gambit and No-Girl on the cover. Then when I flicked through, Quentin Quire! I think that kid is just adorable, his angstpain is just so all consuming and his anger so impotent — despite his great psychic abilities. And he’s so SURE that he’s RIGHT! Grant Morrison, your work is often groovy.

After I left the comic shop (and after I completely failed to find anything I was after for research in HMV) I wound up in Waterstones, where I found three separate comics - or comics-derivative - books. I feel guilty! Comics should be bought from speciality stores! Or they’ll DIE! But I didn’t seen any of these things in that shop! So to make up for it, here’s a plug..

Anyway. Onwards.

Tank Girl. Always a plus, no? Yeah, even the movie. If you don’t appreciate it, maybe you’re looking at it funny? This is a text-only book, a novel. I bought it for novelty value, honestly - can Tank Girl work without images?? We’ll find out!

Jennifer’s Body: this isn’t a novelisation of the movie, apparently. It’s four short stories about how boys in the school perceive Jennifer. I haven’t seen the movie yet but the commentary on Jezebel was fascinating and I’m planning on a dvd watch; I’m generally interested in less than franchise-y peripheral add-ons to fiction and, yeah, I want to see how the (male) writer adheres to or strays from the feminist slant of the film’s plot. STAY TUNED.

The Complete Nemesis the Warlock vol. 2. I want to read more classic 2000AD in general, more Pat Mills in particular, and a black-and-white phonebook post-apocalyptic epic is just what I need on a rainy day. Plus, my beloved said it was good one time, and he usually has pretty good taste.

SO. Let’s see, huh? I’m excited! I hope you are too! And please, don’t think you’ll be bored if you’re here for fashiony stuff. Don’t expect a review from me that ignores character design.

Pattern-model style, Christmas day, exhibiting one of the presents my sister and I gave our immediate ancestors.

Boxing day, walking; I love the English countryside. I love it. Quotes from Guthrie in Bloomability by Sharon Creech, one of those books that I might describe as “almost perfect” and only almost because calling a thing perfect seems foolish. You should maybe read it, though, especially if you are feeling unhopeful or hopeful.

Post-walk, building a fire before watching Desperately Seeking Susan. Wearing gift-dress (H&M) and gift-tights. Thanks Mum! And gift-slippers, thanks Dad!

No, my modesty is safe. Knitted shorts.

Peace out.

1 Skirt: etsy

Jumper: Jaeger

Tights: H&M // H&M

Slippers: Fit-Flop

2 (vest: Next, Thermal: M&S, slip: ebay)

Sweaterdress: H&M (gift!)

Sweaterdress: NoaNoa

Suede overdress: Fanny & the Cave

Tights: H&M

Boots: Dr Martens

Hat: RSPB Capercaillie tartan

Coat: Camden

Gloves: Accessorize

3 as before!

I’ve mentioned a few times the thought processes that go into my “work wardrobe”; I want to feel like myself but appropriate. For me, this has meant diving from the [1960s professional lady] board. There’s a character archetype that the neat, softened-geometric shapes and clear colours that thick work-grade fabric evokes. When we (I) watch professionally-set stories set in the 60s, we (I) know that:

1. she’s smart
2. she’s good at her job
3. she can handle the people she encounters in the line of duty with grace and skill
4. she’s underestimated

It’s clear why these are aspirational traits, no? The last, in particular, is important, because I do not feel quite comfortable being an “office worker”. This is no slight to those who are - I simply am myself and not them!

Of course it’s no secret that Ms Joan Holloway is the bees knees right now, and it’s certainly true that she is costumed impeccably.

But who is responsible? Who chose the clothes that make the woman? I will tell you know, and you should read these names:

Tiger Curran: costume assistant / wardrobe intern (26 episodes, 2008-2009)

Allison Leach: assistant costume designer (18 episodes, 2007-2009)

Joanne Bradley: tailor (17 episodes, 2007-2008)

Tiffany White: costume production assistant / costumer / … (17 episodes, 2007-2008)

Michael Castellano: costumer (12 episodes, 2007-2008)

Bud Clark: costume supervisor (12 episodes, 2007)

Le Dawson: costume supervisor / costumer / … (9 episodes, 2007-2009)

Kristine N. Haag: costumer (9 episodes, 2008)

J.R. Hawbaker: costumer (7 episodes, 2008)

Kimberly Nickerson: costumer (6 episodes, 2007)

Lynn Ollie: costumer (6 episodes, 2007)

Hannah Jacobs: costume production assistant (5 episodes, 2008)

Thanks IMDB!

But Joan wasn’t the first! Of course she wasn’t. She’s a throwback, she’s created now. She may be a marvelous depiction of a lady of ‘63ish (I don’t actually know.. I can’t watch Mad Men, because I believe I would burst re: injustice, prejudice, social horror) but she’s a product of 2007.

So, who was really there?

I’ll tell you!

Wende Wagner played Lenore “Casey” Case in The Green Hornet, a show I happen to heart. Bruce Lee’s tv break, too. Am I looking forward to the movie? NO.

Casey was Brit Reid’s secretary. Brit Reid was the editor-owner of the Daily Sentinel, a newspaper. He was also by night the Green Hornet, a asked crimefighter who went about his vigilante business by pretending to be a worse criminal than anyone else. I love that. Casey was one of the three people who knew of Brit’s alternate identity, and she was often involved in his cases. There was no romance between them, and he respected her as a professional and a friend. Andrew Pallack is credited in IMDB as the men’s wardrobe master. I will check my dvds to see if there’s any info on the women’s costumier.

Eve Whitfield was costumed by Grady Hunt. She was an Officer on Ironside’s team, an integral member. She was kind of a hardass sometimes, actually. But look how she dressed! So good!

Photobucket wouldnt take the collage whole! I had to chop it, and I was in a bad, tired mood.. :/

The last, smallest wardrobe featured is that worn by Scott Bakula as Sam Beckett as Samantha “Sam” Stormer (yeah, it’s a maze of a show) in the episode “What Price Gloria?” of Quantum Leap. This was probably costumed by Jean-Pierre Dorleac, but Jacqueline Saint Anne also took charge of the wardrobe duties on “unknown episodes”. Produced in the eighties/early nineties, rather than the 60s proper, but OH that episode gives me the envies. Marvelous.

Thanks, costume designers and wardrobe departments. When you do your jobs, you make stories so much better.

New post over at warmthblog! Click the picture to visit. Western-flavoured cosy undergarments: very fascinating, for you all!

Right now I am watching The Mummy Returns on the Hallmark channel. Which is serendipitous - I have been planning to write this post all week.

So: 2001’s The Mummy Returns, starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weiss. I really, really enjoy this movie! I didn’t see it in the cinema, but I’ve owned it long enough that my copy is on video. It’s just.. basically flawless*, as a movie to feel good whilst watching. It has:

• A married couple who are in love
• who have a child
• who isn’t annoying
• who is actually fun to watch! He’s spunky!
• The wardrobe is marvelous, all 1933s archaeologist-adventurer/stylish English lady wearing egyptian burnished-deco
• The supporting cast all have personalities and are not crippled by their quipping
• Emotions are engaged despite the action-movie set pieces, the cg monsters, etc
• Imhotep is one of my FAVOURITE VILLAINS EVER.

Let’s talk about Imhotep.

In this film - which is a sequel to the remake of the 1932 Karloff picture The Mummy - Imhotep is played by Arnold Vosloo, in place of Boris Karloff.

Part of the reason I like Arnold Vosloo is that I think he looks like G1 Megatron, and I both find that amusing and enjoy Megatron, so I start this situation with kindly feelings.

In this version of the history, Imhotep was (basically) advisor to the Pharaoh who fell in love, reciprocated love, with the Pharaoh’s woman. And from here-on in, SPOILERS. Be ye warned. Imhotep and Anc-su-namun are discovered together, and he is taken away to be executed whilst she kills herself, unwilling to stay the property of the Pharaoh. In the twenties Imhotep is raised - as per the curse he was buried under - and searches out Anck-su-namun, only to be foiled. In Returns he (guess what!) returns - raised by the reincarnation of Anck-su-namun, and they plan to gain the power of the Scorpion King and live it up like they never got to before.

Imhotep’s motivation is, basically, he misses his girlfriend and he’s cranky after being woken up from being murdered horribly (twice). I feel for him; I miss my [gentleman]friend and I too am cranky when I wake. Occult rivalries, too, bring out a worse side than my usual face. He has a minority of the movie’s kills. And his reaction to his final betrayal.. well, do you have a heart? You may find it squeezed for him, the poor mite.

Right??

As per last time: I owe this movie to Karloff’s movie. And he did make that movie; if you haven’t seen the Universal The Mummy it is available for free, legal download on archive.org. It wowed me, to be honest. I was so-so until the close-up on Karloff-Imhotep’s awakening. That, friends, is acting.

And I enjoyed, enormously, comparing the old Mummy with the new Mummys. These remakes.. in my opinion, they are respectful. The build on the story. There are a couple of references that really made me smile, but the story weaving is my favourite. Take 1932Mummy on one hand, and the 1999/2001Mummy(Returns) on the other. If you watch one hand, you will have a fine cinematic experience. If you watch the other, ditto. But if you watch both, you will have a better experience. They work together, they’re a dialogue. The way the nuances of the story and the characters change between the eras, the way the new ones are the old one re-worked rather than simply re-written. The Mummy vs The Mummy will give you some of this, but for the full joy Returns is a must. It is a rare breed of sequel. I think it is a fine tribute.

Once again, let us cheer! Thank you, Boris Karloff! Thank you very much!

Oh, and one more thing - Don’t bother with Tomb of the Dragon Emperor That movie can go.. fish.

*Bar the only-features-two-ladies (three if you count the “I am a gold-digger with my non-1933 cleavage” five-second cameo) catch, natch. :/

My mum decided she needed a video resource for her class - she teaches primary school - and that she wanted my aunt, who was visiting for a couple of days, to play the scientist in it. So I wrote this, and filmed it in a very small time! And then edited it at top speed, because she FORGOT COUGH COUGH to tell me when she needed it by! Also, I hate iMovie.

Very much.

Quite pleased with the script, and the logos, though. Despite the fact that I couldn’t find my tablet stylus and had to make the whole of both of them with the click-and-drag shape-makers and the lasso tool by way of my 5×2 touchpad. I cry!

If you are or know a teacher, you or they may feel free to use this at no cost. Please comment if you want a better quality one, I can do it in my lunch break or something! The lesson/homework was to investigate and compile a report on “an invention”, and the class topic is “keeping warm”, so - this combines the two. Happy watching! >_>

Click the above picture to visit my other blog (about how to keep warm and stay eco-friendly); I have a new post up about nightwear.

Do you have a band? A musical band? Or just a voice and instrument? Or something?

Cover this:

And you will win a prize. Because I really, really like that song.

Oh Grace Jones, you are so fabulous.

Some songs don’t need videos. Some songs render videos useless; they’re facile or shallow or just say everything they need to say within the audio alone. Sometimes videos are just poorly designed and mean a song that could have been enhanced by moving images have to stand alone and watchers of video channels get to be mildly (or strongly) visually bored for four minutes or so.

The above video is an example of seamless integration of eye and ear food. Audio-visual. If you take away the video from the song, you get maybe half the value. If you take away the audio, same. The whole really is more than the sum of the parts. It’s just magical. It’s a whole 80s dystopic movie in six minutes.

If you enjoy Grace Jones, please buy or rent Conan the Destroyer. She’s a secondary character but her arc is some strong heartwarming, her costume is fantastic and SHE IS JUST SO COOL.

pictures pinched off google image results

Here are the rules I must follow:

1. Say Thank You and give a link to the presenter of the award

2. Share “10 Honest Things” about myself

3. Present this award to 7 others whose blogs I find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged me.

4. Tell those 7 people that they have been awarded HONEST SCRAP and inform them of these guidelines.

Amy Claire has given me an award. Nice! So I guess I have to follow the rules now.

Thanks Amy! :D

Honest things:

1) Right now I am watching Sarah Haskins episodes I’ve seen before in bed at half-past midnight lounging alone in a double bed that needs the sheets changing.

2) This does not depress me; it makes me feel like I am awesome and a character I would enjoy were I to read me.

3) I use a nail file on the skin around my nails

4) If I don’t do that, I feel a great compulsion to gnaw at the sides of my nail beds. Gross, right? I used to make them bleed.

5) I like to sleep on wet hair, because the shape it makes in the morning is an adventure

6) I’m not scared about the future, on the whole (obviously I am scared of hypothetical disasters, but I don’t *expect* them to happen)

7) I stopped watching Peep Show when Channel 4 showed Polanski’s Oliver Twist last week.

8) I got really, really indignant at the movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Fuck that noise. Why is it that a Victorian novel which includes characters actually saying that women’s brains can’t take the strain of things like those of men can is more feminist that a movie based on that novel made after three waves of publically identified feminism?

9) Also, Dracula looked flipping ridiculous in it.

10) And the ending was shit.

Er, I’m gonna have to think further on who to re-award this to.. watch this space, right? Thanks again, Amy!

EDIT: My nominees are HERE