Unlikely Doppelgängers: Chet Baker & Michael Pitt

The legendary jazz prodigy, above, and the indie film darling, below (photograph by Hedi Slimane).

Des Belles Personnes

Though I've been told by a reliable source that comparisons are odious, French actress Léa Seydoux (Midnight in Paris, La Belle Personne), pictured above, bears an uncanny resemblance to Godard's infamous Danish muse and queen of New Wave cinema, Anna Karina, pictured below. Maybe it's the bangs, or the signature half-smirk... or just that French je ne sais quoi...

One Got Fat: Blast From the Past

Something interesting I noticed the other day while watching the relatively new music video for Canadian indie band The Albertans' single "The Wake" -- it looked a little familiar. Upon further inspection, I realized that it consisted of much of the exact same footage used for Boards of Canada's video for "Everything You Do is a Balloon."

Neither music video uses original footage-- in fact, the cycling children sporting oddly gruesome monkey masks come straight from a 1963 bicycle safety short aptly titled One Got Fat-- a synopsis of the story is as follows: a group of children decide to go for a picnic in the park and to ride their bikes to said picnic. None of them, save for one (incidentally not wearing a monkey mask) follow proper bicycle safety rules, and are subsequently killed off (yet, being 1963, this is only implied) one by one. The sole survivor makes his way to the park by the end of the film and commences a solitary feast-- hence the short's tongue-in-cheek title.

The decidedly disturbing public safety announcement has appealed to several other bands for sampling and has made its way into a few other music video-- namely, those of Lamps, Dr. Dog, The Black Spiders and Venetian Squares-- perhaps due to its intriguing classification by comedic writers Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy as "a concentrated dose of lab-purified nightmare fuel" which "makes monkeys more terrifying than they already are."

Watch the music videos for The Albertans' "The Wake" and Boards of Canada's "Everything You Do Is A Balloon" below, and the original 15-minute short One Got Fat here.

(I apologize, whenever I embed Youtube clips they tend to be partially cut off...)

The Death of a Legend; Reborn

Elizabeth Taylor by Richard Avedon, 1964

Immortalized by Avedon, recreated by Testino-- The "last great movie star," Elizabeth Taylor, known for her classic beauty, style, charisma and violet eyes (not to mention her unforgettable roles in such iconic films as Cleopatra, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, to name a few) passed away to nationwide despair today at age 79, but her legend will always live on. The girl we all love to hate, Kristen Stewart, uncannily channeled Liz in last month's issue of Vogue:

Kristen Stewart by Mario Testino in Vogue, February 2011

R.I.P. Elizabeth Taylor

February 27, 1932-March 23, 2011

A New Genre for Advertising: The Art Film/Commercial Hybrid

Fashion advertising is headed in a new direction-- as exemplified in the recent short film-ad campaigns for Opening Ceremony and Oliver Peoples, respectively. Gia Coppola and Tracy Antonopoulos' short for Opening Ceremony, released last spring, stars film and fashion darlings Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzman (did you expect anyone else?) wearing clothes from the spring 2010 collection in a bittersweet, tongue-in-cheek Nouvelle Vague-inspired love story set to music by Coconut Records, Schwartzman’s own band. Lisa Eisner’s short for Oliver Peoples stars musical visionary Devendra Banhart and his real-life girlfriend, Rebecca Schwartz, as they traipse through the gorgeously modern yet intimate Rainbow House, John Lautner’s one-of-a-kind Californian architectural masterpiece, wearing an array of Oliver Peoples spectacles and sunglasses from the spring 2011 collection (all this, of course, set to Banhart’s own soulful freak-folk). Both films are whimsical explorations of young love and intimacy, making bold forays into a newly playful, artistic and utterly compelling direction for fashion advertising. Watch both shorts below:

Devendra Banhart at Rainbow House from Oliver Peoples on Vimeo.

Of course, an even "haute-er" couture version of the fashion film-ad comes from prolific filmmaker David Lynch in his 16-minute Lady Blue Shanghai, which he wrote and directed for Dior in May 2010. The illustrious Marion Cotillard stars in the characteristically haunting short.

The entire film can be watched in parts on YouTube, but here's a taste...

Ma voisine Agnès Varda

So I'm all moved into my new apartment in Paris, where I'll be studying French literature, cinema, and art history for the school year. Though I'm considering moving in with a friend in a few weeks, my current studio is in the 14th arrondissement near Montparnasse. My landlord was kind enough to show me around the neighborhood on the day I moved in, and I discovered that not only did Simone de Beauvoir live in a townhouse a few streets over until the mid-1980s, but New Wave filmmaker Agnès Varda, née "La Varda," currently resides just one street over from me, in a charmingly unconventional bright pink house. Her office is just across the street, and though it was closed on the day I passed by, I'm hoping to go check it out sometime soon-- or maybe just run into Agnès herself one of these days!

Chez Agnès

her office across the street

"La Varda" was one of the sole female filmmakers involved in the Nouvelle Vague. Born in Brussels, she studied photography at L'École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and later married filmmaker Jacques Demy. Her first major film, about a singer who falls ill, was Cléo de 5 à 7. Her most recent work, the surrealist filmic autobiography Les Plages d'Agnès, came out in 2008. Check out her work if you haven't already, she's incredibly talented (not to mention the cutest little old lady on earth)!!

an early photo of Demy and Varda

More on Paris to come soon. Bisous!

Below, a trailer for Les Plages d'Agnès:

Why I Wish I Was French

Why are the French so goddamn sexy? There's something unattainable, commanding and iconic about French actors, something I don't see often in American actors-- and I don't just mean the obvious Belmondos and Karinas of the world. Yes, I'll admit, I am a little bit obsessed with everything French (this could have something to do with the fact that I'm moving to Paris in two weeks). Maybe it's just a cultural thing; maybe it's all the cigarettes. Regardless, I find that many Americans are fascinated by the French-- especially on film, they possess a certain elusive, ethereal quality that we sometimes find hard to attain in our brand-name filled, 100-watt-smile-inundated spectrum of film and television. There's definitely something to sitting back and observing, taking everything in, and retaining a bit of mystery-- qualities that these performers seem to relish in.

Gaspard Ulliel

The always-stunning Catherine Deneuve in Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour (1967)

Such a lucky, lucky girl.. Eva Green in Bertolucci's The Dreamers (2003) with Louis Garrel (left) and Michael Pitt (right. Okay, he's not French)

Jean-Paul Belmondo

Alain Delon

Pierre Clémenti

Mélanie Laurent in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Marion Cotillard on the cover of Interview Magazine's August 2010 issue

I always like to end on a classy note... Ludivine Sagnier of Swimming Pool (2003)

Doppelgänger Week, Round 2

Lara Stone backstage at Gaultier

Brigitte Bardot in the mid-1960s

Stumbled upon this iconic image of Brigitte Bardot whilst researching for my paper on representations of modernization/alienation in the city of Paris in French New Wave cinema (might blog about this later... stay tuned). In the August '09 issue of W Magazine, Dutch übermodel of the moment Lara Stone beautifully channeled the French film icon's pigtailed, red-sweatered, cat-eyelinered (is that a word??) classic 1960s blonde bombshell look. Check out Interview's April 2010 issue for more of the "most sought-after face in fashion" : an in-depth interview with Lara by Marc Jacobs and some gorgeous, albeit titillating, photos.

Lara Stone in 2009

Swedish Vampires and Freud

Well... since I spent last night (and a good part of the early morning too, to my great dismay) writing a paper for my Literary & Cultural Theory class comparing Freud's famous 1919 essay "The Uncanny" to a Swedish vampire film from 2008 called Let the Right One In, or, more fittingly, Låt den Rätte Komma In (Scandinavian languages are the best!!), I figured I'd blog about it. And frankly, there hasn't been quite enough fire to borrow around here lately...

Though the film follows the development of a relationship between a young outcast named Oskar living in a suburb outside of Stockholm with his single mother and the pale, oddly-behaved androgynous child next door, Eli (who is soon revealed to be a vampire, and who is not really a girl... complicated stuff, folks) this is far from tween Twilight fare. John Adjvide Lindqvist's script touches upon much darker themes.

Kåre Hedebrant as Oskar (...could he look more Swedish, please?)

The delicate integration between the familiar and the unknown, which Freud delineates as an essential element of that which is "uncanny," emerges as a common trope throughout Let the Right One In. Visually speaking, there is a significant stillness and almost unnatural quietness to Alfredson’s filmic imagery; in the utterly frozen landscape shots, waning wintry light and forthright, frank depictions of would-be grisly murder acts (without the use of the usual dramatic “horror-movie-esque” heavy brass chords announcing danger).

I won't give anything else away, but suffice it to say that you should see this film, even if you aren't a foreign-movie buff or a slasher film aficionado. It's not gruesome or terrifying but it does harness a definite eerie-ness, and can be looked at as a love story, a coming-of-age allegory, a subtle cultural criticism, you name it... Alfredson's juxtapositions of light with dark, tenderness with violence, familiar and unfamiliar result in a work of art that demonstrates the uncanny in its most beautiful sense. Not to mention, the two young leads are phenomenal.

Lina Leandersson as Eli, Kåre Hedebrant as Oskar

Below, a link to the official trailer-- which I must say, makes the film look a great deal more like a horror film than it actually is (in my humble opinion). Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICp4g9p_rgo

...and a link to Freud's essay, "The Uncanny," just in case you have a LOT of time on your hands and/or are interested in psychology...

http://homepage.mac.com/allanmcnyc/textpdfs/freud1.pdf

Fun fact: the title of the film, which is based on Lindqvist's novel of the same title, apparently came from the Morrissey song "Let the Right One Slip In," which refers to the legend that vampires must be invited into homes before they can enter (this concept is explored in probably the most disturbing scene in the film). Good ol' Moz... inspiring Scandinavian cinema and whatnot.