Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:
The stone lithography process by which this poster was printed makes looking at it a rather sumptuous experience. Gotta love the delicate lighting effect on the faces and the array of blues and greens. With art by Xarrie. The poster dates from a ’60s release of the film.
Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:
I suspect Jennifer Lawrence will stand as the naked lady of this week regardless of what I say. But even so . . . I give you Chloe. She was one of the early models at MetArt, where she was featured in a number of photo sets in the early 2000s. The photos, all of which seem to have been shot by Peter Dominic, bear all the marks of the “new nude” aesthetic of that period, including a low-key artiness, a warts-and-all naturalism, and an emphasis on dewy youth and vivacity.
Chloe disappeared soon afterwards. I haven’t been able to learn anything about her other than that she’s French. Gotta love that incredibly healthy looking bod, those freckles, and that defiantly luxurious bush, which is like a relic from an earlier era of eroticism. Is it just me or does she call to mind 19th-century French painting? I can imagine her posing for some goateed Impressionist.
I think these photos derive from MetArt, though the site seems to no longer offer some of these sets. DOMAI supposedly offers some Chloe content as well.
Nudity below the fold. Enjoy your weekend.
Blowhard, Esq. writes:
A musical comedy co-written by P.G. Wodehouse, with music and lyrics by the Gershwins, and starring Fred Astaire is pretty much essential viewing for me. Although the film is usually regarded as one of Astaire’s post-Rogers flubs, I enjoyed it despite its weaknesses. Here Astaire, playing an American movie star in England, is paired with a young Joan Fontaine, who couldn’t dance and later noted that the film set her career back a number of years. In Fontaine’s one dance number director George Stevens’ camera tracks her through a wooded glen so she’s mercifully obscured by the occasional tree. Yes, her dancing isn’t that great and her acting isn’t spectacular either, but it’s hard to fault her given that she was simultaneously in over her head and the story doesn’t give her character much to do.
As for the script, it’s not a great Wodehouse vehicle, but it’s a good one. Adapting one of his earliest novels, we’re firmly in his milieu: mistaken identities, grand English estates (Totleigh Castle presided over by Lord Marshmoreton), day trips to London, country carnivals, awful aunts, fickle yet winsome ladies, capable butlers, and jazz-playing bounders. Although it has all the trappings of a Wodehouse classic, except for a few flashes the script lacks his signature absurd dialogue that’s simultaneously sophisticated and blissfully clueless.
Perhaps to make up for the verbal comedy deficit, the film brings in George Burns and Gracie Allen as Astaire’s press agent and secretary. The movie then is an odd, uneven mixture of British farce and Brooklyn vaudeville with Allen spinning out her ditzy malapropisms and Burns trying to keep her in line as the exasperated straight man. But hey, who knew Burns and Allen were also good dancers? They acquit themselves quite well in two numbers alongside Astaire. The dancing is filmed in Astaire’s preferred style — bodies filmed from head to toe with little or no cutting, thereby giving the performances a tension and excitement that contemporary dance editing lacks.
Even if Astaire was on the downslope of his career, he’s still amazing to watch. The last time I was at a baseball game, it was hypnotic watching the players warm-up — just throwing the ball to one another, their movements were so confident and sure. Astaire merely walking around a chair or hopping on a table looks effortless, light, and graceful. It’s the kind of movement that can’t be faked, that only comes from a trained dancer who has put in his 10,000 hours. Combined with Wodehouse’s silliness and songs by the Gershwins, you can’t help but be transported.
Here’s Astaire’s closing number, “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” which prefigures Stomp.
A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS is available for rental on Amazon Prime.
Fenster writes:
When Steven Pinker writes Fenster listens. Well, not literally. He reads. But language is all a kind of metaphor, right?
From The Language Instinct on I have been amazed by this guy’s reach, educated through his insights and entertained by his prose. I only caught him in one actual error 😉 Of course it was on a minor point. In the first edition of The Language Instinct he mistakenly said it was the group Blue Cheer who recorded “I’m Your Venus”. Of course, it was not the hardcore pyschedelic band Blue Cheer, out of San Francisco, but the light and frothy pop outfit Shocking Blue, out of Holland. I sent him a note and he graciously acknowledged the error, correcting it in later editions.
He has a terrific article out in the current New Republic entitled “The Trouble with Harvard”. The article’s sub-title is “The Ivy League is Broken and Only Standardized Tests Can Fix It”. Which tells you something right there about the vector of his argument.
Blowhard, Esq. writes:
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably developed a certain image in your mind of how I am in real life. No doubt you think of me as a mega-Alpha male not unlike a combo of Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, and a Major League pitcher. And of course you’d be correct. But I have my foppishly dandy side, too, which I got to indulge recently by having afternoon tea at the Boxwood Cafe, one of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants.
The cafe is located in The London West Hollywood, an elegant hotel catty-corner from the Whiskey A Go Go on the Sunset Strip.
When we arrived at two on a Saturday the place was pretty empty, but a few more couples came during the hour or so we were there. I didn’t get a good look at them, but two young women (late 20s?) sat behind us talking in great detail about the one’s new relationship. “So, you’re in love. Let’s talk about it from every angle,” the chatty one said. The first order of business was whether the one was going to sleep with her new beau for the first time that night given that it would be their third date. (I swear I’m not making any of this up.) After that topic was settled, the chatty one started talking about her dating travails. Of her current boyfriend she said, “He’s not interested in anything so he’s not interesting. Weird how that works.” No, lady, not weird at all, makes complete sense.
When we asked for recommendations the waiter admitted he wasn’t much of a tea drinker (“I prefer coffee.”) but noted the rose with French vanilla was the most popular, so that’s what I ordered.
I’m not the tea connoisseur that Eddie is, but I thought my choice was lovely — an herbal/garden flavor touched with sweetness, just as one would expect. As the right-hand column on the menu states and the picture below shows, the tea was accompanied by a generous selection of finger sandwiches and desserts. My favorite sandwiches were the curried chicken with raisins and ham with asparagus, while my favorite desserts were the licorice macaroon and blackcurrant scone with Devonshire cream. Everything was sophisticated without feeling too fussy.
The English have their afternoon tea, the French have their long lunches, and the Spanish have their midday siestas — some cultures really know how to pace the day, don’t they?
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Fenster writes:
Eddie Pensier writes:
Grandma and Grandpa Pensier getting married, early 1930s.
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Eddie Pensier writes:
An outtake from Annie Get Your Gun (1950), with Judy Garland, before she was fired by MGM and replaced by Betty Hutton. Garland had clashed with original director Busby Berkeley, and retaliated against his perfectionism by showing up late and missing calls. (Berkeley himself would be replaced by two additional directors.) There’s dialogue in the beginning: the music starts at 1:50.
Judy seems oddly subdued in this clip, although it’s almost a masterpiece of subtlety compared to the googly-eyed hamming of Hutton. It’s a song that has to be taken on its own terms: for lyrical wit and cleverness and a bloody-minded earworm of a tune, with absolutely no other redeeming value whatsoever.
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Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 