A Brush with Greatness
To remind America of the traditions surrounding non-traditional relationships in what would be Cary Grant's 100th year, Fox swags a DVD collection of the Mae West protege wherein: 1) Grant cross-dresses to circumvent U.S. immigration laws; 2) sleeps with an unwed mother and protects a man condemned to be executed; 3) he sleeps with an unwed mother who then comes to share Grant's and his wife's home; and 4) as a WWII Navy pilot on leave in Baghdad-by-the-Bay, he makes moves on another man's finacee while ignoring his duty.
To convey the suave and debonair deportment of such a character, swagged is a nameless, disposable safety razor and shaving brush of brandless origin and a cake of Conk shaving soap in a zippered pouch (ostensibly for pencils) for the guy or gal on the go or in need of that between-waxings touch up. Col. Ichabod Conk Products also sells mugs for drinking, shaving or both; a $200 razor (4th item); rubber band guns; a corn razor that "gently trims away corns and calluses;" a multi-tool that "comes with nail file, screwdriver, knife, scissors, and lighter;" and ear spoons: "Safely removes wax from ears." Their mustache wax is apparently unrelated.
Swag presumes being clean-shaven evokes Grant's glamor, but this suggests it's much more than that: "Grant's glamour is directly tied to his objectified beauty." It could have been his charm with Paris Hilton's great-grandfather or a screen kiss, as described. But it's unlikely it was his kissing off autograph seekers.
The facial hair issue marks cultural change and crosses cultural boundaries (and has prevented same, 1st item) and creates firm economic ones. Distaff preferences vary, historical trends (6th item) too.
Mar 22, 2004 at 06:58 PM by James Hames in Film, Video and DVD | Permalink | Comments (0)
Noodling with Westerns
"The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" DVD release swagged by a package of Santa Maria dry spaghetti pasta, pegged on the Spaghetti Western's cult status as paean to Atkin's Diet outlaws.
Re-inventing an image of Westerns as a serious genre, Spaghetti versions specifically, genre and Clint Eastwood seriously grew a fanbase despite sloppiness in filmmaking. A fan went to the exact location of the pivotal graveyard scene; in this slow-loading applet you can almost imagine Eli Wallach running in circles. Seriously want to be a cowboy? (not the tune nor the tome), for those who take myth seriously ... very, very seriously.
Years ago, pasta maker (not a pasta maker) had troublesome expiration dates on some food products, not an issue with pasta with its 2-3 year shelflife. Company's facility won a cement award though and they offer gluten-free products for restricted diets.
Who is Al Dente and why is he eating so much?: Whether blogging pasta generally or cooking pasta ala brand specifically, one casa es su casa.
Score one for Ennio Morricone. Composer's work here cited as "This is the most fertile of all Western soundtracks ... Not even the endless corporate raping of the title theme for purposes of advertising can tarnish this work. It will remain as the standard by which all music associated with the period geography of the film will be judged." Remixed to dubious (read that as annoying) result, compilations 1 & 2 (with some audio samples; downloads here), his fat oeuvre remains available. Another medium's twist on updating a genre, called "Macaroni Westerns" in Japan from whence the movie form mutated orginally. More than a composer for Westerns, Morricone's still not Oscar-ized even after 5 noms.
Mar 16, 2004 at 01:38 PM by James Hames in Film, Video and DVD | Permalink | Comments (0)
Eat Me
When Alice descended down the rabbit hole and into the looking glass of Wonderland, it came after undergoing a transforming experience of perception and reality brought about by drinking and eating things that said "Drink me" and "Eat me," consumed with a quality of faith generally unknown in real life until the cultural phenomenon of Deadheads. But now, no doubt as the result of molecular bio-chemistry, crop hybridization, micro-mechanical superchip engineering and even truth-in-packaging laws, consumers are pre-informed of the visual excursions to come. Truly, it's a leap forward in the technology of recreational hallucinogenics ... a wonderland, indeed.
This advance comes on the occasion of the DVD release of Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" and the connection between eating swagged cookies and seeing the animated classic, although probably not causal, is clearly inevitable. It's a Mrs. Beasley's Iced Scanned Cookie that conveys the data in a low-res manner, seen better here.
Story author Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) was a photography pioneer, making portraits including Alice Liddel, a relationship referenced in song. Evidence suggests though, older sister Ina may have instead had his eye.
"Alice" caught the eye of every era's top illustrators, from Sir John Tenniel in 1856, to 1904, to 1, 2, 3 in 1907 (when British copyright expired), to 1914, to Disney's in 1951, to 1966, Salvador Dali in 1969, to 1982 (by Barry Moser, about whom there's a docu), and someday (who knows what will pop-up?), plus in 3-D CG.
Book was born of its time and this pulls the story into the 21st Century and this looks at Disneyland in the mid-20th. There's deep cultural impact from Dodgson's tome obviously; eventhough "Wonderland" is named after a street's murder scene, and "Next Stop ..." named after a dog track/train station and used as a metaphor here: 1, 2, 3, 4 (docu with Zippy creator), yet the term "wonderland" predates Carroll's use by at least 66 years.
So far, we referenced sex and drugs and for the whole Ian Drury triumvirate (not Triumvirat) -- we find rock'n'roll collides with "Alice" repeatedly. Of course this classic, but remember the hoopla about Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" synching up with "The Wizard of Oz," as if in a hand-cued LP & pre-VHS era any rock band would ... let alone could ... key an album's worth of songs' music and lyrics -- sprocket by sprocket, groove by groove -- to a film. Yet some hunt for synchronizations again and again. "Alice" is #14.
Likewise some search Disney films to see if animators have slipped a Mickey in (how?), specifically into "Alice in Wonderland."
Mar 11, 2004 at 12:12 PM by James Hames in Film, Video and DVD | Permalink | Comments (1)
Vote for the US President? They May or May Not
As election-year Americans make a choice for a vote-worthy candidate (free registration), likewise Fox throws its support behind Gene Hackman for president -- ostensibly conceivable after his "service" in the military, (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11) and in jurisprudence for various law enforcement agencies (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,) in law (1, 2, 3) and in government 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Eventually he retires to a tiny town and runs for mayor where a local citizen gives him a run for his money ... thus is the narrative to "Welcome to Mooseport."
Swagged is 6-panel baseball hat which adjusts by quality means: a fabric strap clamped by a fixed position buckle. Antlers and embroidered logotype are equally well-stitched -- logotype virtually designed itself the moment the movie was titled, much like this ... which means something different today.
Press materials maintain the conceit as if it was prepared by the Mooseport Chamber of Commerce, arriving with postcards and promotional brochures. Text avoids the resident nickname dilemma, calling everyone "Mooseport residents." Residents' nicknames -- the suffix that gets added to the place name that identifies its residents, like New Yorkers or Los Angelenos -- have few standard protocols. People in Moscow, Naples, Liverpool and Florence are called Muscovites, Neopolitans, Liverpudlians and Florentines. State residents' nicknames are pretty well set, but not so for the Mainers who would be Mooseporters, Mooseportians, Moosepolitans, Mooseporvites, Mooseportlians, Mooseportines, Mooseports ...
Cities themselves get nicknames, often. Toponym is the study of place names and demonyms are the people who live there. For example, a few L.A. specific names. Apparently, this is the sole authoritative source. What's in a name? Links and more links.
Mar 9, 2004 at 04:33 PM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (0)
Pillow Talk
Focus Features' "Lost in Translation" is the "Bill Murray's a fish selling swillage out of water" flick which hooks its plot on the famous trend of the famous pitching in the Japanese leagues, dubbed Japanders and some Japanders ponder that wonder about their pander will end over there. Nope:
Alan Soiseth puts the ads onto his Japander website. He calls it "a little bit of fun with an alternate view of celebrities."
But not all those celebrities agree. Lawyers for Leonardo DiCaprio and Meg Ryan have used a little legal persuasion to get him to remove their clients' ads from the site.
More, also de-lawyerized and wrapped in food metaphors. Find samples of English weirdly used in Japanese ads, and an anecdotal gif on the topic.
"Translation" swag supports thread woven into plot of leads being insomnia cases (not "Insomnia" cases, it's chronic BTW) -- an affliction, not "Affliction," whose pain is eloquently conveyed here on this -- 30 tips to fight it and NSFW fotos to look at while you're up.
Companies are out there that will repurpose Andes Mints (swallowed by Tootsie Roll in '00). Two mints fugitive glued to this embroidered pillowcase of dubious threadcount carry info specific to DVD, but thread bears title alone and pivots on plot's point of pillow patter spread upon one sheets still blanketing town. Another of pic's posters tops this list.
Headline: Dan River makes and embroiders pillowcase of no-iron percale in 60% cotton / 40% polyester. The fun of such a texture on a pillow is to awake with "noitalsnarT ni tsoL" pressed into one's face. It'll soon fade ... what a relief.
Feb 24, 2004 at 02:23 PM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (1)
Picking Knits
We imagine a chat, between a man and himself, upon seeing this knit cap thing atop a head ahead in a checkout line or on a bus, where one's mind might be destined to wander, to wonder while waiting to arrive at the cashier or his destination ...
"'Zero Day,' hmmmm, that's curious... 'One Day,' sounded too far off?; did 'Two Day' sound too soon?; 'A Day,' too general; 'B Day,' bidet? too specific ... "
Would he notice how when such a knit thing has a sewn-on patch label, the weave's weft and warp won't stretch around the patch evenly, warping the bottom edge and losing the inherent comfort arrived at from the symmetry of the knit? Would he notice when a knit thing has a patch label the wearer is hindered from folding up the brim and having the crown rest close upon the head in the inherent customable comfortable qualities arrived at from the elasticity of the knit?
Would he know Avatar Films' "Zero Day" is a post-Columbine (once it was only renowned as the name of a flower) fictionalization of that Trenchcoat Mafia carnage as revistited by the Army of Two -- a fictionalization refictionalized at least twice so far: "Elephant" and "Home Room" ... would he?
Or would he think Zero=Nothing and it's a Buy Nothing Day reference? Or would he begin to hum "Jzero" or "My Hero Zero" or one of these?
Maybe he'd think it's noting the introduction of the zero into European mathematics by Fibonacci about 1225. It took about 400 years for his contribution to catch on, but he also gained renown for sequences of Fibonacci numbers which spiral on ad infinitum, unlike the sequences of Fibonaccis numbers which ended in 1988.
Yet we imagine most clearly our knit-thing wearer feeling suitably alienated, thinking he's being stared at because people think he just wants to blow things up.
Although here it says 22% (last item); perhaps data were lost in translation (not "Lost in Translation").
Feb 20, 2004 at 11:46 AM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (0)
Do You Believe What They Call a Miracle?
Once upon a time, a miracle was changing water into Shiraz, or a frog becoming a becoming prince or a sports team that had a shot to take 3rd place at home, that overcomes the odds and beats the top-seed: U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Now, from Disney comes the triumphant tale of a patchwork team who rise to glory in a outstanding athletic achievement and satisfy the remarkable patriotic needs of a grateful nation -- "Miracle" ... ? Waiting longer than the age of many a TV exec to come to screen? You bet. "Miracle" became so-named from the announcer's call by Al Michaels (among the most famous of game calls) and the fact that David vs. Goliath, although Biblical, wasn't divine enough a reference.
Swagged is an 18-inch (office desktop-sized) hockey stick and a hackysack-soft puck (office slapshot safe-ish) but obviously disregarding the former L.A. Kings owner's remark, on hockey's (pre-Gretzky) feeble regional drawing power: "There are 800,000 Canadians living in the L.A. area, and I’ve just discovered why they left Canada. They hate hockey."
Feb 17, 2004 at 07:00 PM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (0)
Hat Dance
"Once Upon a Time in Mexico," the third in Richard Rodriguez' "El Mariachi" series, comes to DVD so Sony swags a fishing hat to us.
If, regardless of design, a hat (even a baseball cap) is a fishing hat because it's worn while fishing in it (1, 2, 3) or having a fish on it (1, 2, 3) ... or called a crusher because you can crush it, or a roller because you can roll it, what's that imply about a bowler or a boater? What about when it's called a bucket hat? BTW, a fish hat can be "of" fish (1, 2, 3) also.
Khaki-toned cotton hat comes with movie title logotype embroidered across the crown, complete with iconic scorpion, presumably Vejovoidus intermedius, but it http://wrbu.si.edu/www/stockwell/photos/photos.html">could be another.
Feb 12, 2004 at 12:25 PM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (0)
They Call the Wind Pariah
Once upon a time, the phrase "direct-to-video" meant the project stunk. Now it means: bypassing risks associated with expanding beyond the presold audience, and thus maximizing return on a niche, albeit avalanche, marketing campaign. But Disney still wants you to know "Lion King 1½" stinks. Sorta.
For this Lion King sequel -- dubbed "1½" because the studio already went Number 2 -- swagged is Gas-X based on the plot point of Pumbaa, the warthog character, and his heinie halitosis and the profound effect he, it and meerkat pal Timon have upon the storyline in "LK1." So we guess this is "Lion King: The Backfill."
Missing parent in animated Disney phlik phenomenon alert (referenced here): Despite that being a major plot crutch in "LK1," here also Timon lives with mom and uncle.
"One of Those Things Where, in Yourself It's an Interest, Sometimes a Stunt, Maybe a Curiosity, But in Someone Else it's Obviously a Sickness" Dept: Exhibit A (not safe for parents), B, C and D, and so forth. Frankly, Ben was not always gentle either.
Beyond the beans around the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles to the Japanese "boy in the bathtub" commercial Johnny Carson replayed regularly, farts are not just a passing fancy. Over 140 years ago, Joseph Pujol performed as Le Petomaine, the Fartiste. Still today, flatus permeates the social fabric: in science, in medicine (info with tips), in film, in books, in jokes told & smelt & heard, in costume (and why a patent? clones), in home videos, underwater, in entrepreneurship, post 9/11 airline safety, in apocryphal urban legends and folktales retold in advertising (the service) propelling two to trumpet their farticipation:
"It only took three hours to shoot the ad, but Soustrom is hoping the unprecedented publicity will help launch her career into a sitcom or romantic comedy. Grant Pace, creator of the ad, hopes it will launch his career as well. This is his first effort as president of his own agency, Mercury Advertising. Pace was inspired by an event that happened to his sister several years ago."
We are glad this never caught on.
Feb 11, 2004 at 04:40 PM by James Hames in Film, Video and DVD | Permalink | Comments (0)
Smile Though Your Paint is Breaking
Once upon a time, the universe was filled and had all the movies needed about a school, somewhat hidebound, with a dedicated and strong-willed teacher who's gone outside the margins with advice to students to be true to themselves, and often misunderstood students who come to rub the administration wrong.
Said students, when science genuises, become like other smart people uttering and muttering unintelligible argot on a silly String Theory (not Silly String theory) and they decipher an expanding universe.
We don't need them for proof. Movies themselves convey proof the universe is expanding. Because now there's enough room for one more: a period movie (circa '53) where the school is a woman's college and there aren't group nude scenes.
"Mona Lisa Smile" is said flick via Sony and it's distaffed by Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, Maggie Gyllenhaal. Julia Roberts is taking the Eve Arden role, sorta, teaching art history. Her character's inscrutable demeanor is the titular Mona Lisa simile, often milked for being famous and commercially flipped, in song and consumer goods and just for being an icon. Icons get adapted, or clasted if you will. (A cast of clasts cached here, follow the "artsy" link.)
Treating cultural changes without regard to dates, the movie fails history for art's sake -- says the Chicago Reader apparently. Treating Roberts as an icon, this apparent gossip (circa December) measures Roberts' fame, as does Fametracker (circa '01) which also compares heirs apparently.
Apparel is swagged -- the T-shirt is less period than the embroidered knit cap, which is pink. Release's press kit folder is a pseudo-yearbook -- printed, bound, hardcovered and embroidered to that standard -- evoking an era-appropriate hokey-cute. It's pink.
Pink Thread: Pink Ribbon breast cancer site funds free mammograms. Once daily, donate by clicking the center button. It's pink.
Feb 4, 2004 at 09:55 AM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (0)
Dapper Clapper
Not only does MGM/UA swag its spring slate but their exec contacts too, tucking tabbed index cards with brief film descriptions along with other cards having various studio suits' phone numbers into a heavyweight cardboard holder fashioned to represent one of those whatchamacallits, a clapper, a slate, a clapper board, a slate board clapper, everything but a clapper slate board. Bored? Can't figure it out? Piece of cake.
Jan 29, 2004 at 12:31 PM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (0)
No One Expects the Spanish Inn Query Shunned
Fox Searchlight provides "L'auberge Espagnol (The Spanish Apartment)," as one of the many films (1, 2, 3, 4) that make you want to go to stay in Barcelona, not the least of which being "Barcelona"). In this instance, it's an ensemble who have come to stay in Barcelona (red button for English), exporting from either Paris, Rome, London or Berlin and helping the marketing of the film to regionally resonate, internationally.
Here's the trailer... via Australia... with enough cityscapes to intensify your desire to go stay in Barcelona. To help you getting there, swagged is a passport cover with movie advert's type package slavishly reproduced, stamped into the surface. To hinder you getting there, a French phrase describing Spanish lodgings (literally: "The Spanish Inn") will only bring questions in two languages that likely won't get answered by a mono-lingual American who is being asked their travel plans, and Custom Agents are not accustomed to having their questons shunned.
Movie packaged for Cannes '02 and domestically as "Euro Pudding," perhaps a reference to the French title also being idiomatic for "for a place where cultures are mixed together like a stew" and "Euro Stew" sounding more like an international currency report.
Speaking of which: Those colored alert designations haven't really caught on, we feel. Colors only vaguely speak to levels of awareness and security ... wherein they're more like a reignbow and less like a traffic light, sorta non-specific: what's orange/yellow to us might be yellow/orange to you. And if we aren't all sharing the same level of anxiety, well ... the terrorists win. So Mr. Ridge sir, if you're reading this (and we know that you are), we offer these regionally resonating suggestion for terror level titles: Chillaxing, Puckery, Harsh, Mezzed and Un-frikking-real. Be prepared.
Jan 26, 2004 at 06:35 PM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (0)
Little Ditty About Jack & Diane, ...
... Two American kids, playing in the Hamptons. Entitled "Something's Gotta Give" (in which there is an unseemly allusion to a collision of seams and middle-age spread), we think we're entitled to note the irony in this swag from a movie about AARP-aged movie stars Nicholson and Keaton falling in love. The studio learns movie-goers are happy to see all women naked -- so, logically -- Sony swags clothing.
No school marmy rap across the knuckles from us for "gotta," because bad grammar do marketing good since Winston's less than Churchillian ad campaign.
Is this another movie (alluded to here) with a title taken from a song that doesn't appear in the film?
Jan 23, 2004 at 08:03 PM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (0)
Drum Fu
Fox Home Entertainment, drumming up the DVD release of martial arts hits (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), swags a peddler drum noisemaker of plastic and drum skin with a hand-snipped card attached by fugitive glue. Info quotes Confucious (perhaps meaning Confucius or perhaps making sure the man who said "The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it, not having it, to confess your ignorance" didn't get mistaken credit) saying "Little drum makes little noise; but little movies make action superstars." We feel humbly enriched for helping make that distinction clear.
Jan 19, 2004 at 06:28 PM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (0)
Polly Want Hot Pepper Sauce?
Universal's "Along Came Polly" revisits the tale of a stuffed shirt unraveled by a stitch (others that have come along: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Ben Stiller has the Cary Bogart part, Jennifer Aniston is Carmen Hepburn and the leopard is played by a ferret. Thus, we think the asp is played by Tabasco Sauce, swagged here and paired with Pepto Bismol, each relabeled to embody the character it represents -- even if the metaphor frays: "Fear of commitment. Resistant to change. Chronic sufferer of gastro-instestinal distress"; and makes promises like a politician in an early primary state: "Soothing relief for five symptoms: Spicy foods; upset stomach, heartbreak, paranoia and reckless love." Women/food metaphors are easier to sustain perhaps: "Hot & spicy. Bold & adventurous. Not intended for sensitive stomachs."
Made by the McIlhenny Co., Tabasco's ability to cure (as in vulcanize) can be had by the sip, swallow or submersion. The company's neighborhood also needs a cure (as in medicative), losing as much as 35 sq. miles annually.
Jan 13, 2004 at 01:33 PM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (0)
Pass Up Chocolate? Neigh
Universal trots out the "Seabiscuit" DVD with chocolate cookie swag, pulling with the force of a horse of course. Yoking their product to the product of Harbor Sweets, whose Sea Biscuits product is a biscuit dolloped with peanut butter and covered with -- despite the "Dark Horse Chocolates" label -- milk chocolate, cast into a mold relief of a racehorse. Swag arrives in a stable straw-evoking excelsior-filled tin, labelled with a representation of the Daily Racing Form, a publication that needs a how-to.
Want this "Chocolate Horse"...? Check with this bookie. A
Chocolate Horse of a different color, of course. But a horse of chocolate, no one can eat just one.
With so many other equiny confections, why go to Massachusetts for this particular cookie? We guess it's because of the label's boast: "Sea Biscuits are made from the finest ingredients, regardless of cost." The producers likely identified with that.
Jan 7, 2004 at 05:01 PM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (3)
Go 'Fish'
After casting around for swag for Tim Burton's "Big Fish," Sony sends a casting of clear acrylic polymer. Hooked upon pic's plot point of a tale of a fish lured by a ring, swag is an 8-inch, aqueous brick of resin -- with percolating bubbles frozen within -- plus a slot behind to hold press kit material.
Plot takes the antique magic fish angle (not Magic Fish), where a lucky angler's wishes get granted by a grateful anglee ... fable credited to Pushkin. What can we say but "nice cast."
To these folks' casting concerns (insert generic casting couch joke), bubbles are flaws. Find casting directoriality here to describe how to manipulate trapped air in material similiar, if not identical, to swag.
Dec 30, 2003 at 04:10 PM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (2)
Put Your Hand in the Hand
We imagine this could have been leftovers from the sports fan merchandise company -- home of the big "We're #1" finger -- one that made too many big foam hands for fans of a red team to stick the thumb atip their noses and wiggle, extra fingers providing the visual traces of movement. Item likely failed because fans were wholly confused at trying to high five. We think it's good then "Bruce Almighty" came out on DVD. The windfall is Universal's.
Seven-fingered hand is ostensibly Jim Carrey's after God gives him the finger or two. Quick, try and hold your own hand to match the swag -- open toward you so you can see your own thumbnail. On stage, that's a contortionist act; in private, it's yoga; to your cubiclemate watching you right now, it's physical comedy.
Morgan Freeman enters the pantheon of the celebrity Gods, with George Burns, Graham Chapman, Gene Hackman, James Garner, David Johanson (Buster Poindexter), Val Kilmer, EG Marshall, Robert Mitchum, Robert Morley, Alanis Morissette, George Plimpton, Martin Sheen, Annie Sprinkle (normally not safe for work) and Nancy Walker. Faye Dunaway will be added soon. Your Gods may vary.
A type of tangent: Swag is printed with Gill Sans Ultra Bold, designed by Eric Gill -- accomplished and versatile -- he wrote in the '30s that he feared for craftsmen's arts in an industrial age and lamented humanity's loss in the face of mounting mechanization. Any philosophical or physical resemblence is coincidental.
Dec 22, 2003 at 05:15 PM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (1)
Pro-growth
D-I-Y flower kit, just add water, comes to us from Touchstone Pictures swagging "Calendar Girls" linking to pic's plotline of a group that shucks their garb and their traditional garden calendar when it dawns on them that they could get more done and dun more if they were undone and undonned, showing more than their green thumbs, baring a burden of fund-raising for the Leukaemia Research Fund -- domestically that's Leukemia and they also have a calendar, though different.
Unidentified seeds -- likely a sunflower, black-eyed susan, daisy, and asteraceae of some flavor-- arrived with dirt and a logo-encrusted terra cotta pot topped with a silk flower.
Horticultural tangent: Blossoms in the asteraceae family are actually made of hundreds of individual tiny flowers -- called disk flowers-- covering the center, plus one at the base of each petal, called a ray flower.
Nomenclature tangent: The phrase was attached to a 1917 movie and a 1947 movie, and a 1959 Chinese film dubbed the same before the song was written in 1960 by Neil Sedaka. 1993 saw yet another so-named flick. Also, song is a plot point here.
Speaking of soft porn, we noticed Variety blogs porn now.
Dec 19, 2003 at 11:43 AM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (0)
Deck Your Boughs With Alm-Swagged Jolly
Comic Relief is still feeding hungry people, raising funds to do so. But rather than have a sumptuous black-tie jokefest (about which the Variety slanguage hedline would be: "Tux Yux Sux Bux"), they instead made a Christmas special of "Robbie The Reindeer, Hooves of Fire." Powers that be, referred to here as "they," thought reindeer have American accents.
They swag a soft frosty Christmas ornament bedecked and all Wallace & Gromit-y, with what seems to be Robbie his-reindeer-self acting in the role of an ape in a suitcase commercial, but we can't say why exactly. Perhaps it may be a Comic Reliefy homage to the Sam Kinison joke remarking how Ethiopia is farm-free and instead of sending food we should sending luggage ... but we doubt it.
Dec 17, 2003 at 06:03 PM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tome Cruise
"The Last Samurai" as per Warner Bros.' swagged book, tells the tale of a Civil War vet who has a passion for battle; he loses passion for battle; he gets passion for battle back ... in Japan. Showing 1) Tom Cruise can skew a shaggy 1970s look into an 1870s look and 2) swords mean a few opportunities for a few slightly bleedy nicks to the face. Repetitious picayunity in Cruise movies? You bet. We can't really blame him for that, but it's funny how some of these protocols seem to regularly apply, not to mention how often someone close to him dies. Here too we see this, as text and pictures provide a picture of the picture and more ... well printed, as well.
Expositorical explainers -- clear on specifics and mixer chitchat deep -- punctuate film's chunks: Native American slaughter, sets and locations, character. The costuming segments with arms and armor, seem deeper than chitchat, suitably so.
Keenest backgrounders are cultural, including isolation-era Japan, seppuku (never "hari-kari" in Japan), and Zen Buddhism and the art of tea service (not the serviceable "Art of Tea") where samurai discipline grows from meditative balance of oneness within the dualistic ritual, sorta. Like a mantra, the tome says: "That is Bushido, the way of the samurai." Two weeks was our draw in the office pool as the date when an out-of-ideas-on-deadline pundit spins his film-going experience into BUSHido rhetorical hooey. Look, that particular word-play is out there now.
And BTW: Just because it's called the "Last" something doesn't mean it is the last "something" -- book, film or record. Not sequel-proof: "Mohicans," "Picture Show," "Record Album." Here's one possible tack to attack next time.
Dec 15, 2003 at 01:04 PM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (0)
Hitting 'Missing'
"The Missing," updates the suburbanite missing-kid-nightmare genre by adding magic and making the suburbs the 1885 Southwest. (Ron Howard revisits genre, on which wrinkles vary: Exhibits A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H )
Sony swags 6-paneled crown cap (style 8010S) of heavy cotton twill which adjusts by a fabric strap closure with a snap-secured buckle to make a comfortable, well-fitted baseball hat. For those who like this sort of thing, this is indeed the sort of thing they like.
Title provides swagshelflife potential through enough irony to enter some future photo student's portfolio by way of a pickup baseball game player at homeplate swinging, and ... well, you get it. On behalf of all photo students, thank you in advance. We guess The Missing are too punk to have a Cate Blanchett hat.
Dec 10, 2003 at 05:21 PM by James Hames in Film | Permalink | Comments (1)
Playing 21
They entered the room amid hubbub and racket / These balloon-like things in our in-basket; And what to our wondering eyes did appear / But swag encased in plastic and air ... making it the swag equivalent of a toddler's Christmas morning -- more interested in the packaging than the contents.
Focus Features serially swags "21 Grams," sending a pair of postcards with chocolate and coins in inflatable packaging, working much like this sleeve product -- if not that exactly. Torn from today's headlines and based on the film's premise that a human loses 21 grams of weight upon death, swagcards feature Sean Penn and Naomi Watts and the analogy that 21 grams is the weight of five nickles, or a candy bar. Likely there's a Benicio del Toro/hummingbird swag floating about someplace.
While the movie undoubtedly solves the riddle of the human soul, what we want to know is what is going on with the sizes of candy bars? If a soul