My dear brother Keegan and I have had a genius epiphany! Meet The Last Supper For Heathens, a dinner blog about duh, our dinner. Cue the drool worthy photos and mish-mash of our diverging tastes. (First post coming tomorrow.)
Mary-Kate Olsen is a hot goth nun!
Dakota Fanning snags a September Cover for D&C. (She really is a classy one, ain’t she?)
Calvin Klein interviews Marc Jacobs for Harper’s. (An almost enlightening read from one former fashion dynamo to today’s fashion dynamite.)
Harper’s gives us the run-down on who’s who of supermodels. (The real ones, not Janice Dickens wannabe’s or today’s flash-in-the-pan models of the moment—whom have yet to prove their longevity.)
Michigan-born cheese in Philly? Yessss pleasssse.
I said Daisy and I could be bestfrannns a couple of days ago, and I’m pretty sure James Franco could totally join our crew and be our best mate, you know, the one with a questionable sexual identity. (Everyone has one of the friends, right? And Franco sure is fun to look at and semi-flirt with. You know how straight women love to flirt with gays, right? Tell me you saw A Single Man people.)
Speaking of A Single Man, I’ve now seen the film—designer Tom Ford‘s directorial debut— enough times and have trolled through enough reviews to properly respond to all of them, and here’s what many had to say:
Many, including the NYT, have said that Ford’s piece devolves into an hour and a half long perfume commercial, but Colin Firth‘s performance still shines through all the picture perfect 60′s aesthetics.
My response:
The streamlined aesthetic in A Single Man is exactly what has been missing in film for quite some time. Film has returned to beauty and, given that the plot takes place in the 60′s, it’s only natural that people back then cared more what they look like. (As opposed to today, when some women runs errands and spend all day in their pajamas, while some men think basketball shorts are acceptable attire for Sunday service.) The focus of the original, a novel of the same name by Christopher Isherwood, is on the everyday, ordinary aspect of this single, gay man’s life. Firth’s George Falconer, a Brit ex-pat, lives in a a glass house, wears immaculate suits, geek-chic prescription lenses, and everyone around him looks model-esque. Critics hated the beauty of it all, but sweetie, the plot is set in Los Angeles, so what did you expect normal to look like? The beauty is a bit of a metaphor, right? The man who isn’t openly gay lives in a glass house full of windows and looks absolutely perfect while going through the motions of his grief-infested life? I’m not a critic, but really, are the rest of the world’s critics that idiotic? Isn’t it set in Los Angeles, the very place where pretty faces and clean spaces are never what they seem?
If Tom Ford’s named weren’t involved, we’d all be heralding a much needed return to “beautiful” film. If Tom Ford’s name weren’t involved, people wouldn’t be so dismissive in their reviews. Let’s be real, RogueRanters, the film world is filled with territorial geeks (it’s true, much as I love ‘em) who hate when an outsider- one with relatively little film experience- comes in and outshines them. Just as fashion designers hate when celebrities come in and “design” their own lines, making a mockery out of the fashion world.
Tom Ford isn’t mocking anyone, and for a debut effort, it’s a pretty solid (there are shaky parts, but over all solid) effort.
So really, my verdict is in: Firth, genius in a part that was made for him. Ford, scapegoat of critics with no aesthetic taste. A Single Man, beautifully captured story of a grieving man going through the motions en route to suicide in the ironically always sunny, but woeful City of Los Angeles.
