Make it from the Movies - Another Earth

Having seen Mike Cahill's sad, touching sci-fi drama Another Earth, who could forget the multitude of resonating images presented to us on the screen? Whether it's the huge, beautiful Earth 2 ever present in the sky of each scene, or the shocking final shot, what could be better than having your own little piece of Another Earth to keep at home with you? Just to remind you that, perhaps, we're not alone in the universe...

http://www.chicaandjo.com/2008/05/08/magic-folding-wooden-photo-cubes/

This website has the best instructions for making your own version of Rhoda's cool folding puzzle cube. Use big square pictures of planets for an accurate representation of the original, or catch the pictures of the promotional one below. Get making!

Have Yourself a Merry Little War... Film Review: Meet Me in St Louis

When discussing his new film, producer Arthur Freed declared that he would make it “into the most delightful piece of Americana ever.” With the nation in the grip of the Second World War, the Hollywood studios, while hoping to simultaneously inflame public hatred of the Nazis and quieten any fears of defeat, stampeded to produce films which accordingly celebrated patriotism and encouraged escapism. This began in 1939 with the release of blissful, romantic epics such as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, and resulted in the production of many films throughout the 1940s which showcased plucky heroes and family values, from Disney’s Pinocchio to John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (both 1940). Perhaps one of the most memorable and beloved of these, however, is Meet Me in St Louis (Minnelli, 1944). The film’s eternal appeal is not difficult to pinpoint; the casting of well-known favourites such as Judy Garland, Mary Astor and Margaret O’Brien combine with a repertoire of relentlessly memorable songs, from the catchy and cheerful “The Trolley Song” to the wistful “Boy Next Door,” to perfectly capture and deliver the public need for hope over anxiety. What struck me most about Meet Me in St Louis, however, was the filmmakers’ willingness to address the American fear of displacement at this time, and turn this into an unforgettable yet meaningful film.

A lengthy and expensive scriptwriting process was just the beginning of the uncertainty and trouble that shadowed the production of Meet Me in St. Louis. The Sally Benson stories on which it was based were digressive and anecdotal, and so had to be vastly cut down, eliminating scenes in several new locations as well as a whole other family of characters. The result lends a very insular, almost stifling feel to the film, with the family as a community coming first, and very few scenes taking place outside of the home set. Even as the world comes to St Louis, in the form of the 1904 Purchase Exposition, the film is still entirely concerned with the fate of the Smiths and their little household, whose entire story hinges on their unwillingness to leave town and live somewhere new. Minnelli celebrates this fact even with Esther’s closing line, “Right here where we live. Right here in St. Louis.”

In making one of the most charged and unusual musicals of Hollywood’s prime era, Vincente Minnelli manages to perfectly blend his genius in both the genres of musical, such as the opening scene in which the title song is seamlessly picked up by different members of the Smith family, and melodrama, for example within the dark, long takes of the Halloween sequence. In my opinion, it is in its treatment of its themes that Meet Me in St Louis most excels. The fears of change, movement and unfamiliarity which were driving America at the time are addressed and reassured within the film, from the showpiece trolley sequence, the family values and the near worship of the titular hometown. Minnelli manages to inject pathos and joy at precise moments, allowing the film’s influences on the audience to be fine-tuned so as to provide maximum effect.

Fashion Inspiration - Russia on Film

Some looks inspired by my favourite Russian-set films and TV shows! Time to get dressed up!

Ride out the revolution in style with these cosy babushka essentials.

Russian Doll - Doctor Zhivago by isabelle-milton featuring a wedge ankle bootie

Feel like lost royalty? With an outfit like this you'll be discovered in no time!

Russian Princess - Anastasia by isabelle-milton featuring BCBGMAXAZRIA

Feeling ill? Blow them all away with a sharp, professional look courtesy of Daniel Radcliffe.

Russian Doctor - A Young Doctor's Notebook by isabelle-milton featuring framed wall art

Float through the grand halls of the Winter Palace with these pretty ideas.

Russian Fairy - Russian Ark by isabelle-milton featuring a chain headwrap

Seduce the count - or anyone for that matter - and be the belle of the ball in splendid opulence.

Russian Aristocrat - Anna Karenina by isabelle-milton featuring Forever 21

Love is Frozen... Wider Reading 17: Annabel Lee

Composed in May 1849, Edgar Allen Poe's last complete work was not published until shortly after his death that same year. Poe himself made sure the poem would be seen in print. He gave a copy to Rufus Wilmot Griswold, his personal rival, another to John Thompson to repay a $5 debt, and sold a copy to Sartain's Union Magazine for publication. It is unclear to whom the eponymous Annabel Lee is referring. Biographers and critics often suggest Poe's frequent use of the theme of death, particularly of beautiful women, stems from the repeated loss of women throughout his own life, including his mother Eliza Poe and his foster mother Frances Allan. Biographers often interpret that "Annabel Lee" was written for Poe's wife Virginia, who had died two years prior. "Annabel Lee" and Poe’s other works were an inspiration for Vladimir Nabokov in his novel Lolita (1955), in which the narrator, as a child, falls in love with the terminally ill Annabel Leigh "in a princedom by the sea". Originally, Nabokov titled the novel The Kingdom by the Sea.

The speaker laments the death of his childhood sweetheart, Annabel Lee, reminiscing about their time together and defies even angels and demons to tear his love apart. Poe often associated death with the freezing and capturing of beauty, and “Annabel Lee” is no exception. Just as words can suspend and encapsulate a single moment, so can this poem capture the idyllic childhood romance of the speaker and Annabel. The poem specifically mentions the youth of the unnamed narrator and of Annabel Lee, and it celebrates child-like emotions in a way consistent with the ideals of the Romantic era. Many Romantics from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries viewed adulthood as a corruption of the purer instincts of childhood, and they preferred nature to society because they considered it to be a better and more instinctive state.

The name "Annabel Lee" continues the pattern of a number of Poe's names for his dead women, which contain the lulling but melancholy "L" sound. Furthermore, "Annabel Lee" has a peaceful, musical rhythm and makes heavy use of the refrain phrases "in this kingdom by the sea" and "of the beautiful Annabel Lee.” In particular, although the poem's stanzas have a somewhat irregular length and structure, the poet continually emphasizes the three words "me," "Lee," and "sea," enforcing the linked nature of these concepts within the poem.

Annabel Lee - Quotations

Love is Patriotic... Wider Reading 16: Henry V

It is a commonly held belief that Shakespeare's Henry V was the first to be performed at the new Globe Theatre in the spring of 1599. Since then, the story of the victor of Agincourt has been performed and adapted many times, with the dashing king as a prominent historical figure. Many types of love are explored within the play, the most obvious of which is patriotism and love of one's country. When Henry calls for his army to "Follow [their] spirit, and upon this charge / Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!" they are portraying their strength in terms of their love for England and its king. During the play Henry also experiences the loss of many of his friends and family members, who he remembers gratefully as loving him as a man despite his high status.

Henry's wooing of Katherine - or as he calls her, Kate - at first superficially appears to be the charming comical awkwardness of a soldier talkinh to an aristocratic lady. But Katherine knows that "the tongues of men are full of deceits", and for all his insistences on lacking eloquence Henry's speech is lengthy and highbrow. Katherine asks, "Is it possible dat I sould love de enemie of France?". To the king, and probably most others, the match with Katherine is a marriage of national conquest, not of human love. Henry is obliged to answer that he is not the enemy of France - quite the opposite. That this marriage is about rapacity for land rather than love is clear from Henry's rhapsodizing about France itself. At best, after some banter about the language barrier, "I love thee cruelly", he protests, letting slip a Janus-faced adjective. He believes calling her "a good soldier-breeder" is an appeal to maternal instincts.

After substantially more dissertation from Henry, Katherine punctures the hypocrisy of all this - the pretense that any fate is in her hands - by noting that the match is entirely up to her father. Although the Princess and Alice insist it is not French custom for ladies to kiss before marriage, Henry kisses her. The French nobles return, and Burgundy explains Katherine's resistence as maidens' natural modesty regarding Cupid. Henry declares, "Yet they do wink and yield, as love is blind and enforces". Historically, Henry married Catherine de Valois on 2 June 1420. Here, it may not be so much a marriage as a rape dressed up in ceremony. With the French conceding all, the "conquest" is achieved and all look forward, incorrectly as the audience knows, to a lasting peace.

Henry v - Quotations

Love is Everlasting... Wider Reading 15: Les Misérables

I dreamed a dream of blogs gone by, so went up to my castle on a cloud, sat at an empty chair at an empty table, looked down and saw red and black. So I decided to do a Les Misérables post. Victor Hugo began writing Les Misérables twenty years before its eventual publication in 1862, when he was still in exile. His goals in writing the novel were as lofty as the reputation it has subsequently acquired; it is primarily a great humanitarian work which encourages compassion and hope in the face of adversity and injustice. It is also, however, a historical novel of great scope and analysis, and it provides a detailed vision of nineteenth-century French politics and society. In publishing it, Hugo hoped it would provide inspiration for a more democratic future, for France and for the world.

Les Misérables employs Hugo’s style of imaginative realism and is set in an artificially created human hell which emphasizes the major predicaments of the nineteenth century. Many of the major characters in the novel symbolize one of these predicaments. Jean Valjean represents the degradation of man in the proletariat, and the voicelessness and injustice of the legal system of the time. His hunter, policeman Javert, is the overzealous authority who forget their real duties in the fever of the chase. Fantine represents the subjection of women through hunger, and the predicament of those who are judged unfairly. Finally, Cosette represents the atrophy of the child by darkness, but she also represents hope, the only real hope for life and love in the entire novel.

Hugo makes the contrast between good and evil transparently clear through visual imagery, referring to the men in terms of light and dark. The Bishop of Digne, M. Myriel, who trusts in and hopes for other people, operates in light, whereas the mistrustful Valjean operates under cover of darkness. The tension between light and dark reaches a peak when Valjean stops to look at Myriel before stealing his silver. As Valjean plans his theft, the clouds darken the sky; he then sees Myriel’s face in a beam of moonlight. Finally, we see Valjean standing in the shadows while he breaks into the cabinet of silver. In this description, Hugo uses pathetic fallacy. As Valjean contemplates stealing the silver, the sky is dark, as if it were frowning upon the crime he is about to commit. Once Valjean approaches Myriel, however, everything becomes light, as if Myriel were radiating purity and goodness. By using this technique of pathetic fallacy, Hugo is able to pass judgment on his characters and their actions without ever breaking the narrative voice.

Many types of love are explored within Les Misérables. It is implied that Valjean is in love with Fantine, risking his life to rescue and protect her and her daughter. Both of them have strong parental love for Cosette, who seems to elicit this emotion from many people who meet her. Later in the novel, a young revolutionary named Marius falls in love with her, and the two begin a secret relationship which must be hidden from Valjean. Marius in fact is so besotted with Cosette that he is blind to the feelings of Eponine, who has loved him for many years without his notice

Les Miserables - Quotations

Love is Unrequited... Wider Reading 14: The Seagull

By now, you will have ascertained my love of Russia and Russian literature. I am trying to wean myself off it by taking a few doses of Les Miserables, so look out for that sometime soon. In the meantime however, let us see how far we can push Mr Chekhov and his play-within-a-play. "The Seagull" is the first of his quartet of major theatrical works written between 1895 and 1902. It's disastrous opening night caused the writer to renounce the theatre, only to return in 1898 with "Uncle Vanya", "Three Sisters", and his most famous work, "The Cherry Orchard". "The Seagull" dramatises the romantic and artistic conflicts between four characters: the famous middlebrow story writer Boris Trigorin, the ingenue Nina, the fading actress Irina Arkadina, and her son the symbolist playwright Konstantin Treplev. The character of Trigorin is often considered to be Chekhov's greatest male role, though as with the rest of Chekhov's full-length plays, this one relies upon an ensemble cast of diverse, fully developed characters. In contrast to the melodrama of the mainstream theatre of the 19th century, lurid actions (such as Konstantin's suicide attempts) are not shown onstage. Characters tend to speak in ways that skirt around issues rather than addressing them directly; in other words, their lines are full of subtext, and many important things are not said aloud.

Part of Chekhov's genius is that he does not simply write about artists and love, he creates the embodiment of art and love on stage, and entwines the two. Through his characters' particular personalities, Chekhov portrays the various manners of being an artist and particularly, an artist in love. All four protagonists find themselves this way. Arkadina, Trigorin, Treplev, and Nina have divergent relationships with their craft and their lovers. Arkadina and Nina romanticize acting, placing it on a pedestal higher than the everyday affairs of life. Arkadina places herself on this same pedestal using her identity as an actress to excuse her vanity. Nina exalts acting as well, but, contrary to Arkadina, she endows acting with nobility, sacrifice, and privilege. In writing, Treplev compulsively paralyzes himself in the pursuit of perfection, while Trigorin obsessively gathers details from his life and the lives around him for his work without allowing the work to affect his life.

The playwright's setting of a stage upon a stage lets us know from the outset that "The Seagull" is no ordinary play. Treplev creates a situation in which the play characters become increasingly similar to their own audience, because they themselves watch and are aware of the illusion of the theater. This is a tradition in the theater, presented repeatedly in Shakespeare's plays, such as A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is emblematic of the exploration of the self that the play will examine, and foreshadows major themes of the play such as the role of theater, art, and love in a person's life as well as self-evaluation and reinvention of one's purpose in life. There are specific allusions to Hamlet: in the first act a son stages a play to impress his mother, a professional actress, and her new lover; the mother responds by comparing her son to Hamlet. Later he tries to come between them, as Hamlet had done with his mother and her new husband. The tragic developments in the plot follow in part from the scorn the mother shows for her son's play.

The Seagull - Quotations