From "Beautiful China," almost unbelievably stunning contemporary photographs of rural and natural scenes [via pixelsurgeon]
Related: China #1 in 2050, according to trendspotters PSFK.
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Entries from January 2006
Wednesday! Read, Drink, Repeat.
Say, what's that on your bedside table? Ah, reading the dead. So noble! But living authors need love, too, so why not spread it around in 2006? Scribble it down, New Yorkers, because tonight (Wed, 1.25), you've got one not-to-miss option! I've put together a chic little literary affair taking place this evening at Bluestockings, my favorite bookstore in the city at the moment, that of course you should totally get dolled up and come out for:
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 7PM: Join us for "First Fiction" night as two fresh voices share tales from their debut works. BILL GORDON is the author of the remarkable novel MARY AFTER ALL (Dial Press, December 2005), which tells the story of Mary, a Jersey City native who comes of age during the turbulent 1970s and discovers her own route to independence along the way. RONNA WINEBERG's award-winning collection of stories, SECOND LANGUAGE (New Rivers Press' Many Voices Project, 2005) has been described as "like entering a series of complex, absorbing worlds…" and "beautifully written and deeply satisfying" by critically-acclaimed novelist Margot Livesey. Bluestockings, the Lower East Side's best independent bookseller and cafe, is located at 172 Allen Street (between Stanton and Rivington). FREE.
Or, if uh, "dolled up" is too strong an adjective for your post-work persuasions, well then, do come as you are and join us -- we'll stroll out into the brisk evening air and just down the street for a tipsy splash or two at Lolita, post-haste...
[ Image: Stella Vine, Lily - Black Book ]
Windowlicker
I like these glasses just because they're blue, and remind me of sea glass, or something that might wash up on a beach. They also remind me a passage from one of my favorite books, Virginia Nicholson's Among The Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939. Referring to Iris Tree's carefully crafted description of her fashionably louche studio, "Note the blue plates, for example, which would have had tremendous shock value when this was written around 1916. Even in the twenties debutantes like Mary Clive and her friends were scandalised by the 'aesthetic' young men at Oxford -- apparently the lay about on divans all day and went in for blue china -- 'enough to make anyone feel queer.'" How sublime!
Totem Glassware, on sale for $9.99 at West Elm.
Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - appears on Tuesday and Thursdays at 10am EST.
Le Cineclub with Emma and Lauren: Match Point
For the first Cineclub of the New Year, Emma and I recently saw Match Point (Warning: Spoilers discussed with little fanfare, but you really don't want to see this film. Promise):
Emma: So: we went into Match Point with no specific expectations. And you're not particularly a Woody Allen fan - so what impression did this give?
Lauren: Emma, as you know, I freaking hated this movie. It was tedious and completely meaningless.
Emma: I'm listening!
Lauren: I mellowed out slightly after a day as my displeasure receded from immediate memory, but not that much....Why was this film made? Why was it financed? How does it advance human civilization? All unclear.
Emma: Hee hee. Certainly, the film deserves your disdain. As for me, I found it bad, but in a funny, so bad it's good kind of way. It was an embarrassment for start to finish - and that amused me!
Lauren: Well, I think it was sort of amusing to you because you grew up in London.... whereas I felt like Woody Allen went in for the usual pitch and they were like, "No way are we producing another Upper East Side character-driven relationship melodrama. Uh-uh."
Emma: Right!
Lauren: And so he was like, "Oh no, not at all... This one is in LONDON." I was just so bored. And then my boredom turned to irritation. I felt taken advantage of by the lame plot. And the wooden performances. Why does Rick Moody get picked on when Scarlett Johansson is the WORST EVERYTHING of her generation? I challenge her to write a novel!
Emma: Totally. There were two main choices made by Allen here that were the absolute height of arrogance: a) thinking he could accurately depict the British upper classes, which he did in a cliched, stupid way; and b) thinking he could play with the murder mystery genre without doing it properly.
Lauren: Yes. Totally. Can we talk about Scars and Jonno for a bit?
Emma: Please let's.
Lauren: I liked that when we went in and I said, "I am going to have trouble separating Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as an alleged underage girl beater and Scarlett as a total zero from their on-screen performances." and you were like, "I know -- that's the fun part!" It gave me hope.
Emma: They were both painfully unconvincing. You would think the fact that Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is allegedly a violent psycho in real life would help him play one - but no!
Lauren: He did a wonderful job of playing a tremendous bore, though. I can see why he won a Golden Globe for Elvis -- perhaps he could have channeled Woody's penchant for underage girls this time around?
Emma: Ha, that would have helped!
Lauren: And Scarlett -- hasn't she ever heard of Method Acting? Her performance as "drunk whore" was utterly unconvincing, and I was so surprised. I read Star.
Emma: She thinks that an entire performance can be wrung from a cigarette and a pout. It cannot!
Lauren: Not in her case, at least. Even Juliette Lewis realized she'd have to start a band.
Emma: Which is working out well for her, unbelievably!
Lauren: The band? I know. They're pretty good. She sings cock rock. That's another story for another day.
Emma: Indeed - look, we can't even take Match Point seriously enough to keep on topic!
Lauren: I suppose that JRM and SJ did have good chemistry, compared to their relationships to their respective rich patrons.
Emma: It was OK! Dunno about good.
Lauren: Let's just make a list of what was boring and then we'll try and say some nice things, just to be polite, and then we can rate it.
Emma: Can we talk about the plot? Because there were some good and terrible things about it.
Lauren: Yes. Please do.
Emma: As you pointed out, one of the few interesting ideas in the film was the fact that Scarlett and Jonathan's characters both had their fates determined by being beholden to rich people.
Lauren: I thought the central conceit -- what happens when you take two people wholly dependent on other people in overlapping ways, and introduce a powerful sexual attraction and a willingness to sabotage everything in their lives just to act on it? -- to be provocative and intriguing. It could have been a pretty good Marxist critique. But alas, it was like a hopelessly out-of-touch 1930s movie played for laughs today-- we immediately started pointing out the egregious holes in the plot/case with abandon.
Emma: But did you buy that Jonathan's Chris Wilton would be driven to murder? I thought that was key, and I didn't, really.
Lauren: Oh, I did. Scarlett was SO UNSEXY once she got pregnant. Like I said, LIAR LIAR LIAR I WANT TO TALK TO CHLOE I WANT TO TALK TO CHLOE is definitely the new I WISH I KNEW HOW TO QUIT YOU.
Emma: It most certainly is! But yes, then, as you say, the cop drama that took over at that point was SO badly done.
Lauren: Except for the cute Scottish cops, who we granted a reprieve.
Emma: Yes! The Irish cop (James Nesbit) and the Scottish cop (Ewen Bremner) were a delight. But they wouldn't last five minutes on Law & Order with those investigative skills. No post mortem to find out Scarlett was pregnant? No interviewing her friends to find out she was due to meet her lover the night she was shot?
Lauren: Completely stupid and ridiculous. Also, it seemed to be very classist. When Jonathan/Chris was interrogated he kept saying, I am rich blah blah I am rich let's don't rock the boat now. And they were like, Okay.
Emma: Exactly! They were excessively co-operative.
Lauren: What about when the ghost of Scarlett haunted his kitchen?
Emma: Scarlett and the old woman.
Lauren: And then he gave that soliloquoy on the nature of guilt...
Emma: Painful!
Lauren: What about the depiction of British people, generally? I am very curious to hear your take.
Emma: Well, what you said about it being classist is interesting. It was certainly very stereotypical - posh people play tennis, work in undefined important jobs and drink expensive drinks. None of the characters were actually characters. Just symbols, and not very nuanced ones at that.
Lauren: I loved your assessment that no rich people just, you know, go to work in companies that are never named, that are constantly popping out plum assignments, structuring themselves into genius and highly lucrative new ventures, etc.
Emma: Right! We were never once told what Chris actually did, just that he had a secretary and a big office and salary!
Lauren: The idea of Chris Wilton as a social survivalist was so intriguing -- his move from poor boy to tennis player to club pro to fiance of a very rich young woman was seamlessly cool. And then Scarlett's Nola, largely on a very similar trajectory...
Emma: Too seamless, though! It was all so pat.
Lauren: Also: using work as an affair alibi when his wife's family owns the company? Bizarre!
Emma: Exactly - that typifies this film, and Allen's arrogantly sloppy approach.
Lauren: I think the script was just slapped together around a premise and that basically financiers are too willing to give Woody Allen money to make films.
Emma: You must be right. And the fact is, it's gotten good reviews, hasn't it? Unbelievable.
Lauren: If someone young, clever and enterprising took the script and re-tooled it as a stage production it could be powerfully affecting! Because there is a kernel of intrigue at the center of so much mediocrity.
Emma: Yes, you're right. In a way, it wanted to be like Closer. But that was a far superior play and film.
Lauren: Totally. It was the H&M to Closer's Topshop.
Emma: What a perfect analogy!
Lauren: Let's just cut it loose then shall we? I feel like we've given it more than its moment in the sun. Since we don't do halves, how about one peony?
Emma: Indeed. Yes, I think one is exactly what it deserves. And that's only for the police characters!
Lauren: Totally. None for Scarlett.
Emma: Negative for Scarlett!
Lauren: Dead flowers for her.
Emma: Dead, bad feng shui petals for Scarlett.
Lauren: Evil feng shui dried peonies for Hollywood's sweetheart!
Le Cineclub Rating:
(one out of a possible five peonies)
Previously: Walk The Line, A History of Violence, Shopgirl, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Nine Lives, Dandelion, Going Shopping, Green Street Hooligans.
The Smart Set: January 23-29
In this week's edition of The Smart Set: Fever dreams, golden apples, a date with destiny and... more.
Two-Day, Today, To-morrow
My grand plans for this weekend were not entirely realized...although I didn't necessarily miss the mark by too far. Saturday morning, I slept too late and lacked the proper motivation to make it to the poetry reading I wanted to attend, as tea turned into a bath and soon it was futile to try and make it to the Village (although this was clearly not an issue for the nice crowd that showed up). I'll have to order online and take advantage of Action Books' "3 for $30" website special; also on the shortlist: Softskull's Pretty Young Things, by Danielle Pafunda.
As I was idly plaiting my hair and contemplating a sweep of peacock blue/green eyeshadow (see: Vincent Longo's "Paradise Love") and perhaps a stroll around the neighborhood, a friend called and asked if I'd like to go for a walk. Thrilled by the serendipity, I grabbed a cashmere wrap perfect for the unseasonably mild weather and strolled a few blocks up to SoHo. I made it to our rendezvous point a few minutes early, so I switched our meeting place slightly and popped in to say hello to Jen Bekman!
Once we were in the same place at the same time, I learned that my fellow flaneur was looking for work clothes, so we went to Cloak and he picked up a gorgeously detailed oxford with covered buttons and a subtle blue stripe. After that, we stopped and lingered at Palacinka, catching up on each other's latest dramatic episodes over savory crepes and Syrah.
Yohji Yamamoto was still open when we walked by, so we did a little browsing therein, and I fell in love a thousand times over, mostly with coats but also the dressing rooms loosely modeled after Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipse, albeit on a human scale. Gourmet Garage was our last stop, where I picked up some tapas fixin's and good black tea (Scottish Breakfast), and then headed home for dinner and a movie before reading an essay on dancehall fashion in Black Style until I fell asleep.
Today, I went to a matinee of The Civilians' brilliant, hilarious Nobody's Lunch with friends, and then we went to Burger Joint in Le Parker Meridien. Afterwards, I went for a walk down 57th Street -- past Rizzoli, the most elegant bookstore I've never entered -- and into Bergdorf Goodman, although nothing inside the store (more Gastineau than Golightly, I'm afraid) is quite as appealing as peeking at those gorgeous windows.
Right now I am watching North by Northwest, planning out my schedule and work agenda for the week (See you Wednesday?), and planning to get to sleep at a reasonable hour (tonight's bed-time reading: The Photograph as Contempory Art) as tomorrow morning starts bright and early with a meeting over breakfast at Balthazar. Parfait.