Cabinet of curiosities & Inspirations since 2009

Cabinet of curiosities & Inspirations since 2009
*I Don’t Own the Rights to These Photos*

30 nov. 2011

WANTED for Xmas



I'M STILL SAVING FOR MY BIRKIN BAG

29 nov. 2011

INSPIRATIONS








18 nov. 2011

Joan Crawford : The Wicked Queen ?



The Wicked Queen is one of Disney's most iconic and menacing villains.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American film based on the eponymous German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full length animated feature to be produced by Walt Disney, and the first American animated feature film in movie history.Determined to remain the fairest of all, the Queen becomes insanely jealous of Snow White, the only one whose beauty surpasses her own. She eventually uses her skills in dark magic to transform herself into the Witch.The Queen is the stepmother of Snow White and the main antagonist of the film. Once her magic mirror tells her that Snow White is fairer than she is, she immediately enlists Humbert the huntsman to kill her in the woods. After she discovers that Snow White did not die, she disguises herself as an old hag and
uses a poisoned apple in order to kill Snow White.


Disney suggested that the Queen should be a mix of Lady Macbeth and the Big Bad Wolf, but her face finally took the features of the American actress Joan Crawford (1908-1977), her appearance was inspired by the Helen Gahagan character in the film "She" (1935) and her general silhouette seems to be derived from the column statue at the entrance to Naumberg Cathedral in Germany. Actress Lucille LaVerne was chosen to voice both the Wicked Queen and the hag Witch because of her versatile voice intonations.The transformation of the Queen into a Witch is taken from various cinematographic versions of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. And the Witch herself perpetuates the iconographic tradition develo
ped during the 19th century.

Walt Disney recruited some of the best European illustrators who had immigrated to America:
the Swiss
Albert Hurter (1883-1942),
the Swedish artist
Gustaf Tenggren (1886-1970)
his Danish counterpart Kay Nielsen (1886-1957).
and the Hungarian
Ferdinand_Hovarth (1881-1973)

Trained in the art academies of their home countries,these pioneers instilled their culture in the studios’ early films,
particularly Snow White (1937), Pinocchio (1940) and Fantasia (1940).
The Queen was animated by Art Babbit and the Witch by Norman Ferguson.

Joan Crawford (1904-1977)


Outrageous costumes (note the strong parallel here between Gahagan’s outfit
and that of the queen in Disney’s animated Snow White, released just two years later)

Margrave Ekkehard of Meissen and his wife Uta
Naumburg Cathedral (1249-1255)

You can admire Joan Crawford for her ambition and her professionalism as an actress but did you knew that Joan Crawford was named by her children (Christina and Christopher)
the "witch", the evil “mommie dearest.” ?
When, i see Show White i can't help thinking about Joan Crawford and all the despotic mother in this world.
Now, It can been told that Joan herself was a villain, a MGM marketing made-up actress and character from her name to her look ( she cared about more than anything about her public image) and a despotic mother that indulged severe mental and physical abuse on her children.Her life was a running commercial directed by Hollywood- The "official" story, according to the MGM Publicity Department as Directed by Louis B. Mayer.


When Christina Crawford’s tell-all book came out a year after her adoptive mother’s death, Old Hollywood divided into two camps: those who said they had witnessed Crawford’s unstable behavior with her children and those were convinced that the book’s shocking claims were untrue.

The book and Movie "Momie Dearest" help to spotlight the subject of abusive mothers and Borderline Mothers.But it's still seem that in 2009,we as individuals and a society are still uncomfortable with those kinds of issues.

"Mirror, Mirror on the wall who's the fairest one of all" ......

All about Books: The Literary geek questionnary


Literary geek, I was tagged by Louise from Pandora
in 2009 I decided to respost this questionnary.


1) What author do you own the most books by ?
Stefan Zweig, Thomas Mann, Guy de Maupassant,
Dostoievsky, Paul Morand, Céline, Cocteau.


2) What book do you own the most copies of ?
La montagne magique (Thomas Mann)




3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions ?
No

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with ?
Lewis (From Lewis et Iréne (Paul Morand).




5) What book have you read the most times in your life
(excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count) ?
Moineau, la petite libraire (Trilby),
Le monde en tant que représentation ( Shopenhauer ),
Mont Oriol (Maupassant),
La montagne Magique (Mann),
La curé (Zola),
Le discours sur la méthode (Descartes),
Le Grand Nulle part ( James Ellroy).


6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old ?
Le mystère de la chambre jaune de Gaston Leroux




7) What is the worst book you've read in 2009 ?
L'élégance du hérisson (Muriel Barbery)


8) What is the best book you've read in 2009 ?
Le moine (Lewis),
Moïra ( Julien Green),
Nada (Carmen Laforet).


9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be ?
Les Frères Karamazov (Fedor Dostoievski)

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature ?
James Ellroy




11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie ?
La forteresse vide (Bruno Bettelheim)

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie ?
Le Maître et Marguerite (Boulgakov )

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I don’t remenber my dreams.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult ?
Justine Levy, Lolita Pille, Nathalie reims …

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read ?
Ulysses (James Joyce)
Essais sémiotiques (Christian Metz)



16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen ?
Less known : Beaucoup de bruit pour rien (Much Ado About Nothing)
The more dark : Le Roi Lear (King Lear)

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians ?
Both

18) Roth or Updike ?
Never read.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers ?
I have to google.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer ?
Shakespeare

21) Austen or Eliot?
Austen

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading ?
Japanese Literature

23) What is your favorite novel ?
La Pitié dangereuse (Zweig) and
Les possédés (Dostoievski).



24) Play ?
Le canard sauvage (Ibsen),
La cerisaie (Tchekhov),
Un tramway nommé Désir (Tennessee Williams),
Don Juan (Molière),
Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel (Jean Cocteau),
Pelléas et Mélisande (Maurice Maeterlinck),
La Boîte de Pandore (Frank Wedeking).

25) Poem ?
Les yeux d'Elsa (Eluard),
Paroles (Prévert ),
Les Fleurs du mal ( Baudelaire).

26) Essay ?
L'analyse du film (Raymond Bellour)

27) Short story ?
Le Journal d'un homme de trop (Tourgueniev),
Un diamant gros comme le Ritz ( F. Scott Fitzgerald),
Nouvelles Histoires extraordinaires (Edgar Allan Poe).


28) Work of nonfiction ?
Esthétique du film (Jacques Aumont, M. Marie, A. Bergala),
Théâtres du Je ( Joyce McDougall).

29) Who is your favorite writer ?
Impossible to answer.

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today ?
Michel Houellebecq

31) What is your desert island book ?
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë ),
Moby Dick (Herman Melville).

32) And... what are you reading right now ?
Pretty Things: The Last Generation
of American Burlesque Queens ( Liz Goldwyn)




ICONE : BRIGITTE HELM














German actress Brigitte Helm (1906-1996) is a legend
because of her dual role as the noble Maria and as her evil double,
the robot Maria, in the silent science-fiction classic Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang).
After Metropolis she made a string of over 30 films in which
she almost always had the starring role.
Helm easily made the transition to sound films, before she abruptly retired in 1935.


INSPIRATIONS














13 nov. 2011