Mastering the Art of French Blogging: Julie & Julia

Alongside mon amie Rachel (frequent commenter, trusted grammmarian, and bosom buddy) I indulged in the gourmand’s movie: Julie & Julia.  Don’t go to the theaters hungry kiddos.

Poster courtesy of: http://www.impawards.com/2009/posters/julie_and_julia.jpg

The best way to describe this film was a movie for the Food Network lover and the wayward blogger.  While watching the growth of the Julie/Julia blog and Julia Child’s development of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, we are ingulfed in exquisite food porn.

I loved Meryl Streep as Julia: Absolutely stunning as a happy, exuberant student (then teacher) of French cuisine.  But while fun to watch her shop the food markets of Paris and charm the French, I felt more interested in Julie Powell (Amy
Adams) as she struggled with her job, her marriage, and her blog.  It came from that blogging sympathy– watching as she gets her first comment (albeit, from her mother) then struggling to kill lobsters for her 30th birthday party, eventually celebrating the comments from her readers.

They re-created 1950s Europe and post-9/11 New York so beautifully.  I wouldn’t have thought that I would care so much about the subtle differences between 2009 and 2002, but I adored the attention to detail.  And well, cringed a little when I saw the ugly decor of 1960s households (sorry Julia… sorry 1960s housewives).

It’s a movie of hero-worship really.  Julie creates this grandiose idea of Julia Child while writing her blog, working through  burning beouf bourginon and missing her chance at meeting Child’s editor, then never giving up on this idea.  She wears the pearls and learns the craft of cooking, going through her ups and downs and fear of boning an entire duck.  It’s fun to watch her successes, and hard to watch her failures.

The movie made me want to write on here and eat at a French cafe all at once.  Sad to say, I don’t have the plane tickets to do both.  I will, however, wear pearls to work tonight.  And with that, bon appetit!

Swallowed by Light: Vincent and Theo

An analysis of relationships more than the growth of an artist.  And that’s good!

picture from http://dryden.eastmanhouse.org/media/vincent.jpg

Vincent and Theo was directed by Robert Altman, made in 1990.  Starring Tim Roth and Paul Rhys as the brothers Van Gogh.  It was orginally going to be a BBC miniseries covering the full life of the artist, but was trimmed down to cover only the later years.

Altman opens very well, crossing the sale of Sunflowers at Christies for 22.5 million pounds with Vincent’s declaration that he would become an artist to his brother Theo.

Throughout the film, I couldn’t help but make comparisons between Vincent and Theo and Lust for Life, another Van Gogh biopic starring Kirk Douglas.  In both cases, the actors greatly resemble Van Gogh, but they contrast how the artist was.  Lust for Life is Van Gogh idealized, chatty, romantic, even in his crazy moments.  Vincent and Theo is realism, choked with brothels and insanity from both of the brothers.

It’s a movie you have to be patient with.  The fact that it is built on relationships as driving forces makes the viewer sit up to focus on the nuances between the characters.  In most cases, it’s straighforward, especially with Vincent: He is the starving artist who is at odds with the world, in both art and sanity.  Vincent dips his hands into dry paint with utter concentration on his face, then wipes the dust off as if he couldn’t remember doing it.

Theo is more shouty.  Well, honestly, they’re both shouty.  With Vincent, the shouts are cut by painting, at least.  Theo has nothing to do except shout and whine about being an art dealer, sending is brother money, getting married.  It was unique to see a film explore the brothers’ relationship rather than solely the artist’s life, mostly because we wouldn’t have ever heard of Van Gogh if it wasn’t for his brother’s family.

I had to sit back at times and stare.  Both characters act manically throughout the film, and perhaps they both have a combination of syphilis and bipolarism– who knows?  That’s what you’re in for.  Also, the weirdest soundtrack for it’s subject.  At points, the music sounds like rejections of the Psycho theme.  Then it ends with a discordant bass note, thumping along in a B-movie from the 80s style.

The scene with the sunflowers will haunt me in my sleep.  Gah…

Prick Up Your Ears (and the Question of Biopics)

Y’all, I think I have a problem: I’ve become a Biopic addict.

I’ve watched Prick Up Your Ears for the second time this afternoon, which was on the nice HD TV downstairs, as opposed to in bits and pieces on youtube.  While viewing it in the episodic manner many moons ago, a lot hit me more dramatically or became very forgettable.  The internet is giving me a terrible short-term memory, I’m afraid.  Watching full length movies online is almost impossible.

Now, in case you weren’t familiar, Prick Up Your Ears is a biopic on Joe Orton, English playwright, played by the wonderful Gary Oldman.  Joe was homosexual in an age when homosexuality in Great Britain meant prison, which hit me over the head the first time I viewed the film.  It was like, “Yeah, okay I can understand it,” but also “No, shit!  Really?  They made it illegal?”

Now, that same point hits me, but more because it’s a central point to the film.  Joe’s gay, and he doesn’t care.  In fact, I get the feeling that he wants to get caught in the bathrooms sometimes.  Which is, well, a bit awkward to watch, considering his histrionic boyfriend Kenneth Halliwell (Alfred Molina) knows what’s going on.

So I got distracted by Molina during this viewing.  I kept thinking “Now, is he over acting?  Well, I suppose that’s how Halliwell was, if he was that damaged.  Is he overacting?” etc etc, I do believe you get the point. 

It also feels like an old British movie, if someone took British cinema and laid it out from end to end.  Which works with the 1960s setting of Orton’s life, but also makes the movie feel very sad, almost waiting for something to happen.  Then something happens, and it’s terrible, but it’s true: How Orton died.  I remember crying when I first saw that, in a sad pathetic little way in front of the computer screen.  Because I really didn’t expect it, and I had gotten attached to Joe, but felt like he hadn’t lived much.  Anonymous sex, a boyfriend he wasn’t in love with (maybe never had been), and just the beginning of success.

Meanwhile, I get to read someone’s comment on IMDb who says that it’s the biopic that finally worked for her because of it’s strong narrative arc.  Which I can see.  The narrative being the relationship between Orton and Halliwell. 

It just brings me back to another point: I’ve become addicted to biopics.  The question is “Why?” and is that even a genre?  It’s the Costume Drama that’s real, it’s the soap opera that actually happened, if the viewer is lucky.  As much as I like them (or seem to like them– they’re the genre that takes up considerable space on my shelf  at least) I can’t figure out why.  Why like biopics?  They usually end up lying to you about a person’s life.  Immortal Beloved can show you Beethoven, but it still feeds you fiction in order to produce a narrative at all.  Lust for Life shows you Van Gogh, but leaves out the whores, syphillis, close relationship with Gaugin, just because of the time it was made.

And yet, I’m addicted.  I know they’re wrong, but I keep coming back to them.  The question of biopics. Prick Up Your Ears, as it stands, is the most soap operatic of them all, as far as I’ve seen, in an underworld kind of way. London in a different age, experienced by people I can only understand depending on my mood.

Basquiat, or Lessons in Life and Art

I was impressed by the movie, but also a little let down. A little confused. What did I learn from Basquiat?

Art is hard. Or extraordinarily easy, but comes with bad consequences.  There are, as I understand it, three artists seen in this movie: Jean-Michel Basquiat (Jeffrey Wright), Andy Warhol (David Bowie), and the fictional Albert Milo (Gary Oldman).  While the movie focuses on Basquiat, it also shows the three sides of the aristic triangle: How to Not Be a Proper Artist nor Live A Proper Life(Basquiat), How to Be a Proper Artist, but Not Live a Proper Life (Warhol), and How to Be A Proper Artist and Live a Proper Life (Milo).  The thing is, you only understand that at the end, when Basquiat goes to Milo’s house for dinner and it’s so… normal.  A nice flat, Milo explains that he paints because he loves to paint, and Milo’s daughter wandering around, having a good human relationship with her father.   This scene comes when Basquiat doesn’t want to be an artist anymore.

To back up: Don’t do drugs (Basquiat’s serious issue, which comes from the very beginning). 

Don’t destroy your most precious relationships.  Especially not with Courtney Love.  This isn’t much of an explored theme, really.  While Basquiat is known as an artist from the streets, his father is middle class.  His real connection is with his mother, but after the first scene or two, he doesn’t see her anymore, although he tries.  His girlfriend Gina, well, he sunk that ship when he went off with Courtney, so there that goes.

I feel like this film tells me “This is How You Shouldn’t Be an Artist.”  He gets picked up by chance (don’t they all?), he is the rave of the art world for a millisecond, then gets passed around from art dealer to art dealer.  That’s just as sad, combined with watching him lose whatever feeling he ever got from art in the first place, to see it all disappear.

Jeffrey Wright puts to screen an amazing performance as Basquiat.  I was really struck by Bowie as Warhol though.  Because I get to see the life of Basquiat with Warhol as a side character, it just makes me want to find out more on Warhol.  Bowie played him as the cute and the insane, some brilliant mastermind who’s still stuck in adolescence, and I think that works.

Basquiat: Good Choice, Bad One…?

Ahh… let me begin by saying, Borders near my house was having a sale.  But since they didn’t have “The Last Metro” nor “The Lives of Others”, I felt content by shoveling out the cash for “Basquiat” because, hey, I like  biopics and Gary Oldman!  Makes sense to me. And if it’s bad, I can just give it to Natalia.

A-hem.  Well, I’m only on Chapter 6, according to my sister’s laptop.  I like it so far, but it also seems kind of hopeless and, what the opening monologue calls, “The Van Gogh Boat”.  Living homelessly in New York, Basquiat wants to be considered as a real artist.  Snobby artists like Gary just don’t understand the miracles of dada graffitti poems after all.

Eventually we’ll get to the part where Basquiat becomes a major explosion of success, but I’m just grooving until we get there.

Once I got home, I realized that I could have wasted just as much money on “State of Grace”, had it been there (I can’t remember) but I never liked Sean Penn much anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.

Citizen Kane/Immortal Beloved Parallels

I have the strangest feeling that this post might piss some people off… Ah well.

So, we just finished watching Citizen Kane in one of my classes, and I couldn’t help but thinking “Hm, Citizen Kane seems to have influenced Immortal Beloved to some extent.”

For instance, both are about trying to define some great character through one thing: Rosebud, last words, or the Immortal Beloved letter. Then the actual exposition and rising action comes from the stories people tell about this person– and of course, these opinions are all colored by the particular storyteller.

(Gah, I hate blogging in public spaces. The conversation of the people sitting next to me is very annoying-distracting).

Anyway, that’s my thought for today. I also had a rewatching of “The Legend of 1900″ yesterday, which makes me very happy and very sad (it’s just that kind of film). I’m thinking about buying a sheet music collection of piano solos based on Ennio Morricone’s compositions– or they’re directly his compositions, something like that– but I’m being indecisive. “The Best of Ennio Morricone vol.1″ is about $25, comes with a CD, includes “Playing Love” from 1900, but that’s really all that I want.

The collection also includes a selection from “Once Upon a Time in America” and “The Mission,” amongst other Italian films. Anyone want to give some opinions here? Is this purchase worth it?

The Maestro for the Religious: Copying Beethoven

The best I can say about this film is that it had some excellent shots. But, well…

How can I word this?  There are a certain number of things wrong with this film.  1) Jilted camera angles and movements.  2) Overacting on the part of 2/3 of the cast. 3) A Been-There, Done-That Storyline.

If I tried really hard, I’m sure I could make the list grow, but the film really isn’t worth my time.

The story is Anna Holtz, a charming 23-year-old musician-to-be who has been sent from her conservatory to do some work under Beethoven.  Of course, Beethoven in a rude brute who no one understands, except for OMG Anna!  How tremendously convenient that the only person who can understand Beethoven came in time to be his copyist before the Ninth Symphony is performed on Sunday.

In between being snarled at and having zen conversations about music and God, Karl, B’s nephew, drops by and is a rude, spoiled brat looking for some money to waste gambling.  Of course, even though he looks like some heroin addict, Karl is actually a very sympathetic character, because he doesn’t want to play the piano!  O, woe is he for having an uncle who adores him like a son.  Then he runs away, to return to further his weasely ways.

Anna is staying at her great aunt’s convent while she’s in Vienna and is encouraged to drop her silly dreams of becoming a composer, because girls can’t become composers, silly.  Her aunt, the Mother Superior, tells her that dreams are dangerous, but beautiful, and that she once had the dream to study under Salieri.  Let me tell you, that explains a lot about Anna’s aunt and her taste in music.

So, Vienna is agog at Beethoven and his 2-hour long symphony and the fact that he wants to conduct (But he’s deaf! Vienna shouts).  And Martin Bauer, the beau of Anna, is the most annoying person in this entire movie.  He is an engineer of the future and has really, really awful lines about building bridges to the future.  As far as I can throw him, he’s all that’s bad about the industrial era in a nut shell for this movie.

But Anna, o she loves him.  She thinks.  Well, the chemistry ain’t that great, but it’s a helluva lot better than that shit from the Star Wars prequels, is all I can say.  While Martin works on his bridge, he has a tangent about how no one listens to Beethoven anymore, blah di blah.

Then, the symphony!  Only Karl’s not there, so Beethoven can’t compose.  Not unless Anna’s onstage with him, composing from the orchestra.  So they do and it takes up a lot of time.  Probably the best use of time in this entire film, but only for the music.  There’s a montage in here that will make an epiliptic seizure and a lot of close ups of Beethoven cutting to Anna cutting to Beethoven cutting to Chorus cutting to Beethoven cutting to audience cutting to orchestra cutting to Anna cutting to Beethoven cutting to WTF Karl?  Who looks even more like a heroin addict now than every before!  Then he disappears and everything is apparently resolved in that area of the world.  Meanwhile, the standing ovation scene is a complete rip off from Immortal Beloved.

After the Ninth Symphony scene, everything is about God from here on out.  Beethoven whines to Anna about God, Anna says nothing.  Beethoven is the Zen Master of Music: The Language of God.  Anna tries her hand at composing.  Beethoven works on his new Quartets.  Anna questions God because Beethoven makes fun of her composition.  Mother Superior tells her that she would be safe in the convent, away from all of that dirty, dirty Viennese trash and deaf composers.  Then Beethoven begs for forgiveness and we’re back on the religious track!  Yippee.

Martin presents his bridge design for a contest and Beethoven just comes by and smashes it with his cane.  The design was the basic iron bridge design, nothing really special anyway.  Anna and Martin break up, because they can’t really stand eachother.  Anna turns to Beethoven for yelling matches and… more talk about God.  Then he asks her to bathe him. (You think I’m joking, but I’m not).

No one understands Beethoven’s new quartets, which is a pity because they’re rather nice.  Then he collapses and Anna nurses him back to health.  He goes to sleep and when he wakes up, he has a new idea for a song.  Anna dictates while he sits in bed, and this scene totally isn’t a rip off of Amadeus, why do you ask?

One final conversation about God and Music and END MOVIE!

Copying Beethoven has a maturity level somewhere under Beethoven Lives Upstairs.  I can’t even sit lose myself to the pretty landscape or to the costumes because Vienna is portrayed as bland and dismal while the costumes are drab in greys and browns, except for an occassional blue.  The direction isn’t my taste when it comes to a historical film.  Lots of cuts and jags and Seizure-inducing montages.  The film isn’t about Beethoven really, or about his music.  It’s about Anna, which wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t such a Mary Sue.  She’s entirely too boring, even in her costumes.

The easiest portrayal I can say is that this is Beethoven for the Religious, or for those who want to create an idea of Beethoven as being religious.  Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t.  In the books I’ve read, he’s neither one way nor the other, but spiritually searching, always.  To some, I’m sure this speaks volumes, but I look more towards other aspects of a historical figure’s character.  With Beethoven, I want to see the Romanticism through him or the tortured individual, but Copying Beethoven delivered neither.

A Delicious Metaphor

My mom took me out to this Asian Fusion restaurant over the weekend, and I realized that the menu serves as a pretty good guide to the movies I’ve watched recently.

 

Chicken Won-Tons: The Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyessy (1988)

            A little, unexpected Indie film (much like our won-tons, which didn’t have anything in them besides dry chicken.  Dry chicken does not a won-ton make).  Apparently, this was the Indie Darling of the ‘80s: it won Fantafestival, Fantasporto, a whole string of Australian Film Institute awards, and was nominated for a Golden Palm at Cannes.

            At a small Scottish village in 1347, there lives Griffon, a boy who can see into the future.  His brother, Connor, has recently returned and informs the town council equivalent that the plague has arrived, and Griffon has a vision about their solution: They must tunnel through the earth to arrive at a great city and place a cross on the highest cathedral’s spire.  Seems feasible when you live in a mining town.

            About six of them go into the mine and start tunneling with their mediaeval “drill” and when they see light, they have arrived at Twentieth Century New Zealand.  Which would confuse anyone, I’m sure, but they handle it marvelously.

            I love seeing the characters react to modern day events, like crossing a highway.  Everything is related back to their quest or to religion.  There’s a great scene when Griffon breaks into an appliance shop and he’s staring at a wall of televisions, all showing these truly bizarre images that keep switching every few seconds.  It’s a fun watch when the night is waning and you can’t get to sleep.  Like watching a fairy tale with some modern depth.

Manchurian Shrimp: The Host (2006)

            This was my mom’s dish.  I tried some, but didn’t like it.  There was this really complicated mixture of flavors in it and it was really spicy.  In this sense, it was a lot like The Host, a Korean Horror-Family Drama.  (To be honest, at first thought I figured these go together because the shrimp were butterflied and looked like the monster).

            The full amalgamation of the movie baffles at first.  It seems like too much to include, but c’est la vie.  It opens up by introducing the monster’s origins (stupid decisions with formaldehyde at an American military base), but cuts to the family, a man (Gang-du) with his daughter (Hyun-seo) living with his father (Papa Park) and helping to run the family snack shack.  The family comes together through the illegitimate daughter, who is adored on all sides by her father, grandfather, uncle (drunk, unemployed college graduate, Nam-il), and aunt (National archery competitor, Nam-joo).  Their drama escalates with the first of the monster attacks, which drags Hyun-seo into the river after gobbling up a few dozen other people.

            Sometimes the family interactions feel like I’m watching a dark comedy.  They weep pathetically for the lost Hyun-seo, then fall down with journalists taking their picture in some comedic pose.  They can’t help but bicker and fight while their being quarantined at the hospital (the greatest concern after the attack was the potential ‘virus’ spread by contact with the creature).  Late at night in quarantine, Gang-du gets a phone call from his daughter.  She’s alive!  But trapped in the sewer by the monster.  And thus begins phase two: the rescue.

            There’s social commentary in this, on the relationship between family members and America’s involvement with other countries (after deciding that the Korean government wasn’t handling the situation, they come in with “Agent Yellow”).  The combination of seeing the characters in a larger than life problem, combined with a sweeping score that emphasizes the emotional tension perfectly, The Host is an extremely powerful film.

Deep Fried Lamb Peking: Captain from Castile (1947)

            I was surprised in the flavor and texture that I had with my Lamb, but I was also surprised by this movie.  It is a stepping stone from the old epics to modern cinema, even back in 1947.

            It’s a very involved storyline, from the opening to the conflict that leads our hero Pedro de Vargas to the New World, under the command of Cortez.  I watched it day-by-day style, so for awhile I felt like they were just throwing together plot points so that Hollywood could produce another swashbuckling adventure flick.

            That’s not the case.  Remove one character flaw, it destroys the plot.  Change one moment in time, the ending wouldn’t make sense.  There’s still this 1940s feel to it, either coming from the costumes, sets, or style of acting, but there is that script with the modern feel to it. 

Mongolian Beef: Mongol (2007)

            Mongol.  The dish I never had (but I greatly enjoyed the film).  This is the story of Genghis Khan, first emperor of the largest land empire ever in existence.  According to The Industry Rumors, there are two more sequels to follow, in order to span his entire life.  So far, this was the beginning.

            Temudjin, son of a rather powerful Khan, is taken by his father to pick out his bride (family bonding abounds in this menu, it would seem).  His choice is the best Mongolian bride ever, apparently.  More importantly, she picked him.  That equality follows them through their whole relationship.

            When Temudjin’s father dies, his family is thrown out of their clan while the powers that be fight over the vacuum left in the death’s wake.  There, Temudjin starts to be filled with righteous fury and makes a blood brother in Jamukha, who is also looking towards becoming a great khan.

            The story goes on like this: Temudjin grows up, marries his girl, and jumps through hoops in order to become the hero-leader that he lives up to.  The filmmakers felt it necessary to include his family life a great deal in this opening and the violence takes a step down.  Overall, it is very engaging, both as an action movie and as a biopic.  The culture is well explained visually and through voiceover, mostly by watching Temudjin go through religious rituals and laying out his plans of government. 

            Everyone I talk to always likes to mention how international the cast and crew are, or they criticize it.  I think they’re missing the point: yeah, it’s fun to notice stuff like that, but it’s more important to acknowledge the film separate.  It is supposed to stand as a whole when we watch it, as a work of art or a person.  It’s not supposed to be analyzed for where it came from, but then again, we do that with people and art a lot too.

Fortune Cookie: The Duchess (2008)

            The Duchess is fun to watch while watching, but once the credits roll my mind went to “What?  I just watched a movie?  But… what happened?”  The plot is so slow and languidly formed that I felt more like I was watching a fashion show than an actual movie.  And I had such high hopes… ah, well.  The costumes were pretty, expectantly, and I have greater respect for Keira Knightly as an actress.  She had to really stretch her emotions for this one.

            I feel now that I should have gotten more from watching the film—there are these high-strung emotional moments when you’re horrified or at least sympathetic to her situation.  The problem was that I wasn’t all that sympathetic:  I was horrified from my own perspective first, but I was never really rooting for her to conquer her husband or escape from that lifestyle. 

            I discussed this movie with my friend who saw it with me, and she got the same opinion out of it: A lot happened, but it doesn’t feel like much at all.  I’ve seen this story before, I’ve heard it in history class every year since sixth grade.  A woman is only as good as the children she bears, and in that society she didn’t have the capacity to rebel.

            Well, whatever.  Rebel away, or at least make the attempt.  Please, just do something so that I don’t forget you after the credits roll and the taste of crispy cookie has left my mouth.

One of Those “I Watch it For the Hot Guy” Movies: Attila the Hun

Sooo…. Attila the Hun.  Made by the USA channel to showcase Gerard Butler, as I understand.  Or rather, as I want to understand it.

Taken, with respect, from http://images.teamsugar.com/files/users/2/20158/14_2007/sjm_s_attila_gb03.jpg

As Andrew the Actor pointed out to me, it really is a terrible movie.  Terrible, but I enjoy it because… hot guy!  Hot guy in a wig that both makes me want to touch it and cut it all off at the same time.  I think this might have just knocked Phantom of the Opera down from it’s pillar of Guilty Pleasure movies because

Hot Gerry WIth a Sword beats Singing Deformed Gerry (and… the whole Joel Schumacher thing taints Phantom for me anyway, when I really come down to it).

Clearly, this is not the blood-craving tyrant who looks rather Mongolian that Google wants us to believe.  This is the Good Guy Attila, the Destiny Chosen Attila, the Attila who fell in love with a woman who can kill just as much as he can and who has red hair!

That is what they make the biggest deal of in this movie.  The woman with the red hair, who chose Attila over his fugly brother because… well, when two of the most powerful men in the tribe are fighting over you, go for the handsome and nice one.

The basic story isn’t really raped from history, just Attila actually going to Rome.  (And, as my History teacher would say, “They cut out the best part!” Apparently Attila didn’t sack Rome because the Pope talked to him and… no one knows what they said to each other because neither would talk about it after that.  So.  There you go.  I didn’t finish this, so I don’t really know how it ends.  Most likely in bloody vengeance).

As the film portrays it, Attila is wooed to Rome and it’s hot baths by Aetius, the Roman general who hates the Queen Mother, What’s Her Face, more than her useless son Valentinian III.  Afterall, it’s much simpler to control somone who’s an idiot.  But even before the sojourn to Rome’s hottest baths and princesses, Attila has this God complex and is convinced that it’s his destiny to rule the Huns.

Which it is.  But from where I left off, I felt like the movie was making some statement about misplaced trust and arrogance, and blah blah blah.  This entertained me because I was having a bad week and need a shitty, arrogant, pretty-boy’s in it movie to let my mind seep away so that I didn’t have to think about college application essays for a brief period of time each day.

HELL, I tell you!  But most of you probably already know that.  And… I digress. This is the “Please Entertain Me Scruffy Gerard Butler Movie” that cures what ails you (unless you actually like quality cinema).

If anyone out there has seen this and knows the ending, please enlighten me, ‘kay thanks.

Coco Chanel: I watch it for the Clothes

Well, not really.

Not entirely. 

Not… as much as I watch it for the hot guy, okay?

I like the hot guy!  I don’t even know his name! (His character’s name, by the way, was Boy (?!)).  I just remember thinking, “You are so much better for her than the dork with the mustache.”

I was rather excited about seeing this movie, even though it was made by Lifetime, because I like clothes.  I like Coco Chanel, mostly because she’s just neat (and the film pretty much proves that), and I like biopics.

But this is still a Lifetime movie, and I hate bad acting.

Like the hawt menz though, so… keep it coming.  Especially in period costume.  So this, along with Kate and Leopold has become just some movie I will watch to see a hot guy in period clothing, whether it’s Hugh Jackman or That Guy (I will look up his name.  When I feel like it.).

10 minutes later…

Olivier Sitruk.  Well, alright then, Boy.  (?!  I don’t care if that was the real guy’s name, it’s weird.  I feel like I’m calling for a servant like some old rich lady in a different historical film).

I have to say though, for a crummy movie, it managed to cover the forty consecutive years in Paris that I really like, from about 1880 to 1920, with really beautiful costumes.  They would have played folly otherwise, in a movie about Chanel.

But yeah… Sitruk.  He’s a French actor who stars in French films and TV shows that I’ve never heard of, but what do I know?  I’m American and we only care about American, British and Irish actors.  Even better if they’re pseudo-British.