Tuesday, February 26, 2013

tu(n)esday!





Gorgeous song by Kishi Bashi...




Love this remix!




Norwegian electropop from Lemâitre...




Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs remixes Foals...




I've got a tattered line of string...




New Little Boots... (free dl here)



Monday, February 25, 2013

oscars' best dressed



Here are the looks that stood out for me last night!



Naomi Watts in Armani Prive.




Daniel Day-Lewis's blue Domenico Vacca tux.






Sally Field in red Valentino Couture.





Adele during her peformance of Best Original Song winner "Skyfall" with her hair down in a Burberry black silk dress with degradé hand-embroidered crystals.





Kind of boring but I mean... it's Charlize (Christian Dior Haute Couture).






Best Actress winner Jennifer Lawrence's voluminous pale pink Dior didn't really flatter nor suit her quirky personality but this image of her after she fell with the stair lights illuminating the dress is sort of beautiful.




Sunday, February 24, 2013

the jdb awards: my dream oscar picks!


It's Oscar day.  While some of my faves failed to get nominated, it's still fun to see how the night turns out.

Here are my film award nominations & winners!



Picture

Moonrise Kingdom



nominees:

Elena
Holy Motors
Lincoln
Looper
The Master 
Silver Linings Playbook
Tabu
This Is Not A Film
Zero Dark Thirty



Director

Andrei Zvyagintsev, Elena


nominees:

Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master
Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom
Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty
Steven Spielberg, Lincoln



Actor

Joaquin Phoenix, The Master


nominees:

Jack Black, Bernie
Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook
Denis Lavant, Holy Motors
Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln



Actress

Emmanuelle Riva, Amour


nominees:

Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Nadezhda Markina, Elena 
Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Rachel Weisz, The Deep Blue Sea




Supporting Actor

Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master


nominees:

Robert DeNiro, Silver Linings Playbook
Dwight Henry, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Samuel L. Jackson, Django Unchained
Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln






Supporting Actress

Ann Dowd, Compliance 


nominees:

Amy Adams, The Master
Rosemarie DeWitt, Your Sister's Sister
Sally Field, Lincoln
Edith Scob, Holy Motors



Adapted Screenplay

Tony Kushner, Lincoln


nominees:

Lucy Alibar & Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Skip Hollandsworth & Richard Linklater, Bernie
Terence Davies, The Deep Blue Sea
David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook




Original Screenplay

Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom


nominees:

Rian Johnson, Looper
Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master
Miguel Gomes & Mariana Ricardo, Tabu
Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty



Ensemble

Silver Linings Playbook


nominees:

Lincoln
The Master
Moonrise Kingdom
Your Sister's Sister



Foreign Film

Elena


nominees:

Amour
Holy Motors
Tabu
This Is Not A Film




Cinematography

Rui Poças, Tabu


nominees:

Mikhail Krichman, Elena
Mihai Malaimare Jr., The Master
Robert Yeoman, Moonrise Kingdom
Gökhan Tiryaki, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia




Film Editing

Bob Ducsay, Looper


nominees:

Vidar Flataukan, Headhunters
William Goldenberg & Dylan Tichenor, Zero Dark Thirty
Fred Raskin, Django Unchained
Andrew Weisblum, Moonrise Kingdom



Original Score

Dan Romer & Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild


nominees:

Alexandre Desplat, Moonrise Kingdom
Philip Glass, Elena
Jonny Greenwood, The Master
Dario Marianelli, Anna Karenina




Original Song

"Who Were We," Holy Motors


nominees:

"Who Did That To You," Django Unchained
"Pi's Lullaby," Life of Pi
"Skyfall," Skyfall
"The Enemy," Wuthering Heights




Art Direction / Set Decoration

Moonrise Kingdom


nominees:

Anna Karenina
The Deep Blue Sea
Holy Motors
Les Miserables



Costumes

Kasia Walicka-Maimone, Moonrise Kingdom


nominees:

Sharen Davis, Django Unchained
Paco Delgado, Les Miserables
Jacqueline Durran, Anna Karenina
Joanna Johnston, Lincoln


Visual Effects

Life of Pi


nominees:

Beasts of the Southern Wild
The Impossible
Looper
Moonrise Kingdom



Sound

Zero Dark Thirty



nominees:

Elena
Looper
Tabu
Wuthering Heights



Sound Editing

Zero Dark Thirty


nominees:

Les Miserables
Life of Pi
Looper
Tabu



Documentary Film

This Is Not A Film


nominees:

How to Survive A Plague
The Invisible War
The Queen of Versailles
Searching for Sugarman


Make-Up

Holy Motors


nominees:

Cloud Atlas
Django Unchained
Les Miserables

Friday, February 22, 2013

the screaming 60s by justin lockwood




How appropriate that 1960 saw the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.  The classic film neatly separates the more subdued and fanciful horror of the 50s and all that came before from the intense, at times harrowingly realistic movies that followed.  It’s easy to forget how groundbreaking Psycho was when first released, as is often remarked.  Besides the obvious, innovative brutality of the shower scene, there’s a cornucopia of previously taboo subjects on display: premarital sex!  Drag! Voyeurism! Grave robbing!  Oedipal fixations!  The list goes on and on, up to and including frisky costars depicted in their underwear and the screen debut of a toilet.  None of this would seem nearly as striking now, but at the time, Psycho shocked audiences and heralded the breaking down of cinematic barriers.  More adult, previously verboten topics were starting to come front and center.



Hitchcock himself continued the trend of modernistic, unflinching horror with his follow-up movie, The Birds (1963).  While not quite as taboo-busting, the story still involves lusty unmarried lovers—one critic noted that it “starts out like a sex comedy.”  The most provocative element, perhaps, is the ending: an utterly ambiguous final scene in which the central characters drive uneasily away from their farmhouse, surrounded by hordes of birds that might strike again at any moment.  If you were looking for the good guys to win, or for any sort of resolution for that matter, you were out of luck.  Hitchcock’s coda ensured that The Birds’ eerie spell would follow audiences right out of the theater.  The silence that greeted this coda—broken only by the sounds of the car trucking along—enveloped much of the film, which had no musical score.

If anyone really picked up where Psycho’s startling frankness had left off, though, it was Roman Polanski with his adaptation of Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, released in 1968.  The stylish and deeply disturbing tale of a young woman (Mia Farrow, never better) who comes to realize her unborn baby is the Antichrist is as emblematic of the 1960s as anything could be.  The film manages, in an un-showy, naturalistic way, to challenge religion, modern medicine, the relationship between the sexes, and a multitude of other hot button issues.  Watching the movie for the first time, my boyfriend was impressed by how openly topics like birth control were discussed in the movie.  The trippy sequence in which Rosemary dreams of boarding a yacht with JFK, which plays like a bad LSD trip, is a bit dated, but through its terrifying exaggeration of the fears every woman has when pregnant, Rosemary’s Baby remains relevant and electrifying, and no mere cultural artifact.  For an in-depth look at this seminal film, look no further than this very blog and Jeffery’s recent post on it.


Rosemary’s Baby brought horror into respectable mainstream theaters, but the year’s other horror classic, Night of the Living Dead, aimed explicitly for the drive-in.  George Romero was a director of commercials who pooled talent and resources to make a cheap “Monster Movie” that changed the face of the horror genre.  Shot, like Psycho, in stark black and white and with a cast of unknown but wholly convincing actors, Living Dead depicted the absurd so matter of fact that it felt terrifyingly real.  A group of disparate people hole up in a farmhouse when the dead inexplicably come to life and seek out human flesh.  The radio and television reports watched by the survivors add verisimilitude, but the characters are what make Romero’s opus so convincing.  Like us, they fight, bicker, and get hysterical.  Director John Landis declared that Night pulled an even more shocking twist with its apparent leading lady than Psycho: rather than die, Barbara (Judith O’Dea) goes catatonic after the opening sequence.


That Night of the Living Dead was “read” for a multitude of political meanings probably says more about the 60s than about the movie itself.  Romero and his cohorts just wanted to make a good, scary flick, but in the contemporary climate, having a black lead (Duane Jones) who is accidentally shot by a white zombie killing unit/lynch mob felt like some kind of statement.  So did the dazed, rampaging hordes who could have stood for—take your pick—hippies, antiwar protesters, druggies, and on and on.  Beyond the alleged subtext, Night put a graphic new spin on the horror genre with its vicious gore and relentless nihilism.  This is a film in which there is no escape, no hope.  Its ironic finale was even bleaker than that of The Birds.



If the 60s horror films have one thing in common, it was their refusal to end happily or neatly.  Norman Bates goes completely mad, revisionist 80s sequel notwithstanding.  Rosemary decides to raise the Devil’s baby.  The birds overrun the planet.  So do the zombies.  After this decade, horror stopped pulling punches and started taking audiences into wholly nightmarish worlds they’d have trouble shaking long after the fade to black.


-Justin Lockwood

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

karen g's colossal ads from the 60s



Let me transport you to a world when commercials were sweeping cinematic epics that not only made you remember the company advertising the product, but actually made you really, really want the product too.  The fun, catchy jingles are such a treat!  We live in a world of reptiles and screaming pigs selling insurance and where a family of road-trippers start up the instrumentals to “Crazy Train” by shaking a cup of ice.  (I still don’t know what they were selling there by the way).  In honor of jdbrecords’ nod to the 60’s – below are a few commercials that I hand-picked for their beautiful, and fun spirit. Enjoy.


Yardley’s Slicker Dolly Commercial late 1960s



Colossal Hair Spray 1968



Coca Cola 1960 commercial



Maybelline’s eye makeup commercial 1965



LOVE the Johnny Smoke Anti-Smoking PSA’s from the 60s.



Twist and turn Barbie 1960s



Sanka Coffee 1963 (scoop them granules child)



Joy Detergent commercial 1960s (“Mirror, mirror, on your plate…)




- Karen G.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

tu(n)esday!



Ain't nothin' but a disco party with "Voilà"...




Disorder (free download)...




Tight...




Easy now....




Nu Phoenix...




I miss you...

Monday, February 18, 2013

meep's midnite cinema




Check out the mixtape I made of retro movie music, inspired by Cinema Du Meep.


Tracklist:


1. Telescope (from 'Body Double'): Pino Donaggio
2. Hello Mr. W.A.M. (from 'American Gigolo'): Giorgio Moroder
3. The Shower (from 'Dressed to Kill'): Pino Donaggio
4. Love Story / Bozzo Barrett: Francis Lai
5. Profondo Rosso: Goblin
6. Theme from 'Friday the 13th Part III': Harry Manfredini
7. Magic (from 'Xanadu'): Olivia Newton-John
8. Nightcall (from 'Drive'): Kavinsky
9. Soldier in the Rain (from 'Gods & Monsters'): Carter Burwell
10. We May Never Love Like This Again (from 'The Towering Inferno'): Maureen McGovern
11. Blue Velvet: Lana Del Rey
12. The City Theme (from 'Earthquake'): John Williams
13. The Rodeo Collection (from 'Body Double'): Pino Donaggio 
14. The Crying Game: Boy George
15. Theme from 'The Deep' (Down Deep Inside): Donna Summer
16. Christine: John Carpenter & Splash Band
17. Chariots of Pumpkins (from 'Halloween III'): John Carpenter
18. Chase (from 'Midnight Express'): Giorgio Moroder
19. The Terrace: Linus Loves
20. I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Love Someone Like Me (from 'Carrie'): Katie Irving
21. Can You Read My Mind? (from 'Superman'): Maureen McGovern
22. Love Theme from 'Flashdance': Helen St. John
23. Pino Grigio: Lovelock
24. Hello Mr. W.A.M. (Reprise): Giorgio Moroder


Friday, February 15, 2013

honor - fall 2013 rtw


More 1960s inspiration of cocktail dresses, Peter Pan collars, and pink and red, this time from Giovanna Randall's sweet but not too sweet Honor collection. She notes, "I didn't feel like doing a heavy Fall collection, and wanted more of a pick-me-up. So this season began with the idea of a celebratory coat that would make me smile even on the darkest day in winter."  Bring on the hearts, shine, cheer & color, I say. I really love it.