The Jacksons

What a different a year made.

List of Independent Spirit Awards Nominations

"The Squid and the Whale" Leads List of Independent Spirit Awards Nominations

My Holliday wish list....

We all know that December is the best month of a movie fan. Here are my wish list

(I know I'll end up watching on dvd )

(click movie to enjoy the trailer)

Entertainment Weekly's EW.com | Feature: Oscars 2006: Early word on the Best Picture race

Entertainment Weekly's EW.com | Feature: Oscars 2006: Early word on the Best Picture race

荻野目洋子 - Wikipedia

荻野目洋子 - Wikipedia

six most commonly misinterpreted rejections.

Love:

"'I'm Not Attracted to You In 'That Way''

Translation: I'm not attracted to you at all. You might also hear this one as 'You're such a good friend.' Which you can interpret to mean, 'I will not ever sleep with you.' While it seems pretty upfront in its finality, some people just don't seem to get that if you lack the necessary 'that way' attraction, it's not ever going to grow. You have been relegated to the Friend Zone.


'You Deserve Better'

Translation: I deserve better. Basically, your date wants out, but wants you to feel good about it. It's kind of a brilliant rejection, when you think about it. It's complimentary while presenting a bulletproof argument. After all, are you really going to disagree that you can't do better than this loser?

'I Just Want to Take Things Slow'

Translation: I'm waiting for a better offer. This isn't actually an out-and-out rejection, but rather a nice way of saying you're Plan B. Which might be fine with you...until someone better comes along and your date feeds you one of those more final rejections.

'My Life Is Too Complicated Right Now'

Translation: I'm too busy having sex with people who aren't you. Much like 'I just want to take things slow,' this line is all about expressing a need to find a better offer. Except this rejection hints that the search for that offer is in full swing. Take a number and head back to the end of the line, or look elsewhere.

'I Just Need to Work on Me Right Now'

Translation: I don't want to work on you, right now or ever. This is the line you'll hear from the very nice girl who 'just got out of a really serious relationship'. You think it's an invitation to stick around until she's done "

Gene Tierney Film Highlight..

Despite her angelic appearance, Gene Tierney proved herself to be an
actress who could play jealous, conniving women very effectively... and
she did just that in several of the three-dozen films she made in the
1940s and '50s, most of them for 20th Century-Fox.

Tierney with her Mammy Lou (Louise Beavers)
in BELLE STARR (1941), which features the beautiful brunette as the
title character, a passionate, headstrong Southern belle turned
notorious female outlaw in post-Civil War Missouri. One of her
earliest films for 20th Century-Fox
and a movie rarely screened in any format anymore, BELLE STARR contains
some of the 1940s' most derogatory depictions of American
negroes. (Such derisive caricatures would be toned down
considerably after the United States entered World War II in an effort
to promote racial unity.) In the context of Tierney's career,
BELLE STARR exemplifies the kind of diverse starring roles the young
actress played early in her career before the executives at Fox really figured out what to do with her.

Although she had already starred in almost a dozen films, it was
LAURA (1944) that established Tierney's most popular screen persona and
became her most famous film. Also starring Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, Clifton Webb and Judith Anderson, Otto Preminger's
masterful film-noir murder mystery LAURA features Tierney as the title
character, an apparent murder victim whose glamorous, alluring portrait
haunts the detective on the case.

It is interesting to note
however, that this quintessential film noir was not so described at the
time of its release because the term "film noir" (used to describe
movies with cynical, imperfect heroes and a dark, brooding photographic
style) was not invented by French film critics until the mid-1950s when
they were finally able to see the Hollywood films, like LAURA (1944),
that had been unavailable in Nazi-occupied France during World War II.

Having finally found her niche, Fox next assig
ned Tierney to headline its adaptation of Ben Ames Williams' novel LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945) with Cornel Wilde, Vincent Price, Jeanne Crain and Gene Lockhart.
Tierney received her only career Best Actress nomination for her
portrayal of Ellen Berent, a jealous wife who will stop at nothing to
keep her husband all to herself. Although LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN was
shot in Technicolor, and even earned an Academy Award for Leon
Shamroy's color cinematography, many critics still consider it part of
the film-noir genre because of its dark storyline and moody atmosphere.
(Usually, "noir" films involve claustrophobic, urban storylines and are
shot in black-and-white.)

In DRAGONWYCK (1946), her fourth and final film with actor Vincent Price,
Tierney plays a tenant farmer's daughter who is sent to live in the
mansion of her father's wealthy landlord, Nicholas Van Ryn (Price),
but soon finds herself caught up in romantic and political intrigue
when the farmers revolt against the aristocrats. Set in mid-19th
century New York, this gothic noir-thriller features noteworthy
supporting performances by Anne Revere, Henry Morgan and Spring Byington and also marked the directorial debut of screenwriter-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Tierney as Isabel Maturin with French society snob Elliott Templeton (Clifton Webb)
in the film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's THE RAZOR'S EDGE
(1946). This story of childhood friends who grow up and go their
separate ways was nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture, and
featured an all-star cast including Anne Baxter, John Payne, Tyrone Power, Herbert Marshall and Elsa Lanchester.

In Joseph L. Mankiewicz's
THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (1947), Tierney plays a widow who moves into a
haunted seaside house and falls in love with the ghost of its former
sea captain inhabitant (played by Rex Harrison).
Though the story sounds a little far-fetched, it actually makes a
pretty good fantasy/romance, and contributions from supporting
characters played by George Sanders, Natalie Wood and Anna Lee as well as Bernard Herrmann's music and Charles B. Lang's Oscar-nominated cinematography only elevate its status as a top-notch film.

In the late 1940s, Tierney was again teamed with one of her most frequent co-stars, Dana Andrews,
with whom she had previously appeared in BELLE STARR, TOBACCO ROAD
(both 1941) and LAURA (1944). Their fourth joint appearance for Fox, William Wellman's THE IRON CURTAIN (1948), was a successful spy film featuring Tierney and Andrews as a married couple trying to sneak top-secret documents out of the Communist east.

Reunited with her LAURA director, Otto Preminger,
Tierney continued her success playing beautiful, yet cool and distant
film-noir heroines in WHIRLPOOL (1949), a complex crime drama about the
wife of a psychoanalyst (Richard Conte) who falls under the spell of a
malicious hypnotist (José Ferrer).

reel.com

Flock for Blogger

With Flock, blogging is a fully integrated part of the Web. Flock
includes a blog editor that works with WordPress (and the new
Wordpress.com hosted service), Movable Type and Typepad (and shortly
also Live Journal) and Blogger.

Happy Birthday Sean.

Happy Thanks Giving

Can't Belive it's been 10 years already ...Time flies when you having fun

"The Unique Beauty of Gene Tierney

"Unquestionably
the most
beautiful woman in
movie history "

(Darryl F. Zanuck, founder, 20th Century Fox)

Gene Tierney Articles: "The Unique Beauty of Gene Tierney"

"Among faces, Gene Tierney's is a tournament rose, an opaline study in serene, sexualized perfection, a mad musky Egyptian daydream of cat thoughts.

It's a face that, yes, could make you half-believe in the human ideal, make you pass into a foggy romantic movie-trance of studio key lights and shadows with edges so soft you could lay your head down in them and sleep for a week. All you want as you're looking at her, all you think you'll ever want, is to get close enough to smell the lilac vapors rising from her shoulder.
Tierney's beauty lies somewhere between homespun Everygirl and Oriental exotic, shy high school sweetheart and man-eater.
Her eyes smile before her lips do.
But if the lips parted in a smile, you'd be witness to the sweetest overbite in Hollywood history.

This is a face built to be gazed upon.
Perhaps that's why 'Laura' was Tierney's breakout film. Deadpan cop Dana Andrews spends the whole first half of the movie falling in love with her portrait. When she shows up in the flesh,
Andrews is shaken to the core--we are, too.
'Laura' is hardly just a murder mystery;
it's a meditation on the
brute force of a beautiful face."

Excerpted from Michael Atkinson's essay
in December 1994 Movieline magazine

Star of the month Gene Tierney pt. II

As for her personal life, Tierney married fashion designer Oleg Cassini, Perhaps his best-known design was the white lace wedding gown Gene wore in “The Razor’s Edge.”

In 1943 their first daughter, Daria, was born mentally retarded as a result of measles Gene contracted during pregnancy while on a U.S.O. Tour of army camps. A woman fan with the disease innocently kissed Tierney, thus passing it on to her. The tragedy, which left Daria in need of lifelong institutionalization, had a profound effect on Tierney’s mental health. (The couple's second child was also a daughter, named Christina.)

After divorcing Cassini in 1952, Tierney became enamored of Prince Ali (or Aly, take your pick) Khan, European jet-set playboy son of the spiritual leader of millions of Moslems, who was a former husband of Rita Hayworth. His father, the Aga Khan, strongly objected to him marrying another Hollywood actress. A combination of guilt because of her daughter’s devastating illness and losing Ali resulted in Gene having a nervous breakdown. Because of being hospitalized at times for depression, her career suffered during the 1950s and the films she did make were of lesser importance.

She married Texas oilman Howard Lee, a former husband of Hedy Lamarr, in 1960 and afterward made occasional movie and television appearances. Lee died in 1981.Prior to her final movie, “The Pleasure Seekers” in 1964, Gene had a supporting role in the remake of “Three Coins in the Fountain.” Her last appearance on television was in a guest star role in “Scruples,” a 1980 romantic miniseries.

Retired from acting, she died of emphysema in 1991. Like the unfortunate kiss that gave her measles, it was another tragic irony in her life that she had only taken to smoking cigarettes because studio bosses suggested it would lower her speaking voice attractively.
In her autobiography, Self Portrait (1979), Tierney candidly reported on the misfortunes of her personal life and revealed she had had many romances including dating John F. Kennedy during his Navy service. The future President had said he couldn’t marry her because he had political ambitions.

Many Hollywood actresses of beauty and talent star today and are gone tomorrow. Gene Tierney will be long remembered for being one of the screen’s greatest beauties, and as an actress who, when given good parts, gave performances equal to the best.

Mighty Kong Tonight

As movie fans everywhere await the arrival of the latest big-screen version of King Kong, Turner Classic Movies is taking a special look back at the man who first concocted the idea of a giant gorilla on the rampage in New York: producer Merian C.... Filmmaker and cinema historian Kevin Brownlow, who has created documentary portraits of such screen icons as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, D.W. Griffith and Greta Garbo, tells the story of Cooper's adventure-filled life and creative endeavors in I'm King Kong!... Cooper (2005), a new TCM original documentary narrated by Oscar®-nominated actor Alec Baldwin (The Cooler).

Madonna At No.1

It’s been a close race all week between the ladies, but it looks like age and experience trumps all,Madonna edges her way to the top of the chart. Our happy number are here at 344,061 copies, beating out American Idol winner Carrie Underwood’s Arista/RMG debut release, which 303,300 putting her way above the predicted #4 winner—Mariah Carey, who sell 182,873 copies of a new expanded version (complete with DVD) of her The Emancipation of Mimi.

ONE-DAY SALES: FANS SAY “IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MATERIAL, GIRL”

Veteran Artist Aims to Reclaim Her Crown, While Retail Gets Ready to Weigh the CMA Factor

November 16, 2005

A pair of potentially big records from female singers from different generations streeted yesterday, with Madonna holding a slight lead over Carrie Underwood in the early going. Right now, the Material Girl’s Warner Bros. album is looking like 325k-350k, while the J/RMG debut from the 2005 American Idol winner is trending at 300k-325k. That said, let us not forget that the CMA Awards were telecast last night, with Underwood singing her current Country hit, “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” and the phenomenon that industryites have dubbed “the CMA factor” makes this race too close to call, considering said factor could easily sweep young Carrie to 350k or beyond.

Happy Birthday Kris

Ninotchka Ninotchka …, Where have you been all my life .

Though I love watching old movies, there are many super stars whose work is unknown to me. Garbo is one of them. I'm fairly familiar with her legend, but up until I saw NINOTCHKA

Before she walked away from the movie business, at the age of 35, Greta Garbo just decided to make a film that was the opposite of everything she had done before: a screwball comedy.
.
MGM's film promotions and publicity used the slogan: "Garbo Laughs!" capitalizing on the legendary Garbo mystique and persona and promising to humanize it. She succumbs to laughter in the film when her co-star falls clumsily from a cafe chair after a joke he has told fails to produce a response. [This was shade of an earlier campaign for her talkie debut in Anna Christie (1930) - "Garbo Talks!"] Additional ads proclaimed: "Don't pronounce it - see it!"

A whole movie full with tresure. Garbo was mavelous . I fall in love to Mervyn Douglas. He is so charming .There’re great supporting characters (particularly the three men from Russia) including Bela Lugosi as the Commissar. Garbo, the picture, the story and its screenplay by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett were all Oscar nominated, with each losing to Gone With the Wind (1939). Added to the National Film Registry in 1990. #52 on AFI's 100 Funniest Movies list. #40 on AFI's 100 Greatest Love Stories list. Directed by great Ernest Lubitsh.

Fashion ICON

2005 Judith Leiber's unmistakable blend of elegant and whimsical designs are captured by the Judith Leiber Barbie® doll, featuring a classic, strapless taupe lace cocktail dress shimmering with golden sequins and a crystal encrusted minaudiere bearing the Barbie® monogram.

.

2003 in Armani .Elegant re-creation of an original Giorgio Armani gown. Her strapless, silk chiffon top is paired with a skirt of crepe and sparkle tulle. Intricate beadwork lends sophisticated glamour to the long skirt. She �carries� an evening purse of taupe crepe embellished with crystals. The perfect final accessories are hematite earrings and necklace.


1998 Barbie® is the picture of style and elegance in Oscar de la Renta!





2004 in Versace , an exquisite combination that brings two of the fashion world's most celebrated names together for the first time.... The ModelMuse™ sculpt accentuates movement with legs caught in mid-stride, an arched back and delicate details that bring new meaning to the term, "willowy blonde." The House of Versace's fashion interpretation for Barbie® projects all the label's trademark appeal: a blend of art and fashion that pays careful attention to the female form.




2003 in Badgley Mischka Opulent iridescent beading, rhinestones, and embroidery embellish the fitted bodice above the exquisite detail of a full skirt of satin-faced silk organza covering a taffeta underskirt. Crystal chandelier earrings with filigree details, solitaire rhinestone ring, and white headband and finally a white velvet evening bag and pearl-white high-heel shoes complete the lavish bridal ensemble.

Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the man who defined style with an authentic reproduction of a 1947 Dior fashion. This fashion captures Dior's famed New Look silhouette, featuring narrow shoulders and calf-length full skirts that created an international sensation! This Barbie® doll fashion is elegance itself and includes a Parisian straw hat, single strand faux pearl necklace, black panties, stockings and garter and a black lace-trimmed tulle petticoat.





1996 Her exquisite European design features a fitted, black velvet bodice, surrounded by layers of pink silk shantung that creates a graceful cascade of fabric around this radiant Barbie®....Escada Barbie® doll features long, rooted eyelashes, a stunning silk stole, long beaded earrings and ultimate glamour.




This Berkin with company starting with a supple, soft white-textured dog carrier with mocha trim that matches Barbie® doll’s belt and purse.

...The “New York Yorkie™” accessory pack more than fits the bill, providing Barbie® with a pair of strappy sandals and sunglasses for a side trip to Central Park’s famous dog park.... Barbie® accessorizes with striking black stilettos with ankle straps and a sparkling crystal and golden bracelet—a great choice when her precious pooch wins the competition and comes home a blue ribbon champion!




Here some of the 2005 winter collection.

Director of the month " Otto Preminger (1905-1986)"

-Austrian-born Otto Preminger came to Hollywood from the stage in the 1930s with plans to direct, but after a falling-out with 20th Century-Fox production head Darryl F. Zanuck, was forced to support himself as an actor for a time during World War II. After replacing director Rouben Mamoulian behind the camera of LAURA (1944) however, Preminger's directorial career was back on track, and he went on to make some three-dozen films, earning three Academy Award nominations in the process. Known as a filmmaker with a penchant for being notoriously tough on his actors, Preminger showed a special talent for film-noir crime dramas at Fox in the 1940s, before tackling controversial and frequently taboo subjects such as race, drug addiction and rape in several independent films of the 1950s and '60s.


Anatomy of a Murder (1959), A Man with the golden arms (1957) which remains, with Laura, Preminger's most popular film, he made a series of long, sweeping, all-star blockbusters based on popular novels on social-political themes: Exodus (1960), Advise and Consent (1962), The Cardinal (1963), In Harm's Way (1965), Hurry Sundown (1966). One factor in the critical disapproval of Preminger was his public image: notorious for his tyranny on the set, Preminger cultivated his celebrity and became, along with Hitchcock, one of the only Hollywood directors to be widely familiar to the general public..

Other noteble movie River of no return (1954) , Carmen Jones (1954) , Porgy and Bess (1959) . His Last film I belive was Rosebud (1975) Kim Cattrall first screen debute.