What is Lanvin be without Alber Elbaz? The designer’s
peremptory and abrupt, and now acrimonious exit from Lanvin last November capped a year of dramatic changes in the world of fashion.
Designer musical chairs are hardly new in fashion; But 2015’s
edition seemed evidence of a trend of dumbing down to the masses, a
trend that will shape the way we look at fashion for many years to come. Not
all the new queens on fashion’s thrones sit comfortably. You can see that in
Alexander Wang’s lacklustre three-year stint at Balenciaga – you can see everyone's palpable
relief at not having to witness the products of Wang's struggles. One "cool downtown party" collection is enough and ought to be contained in downtown New Yuck, where it belongs. That sort of thing hardly sits comfortably at the Paris Collections, and can hardly be expected to replace Nicolas Ghesquière's work at Balenciaga.
Ghesquière had spent 15 years reviving the nearly
century-old Balenciaga before he moved on to Louis Vuitton to replace Marc Jacobs. His experiments here are also strangely both over-thought and underwhelming.
Now there are two more mediacore collections to add to the general ugliness of what's out there.
Lanvin Pre Fall designed by Chemena Kamali and Lucio Finale
In 2015, the world woke up to the Gucci drama
of an accessories designer, Alessandro Michele, replacing Frida Gianini as
creative director. While many of Gianini’s collections during her seven year
tenure at the helm of the label left critics scratching their heads and
searching for polite euphemisms, although of course, when she succeeded the iconic Tom Ford (who truly revolutionised fashion for the Noughties), she was lauded with enough corporate praise to sink all criticism. Gianini was hailed as a second coming of sorts and beatified as a fashion saint, becoming thinner, blonder and altered beyond recognition towards the end of her reign. Now Michele is being thusly lauded too, for basically doing some pretty things, and some pretty commercial things, which in the end simply looks like a luxed up version of the hipster trend for all things vintage, a trend already a few years old, with a Wes Anderson aesthetic. It's a sort of Gucci version of the Hedi Slimane's SaintLaurent 'strategy' - give them what they already want - just better made, and priced to appropriately. Note: Lanvin's first collection (Pre Fall 2016) not by Elbaz looks like Michele's Gucci doesn't it? And all that is par for the course - after all it's ready-to-wear - but what of a storied couture house like Dior? After Raf Simons stepped down last November, no successor has been announced till today, even though Spring Couture shows are looming. Hopefully they are taking their time to field a visionary creator, and not some gloriefied handbag designer-with-a-proven-sales-record to dumb down fashion even further. Hopefully they will appoint Elbaz - he surely fits the bill.
This 2014 documentary explores the world of four French craftsmen/dinosaurs who inhabit another altogether different, finer world than the one in which we find ourselves. After decades working for the most prestigious couturiers like Chanel, Dior and Yves Saint Laurent, their workshops are closing down. What will happen to the art of fashion once they are all gone? Thisquintessentially French movie questions our harried exisitence with our dwindling interest in intricate craftsmanship. Featuring masters Gérard Lognon (pleats), Bruno Legeron (artificial flowers and feathers), and Lorenzo Ré (one of three remaining sculptors of hat blocks), this film will leave those who love fashion spellbound.
This is probably the only movie review that will come right out and say that the much maligned Ridley Scott epic Exodus: Gods and Kings is a much better movie than the generally praised The Hobbit.
Frankly, Exodus is simply more beautiful and finely made than The Hobbit, which feels for the most part like a glorified wuxia movie with too big a budget. You half expect to see Dato Michelle Yeoh leap out out from the cave looking gnarled and bloodied to battle an Orc played by Donnie Yen. (Of course Donnie Yen will die first; As you know Ms Yeoh has survived a disastrous string of flops and will outlive anything.)
Exodus promised to be a stunning epic, and delivers. The CGI and art direction are lushly beautiful in an Old Master way, at once stunning and considered, whereas in The Hobbit, it looks like CGI, at once too real and not real enough - you're never not aware that the actors are wearing a tonne of hair, makeup and polyester (for instance, you're never not aware that Gandolf is wearing a pointy hat made of that Christmas stocking felt - it's too real and not real because that Christmas stocking felt simply looks too NEW), or that the lumbering monsters are created by an army of artists clicking feverishly on a computer. The CGI monsters are summoned up for no reason, felled by any stray pebble hurled by a Hobbit, or elbowed by a Dwarf. They never feel menacing, just numerous.
I will never quibble with the casting of Christian Bale - in anything - even if he isn't his very best in Exodus, Bale is still always strangely watchable. I have no preconceived notions of what Moses should be like, and I reckon if there was a Moses, he would be heroic, human and conflicted, as portrayed by Bale. I also think that portraying the Old Testament God as a willful child is poetic and appropriate.
The last time I was in Bangkok was literally the eve of the anti-government demonstrations last November; the hotel manager called me that morning soon after breakfast and instructed me to pack my bags and leave just as I can because he had received advance information that demonstrators had begun to move towards the road leading to the hotel and would close it to traffic; he couldn't say if things would get violent but was advising guests to evacuate. Something in his tense voice over the phone made me pack my bags at once, and within an hour, I left in the hotel car. Turning back for one last look, I saw the crowd of demonstrators marching in, flags waving, with something of a festive air, but guards were beginning to bar entrances with barricades, and the streets were noisy with shrill whistles and clappers.
I felt like Sigourney Weaver in A Year of Living Dangerously.
Fast forward to (more or less) six months later and I'm simply longing to visit Bangkok again. As you know, for most Singaporeans, Bangkok is simply an obsession and a habit. I have not heard of any Singaporean who didn't like Bangkok; and according to my luxury brands PRs, the local press are always keenly enthusiastic about Thailand press junkets (as opposed to those to Hong Kong and etc ones, although arguably the press here salivate like a komodo dragon at any mention of a junket, with eyes bulging and ropes of sticky drool, cankerous tail waving). I wonder if it is thus for your country?
This last weeked I was reading 2011's Thoughtful Gardening by Robin Lane Fox, one of my favourite (living) writers and amongst the riveting chapters on cuttings and pests, Mr Fox remembers his visit to Bangkok as a young journalist. In particular he mentions the Phukae Botanic Garden, a gigantic park in Saraburi, some 60 miles outside Bangkok. Within the city, Mr Fox remembers Wang Suan Phakket (Lettuce Farm Palace), the lovingly tended garden of the late Princess Chumbhot. He took the bus number 3, which delivered him to the door of this "tranquil retreat".
Reading about these gardens made me simply long to visit Bangkok.
I called my Thai sister Ms O. All my visits to Thailand are preceded by calls to my Thai sister.
She was busy making T-shirts.
What for?
Ms O was involved in what promises to be the mother of all demonstrations; she was making T-shirts for the anti-Thaksin army. Ms O said: "Honey please don't come between 5 May and 17 May. Millions of people are going to demonstrate to oust Yingluck. May not be that peaceful. Come after."
Sure enough, the papers are full of dire reports on the impending demonstrations which will climax with new, and surely contested, elections in July.
With this wearying warning in mind, it could be months before I see Mr Fox's Thai gardens.
1. The Grand Budapest Hotel, identifies Stefan Zweig, an Austrian novelist, as an inspiration (a contemporary of E.M. Forster from the early half of the 20th century). It uses a Zweig-like author as one of its three framing devices, which left me wondering if this was necessary - or just another cute style flourish in a movie composed entirely of cute style flourishes. Form is function in this (writer-director) Wes Anderson film. What is this manically-paced movie about? It is all about style, if it is about anything at all.
2. It's a meringue of a movie, profoundly sweet and pretty, like one of those confections from the confectionery Mendl's in the movie. It's a heist and a caper, it's a whodunit too, with a body in the library, a butler (in this instance the protagonist, the pompous, mannered and perfumed grand concierge Gustave H, brought to life by Ralph Fiennes in a comic, sympathetic and droll performance), a missing painting, a jail break, a disgruntled heir, a gothic palace, and a guest-list of cameos. The whole thing is finely art directed and exactingly styled, reminding me of nothing so much as one of those big production Tim Walker fashion spreads.
3. Luckily the rather self-conscious thing is enlivened by wonderful little pieces of acting by the ensemble of cameos. These are studded like brandied cherries in an all-cream wedding cake, densely sweet on sweet, with a bit of tartness. We see them all through the extraordinary pragmatic eyes of Zero, the Indian lobby boy (Tony Revolori): I was riveted by a sequence where a chain link of grand concierges of the crossed keys make telephone calls. Tilda Swinton is amazing and memorable (she looks like amazingly like Dame Vivien Westwood here); Adrien Brody adds a darkly sleazy note
(always!); Jeff Goldblum is surprisingly good (because
almost unrecognisable, I suspect); Willem Dafoe is really
rather funny as the ruthless roughneck; Edward Norton is a
handsome policeman: there are many others including
Saoirse Ronan, Bill Murray, Jude Law, Owen Wilson, Jason
Schwartzman, etc. They are uniformly eccentric and
wonderfully good.
4. For all its polish and distancing nostalgic style, this work
still feels human. It has a warmth and heart because it is also
about rather real human frailties and heroic qualities.
I think also that it is made with great passion and that does translate onto the screen.
5. Lush visuals aside, the moviesuffers from a rather abrupt ending (not that it's a short movie). The various threads seem to be knitting themselves into a bigger picture than it really is. As it is, the movie seems to be a tribute to "CUTE" and "CHARM" and that's sufficient I suppose in these rather dark and charmless times.
Robert Pattinson wore a Gucci micro houndstooth, two button suit, shirt and tie. Pat Pat is looking impossibly dapper and dry browed isn't he? At the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn 2 premiere in LA Live in on November 12.
On a recent trip, I buckled down with the goal of watching four movies by the time I got home, flying not being one of my favourite things to do. I don't like anything about flying do you?
These were the four movies I watched:
To Rome With Love
He's taken us to London, Barcelona, Paris and now Woody Allen has landed us at yet another luxury-tourist European capital, Rome. It's pretty and escapist and great in that honeyed sunset lighting and picturesque and familiar setting kind of way. In this ensemble/omnibus movie (it's got Judy Davis, who's always so droll!), not all the jokes come off, but on the whole it is engaging, undemanding fun with gags that are one-liners but milked for slightly more than its worth. It's a warm, slight movie, far from the greatness of his earlier ones, but fun nonetheless. I want to highlight that Allen's movies are always nicely styled, and all the actors look prosperous and attractive. I was especially thrilled to see the patrician Flavio Parenti (below), whom I first discovered in I AmLove in this movie playing the activist/lawyer Michelangelo. And Jesse Eisenberg who plays the architecture student is creamy-cute!
Bel Ami
Pat Pat and Kristin Scott Thomas
Can you resist a costumer with Uma Thurman and Kristin Scott Thomas? Robert PatPat plays a pale, vampiric Belle Epoque social-climber with greasy hair under his hat and suggestively poufy breeches and seduces both Uma Thurman and Kristin Scott Thomas. Of course I had to watch this! Adapted from a novel by Guy de Maupassant, the unsympathetic protagonist, a would-be journalist, Georges Duroy clambers clumsily from a roach-infested garret to the poshest salons of literary Paris. I've never read the book, and the movie doesn't make me want to, as the script seems sketchy and cliched and none of the characters seem particularly sympathetic or indeed interesting. I think the story's point is that Pat Pat is both foxy and self-deluding, but Pat Pat just comes off as petulant and sulky and in need of a good shampoo. Pat Pat always looks clammy and unwashed and I'm sure Ms Scott Thomas (who seems to be in a separate, better movie) must have fought the urge to bury her nose in a hanky doused with Jicky. There's lots of Pat Pat's white, thickly-fleshy body in this movie if that's what you are into.
No judgements!
Farewell, My Queen
This much lauded period piece about the French Revolution is told from the perspective of a servant to Marie Antoinette in Benoit Jacquot’s rather claustrophobic film. Most of the film is situated in smallish chambers or hallways and seems unfamiliar, a sort of 'fresh take', I suppose, but one does like a bit of grandeur and pomp in period movies, doesn't one? Sidonie Laborde (Lea Seydoux) is the queen’s devoted “reader,” and Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger), who spends most of her time considering patterns for new dresses and dithering over her infatuation with the beautiful Duchess Gabrielle de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen in too brief an appearance) seems mostly bored out of her wigs. It's not escapist fare and I clutch at the introduction of a handsome gondolier (Vladimir Consigny), who isn't even necessary to the plot. How sad. This movie could be of special interest to history buffs, who will appreciate the “behind-the-scenes” speculation, but I'm not sure this is all that good an idea for in-flight entertainment. Much has been made of Ms Kruger's portrayal of Marie Antoinette, but I almost want to say I prefer KiKi Dunst's in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.
Magic Mike
Could I have missed this? This is the perfect movie to watch just before you land because it's silly fun, and you can rush through it with your finger on the forward button and still enjoy it entirely. Inspired by Channing Tatum's stint as a male stripper, director Steven Soderbergh's comedy uncovered Alex Pettyfer for me, and that's enough. He's dreamy and a Brit and if you can hug his image all the way to the hotel like a double cashmere coat . Matthew McConaughey is the big daddy stripper, and despite the chocolate bar abs doesn't register as sexy. There's just a hint of erotic energy (unapologetically targetting the reliable gay dollar)- there's ample, if unthreatening, man candy, of course, fit for the mainstream. The script isn't polished or strong on character with no narrative originality or emotion, you don't really care about the girlfirends, and the poverty and drugs never seems real. But you can almost read this movie as a bromance because it seems more about male camaraderie and the buddy element is the emotional core of the movie. If anything, the friendship between Tatum and Pettyfer is the main narrative - it's Brokeback Lite. The Chinese uncle sitting next to me was so riveted by the stripping scenes that he actually leaned over and asked me what I was watching - I told him, pointing to the title in the the menu, and then he turned it on, put on his headphones and studiously ignored me me for the rest of the movie. Well, at least one person enjoyed the flight.
Those who are determined to be kind, or merely politically correct, will focus on the millions of dollars that Mrs Jolie has earned to make and market this commercial. I'm not one of those. I'm a fan of Chanel perfumes and their iconic commercials, of which there have been some fine ones over the years - but this one I find a right howler. Whatever Mrs Jolie's making is too, too much for something so crushingly dull and inane. It's no mean feat to be so boring in the short 30 second film (and I suppose that is a talent in itself). But unless you're an orphan waiting to join the Jolie household, you will be quite bored, click on the the video and yawn for yourself? Wasn't Mrs Jolie once the hottest cameo alive circa Thelma and Louise? At which point did he degenerate into this leaden, crusty number in the Jolie entourage? Did Jennifer Aniston have something to do with it? Not only does this commercial not add to, or explain Mrs Jolie's appeal, it hardly adds anything to the mystique of the planet's best-selling perfume.
How I miss the signature jazz tunes of the classic Chanel ads and the iconic beauties. My all-time favourite has to be the Ridley Scott one starring Carole Bouquet. Now that's a commercial!
Out in November (not that type of 'Out'): Ang Lee's Life of Pi is adapted from Yann Martel's 2001 bestseller, looks like an Aesopian fable with cutting-edge 3D technology. I never got down to reading the book (the premise seemed worryingly sanctimonious), and now I don't have to.
Baz Luhrmann's 3D adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby is now scheduled to open next May (2013) for a summer season. Starring the always interesting Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan (I'm not sure about the fit),the movie was originally scheduled to open this Christmas 2012 but was pushed back to allow more time for postproduction. I've been looking forward to Ms Luhrmann's version of the story, not only because of the Prada (women) and Brooks Brothers (men) costumes but because this is one of my most loved books, and I liked the Mia Farrow in the 1974 movie.
Not properly a movie, but still of immense interest to me is HBO’s upcoming TV movie The Girl which stars Sienna Miller as Tippi Hedren. This will purportedly chronicle the making of The Birds, director Alfred Hitchcock's iconic birds gone wild movie that made Ms Hedren, now 82, a star in 1963. Of course I hope that the opening scene where Ms Hedren is in a boat wearing a mink coat when a seagull attacks her, as well as the scene when she is trapped in a phonebooth as angry birds lay siege to a small town, as well as the climax where she is locked in a room full of birds of prey tearing her to shreds as she screams and struggles will be recreated, because one does so want to see Ms Miller shrieking with terror. Of course this spectacle can also be very enjoyable with either Gwyneth Paltrow or Nicole Kidman. Why don't they do it with all three and make it a mini series?
This should make you titter in giddy delight: it has been announced that Gong Li will star in a China-American co-production The Last Empress, as the empress dowager Cixi. This project has 'unlikely' written all over it, and I can't wait to see how ridiculously campy this will turn out to be. The plot will purportedly chronicle Cixi’s life and her complex relationships with Emperor Guang Xu (played by Datoh Michelle Yeoh, fingers crossed). I can already forsee problems because I don't think the Manchurian court dress will allow for many scenes where Gong Li can run around the vast and forbidding corridors of the Forbidden City with heaving breasts spilling from a corset and chin thrust determinedly out whilst throwing hot tea at Zhang Zi Yi in a fit of rage!Pant, pant!
Please, Seven Stars Film Studios, please also cast Ms Zhang in this movie? Let her be some hapless palace maiden or even a ninja assasin? She should be slapped with energy and violence in every scene she appears by Cixi! It will be rivetting! Remember the big-budget film Memoirs of a Geisha? This promises to be its sequel in terms of histrionics and comedy. Can't wait!
But for now, The Last Empress is still seeking a director. This means that we can be holding our breaths forever although the film's producers are eager to get things going, hoping to shoot in October.
If I could speak like Helena Bonham Carter, you won't be able to keep my mouth shut! I'd talk and talk and talk just to hear my own wonderfully posh, cut-glass accent. I want to take elocution classes!!!
A: The Madonna video is weird! The song is weird! The only part I liked was the part where she wore the short blonde wig. B: I actually think she wears a blonde wig the whole time! A: That was when I realised that what I really miss about the Madonna that we all grew up with was her transforming herself from video to video. She doesn't do that anymore. B: The needle on her meter has been stuck at 'hot chick' since a long while back. Now she only wants to look like a sexy chick. She has that in common with gay men - looking sexually attractive is her be all and end all. She wants to be a cheerleader for goodness sake! There's a bit of Sunset Boulevard going on there I think.
What stuns me about this movie is that director Clint Eastwood has taken what could have been a ponderous, confusing and difficult subject matter (too wide, too many angles), nothing less than the history and myth of the FBI and its controversial founder, J Edgar Hoover, and America's battle against the underworld, Nazi agents and communist subversives (yes, even typing that was a little confusing) and disciplined it into a graceful, moving biopic that has weight without being pompous, and has speed without over-dramatisation. That's a huge achievement, even if it feels too evenly paced. Leonardo DiCaprio is rivetting and great (an Oscar-worthy performance if there ever was one) in his sympathetic portrayal of Hoover, who in any other hands would simply be a repellant, megalomaniacal freak; It never descends to sentimentality, whether dealing with Hoover's relationship with his mother (Judi Dench), his revealing friendship with 'companion' Clyde Tolson (the subtle Armie Hammer), or his loyal secretary Ms Gandy (Naomi Watts).Scripted by Dustin Lance Black (who won an Oscar for his film Milk), the film uses back-and-present flashback device (not chronologically, thank goodness), with clarity coming from Hoover dictating his self-aggrandising memoirs (this makes the story very clear for they are virtual chapter headings). A carefully-crafted, unexpectedly nuanced, thoroughly absorbing movie.
This is Ariane Koizumi, in a 1989 photo by Peter Lindbergh. Ms Koizumi, a native New Yorker of Dutch and Japanese parentage, was discovered by Steven Meisel (Meisel's picture of her below) and was a supermodel, before the term was coined, and joined the long list of models who never quite made a successful transition to films. She starred in one movie, Year of the Dragon, which came out in 1985, at the height of her fame as a model. Directed by Michael Cimino, starring Mickey Rourke and John Lone, the Chinese Mafia film didn't exactly break racial stereotypes. The screenplay was written by Cimino and Oliver Stone. In the movie Ms Ariane played a Chinese-American television reporter, Tracy Tzu. There was Sayoko, Tina Chow and then Ariane. Ms Koizumi made Jenny Shimizu possible.
Unexpectedly, I liked the very masculine Let the Bullets Fly (2010). I don't usually like political satires but China’s biggest domestic box-office hit to date is a fast, freewheeling romp full of wit, violence, and humor. Set in the 1920s, after the Qing dynasty ended in the era of the warlords who fought over the empire’s pieces, Let the Bullets Fly tells the tale of a notorious bandit facing off with the local strongman for control of Goose Town.I liked its crackling amorality and lack of ideology, which feels truly modern. Jiang Wen, who directed the film, plays the bandit chief, whose band of brothers robs a train, along with the governing seal to Goose Town, where they steal from the rich to distribute to the poor. Opium smuggler, played by Chow Yun Fatt tries to kill the bandit and regain his town. The weasly former governor, played by Ge You, tries to gain at ever twist and turn of the plot. The chemistry sizzles amongst the charming leads (I liked the casting), and all the art direction is fresh. As my friend BLA observed, the clothes are beautifully made. However it is a bit long, and as it ends, sags rather a bit. It's thought-provoking nonetheless, and clever, and way ahead of much that is coming out of Hollywood, for instance, or Hong Kong.
I've been eating a lot of fine Chinese food over the Chinese New Year, and lots of yummy stuff cooked at home by mother, so pardon me as I leave a trail of drool as I stick my snout into the wonderful hawker food guide The End of Char Kway Teow and other Hawker Mysteries. It's by award-winning food blogger Dr Leslie Tay (ieatishootipost.sg) and it's gastroporn of the most delicious kind. Divided into chapters featuring all the heart-stopping Singapore street food like laksa, satay, rojak and other obsessions which I've not eaten in ages, it's a pretty definitive, opiniated, well-researched, guide including ratings and addresses and directions. I just want to tear downstairs and fly to the nearest hawker stand. Fortunately, the nearest one for me is Singapore's top biryani store (across the road); I don't like biryani, otherwise I'll be eating, not blogging.On a different note, I've been reading E M Forster's Collected Short Stories. They are queerly comforting, and read very much like period pieces. I didn't use to think so when I first discovered these in my 20s, but upon reading them again, I find that they feel anachronistic. It's truly a vanished world. Just downstairs, gay couples, with their Stussy T-shirts and sling bags, stroll in pairs of a Sunday morning, with nary a care in the world. They know no repression. They don't need polite metaphors for the love that once caused Forster panic and anxiety. They have their lattes, and designer flip flops and Lady Gaga. Needless to say, I prefer polite metaphors and Merchant-Ivory movies.I just read in the papers that drinking more than two cups of coffee a day can be good for your health - specifically, some substance in coffee supposedly lowers the risk of diabetes. Alas I can only drink one cup a day, and never after 1pm for fear I would be tossing and turning the better part of the night away. However, I've been completely absorbed by the 2008 Korean drama Coffee Prince. I'm not ashamed to admit this because this is simply one of the best things I've seen in a long while and it's a very well made entertainment, perfectly cast (gorgeous good actors) and cleverly written to milk every adult tear still left in the desert of your folorn heart. It's completely escapist of course, with little that is realistic, but that's its magic I suppose. The girl is so poor that she has to disguise herself as a boy to work in a coffee house; No it doesn't make sense, and even her poverty never feels desperate or ugly, and is instead an excuse for very cute antics, and silly behaviour. There's no real crisis, no fatal illness, nothing upsetting or stressful, just the bittersweet romance of The Butterfly Lovers, or Yentl, or As You Like It, where the boy falls in love with the boy who is a girl, but with a Starbucks setting. Gong Yoo, the leading man, is of course meltingly adorable (as yummy as the best oyster omelette), and has become an obsession. I can't believe how ideal they've made him, and how unrealistic and impossible to match in real life. So that's my discovery in the Year of the Hare, and if you find yourself all alone this Valentine's Day, do not despair. Go to your nearest DVD store and buy Coffee Prince - Gong Yoo is simply the best thing since... E M Forster?
