Hippy Barfday, Sofia Coppola

Hippy Barfday, Sofia Coppola.  You’re officially over the hill, but your films sure aren’t .

And those Miss Dior “Cherie” commercials – Hot Cha Cha, Mama!

Let’s take a brief look…

Lick the Star

Her first film, black and white, irresistibly bad acting.  Any young filmmaker that can combine teenage girls in black lipstick, sinister plots involving arsenic, and a soundtrack featuring Kim Gordon is way okay. Check the blatant references to Flowers in the Attic, a book/movie that Miss Coppola draws influence from in almost all of her screen work.

The Virgin Suicides

I watched this movie when I was much too young, and I blame it for most of my teenage angst.  That’s how dreamy this movie is, that it made me wish for stricter curfews, a suicidal younger sister, and Bible homeschooling, just so I could rebel in a mischievous and seductive way.  Watch their eyes, they know what they’re doing to those poor neighbor boys, the young sirens.

Lost in Translation

I’m skipping this one. It hardly needs another review.

Marie Antoinette

Fabulous.  No other words.  Weak plot, simple characters, but DAMN luxurious. It makes you think you can pull off 18th century fashion everyday, and after this movie, I’d give up all modern appliances AND wear a corset for Marie’s castle.  Andddd there’s a shoe and pastry montage to Siouxsie & the Banshees – reason numero uno why all girls should love Miss Coppola.

Somewhere

I haven’t seen this one yet, but I DO plan to.  I simply can’t sit in a movie theatre, because I have a horrid case of the wiggles.  So when that movie hits redbox, I’ll be there, waiting.

Besides her illustrious career as a screen writer, director, and film maker, she also created a Japanese clothing line,

Milk Fed

with Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth.  It puts scrawny

Schmerican Apparel to shame.

Marie Antoinette Fanatic? Click Me!

Expand Your Pitiful Mind, Earthlings.

::::Cygnet Committee Presents::::

Summer Reading Lists!

Both are spectacular. Expand your pitiful mind, earthlings.

List One:  These Will Not Fit in a Picnic Basket

1. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy: If you’ve tried War & Peace, and hated it, you should probably replace it with this one.  Tolstoy once claimed it was the best and only novel he ever wrote. Try it.

2. Force of Circumstance, Simone de Beauvoir: You’ve heard of Sartre, and it changed your life or you didn’t understand Nausea one bit.  Either way, Miss de Beauvoir is charming, deeply soulful, and a complete lunatic.

3. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Marcel Proust: It’s as intellectually scandalous as its name. Sex in my mind.

4. The Beautiful and the Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A bitter story foretelling Fitzgerald and Zelda’s utter demise. Gruesome, mocking, and more than a bit prophetic of most ambitious relationships.

5. East of Eden, John Steinbeck: Good Commie lit, in the best of ways.  Oh so sinister, an enchantingly dark character study.

6. Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence: Revolutionary for its time, not so much now.  Still positively good storytelling, however.

7. Candide and Zadig, Voltaire: Technically, this might fit in your picnic basket, it just depends whether it’s hard back or not. Mine’s hard back, so it’s going on this list., and well deserved at that.

8. Moby Dick, Herman Melville: Just kidding. I despise Herman Melville.

List Two: These Will Fit in a Picnic Basket

1. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley: It’s alive.

2. Invitation to a Beheading, Vladimir Nabokov: I’d recommend Lolita, but that’s no good when you can just ask me to repeat it to you verbatim.  Plus Invitation to a Beheading is just as lyrical; it reads like poetry without the monotonous rhythm.

3. The Stranger, Albert Camus: If you haven’t read this, it’s about time. Jeez.

4. A Coney Island of the Mind, Lawrence Ferlinghetti: The sole work of the Beat publisher; it’s obvious he only needed one – it’s absolutely fantastical.  If I saw the world as he does, I’d do nothing but smile and kick cans down the street.

5. The Nose, Nikolai Gogol: Funniest book I’ve ever read, no holds barred.  Unconditionally hilarious.

6. The Skating Rink, Roberto Bolaño: This book will break your heart.  The characters are pathetically flat, the plot simple and unadorned, and if you’re at all a romantic, you will end this book in tears.

7. Suite Française, Irène Némirovsky: Lovely in every way imaginable, beautiful to read, and written while in hiding from the Nazis in war stricken Paris.  Miss Némirovsky’s novel is the adult Diary of Anne Frank; a Jew, she was deported to Auschwitz where she died.  This novel was found 64 years later. WOWIEZOWIE, HISTORY!

8. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller: Typical, but effective if you just need something to look at, or carry.

9. Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse: Every angry teenager should read this, and then when they grow up a little, try Siddhartha.

10. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde: Drama-licious.

[Public Service Announcement]

Beware of loaning out your favorite books.

There are multitudes of BOOK THIEVES out there.

Dante should have dedicated a ring of hell to you.

One particularly horrid.

Fan Bing Bing – a Ling

Spring Fashion Weeks = Lotsa Lotsa Asian Persuasion Inspired looks.

Check out any fashion magazine last month. Yellow Fever.

Let me explain the cause:

FAN BING BING; actress, model, sexy sexy superstar

Hey Look, I’m Famous!

Hey look, I’m famous! 

Not really.  Actually, there are certain days I turn up at Sunday IFC meetings in leather cutoffs and hair that hasn’t been washed since the weekend started.   And still get roped into quickie photoshoots outside coffee shops with unknown bicycles. Dang.

~Indianapolis Fashion Collective~