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Entries in celebrity portraiture (100)

Friday
Jun202014

Happy Birthday Nicole & NathanielR?

Kidman's first Vanity Fair appearance in 1990 with the "Dead Calm" look

I can still hear her saying it...

Nathaniel. It's Nicole!"

...t'was one of my all time favorite life moments, interviewing her. Today twitter informed me that it was my 7th birthday there. By their count I'm almost old enough to start obsessing on movies. And, as Graham pointed out, that means I joined Twitter on Nicole Kidman's birthday. Was this intentional? I can't recall. For our faux shared anniversary, Catarina challenged me to share my single favorite Nicole Kidman photograph. Just one? I've selected seven in keeping with my twitter age.

My top seven (at the moment) are after the jump but before we get there, I just want to say that this challenge led me to Kidman pictures I'd never seen before like this one with Ed Harris from Bruce Weber! They didn't have any scenes together in The Hours so what was going on here? I'm obviously forgetting a movie as I'm typing.

Click to read more ...

Wednesday
Jun182014

"Big Eyes" Sneak

Tim Burton with Lisa Marie and her comissioned portraitEarly test screenings of Big Eyes have started, Tim Burton's Christmas movie and the word is very positive.

The film stars Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz as an infamous pair of artists... of sorts. Margaret Keane was the artist but it was Walter Keane who got the credit for the well known paintings of sad children with ginormous eyes. In fact, as "Sage" points out in the test screening review at Head Over Feels in a great piece of trivia I was hardly aware of, Burton is a long time fan and commissioned a portrait of Lisa Marie, his former muse, who once cut such an indelible figure in his movies. (I think she's best in Ed Wood and Mars Attacks!)

Anyway, you should read the post if you're interested since there's a lot of Oscar talk (Amy= sure thing / Christoph = probable category fraud) but I like this part:

The story of the Keanes is so bananas that there’s nothing to do but keep it and the ’50s themselves center stage. Burton’s stylistic touches are there and all the more effective for their restraint. We first meet Margaret as she and her daughter are frantically packing up to escape, we assume, her first husband. She piles her things into a big boat of a pastel car and drives it down her calm, colorful, and symmetrical suburban street – very Edward Scissorhands. Vancouver streets are transformed into a swinging, San Francisco drag. Margaret pushes her shopping cart through cartoonishly perfect grocery store aisles. She locks herself away in her studio to paint in secret, like a princess in a tower. The costumes and styling are truly breathtaking...Burton adds touch of the fantastical that I won’t give away; it works and does nothing to downplay the drama of Margaret’s real story.

Hearing words like "a touch of" and "restraint" is really weird in this era of Burton films. Perhaps I should pick back up that BurtonJuice retrospective I started but only just barely before abandoning?

When I was in Boston in May worrying about my then half completed Oscar charts,  I ended up eating brunch with friends in a tiny charming restaurant that had a Keane print ("The Waif") on the wall. I immediately thought "I should tweet this for Big Eyes omen/countdown sake" but forgot.

(The girl in the foreground is one of my best friend's sisters. But I apologize to the oblivious strangers behind her but they were in the shot!)

Do you think Big Eyes is Burton's Oscar ticket or another Big Fish with large holiday hype and some ardent fans but no Oscar love? 

Tuesday
Apr012014

Beauty Break: Logan Lerman

When I met Logan Lerman in 2012 to talk Perks of Being a Wallflower and Noah (right here icymi) he was as nice as movie actors can get. We even strayed off topic quite a bit over coffee. I was eager to see what he'd do next but, I must confess, he seemed so young that I wasn't exactly thinking of him as a contender for leading gigs, just as a very promising actor. During my screening of Noah, my best friend (who is not at all into movies and had no idea who Lerman was) was all a-drooling and I felt weirdly protective. He's just a nice boy, put your tongue back in your mouth!

But, uh, I need to rethink. Lerman is now 22. This new spread in Interview magazine, to accompany an interview conducted by one of the young actor's idols Michael Shannon seems determined to update perceptions about his age and his romantic leading man potential in the wake of Noah.

More after the jump...

LERMAN: I'm in New York right now. I came out here for the photo shoot for this piece.
SHANNON: How many outfits did you put on?
LERMAN: Um ... there wasn't a lot of clothing involved.

Click to read more ...

Tuesday
Mar252014

Curio: David Lynch at Spoke Art

Alexa here.  I couldn't let the week pass without posting about a show that runs through this week at Spoke Art Gallery in San Fransicso: In Dreams, an art show tribute to David Lynch.  Following past tribute shows to Wes Andserson and Martin Scorsese, Spoke is now featuring the works of more than 50 artist fans of the coffee-loving cult icon. Reckoning with Lynch's work must have caused a collective plumbing of subconscious depths because the show features some of the most hypnotic tribute art I've seen in awhile. All works are available for viewing, and purchase, here.  

What follows are a few of my favorites...

Click to read more ...

Saturday
Feb082014

Jennifer Lawrence: The Comic Book!

Apologies if you've read about this elsewhere and a full week ago, too, but sometimes my inbox defeats me. So many press releases. Nevertheless, this seemed worth noting: Jennifer Lawrence is now so popular that she warrants her own comic book!

Bluewater productions has released Fame: Jennifer Lawrence.  It's a 32-page comic book about her life and career available in print, digital and as an animated interactive comic book.  Apparently it's not the first time the company has done an actress. They've also given La Liz, Angelina and Cher this type of comic.

But I do have one gripe about an issue so important that the very success of modern civilization hinges upon it. None of us should ever rest until the crime of the misrepresentation of Oscar dresses is wiped out. Here we see Jennifer at the 2010/2011 Oscars when she lost for Winter's Bone:


But Jennifer was not wearing a gray dress! Nor was she wearing a pearl necklace. (In related news: Nicholas Hoult wasn't with her.) This is what she wore to the Oscars, a va-va-voom red number that reminded everyone of Scarlett Johansson before Jennifer Lawrence was famous enough to not remind anyone of anybody but herself.

My work here is done. Never Forget (the Oscar dresses).

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