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Where My Girls At?

A link roundup, actress style


The Classics
NY Times Douglas McGrath demands a special Oscar for Doris Day. Time to give her her due
Film Art "Tell, Don't Show" David Bordwell examines a great scene with Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson in Persona to illustrate the power of extended monologues
Gawker Susan Sarandon shtupping the ping pong kid?
The Independent Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds is still the top celebrity scent. Talk about staying power. La Liz has been raking in the dough from that single career move for almost 20 years now. How many diamonds has she bought with the haul?
I Need My Fix "Cher (!) Films Burlesque"... though be warned. 'Fix' gets the headline all fucked up and adds several letters inbetween "Ch" and "r"... confusing the true story here: CHER ! Making a movie again.
Style List Catherine Deneuve's 60's era magnificence is still inspiring fashionistas


The Now
contact music Toni Collette to be honored by Nicole Kidman at a special Aussie Expat event in LA on Golden Globe weekend
LA Times Julianne Moore, still hoping for Oscar nom #5, says you should never take employment for granted
Huffington Post I avoid the People's Choice Awards like the Bubonic plauge but Nicole Kidman looked so good. What ever possessed her to stay blonde for so long? So glad the red is hangin on
Pop Matters Big Love returns. It's Amanda Seyfried's last season. Sissy Spacek is guest starring

The Stage
London Travel Julie Andrews is doing a one-off show this summer
Theater Mania and Isabelle Huppert is doing Streetcar in Paris in the spring. I expect a full report from one of you French readers. Comprenez-vous?

8th Image From Persona

In 2008 we celebrate the 8th Something of Something. Woot!


I snapped this shot from Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966) months ago. I'm not even sure it's the 8th thing you see in that famous rapid experimental montage that opens the film. I typed up a list of all the images flashing by, some of them repeated: projector lamp, phallus, cartoon, tarantula, young boy, etcetera but promptly lost the list and buried this photo accidentally in a folder within a folder within a folder. (Ah disorganization!) But as with the film its culled from, the image came back to me like a dream. Persona always comes back and demands that you return to it, too.

That is to say that I think of Persona the film as the mute actress (Liv Ullman) it gazes upon and the audience as her frustrated nurse (Bibi Andersson) who struggles to understand her before succumbing to some sort of symbiosis. Persona may make little narrative sense but its emotional and psychological effects are large. It haunts, compels, questions and demands rescreenings. Simply put: it's indisputably great.

"08th" the series
This short-lived blog experiment didn't work out exactly as I planned --too much work and too odd -- but I'm still proud of it. Found some interesting things in interesting movies and what better way to wrap it up and say goodbye than on 08/08/08. Did you miss any of the earlier episodes? Chase the label and view them all.

• "FEAR!" in Batman Begins
• Line of dialogue in Volver
• Costumes in Marie Antoinette
• Description of Elizabeth
• Close Up of Carrie's hands
• Shot of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain
• Kill in No Country For Old Men
• Character in Showgirls
• Use of Magic in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
  

RIP Ingmar Bergman

JA here - I'm sure Nat would want to say something on the death of Ingmar Bergman if he were here, or at least give y'all a chance to say what he meant to you in the comments.

Myself, I just started really appreciating Bergman over the past couple years or so (thanks to Netflix and the mini-festivals one can schedule one's self); I haven't even come close to seeing even half of the films by him, but what I have seen so far has been astonishing. Cries and Whispers, Fanny & Alexander, The Virgin Spring, Persona... all films that couldn't have been made by anyone else and that deeply enriched not only my own love of cinema and what it can accomplish, but the very language and possibility of film itself.

Below is a brief clip from Persona, which is my favorite Bergman film so far, probably because Bergman understood that the greatest terrain he could ever point his camera at and study was the face of Liv Ullman:

What's your favorite Bergman film? Or even just a moment - I, being a horror buff, have often thought that the puppetry scene in Fanny & Alexander is one of the scariest moments ever filmed.