American Woman: Sister Suffragettes and Screen Sirens

Mike i.e. Goatdog (of the Best Pictures From the Outside In series) was visiting from the Windy City this past weekend. He brought the wind with him. It was so strong and crazy that he cracked "I think we're going to land on someone's sister". Hee!

We took in the "American Woman" exhibit at the Met. They had a section on Screen Sirens so... that's always one way to hook the cinephiles. Only one section was about the movies but I was reminded of other movies a few times as the decades past by: Howard's End and Thoroughly Modern Millie in particular.


It was a costume exhibit mostly, which covered the long slow rise of female liberation.

Reminders that it took multiple decades to get half of the population something as obvious as the right to vote suddenly gives you perspective about how slow progress is. And it reminds you that today's civil rights struggles will pay off... eventually. The problem is there's always huge conservative forces working against progress. And they're always so proud of it at the time. Decades later their ancestors will watch a period movie about some civil rights struggle and everyone will cluck at the screen and feel confident that they would have been on the progressive side and 'how horrible that people treat [fill in blank with any minority] this way!'. And they won't see the hypocritical parallel when they vote against whatever is the new civil rights struggle.

This is the way history (and movies about it) goes...and why everyone should stop fighting against other people's rights fer chrissakes [/soapbox]

It was totally fun to see how one decade would bleed into the next fashion-wise... but you know how I get about costume design. The whole thing made me long for a really great epic about the Suffragette movement. I love the "Sister Suffragette" number from Mary Poppins but it does depress me a little that that's my chief touchstone, cinematically speaking. Or am I missing some great obscure drama?

I also think we need a really big budget eye candy movie about flappers. My favorite fashion evolution was watching the slim androgynous lines of the flapper dresses morphing into the sleek but very feminine dresses of Hollywood's golden age.

The tail end of the exhibit, before you exit from the gift shop, is a circular room filled with costumes one might easily have seen in 30s and 40s movies with huge looping clip reels of greats like Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn and Rita Hayworth. A Norma Shearer vs. Joan Crawford clip from The Women, which I've seen a trillion times, was made fresh by Mike's Old Hollywood knowledge. He pointed out the ample display of Joan Crawford's legs while Norma is only shot from the waist up or covered up with a huge full skirt. I guess they rarely showed Norma's legs because they were considered unsexy/stumpy? It's another variation on Natalie Wood's bracelet (she was uncomfortable about her left wrist) or Barbra Streisand's 'only from the left side' profile edict.

I love Norma and I did not know this.

One of my favorite things about hanging out with fellow movie-obsessives is that you can make bad jokes and constant movie references all day and no one looks at you funny but instead plays along. Right before leaving the museum for dinner we chanced upon this statue of Cleopatra.

Nathaniel: I want my money back. This looks nothing like Liz Taylor.
Mike: OR Claudette Colbert.

The American Woman exhibit runs through August 15th and you can see a slideshow (partial) here. If you missed the celebrity attended opening last week you can see pics here.

Helen Mirren... Not Usually One For That Waxy Look

One of the most brilliant things about Dame Helen Mirren has to be how lively and famously sexy she still is in her 60s. It surely has to do with comfort in her own skin since she doesn't seem to be trying to come across like some fresh 45 year-old. One can't really imagine her ordering up plastic surgery or botox. Is that why seeing her pose with her wax self amuses so?


This statue is one of the newbies at Madame Tussaud's in London. Have you ever been there? I went only once here in NYC and found it all surprisingly amusing. I was stunned to find that RuPaul got quite the goddess centerpiece treatment. And this was a couple of years before RuPaul's comeback on RuPaul's Drag Race.

Despite only entering the tourist trap once, I regularly see their statues outside since they're very close to one of the biggest multiplexes here. Waxy Leonardo DiCaprio is hanging outside right now in a suit.

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Mothers on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Adventures in DC Part 2

This weekend with friends visiting for the holidays we hit a lot of museums (and margaritas. shhhh). My friends are almost to a one culture lovers so museums are often good options. One of the best things we saw was something called The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image (closing this coming weekend, here's a NYT review]. All of the video installations were about the way the motion picture portrays or pretend realism. My favorite piece in the roundup was by Candice Breitz and simply titled Mother (pictured below)


In the supremely well edited six screen extravaganza Faye Dunaway as Mommie Dearest, Susan Sarandon & Julia Roberts from Stepmom, Meryl Streep the ex Mrs. Kramer, Diane Keaton The Good Mother and Shirley Maclaine ...from the Edge have what amounts to a schizophrenic tearful and angry conversation filled with interrupted monologues and asides about being mothers and women. Fused together and separated from the context of their films, Keaton actually rivals Dunaway's camp icon for overacting and Maclaine comes across as the most sane. "I am...[slams piano]... STILL. HERE." This, as you may have guessed, is unsettling. Clearly none of them have been taking their meds. It's very very funny.

Thought provoking too, sure, in its voyeuristic way but I mention the funny because too few people in museums ever laugh. Another piece in the exhibit lampoons the E! True Hollywood Story pretending great typical rise-and-fall fame for Francesco Vezzoli following that nifty Trailer for the Remake of Caligula in which he convinced Gerard Butler, Helen Mirren, Milla Jovovich, Courtney Love and more to star. His E! prank follows all of the beats of those shallow infotainment documentaries so well that anyone who sat next to me in the room didn't get that it was a spoof. (I saw the ending three times -- trying to let friends catch up) and both times when it ended conversations were along the lines of "I have never heard of this guy. He's famous?" or "Did he really die?" Before you think this is a Nathaniel feeling superior moment I assure you it was more along the lines of confusion. The exhibit is called "Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image" and every piece is about how the presented real is never real. I really think misunderstandings arise because people don't expect humor when they go to see "Art". Certainly not humor that pairs Dame Helen Mirren, gay porn, Dietrich, biopic cliché and infotainment specials.

P.S. There was also a companion piece to Mother called Father which featured Dustin Hoffman, Steve Martin, Jon Voight, Tony Danza (!?) and Harvey Keitel but it wasn't as interesting. Men never are. But give me six Hollywood moms on the verge of nervous breakdowns? Bliss.
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Because you've been good museum attendees today, here's a retro treat. It's Shirley Maclaine's house rattling "I'm Still Here" from Postcards from the Edge.



How Maclaine wasn't Oscar nominated for this turn as the Debbie Reynolds-esque mom in this movie is one of the great mysteries of the 1990s.
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How I Spent My Summer Five Day Vacation

I want to thank my guests JA, Robert and mB for keeping the place warm and sweaty in my absence. Speaking of warm and sweaty, can summer be over now? I'm not a summer person. I spent my short break sweating. A lot. Summer is hateful. Anyway, here's the parts from my break worth sharing with you, my hundred thousand closest friends strangers... "frangers?"... "striends"?

Where I've been...


@ the Met's Superheroes: Fashion & Fantasy exhibit.
Among the many delicious sections was one on Catwoman (pictured above, La Pfeiffer's actual costume stitched seductively over a mannequin) and the "paradoxical body" I love this bit

Superhero comics have tended to promote an ideology that is both masculinist and driven to mastery. Nowhere are these biases more blatant than in the representation of female superheroes. With unabashed and unapologetic obviousness, women are portrayed as objects of male desire and fantasy with absurdly exaggerated sexual characteristics ... the frisson of fetishistic sexuality presented by female superheroes is adduced with one hand only to be dismissed with the other. This offering and denying of sexuality, which helps to resolve the sexual fears and desires of developing males, is the eternal paradox of the superheroine.

Offering and denying of sexuality, indeed. The same can easily be said of the superhero movie genre. God forbid if women actually got to do anything in the genre outside of being indisputably hot. There was a lot more to this exhibit including costumes for films from Iron Man, Spider-Man, the Batman franchise, and couture inspired by the same ("A Must See!" -The Film Experience) but I spent the most time with Catwoman. It was a bittersweet moment since I knew that as I stood there contemplating the costume, Michelle Pfeiffer's reign over the kingdom of "best performance in a superhero movie. ever" was coming to the end of its 16 year reign. The "now now now" of pop culture demanded that the crown be passed. I have no wish to rain on the Ledger worshipping parade --I too loved his performance-- and quibbling with The Dark Knight this week seems about as smart as strapping an explosive to yourself and handing a convention of fanboys the detonator. Will they think you deserve to live if you only liked the movie? They don't believe in anarchy like The Joker. They don't believe in good citizenry like Harvey Dent. They don't believe in whatever it is Batman believes in. They demand conformity! I am trying valiantly to not let this mass craziness spoil my pleasure in parts of the movie and in the wondrous Heath Ledger. It's too bad that bandwagons get so crowded.

@ the Movies
I saw the thriller Transsiberian (which I've reviewed for Pajiba) and The Dark Knight. I'll try to write that one up here. Perhaps in a few days. Once the villagers have put down their torches or lowered their guard a little. Everybody gets hungry eventually and returns home. Mobs dissipate.

@ the Yazoo reunion tour
Gah. This night was so cool. I've listened to Upstairs at Erics (be suspicious of all 'best album' lists that don't include it) and You and Me Both more times than I can count. They're embedded in my DNA. I was able to listen to both live for the first time ever (they performed every song but two I believe), with Alison Moyet doing her supersized vocals and Vince Clark doing his trademark shy genius keyboardist/computer guy thing "How did I get to be a famous gazillionaire rock star responsible for Depeche Mode, Yaz and Erasure? I hate being on stage. Don't look at me! Why are you here?!?"

Only You Them: Vince Clark & Alison Moyet

That was my week that was. Was yours eventful?
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Hump Day Hottie: Matthew Barney

Because some days, like days in which you return to New York City from Utah (just... hypothetically speaking), nothing but a Mormon obsessed art world superstar will do.

Matthew Barney in "The Order" from Cremaster 3

There's nothing like a man who likes to toss his own sculptures around, wear feather headdresses, pink kilts and shove bloody rags into his mouth.

The many faces (and bodies) of Matthew Barney

Sometimes there's nothing like a man who dresses his nude body in intricate outfits and squids, obsesses about viscous fluids, shrinks his own testicles for art and then ties ribbons on them, chops up his pop star girlfriend in rising water before transforming into a whale, and reworks the Guggenheim as a video game setting.

There's nothing like a man who makes things with his hands.


Today is one of those days. No other man but Matthew Barney will do.