What You Should Do RIGHT NOW.

What are you doing right now?  No, seriously--what are you doing?  Do you really need to do that?  Right at this minute, especially.  I mean, surely it could wait, right?

Fine. Then I will wait until you are finished.

Okay, NOW--stop everything and go watch "Sherlock" from the brilliant minds of Stephen Moffatt and Mark Gatiss, running Sundays on PBS.



It's Sherlock Holmes in 21st century London, but still the same prickly, irritatingly brilliant, self-absorbed charcter who used to stalk the foggy streets of Victoria's age. And amazingly, the more things change, the more they stay exactly the same: John Watson, former Army doctor, wounded in Afghanistan.  He still writes about Holmes's adventures, but on a blog.  And what Holmes can tell about a man from his cell phone rivals anything the 19th century version could tell from a bowler.

It's fast, it's sharp, but still it has all the flavor of Conan Doyle's aggravating hero.  Kudos to the design team who found ways to use modern editing techniques to illustrate the Great Man's ratiocination (and isn't THAT a Victorian word!)  Moffatt is currently Much Beloved for his masterly work on the rebooted Doctor Who series, and obsessives fans like me can see a great deal of similarity between the first episode of "Sherlock" and the first episode of Matt Smith's tenure as the Eleventh Doctor.  In fact, Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock could easily be transplanted into the Tardis and be completely believable as the Doctor.

I have great respect and affection for Martin Freeman's Doctor Watson here as well: he's dazzled by Sherlock, but not such a fool as many Watson's have been.  Freeman makes a wonderful foil--he is more human, if a bit PTSD, but every bit Holmes equal in heart.  Which I wouldn't necessarily have expected, given that I know Freeman solely from his roles as the porn star stand-in in "Love Actually" and as Arthur Dent in the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" movie.  In both of those roles, he was rather bumbling and overwhelmed by events.  Here, however, he dives into Holmes's life and immediately fits in.

Sadly, there are only three episodes of this series--damn you, you wily Brits, and your insistence on quality over quantity!  However, there have been promises of new episodes in 2011, which will have to be filmed around Martin Freeman's starring role as Bilbo Baggins in the upcoming "Hobbit" movie.

Yes.  I am a geek.  But just watch, and tell me you aren't glad that I am, so I could point you to this!

Bryan Ferry's Latest

Yes, the man who gave us "More Than This" still has it.  Sadly, the video director seems to have spent too much time perusing "Hot Russian Women Seeking Husbands" sites and three color processing effects from the 1960s.



So maybe it's not an accident that the album cover looks like a live action Vargas drawing?

Tarot For the Day

Just for kicks, I downloaded a Tarot app to my DroidX phone.  Yes, it's an upgrade--previously, all my fortune-telling chores were handled by a virtual Magic 8 Ball on my iPod.  But tarot--that's like having TEN Magic 8 Balls all at once, or something.  At any rate, even with a completely random, free app, tarot card reading, at least you get more than a mere yes-or-no answer.

So, offered for entertainment purposes only, here's my tarot reading for the day:

1. Your Position: Temperance.  Keep emotions in balance.  Synthesis.  Create something new.
2. Cross/Opposition: Nine of Swords.  Sense of despair or dread hangs over you.  Temporary.
3. Immediate Future: Ace of Pentacles.  Luck.  Financial propositions, business opportunities.
4. Recent Past; Eight of Swords.  Fear, doubt and anxiety.  You can escape, but with some bruises.
5. Distant Past: Judgment.  Recurring illness or problem.  Old debts, old scars come back.
6. Long Term Future: King of Swords.  Calm and self-assured, with a deep sense of inner strength and conviction.
7. Position You Will Soon Be In: Seven of Wands.  Deep purpose and valor.  Stiff competition and opposition.
8. External Influences: Six of Swords.  Moving away from strife/difficult times to calmer waters.
9. Hopes/Fears/Concerns: Two of Pentacles.  Success is achieved through skillful manipulation of goals and objectives.
10. Final Outcome: The Devil.  Temptations.  Addictions.  Raw, primitive instinct.

As I was reading these, I went through the five stages of fortune-telling:

1. Hope that it would tell me something; 
2. Skepticism that these things ever mean anything; 
3. Consideration that maybe there was something in what the cards mean that I could at least take as ideas about things to do in my life; 
4. Critical skepticism, trying to figure out how often a mix of "working toward calm" and "escaping old bad habits" would come up and be applicable to how many millions of people; 
5. Total WTF?!?!?!  The Devil?  After all these cards saying that I am temperate, escaping doubt and anxiety and old scars and moving away from strife to calmer waters--and I end up with Addiction and Temptation?

 Who knew that calm and inner strength, deep purpose and valor were the harbingers of addiction?  Does that mean that the Buddha got Nirvana and heroin addiction confused? 

Well, Kurt Cobain seemed to have, so maybe that's not a hard mistake to make.

 [Drum hit here: Ba dum shish!  I'm here all week!  Try the veal!  Watch for me on HBO!]




But seriously, if you think of people with whom you associate the terms "temperance" and "inner strength" and "conviction," don't you think of --well--the Dali Lama, or Gandhi.  Not so much "raw, primitive instinct."

Oh yeah, right.  "Entertainment purposes only."  Well, I guess that was fun.

Let's Do Word Problems!

Stick with it--I know you can do this!

A thirsty person has a lovely 22 oz. glass with some ice cubes in it.  She has one-quarter of a 24 fl. oz. bottle of Diet Pepsi

and an unopened 12 oz. can of Diet Coke.




If she pours all the Diet Pepsi into the glass, and then fills the remainder of the glass with Diet Coke, does the resulting class of trademarked brands interact like matter and anti-matter and bring about the end of time and space as we know it?  Or does the presence of the ice cubes operate as dilithium crystals, making faster-than-light speeds possible?

You know that Starfleet Academy gives this test to incoming cadets--I think it was originally posited by Montgomery Scott, who was perhaps enjoying his own lovely beverage at the time.

Henry VIII, a Review

So much promise, so much wrong.

Back in 2005, when the Famille Evil went to England for the first time, one of the first things we did (after overcoming jet lag) was tour the Tower of London.

Yeah, so do everybody. I know. Shut up.

One of the first things the Yeoman Warder said on the tour was that "Henry VIII was the most despotic and tyrannical of English kings." And I was startled, because that was not the image that I had of the man.

Sure, he'd married a bunch of times, and cut off a head or two, but---Tudor England! The English Renaissance! The flowering of music and poetry and Protestantism! Finally the end of civil war, and a king whose first job was not to don armor and lead troops, but to write music and woo women and travel from palace to palace in a peaceful land, right?

Well, partially true, as all things are, but also Henry had a lot more people beheaded than I had realized, and the worst of it was how many of them were the people who had served him closely for years. A man who observed the letter of the legal process but bullied it to get his way. A man who would be interesting to see played by Ray Winstone.

And to be sure, we get a thug of a king. A man whose outsized desires and will simply flatten anyone who gets in his way. There is some charm, and in the early years he's rather attractive and you can see his charisma. He's terribly short of elegance or subtlety, things that the real Henry VIII is said to have had, but you can certainly find him appealing.

Coupled with Helena Bonham Carter, who acts the hell out of the role of Anne Boleyn, and you can see the greatness and the disaster of that marriage. Bonham Carter's Boleyn is fiery, whip smart, sensual and challenging. Why wouldn't a competitor like Henry insist on conquering her?

It is here, however, that the series takes its fatal wrong turn: Henry decides to get rid of Anne when she doesn't give him a son--but he starts skulking around outside the chamber doors to listen to the "trial" and to hear the verdict that was entirely pre-determined. And then. . .he cries. He cries! He actually stands in an empty hallway, half in shadows behind a column (as if THAT was ever going to happen--the man was positively surrounded by people at all times) and cries!

Oh boo bloody hoo, you jerk! YOU'RE the one who made the decision to throw her to the wolves. If you loved her so damn much, then you didn't have to do that. Instead, it becomes this pathetic pity party he throws for himself--the woman he loved is going to die and he did it and he didn't have to but blah blah blah whineycakes. Shut up.

It doesn't make the character complex, or more likeable, or anything, actually. It just makes him self-pitying and delusional. The rest of the series continues to fall down the melodramatic rabbit hole, to the point of being unwatchable. A real low point is his discovery that his fifth wife, Katherine Howard, is unfaithful. His advisor, Thomas Cranmer, can't bring himself to actually tell the king to his face, so he leaves a note on the prie dieu for Henry to find while at prayer. (He remains skulking behind a column to watch that Henry actually reads the note--a nasty reminder of the earlier scene.) Ah, but Henry does him one better--he reads the note, crumples it up in his fist and raises his hand to the sky while bellowing "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

Ah, melodramatic posturing. It cracks me up every time.

Because of course it's silly. It's ridiculously silly. It's like bad opera, with him on his knees, his fist raised to heaven, shouting his denial to an unhearing god. . .except not that believable. At this point, my sympathies are all with Katherine Howard, played by Emily Blunt who is far too intelligent and far too good an actress to be saddled with this terrible role.

Of course there is no way to cram the entirely of Henry's reign into a mere four hours of screen time, and the focus on the six wives is a handy way to structure his life. I'm not even going to object to the various historical errors. What I object to is the cheap and cliched picture of the man that is presented here. The series opens with Henry at his father's deathbed, being told the most important thing for him to do as a king is to have a son. That vow to his dying father is then the presented as the most important thing for him to do, which has to be ridiculous--he made a vow to his father, but what about all the vows (coronation vow, marriage vows, etc.) he makes to God? What about his obligation to his own soul? Those are issues that would have been important to Henry, and which were thrown into question in his quest for a divorce from his first wife, his allegation that Anne Boleyn was a witch, and on and on.

But no--for the purposes of this mini-series, Henry has only one vow he needs to fulfill, and all the attendant chaos and death that attends his single-minded quest to have a son is just to be seen as hardships he has to face. It's too bad Anne Boleyn was beheaded, but the real sadness is that her death was uncomfortable for Henry, who had no choice, because he had to fulfill his promise to his dad.

Not buying it. Not liking it. Not recommending it.

My Darklyng, or Journalism Obviously Does Not Pay

It's summer, you're looking to change things up a bit. Journalism is taking a big ole hit, and you need something to freshen up the dreary news thing. So, take a look around--what's hot these days? Vampires! YA fiction about vampires! Moody and beautiful YA vampires who don't actually attack anybody and who hang around directionless and personality-free high school girls!

But--seriously? My Darkling is what you give us?

I cannot begin to tell you how badly written this is. Truly bad. It makes Stephanie Meyer's books look like Nobel Prize-winning material. It makes your middle-schooler's posts to fanfiction.net look like a collaboration between Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. It makes the back of your breakfast cereal box read like Sonnets from the Portuguese.

Don't just take my word for it, let's have a sample from the first chapter. Our Heroine, teen Natalie, is obsessed with a fictional series of vampire novels written by a fictional author named Fiona St. Clair. For some reason, there is an open casting call for models to come audition to "play" the characters on the book covers. Natalie has slipped away from her normal suburban New Jersey life to come to the audition in Manhattan, which is taking place in room 701:

Natalie caught her breath: 7 was the second digit in 17, which was the magic number that unlocked some of the darkest mysteries in Fiona St. Claire's universe. Was it just an eerie coincidence that the casting was taking place in room 701—17 backward, with a 0 between the numerals?

Seriously? I mean, SERIOUSLY? If the call had taken place in room 908, you could add the 9 and the 8 together and even add the 0 and get 17! Or, room 435, where if you multiply the 4 and the 3 and then add the 5, you get 17! Or, room 8, which is what you get if you add the 1 and the 7! Just think how many "eerie coincidences" you could possibly have in any given building. Especially if you take the zip code the building is in and divide it by the area code, subtract the number of floors in the building, and add in the subway fare. . . .

My Darklyng is posted every Friday, and as of today, there are some 18 chapters. (Is it just an eerie coincidence that if you subtract the 1 from the 8 you get the second digit of 17?) Slate's introduction to it called it a "serialized vampire novel" and "a juicy summer read." So far, there are no vampires, and the thrills seem to consist of wondering if Natalie's mother will find out that Natalie took the train into the city without permission. My God! The nail-biting suspense of it all!

So, the high concept of this serialized novel (are they writing as they go? Surely something this bad is just whipped off late on Thursday night in time for posting on Friday) is the parallel social media links. Several of the characters have Facebook pages and/or Twitter accounts so you can follow what happens in "real time." You know, in case you don't have enough real people to follow, now you can follow two-dimensional fictional people as well.

Also, the story is "illustrated" with photos that purport to be of the characters and their surroundings. I'm not convinced that this is all that new or worthwhile, but if you are going to do this, shouldn't the photos actually look like what is described in the story?

For example, take this photo from Chapter 3--supposedly of the house where Natalie lives with her mother and step-father:




I'm not sure what you would call this architectural style. Italianate Queen Anne, maybe, or Cape Cod Second Empire, or even Collegiate Gothic, maybe--or just a hot mess of styles kluged together. What you would NOT call it is a "rambling ranch-style house at 65 Maple Crest Lane."

This is what a "ranch house" actually looks like:



Notice the fact that a ranch house is only ONE STORY TALL. Notice the fact that it is long and even--dare one say it--rather "rambling." Notice how a "rambling ranch house" is NOT three stories tall with a tower on one end.

I mean, geez, people! If you are going to specify the architecture and post a completely different type of picture on the SAME DAMN PAGE--why should I even click through to your Facebook and Twitter feeds? Because I'm sure the same attention to detail you spent on the ACTUAL BOOK PAGE is going to be higher than on the ancillary sites.

If you do click though, you get very little related to the plot of the book, and a lot of random internet crap. Remember the "Leave Britney Alone" video from a few years back? Well "Natalie" just posted it, because that's how you stay ahead of the internet.

In the end, this is not only badly written, but it's apparently failing to generate much interest on Slate. As of today, there are a total of 8 comments--cumulative from the six weeks of posted chapters. OMG--is that another eerie coincidence? Because 8 can be broken down to 1 plus 7. . . .

So, go ahead, see if you can stand to read this. If you can read all 18 chapters, I have a book I'll sell you--it's entirely composed of the subject lines of emails from my spam folder.

In Which I Contemplate Changing the Name of This Blog

In which I only sort of contemplate changing the name of this blog. Because everything I'm seeing on the internet today is triggering a "Are You SERIOUS" reaction. So maybe I should just have a blog where I post the things that irritate me, or make me wonder whether there is Stupid Juice in everybody's triple-shot-mega-skinny-latte. Or juice-box, if you're not a coffee drinker.

Because while a Mistress of All Evil would obviously concoct some drippingly acidic potion that slimes greenly over the edges of a bubbling cauldron, that's just too much effort for the lameness that has presented itself from the internet today. I mean, do Diane Krueger's hideous shoes (terrible as they are) really merit using up the last of the eye of newt?



Photo credit: from Photobucket via here.

This is merely the worst of the recent trend in platform soles making an unfortunate comeback. I mean, we have photographic evidence of the 1970s--did we learn nothing? I guess it's true--those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. And boy, when it comes to platform soles, do I mean doomed.

I like Diane Kruger--I really do. She's lovely, she's ridiculously normal in the National Treasure movies, and she's never done anything to me personally. So why did she voluntarily put on these shoes. There is no way white shoes with thick soles will ever look like anything but Nurse Shoes/Old Lady Nursing Home shoes. Sure, she tried to make them look like sandals, what with the straps and all, but nope. Doesn't work. Just doesn't. They make her legs (fabulous movie-star legs that they are) look like sticks stuck into marshmallows. Hmmmmm, marshmallows. Suddenly I'm thinking about s'mores. And I hate s'mores.

Moving on.

Slate.com, I'm talking to you next.

On the Nature of Man

Met my parents at a trendy restaurant to celebrate JoMama's birthday. This is a restaurant famous for its tea, and as you might expect, there is a line for the restrooms. In a bad move, the restaurant has only two bathrooms--not rooms with stalls, but single person-type almost-like-the-one-back-home type bathrooms.

Somebody came up with a way to make the best of a bad situation, or perhaps they just bowed to the inevitable, and rather than designating one room to each gender, they are labeled for both. This means that about 85% of the time, they are ladies' rooms. There are no urinals--I told you there were almost like the one you have at home. And so you share, just like you do at home.

So this afternoon, I ended up using the one after a guy. This was unusual, as there were four women in line waiting, and probably only about 2 male customers in the whole place. Nevertheless, I was the woman who got to use the bathroom after the man did.

Yup.

It happened.

Do you even have to ask?

Of course you don't.

Because he did.

He left the seat up.






*Disclaimer: Capt. Sweetie never ever ever ever EVER leaves the seat up, because he is a civilized person, and everybody in our household puts the WHOLE DAMN LID DOWN every single time. Because really? Who wants to look at a toilet bowl anyway.

Glee + Madonna: Less than the Sum of the Parts

The much hyped "All Madonna" episode of Glee aired last night, and there were some great moments, but overall, not nearly as strong a show as one would want. I could recap, but Heather Havrilesky of Salon.com summed it up so wonderfully, there is no reason to.

However, I had to grab and keep this:



It's a great homage to vintage Madonna, nicely choreographed, well sung. . .and the best parts are totally the guys' reaction shots. Kurt is all but dancing along in his seat--how adorable is he? Meanwhile Puck is looking dubious, and Finn is apparently distracted some something shiny.

Meanwhile, the girls are totally working the hell out of those satin bustiers.

Reading

Not writing. Too busy reading.

For the first time in ages I have more books waiting to be read and reviewed than I have ever had at one time. At least, since I finished my English degree, that is.

I posted a teaser and three book reviews over at the Book Blog of Evil. Go on over and check them out.

Julie & Julia: A Review

So, you know that scene toward the beginning of the movie, when Amy Adams, as Julie Powell, is having "Cobb Salad Luncheon" with three of her alleged friends? And one friend keeps taking phone calls about the $190 million real estate package she's trying to put together, and another one is bragging about her new position as Vice President of Blahblahblah, and the third wants to interview Julie, but can't find a time to "fit her in," and there sits Julie, with her barely above entry level job and living in a walk-up in Queens over a pizza parlor?

Yes. That. Exactly that.

And okay--Julie Powell decides to cook her way through Julia Child and blog about it, and before the end of the year of her project she gets interviewed for the New York Times and literary agents and publishing houses are calling. So she gets a happy ending. But she's a totally narcissistic and self-absorbed jerk and she's mean to her husband and is in no way a role model.

Right?

And of course I'm not jealous or second guessing my own life or anything, just because this blog will be five frickin' years old by the end of the month, and I'm waaaay past 30 and of course I'm not wondering what the hell I am doing with my life, and whether I matter to anybody outside the tiny bounds of my own little life.

Of course not.

So--Julie & Julia. Meryl Streep is a National Treasure, and if Nicolas Cage makes another movie in that franchise he better bloody well find HER at the end of the trail of clues left behind by Woodrow Wilson and the Trilateral Commission or something. We watched the movie with both of the girls, and they literally cheered, cheered, when she came on the screen. Capt. Sweetie and I used the movie as parental propaganda, encouraging them to only date and marry guys who were as good to them as the husbands in the movie.

What is there to say about this movie that hasn't already been said a hundred million ways? Meryl Streep was fabulous, and it's hard to imagine a time when Julia Child was just a diplomatic spouse, and not Julia Child! If I got the time line right, she spent the better part of a decade on that first cookbook, retyping it with carbon paper and onion skins, and all those years she was just Paul Child's wife, moving from post to post across Europe. Only after he retired and they moved back to the US did she find a publisher for that first book. Only then did she become the icon of French cooking we know her to be.

Stanley Tucci--what a wonderful husband he made. He can marry my daughters if he wants to, as long as he remains in character as Paul Child. Amy Adams--is still darling and winsome and even as a self-involved and whiney proto-author, I'll still watch her. Nora Ephron directed this movie, which wasn't "The Hurt Locker," but also wasn't a "typical female rom-com" and she deserves some real credit for this movie.

Because I knew this was going to be what we did this evening as a family, I made more of an effort than I usually do, and I cooked. I mean, I cooked. We had a thyme chicken stew that took two hours to cook on the stove, and I made creme brulee, and since Sursels doesn't really like creme brulee I made two different flavors--white chocolate and dark chocolate, with fresh raspberries and whipped cream and I started researching recipes this morning and I went to the grocery at 4:30 and I COOKED until 8 this evening, when we had the stew and started the movie.

And the food was delicious and my family was wonderful and we all loved it. And when the movie was over we all went into the kitchen to torch the creme brulee, and Capt. Sweetie turned on "Burning Down the House" by the Talking Heads and we all danced around the kitchen and turned on the butane torch and melted the sugar and plopped fresh raspberries and squirted the Reddi-Whip and we all said "Oh man! This is delicious!"

For that kind of response, I would even cook more often, I think. But I will not do so with Julia Child's recipes, because they are still too hard. But I love her anyway.

Hold Your Horses!

This is frickin' brilliant!

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

I came across this after wondering a bunch of links--isn't the internet amazing? Aren't humans wonderful sometimes?

Oscar Backlash! The Ryan Seacrest Experience

The New York Times has the latest of Oscar backlash. No, not that Kathryn Bigelow isn't "really" a female director since she directed a "boy movie." No, not that "Avatar was robbed." Not even that Giuliana shouldn't have been stuck upstairs in the skybox. (Okay, I made that up. Nobody has said that.)

Ryan didn't ask about the designers. When interviewing A list celebrities, many of whom were actually nominated for their performances, he failed to make "Who are you wearing" his very first question, or even a question at all.

This from New York Times article.

The fashion designer Nicole Miller said she, too, was disappointed (and not just because Mr. Seacrest didn’t chat up the “True Blood” star Deborah Ann Woll, who was clad in a Miller gown). “It was almost like he wasn’t that interested in the designers,” Ms. Miller said. “He seemed more interested in the celebrities and their careers.”

Um. Yes. Given that the man had about 22 seconds per Famous Person, and the event was the Oscars--you know, that thing about MOVIES--and was NOT "Project Runway."

Don't get me wrong--I love the Oscars, and a very big part of what I love about the Oscars is the fashion. Well, obviously. But "who are you wearing" is not really a story. It's advertising. Learning what designer someone is wearing is why Al Gore invented the Internet. LOOK IT UP.

Maybe next year, stylists and publicists will make their clients' information available so E! can post it on the lower screen crawl, so people who care can read it.

Maybe the real "story" here isn't that Seacrest failed to ask about designers, but that the only people the NEW YORK TIMES (you know, the one that used to be called "the paper of record") interviewed about this were themselves fashion designers? It's not that there is a broad based backlash against Ryan Seacrest, as the article promotes--it's that people who care about the clothes than the people inside of them were disappointed. You know what? Mammogram technicians were also disappointed by the lack of X-ray films carried on the red carpet as well.

---The Mistress of All Evil is NOT wearing Marchesa or Armani Prive while producing this post.

Tiara Woes

HEY EVERYBODY! GUESS WHAT DAY IT IS TODAY?

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY! AND BECAUSE IT'S MY BIRTHDAY AND I CAN DO ANYTHING I WANT TO DO. . .

I AM WEARING A TIARA.

Because, dammit, I am already married and not planning to ever do it again, I will never open Parliament, and I will never go to a Royal Ball in an outfit created by a fairy godmother where I will accidentally forget to give my prince my cell phone number so I will be forced to leave behind a glass slipper that he can use to trace me via DNA typing with the help of Gil Grissom.

So, for my birthday I am wearing a tiara, and you know what sucks? I keep trying to pull it down onto my face because I think it's my reading glasses.

Guys? I waited too long to start wearing a tiara.

Oscars 2010 Fashion Mistakes -- Sarah Jessica Parker

SJP here is one unfiltered cigarette and John Hamm away from a cameo on "Mad Men." It's all about the accessories.

Oscars 2010 Fashion Mistakes -- Charlize Theron

You don't even need me to comment on this one.



When you wear John Galliano, you get more than just "body conscious." You get "anatomically exaggerated."

I saw a performance of "How To Succeed In Business Without Even Trying" about 30 years ago. In one song, every woman shows up at the office party in the identical "Irresistible Paris Original" dress, which was a black halter dress with a large white flower at the neck. The only dress any of the men noticed was when the slutty secretary showed up with two large white flowers, pinned over each of her breasts.

Who knew Galliano was there too?

Oscars 2010 Fashion Mistakes -- Elisabetta Canalis

This may be mean, since poor Elisabetta is not herself an Oscar invitee--she's a "plus one," and it is hardly fair to assault someone who's only claim to our attention is that she is dating George Clooney.

That's a fair assessment, but this is a fashion mistake. Maybe we can blame somebody else for it, though.



It's her undergarment. You can see it pretty clearly here, just as I saw it on television. It's a corset or something, with a panel that runs in a triangle down her abdomen and points straight at her ladybits.

Now, maybe, she decided she wanted to wear something sexy and glamorous under her red satin gown, something that would make her feel more fabulous than a pair of Spanx, and really, who can blame her? I mean, why pull a Bridget Jones buzzkill on Oscar night with a pair of practical and unattractive underpants.

Fortunately for her, somebody must have spotted it early in the evening and whispered in her ear, because most of the rest of the night she has her clutch or her wrap conveniently posed to hide the lines.

Oscars 2010 Fashion Mistakes -- Cameron Diaz

You know I love the Oscars with an unreasoning affection--and I have to say beforehand that the fashions this year were uniformly great. Sure, I have quibbles, or personal preferences, but there was nothing this year that made me slap my forehead and scream "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING" at the screen.

And that does happen sometimes.

So even the "worst dressed" are only so in comparison--and are still better than just about anything anybody wore from about 1972 to 1990--just to pick some dates at random. So realize that most of these "mistakes" aren't really Big Mistakes. On the other hand--there is still Room For Improvement.

Let's start with Cameron Diaz.



Give the girl her due--in the past, she has looked like she just rolled out of bed and grabbed whatever was closest.



This was 2002, and whatever she meant to accomplish with the kimono inspired dress and International Festival accessories, it was the messy hair and lack of make-up that guaranteed this was going to be considered a very expensive bathrobe.

She has atoned for that look in the past, which is weird. I mean--why is Cameron Diaz at the Oscars so often? It can't be for her body of work, can it? Does the Academy value "Shrek" and "Charlie's Angels" so highly? Sure, fine, there was "Gangs of New York," but even Leo DiCaprio hasn't been to as many Oscars as our girl Cam here.



Cameron at 2007 Oscars



Cameron at 2008 Oscars

Which brings us back to the 2010 look.



It's fine. It's just fine. It's golden, it's formal, her hair and make-up are lovely.



It's just--meh. Frankly, the look is both generic and matronly. It makes her look "middle aged," which is a phrase I hate, but it's accurate. She looks like she's over 40 (she isn't) and she's got a bunch of kids in a minivan parked somewhere. She sent them off to hockey practice and came on over to the school fundraising formal.

I mean, whether you liked that 2002 bathrobe or not, it was unique. You couldn't imagine it on, say Drew Barrymore, like you can this one. Or just about anybody, really. Susan Sarandon could wear this, or Demi Moore, or Carey Mulligan. It just is a lovely shiny dress, but it fails to give us a quintessential Cameron Diaz look, and that's what I'm looking for at the Oscars.

Oscars 2010--The Red Carpet Pre Show

It's 5:00 p.m. The Dog is fed.I have a large glass of white wine. Ryan Seacrest's mug is on my TV screen. It's time for the Oscars! This year's post is going to be an experiment--live blogging combined with editing the following day. And pictures! (From JustJared.com) So let's get started!

The telecast has already started out better than the Golden Globes, because Seacrest is alone on the carpet, and Giuliana has been sent to detention in the skybox with Jay Manuel. So no more awkward "how do you get that rockin' body" "interview" questions by the tone deaf Rancic. The show is also denied the "360 Glam Cam" that was almost as awkward as Giuliana's "interviews."

Is anybody who is anybody going to be here this early? Why, yes! The leading man in the Avatar juggernaut Sam Worthington and his anonymous girlfriend. (If Seacrest doesn't already know who she is, she must not be worth talking to, right?)

It used to be fashionable to complain about a "Best Picture" nomination if it wasn't accompanied by a "Best Director" nomination as well. What do we say about a "Best Picture" nomination with NO acting nominations? Answer: ANIMATION! Of course, there is some live acting in
Avatar: the lack of acting nominations just sums up the problems with that movie--technological break-throughs are all very fine, but you need a story and some emotional investment to make a movie.

Sam Worthington is sure working his Aussie accent--it's much more broad than it was in the movie. Is this on purpose? It's been said that anybody can sell anything to Americans if they do it with an accent: maybe this is Worthington's broadcast audition tape for any job in Hollywood. In fact, he's being quite open about being "at liberty" at the moment.

And now he and his girlfriend are being pushed off the dais in favor of Zac Efron: which, wait. Why is he here? He's not nominated, he's not got a movie out right now, he's not a past winner--is this the attempt to reach out to a Younger Audience? But how late can we expect 8-year olds to stay up?


Zac Efron is this generation's Rob Lowe--and we begin to see a theme, in which Hollywood is already developing replacements for currently established actors. Maybe they are clones!

Giuliana has changed outfits from the earlier "Countdown to the Oscars" time filler show she was hosting, while Jay Manuel is griping that he didn't have time to change, although he quickly realizes that this sounds dismissive of the designer outfit he is wearing, so he changes his tune. And--we are treated to a montage of what some people wore to other awards show as a time filler in case Seacrest can't find anybody worth televising.

But the Giuls 'n' Jay show gets shut off because Anna Kendrick is here! She's apparently decided to get the gauntlet out of the way by arriving early.There has been a lot of speculation about what she's going to wear and it's--blush and lots of pleating and structure, shoulder bearing, but not something that will photograph well—kind of washing her out.


It's a beautiful dress, it fits her beautifully, and she looks comfortable. It's just, well, kind of meh. You would think that a pastel dress would make her strong coloring stand out and emphasize her gorgeous face, but something is missing. She looks lovely, she looks fine--she doesn't pop or sizzle the way I want someone so young to be at her first Oscars.

The interview set up appears to be terribly squashed both physically and in terms of the amount of time Seacrest will spare any given celebrity. And here comes Mo’Nique, in royal blue and makes poor Anna look like Pasty White Chick, which she is so much not.




Mo’Nique doesn’t actually look good—the color is great, but the cut doesn’t do much for her, and she’s got a frickin’ bouquet on her head. She’s a big woman but she’s looking stuffed into her gown. Not good, honey. If course, later we find out that it's a tribute to Hattie MacDaniel, who wore a flower in her hair when she won for "Gone With the Wind" so Mo'Nique gets a pass on a questionable fashion choice because it is Historically Significant. And we can all breathe a sigh of relief that this doesn't mean Big Hair Flowers are the next Big Flower Pins.

Somehow, it's raining again in LA—just like at the Golden Globes. Seacrest expresses worry that actresses' heels will start sinking into the ground—but it’s all paved, so I don’t know what he’s been drinking. Coming up: Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon. Mariah has apparently covered up those Golden Globes of hers.Buh dum BUM!

Great ad for cervical cancer—it’s totally a perfume ad, with magic sparkles and everything. Followed by an ad for Dentyne Ice, with the slogan “practice safe breath”—gum as condom. Ads have rediscovered the old bait and switch. These are clever, but the cervical cancer ad gets run too frequently and loses its power.


The question for every awards show is: Is Mariah drunk? Has she already started her celebrations?
She might have—she’s looking off into the distance as if she's not able to focus her eyes. Maybe she's just tired of looking at Seacrest? She's wearing something that threatens to float in the breezes and show us more of Mariah than even Mariah wants to show us. Seacrest sounds genuinely panicked at the possibility, but Mariah reassures us that she has a "built in body suit." This solves one problem, but makes the status of her inebriation even more important--how will she pee?
At this point, it's only 5:24, and they seem to be cramming in all the ads they can. Ads are getting weirdly pre-empted before they finish by yet more ads.

Zoe Saldana and the mayor of L.A. have run into one another and Seacrest has failed his traffic cop training, so there seems to be a four or five way interview in progress. I love Zoe, and she’s in lavender and sparkles, which are two of my very favorite things, so I fail to remember what it is the mayor manages to say. But then we see the skirt.


This skirt has apparently sprouted lavender fungus from the LA rain. Some other commenters have likened the dress to plastic leis, or bathroom loofah poufs. Whatever it's actually supposed to be, it's random ruffles and an origami waistline, with ombre coloring to boot. It's all just too much on a small frame. If I could enforce fashion swaps, I'd throw away the entire skirt, and substitute Kate Winslet's skirt--dyed the appropriate lavender, of course. Then Zoe could keep the purple shoes and we'd all be a lot happier. (Except perhaps for Kate Winslet, at least until we got her another skirt.)


Joel Madden and Nicole Ritchie.He’s dj-ing. Nicole isn’t saying much, but she looks like she eats now, and it's a good look for her.
Vera Farmiga in crimson pleats and ruffles and matching lipstick.She’s lovely, and the dress is a statement, and she’s trying to convince us that nobody ever recognizes her in real life.She’s picking Hurt Locker and forgetting to pick Jason Reitman for Best Director.She’s fabulous and human and is even slouching a bit, which can’t be easy in that dress.

Ryan Reynolds is here without his wife, Scarlett Johansson, who is back in New York appearing on Broadway. That's fine with me, as he looks good enough all by himself.
Reynolds is presenting Best Picture nominee “The Blind Side” and Seacrest is asking how likely Sandra Bullock is going to actually win.Because presenters of a single nominee have all the inside information, don't they. We are treated to the less than absorbing factoid that Ryan and Ryan train at the same gym. This is the definition of “Too Much Information.” Reynolds reports he has taken his trainer with him to “The Green Lantern” shoots. The additional training is necessary, apparently, and he promises us a “snug costume.”

Sigourney Weaver coming down the carpet in vivid red, which is such a great color on her, plus is such a fearless choice. Back in the day, no one would have suggested that anyone over 30 wear such a vivid color, much less someone 60 years old an nearly six feet tall. Life is better these days.So what is her secret? Whatever it is, this is what a movie star looks like, Anna Kendrick, I'm talking to you!

James Cameron is in line behind Jason Reitman, which is awkward, and it’s totally like Ryan Seacrest point it and thus increase the awkwardness.OMG—Suzy Amis looks like a skeleton wearing a dress.I hope she’s well, because she looks like a cancer patient.You CAN be too thin.

[I can't find a photo that fully shows the Crypt Keeper look Amis is working, but trust me, it's as scary as Cameron's bad haircut was at the Golden Globes. She's got a great blue dress on, though, I'll give her that.]

Photo from here.

However, I am gratefully distracted by the "coming up" camera shots down the red carpet: Elizabeth Banks in inset is more fun to look at than JC and his death maiden.

Photo from here.

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Maggie Gyllenhall in blue and black strapless nothing. It's Peter Skarsgaard’s birthday, but Seacrest says he won’t sing, because “Happy Birthday” costs too much.

I like this dress--it's simple lines are flattering, the print fabric is interesting--you don't see many patterns or prints at the Oscars. Maggie looks lovely and confident. Is this the Biggest Dress Of The Year? Of course not. But it's perfectly appropriate while being a bit out of the mainstream and expressing a bit of Maggie's own personality.

Elizabeth Banks makes it to the interview platform in a gray highly structured gown, with her hair tied back severely, and OMG flamenco ruffles. It's like the mullet of Oscar gowns: business up top, party from the knees down. I can't tell if E! actually believes we want to hear from Ryan Seacrest rather than looking at the dresses, or if they are so crammed for space there is no way to show the entire outfit. Or both, maybe.

Tom Ford drops in to make some compliments, and to mention his movie as well. Did you know he directed "A Single Man"? Which is a different movie than the Coen brothers' "A Serious Man," FYI. Ford has a fabulous accent, which he is working as hard as Sam Worthington did, and is –surprise, surprise—wearing Tom Ford! And so is Jay! Up in the skybox! Now text your prediction about who will win Lead Actress. Why?

Sigourney Weaver in red, talking about reading the Avatar script. Have you seen it yet? Not in Imax yet, but 3D—which she’s selling. Signorney has a Disney Movie coming out with pole dancing. . .is Miley Cyrus involved—and then she gets pushed off for Lenny Kravitz, who is irritated he has to speak. Or maybe it’s just talking to Ryan Secrest. But he’s going to be touring with U2?!?!

Tina Fey in black? What a surprise. Michael Kors. She's texted with Alec Baldwin earlier today, and he is calm and ready, and it’s probably easier than SNL, because it’s only 20 minutes of material. Insert your own joke here about SNL also only having 20 minutes of material spread out over an unconscionably long time period. At least at the Oscars there are awards to give out to fill the time. That must be why SNL has musical guests.

So, is Amanda Seyfried is wearing Kate Hudson’s dress from the Golden Globes?


There is definitely a theme of highly structured torso armor going on this year--Kate Hudson's looks like it was immaculately constructed out of fondant icing--she looks less like a bride and more like the wedding cake, actually. Seyfried's looks like it's made out of bubble wrap, but it's definitely got the same sort of structural architecture to it. Hudson's was Marchesa, Seyfreid's was Armani Prive, I think, which make it perhaps the same as Lady Gaga's dress from the Grammys, but without the representational orbital paths around it.


Seyfried apparently opted to do without the bejeweled body-head stocking as well, but the bodice seems similar. Nothing wrong with that--I loved it on Gaga, and I like the version that is wearable by people from this planet as well. In her interview with Seacrest, we learn
Seyfried will be leaving Big Love, because she’s not working enough.

Seacrest hints that she'll be doing something called “Red Riding Hood,” which the two of them discuss in some sort of secret code that they understand, but that gives the average viewer (me) no clue about whether it's a movie, tv show, nightclub act or even a life-style change. Spell it out for us next time, if you actually mean to promote it guys.

Cary Mulligan went with black sequins, and a weird tea length plus train hemline. She just about pulls it off, but the heavy straps on her shoes end up making her legs look stumpy, and at a distance the look is all about her shins. Not really what a devastatingly lovely young woman with killer dimples should be reduced to, actually.

Apparently the beading on this gown is eccentric, containing tiny knives, forks, crowns, and other irregular items--which is exactly the sort of detail that takes this gown out of the basic, boring, black, and into something that suits Mulligan's youth.You can see those tiny items in the zoomed photo here.

I'm still not a fan of the hemline, which might actually be what I hate more than the shoes. If the entire dress were tea length, for example, we'd get less of the "proscenium arch curtain call for the shins" effect that spoils this look.


Sandra Bullock, heavily favored to win Best Actress tonight, wearing a sequins and kind of golden paillettes look.J&G think it would best be accessorized with an Oscar. I like her super shiny hair, and the bottom of the dress is apparently panne velvet, although it looks like liquid metal.

I think it's risky to wear beads over illusion netting this close to the Olympics, myself, but the asymmetic bodice is done so artfully that I like it the more I look at it. I'm not happy with the make-up in close-up, but I think its a matter of lighting. In some lights, it's absolutely fabulous, but in other lights it comes off as heavy and aging. In the picture above, it's just fine.
The interview with Seacrest is marred by the odd camera angle: the dress is interesting, but hard to evaluate this close. I’m seeing too much of her arm wrinkles at the top of her armpit—the cap cleaves don’t particularly do any favors in silhouette.

Diane Kruger is such a conundrum--such a lovely woman, who clearly revels in fashion, and yet so often looks terrible. Tonight is not a look I'd ever like to see again: severe hair, and a busy busy dress in black and cream.

She’s such a beautiful woman and is all but unrecognizable in an ugly dress. It's like a black, feathered anaconda is slithering down her torso, and as though she's got different micro-climates going on all up and down her body. Not sure why anyone thought it was a good idea to carve her up visually into thirds like that.

Tyler Perry, who is very very tall, promoting Precious—how he and Oprah kept it from going straight to DVD, so good for him.

The crawl tells us that Apolo Ohno thinks Pam Anderson is “a little too top heavy” to win DWTS.This is what we watch the Oscars for? Answer: NO.

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill promoting “The Blind Side.”Also the guy who played the football player--Quinton Aaron. Oh yes, Tim McGraw was in that one. Faith's dress is a small fail--weird deployment of lace that makes the whole thing look like it was repurposed from somebody's grandmother's attic.
Photo from here.
And due to some issues at home, I have to take a break from recapping. More to come in separate entries.

The Guthrie Theater's Macbeth, A Review.

I saw the Guthrie Theater's production of Macbeth this weekend. It's a great play, and the production played it straight--no attempt to particularly modernize the play, although the costumes were strongly flavored from WWII. The play started fast, and kept going without an intermission for about two hours.

HOWEVER. (There is always a "however," isn't there?) I found myself thinking critically about the production itself, ejected from the story and into some choices about the play.

It starts with a bang. Literally. Warfare rolls across the stage as characters in battle fatigues rappel down from the ceiling and storm across the stage. There is handgun fire and hand to hand knife fights. Bodies fall and roll, lie for a time, then inobtrusively remove themselves from the stage. It could be distracting, but it's effective overall, as if the battle has moved to new ground, and the bodies were left behind. Macbeth is identifiable--even before he's been introduced by name--standing tall in the center of the fighting, his red beard marking him as Scots. Okay, technically, the witches came out first, but the sudden fury of the battle blots out their previous scene.

The problem is that the production never slows down again. Everything happens at breakneck speed, and at top volume. The wounded soldier stumbles on to tell King Duncan that Macbeth and Banquo have defeated both the Irish AND the Norwegians, but his speech about their bravery goes by in a blur, making them seem not like victorious generals, but like manic berserkers who have prevailed out of sheer love of bloody fighting. Which is precisely the image of Macbeth which is most undercutting to his role as a tragic hero. If he's a wildman who happens to be a useful weapon on the battlefield, then he's not a tragic hero--there is no arc to his story. If he likes to kill men on the battlefield, and then he starts killing men from his own side, then he a psychopath who goes mad, not a good man who struggles with bad choices and actions.

The witches are back, wearing grey raincoats and dreadlocks. Weird, sure, but not overtly supernatural. They predict Macbeth's future--thane of Cawdor and king hereafter, and the scene plays with so much skepticism from Macbeth and Banquo that they might as well have broken open some fortune cookies. "Ha ha," they poke each other, "what a bunch of crazy bitches these are. You're going to be king, what can they possibly say to me that would top that?" They don't seem to entertain even the flimsiest of notions that these witches might be telling the truth--because that would take time, soemthing this production doesn't have. A few seconds of doubt, or puzzlement would have made their belief in these predictions believable. But who takes fortune cookies seriously, or alters their behavior because of what they say.

So when messengers arrive seconds later to report that Macbeth is now thane of Cawdor, the audience is prepared for Macbeth to say something like "Wow. What a coincidence. I wonder if those witches had heard this messenger talking before he got here?" We are not prepared for him to gobble up Cawdor without chewing it and immediately look for the kingship. One of the enduring puzzles of the play is the question of the inevitability of the future. Would Macbeth be king even if he had never heard the witches' prediction? Or does the fact that they tell him he will be king change the way Macbeth acts? Is he a good man brought down by his susceptibility to ambition, or was he doomed by fate?

Hard to tell it's even a question in this production: Macbeth seems to take the witches' pronouncements as a To Do list and he has to check off all the items efficiently. Cawdor? Check. What's next on the list? King? Better write to my wife and get her on board.

Let's talk about Lady Macbeth, shall we? Mad shrew, frustarated SAHM, or violent sociopath? Rarely is she portrayed as a complicated human being, and why break that precedent here, right? Dressed in a white shirt and trousers, she's writhing on the couch with excitement at the idea of being queen, already her volume is turned up to 9. Where can she go from here?

I've seen the actress who plays Lady Macbeth in at least two other productions, and I've never warmed to her. She's incredibly good at sweeping onto and off of the stage, but doesn't really do much once she is there. She has a habit of emphasizing her words with a hand gesture: an upside down claw, as if she is gripping an orange underhanded. With her fingers splayed, she makes short, quick motions at waist height again and again. Her voice drips with contempt for Macbeth and even when he agrees to kill Duncan, her attitude doesn't change. At this point, Macbeth doesn't seem to feel he has any choice either: Killing Duncan is on his To Do list.

I could go on in tedious detail, but this is the problem that pervades the play. Macbeth never really acts as though he had any choice in the matter, so he just plans to go through the motions. Lady Macbeth starts out bloodthirsty, and even when she goes mad, there's no sense that she was ever anything but a monster, so why should be pity her?

The best example of what I am talking about is in Mulholland Drive, David Lynch's freaky detective movie. In a pair of scenes, Naomi Watts plays a character who is auditioning for a role in a movie. At home, she runs over her lines with her roommate, shrieking in cliched high-school-drama fashion "I hate you! I hate you!" A few scenes later, she's in the audition, and suddenly she is acting. The actor she is reading with is an old lech, using the scene to grab her ass. She grabs his arm, moves closer to him, and whispers in his face "I hate you." And man is it effective! Instead of a soap opera of shallow and inflated emotions, we see a woman poisoned by hate and self-loathing. It is a Master Class on how underplaying a role makes it incredibly powerful.

Macbeth could have used some of this underplaying. The most effective scene in the whole play was at the banquet, when Banquo's ghost appears. The actor playing Banquo appeared, his head and neck covered with stage blood, and he just looked at Macbeth. There was never a threatening gesture, never a moment of posturing. Instead, Banquo looked saddened that Macbeth should have killed him. And Macbeth loses it in a major way. In fact, the physical interaction between the two actors was so good, that Shakespeare's dialogue was unnecessary and unduly comic. Macbeth comes to himself and tries to apologize, claiming " I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing / To those that know me." One can only laugh, as this is soooo far from explaining Macbeth's weird behavior. . .and here it is that the scope of his madness is apparent, because he can't even behave normally or give anything like a credible explanation for his behavior. So he doesn't even try. And THAT is madness--when you give up attempting to explain yourself.

There were a few things that intruded on my enjoyment of the play, things that popped up into my mind like those goofy VH1 videos. Two of the characters, Ross and Lennox, were advisors to the king, and were the only two men who were never in military garb. They wore suits, and fedoras, and topcoats, and leather shoes, and one carried an attache case--because he was an attache, duh. But all I could see, as he hauled that briefcase around, was "the results of Oscar voting were tabulated by the accountants of Price Waterhouse."

Similarly, the actor who played Malcolm, King Duncan's son and the leader of the troops who finally defeat Macbeth, was played by an actor I had last seen in "The Importance of Being Earnest," which totally undercut the force of his lines. Duncan dead, Malcolm and his brother Donalbain realize that they are not safe either, so they plan to flee to England and Ireland respectively. However, I can't help but see this as an instance of "Bunburying"--Oscar Wilde's plot device where the character gets out of town by claiming he has a ailing friend in the country who wants to see him.

Similarly, when Macduff and Malcolm meet in England--the play signals their location by having them in leisure wear, drinking tea(!)--the scene just smacks of a set-up to a Wildean pun-off, and I had to keep reminding myself to "listen to the words, don't watch the body language!"

Oddly, this is the first time I have ever actually seen Macbeth performed, and I can't even claim I have read the entire play either. However, I'm not going to let a lack of academic grounding get in the way of my having very definite opinions about how this play SHOULD be staged. I'm glad I saw it, but I can't really recommend it.