Ms Stéphane was actually a Baroness and a member of the Rothschild banking family. Her acting CV is not very long, and in one of her finest performances, Le silence de la mer, she does not even say a word. After a car accident, she retired from acting, and concentrated on writing and theatre and film production.
Nicole Stéphane in Les Enfants terribles
She is best known for Silence, like I mentioned, and her imperious mischievous incestuous truly regal turn in the excellent Jean-Pierre Melville film, Les Enfants terribles.
Stéphane in Le silence de la mer
But what you might not know about her, is that she joined the French Army during WWII, and was captured in the Pyrenées by the Spanish whilst trying to hook up and coordinate with the Free France underground.
Another awesome fact about Ms Stéphane is that she lived above Susan Sontag in Paris in the early Seventies. They were lovers for a spell and were off and on artistic collaborators until Nicole's death in 2007.
I had not even realized that over this past weekend in which I had been watching Martin Scorsese's very fine documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, that it was right around the time of George's birthday, which is today. Happy birthday George:
Ms Kirchherr is such a lovely, warm, and humble soul, that I can not help but to love her. She has never complained or fought about the rights to her photographs of the Beatles in Hamburg, though they are without question some of the finest rock photographs in the (short) history of that genre, and could have made her an extremely wealthy person. Her attitude now is as it always been, that she did not mind the world using those photographs, because they were just pictures of her friends, and meant to be shared with an entire globe that thinks of itself, still today, as "friends" with The Beatles.
She also is so humble as to never take claim for inventing the "Beatles haircut", which she rightly claims was a style already popular amongst German boys at that time in the early sixties. But, Ms Kirchherr was the first person to cut Stuart Sutcliffe's hair in that style, and the other Beatles at that time followed suit by having one of her friends, Jürgen Vollmer, cut their hair in the same fashion in Paris.
In fact, just the Beatles' days in Hamburg are enough to write a truly great novel, although one which many might find unbelievable, even if you reassured them that it all really happened.
Astrid and Stuart Sutcliffe, who had just quit The Beatles to become a full-time painter, were engaged to be wed, but Sutcliffe suffered an aneurysm and died en route to hospital, the young Ms Kirchherr with him, holding his hand as he passed.
But, she has never been a bitter or jaded person. Or even ever tried to carpetbag on the group's subsequent unheard of (and perhaps will never see the like of happening again) monumentally massive success.
I am currently working on another massive movie roundup that would include my thoughts on the two latest Godard films that I treasure, Weekend and Vivre sa vie.
And, I can not tell you how tempting it is to get my copy of Against Interpretation off the book shelf, and read Ms Sontag's very famous words on Godard and Vivre sa vie.
But, I will not. At least, until I publish my review, as such.
Actually, I have read Ms Sontag's essay probably a number of times before, but, as I had never seen the film until recently, none of the words or thoughts have been in even the slightest way retained by me.
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Anyhoo, that is all I have for today. Hopefully will see Amour sometime soon with the Wife. I love you all, and everyone have a fantabulous (wow! they did not indicate a spelling issue w/ fantabulous!? It is a real word?) Saturday and Weekend. (Ha ha.)
Here is Ms Sontag, a Woman Michael Truly Loves.
And here is the book she wrote that changed my life.
"The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet."
My Mother, Donna, (I call my parents by their first names, Andy & Donna; always have) has a wonderful, if slightly idiosyncratic, method of organizing her books on her bookshelves. Generally, she organizes them by genre. But then in almost all genres, they will be divided by sex. Thus, William Carlos Williams does not live next door to Edna St Vincent Millay. He lives next door to T.S. Eliot. As much as I have come to love William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound and e. e. cummings and other male poets, it was always that women's poetry section of her bookshelf that intrigued me the most.
The big three for me, from Donna's bookshelf, that I loved the most were Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Marianne Moore. And at the time I was sneaking those books off of Donna's bookshelves was a time when I was still writing poetry. (I hung that hat up a long time ago. I had my moments, but I was never very good. Eventually, I realized that I was not in it for the art, but in it for trying to seduce women. What is it they say in Cold Comfort Farm about seducing people through poetry?) I think the last serious poem I wrote was probably in 1990, or so. Believe me, none of you are missing anything from my "retirement".
I know Marianne Moore is not really in fashion these days (hell, what poets are?) but I still love her work. And Plath was a no-brainer for my drama major sensibilities, plus she was married to a poet, who many believe was better than her. (Those that believe that are wrong, but that is neither here nor there at the moment.) But, whereas, Ms Moore can be very silly at times, or write poetry about the most ludicrous of topics; and Ms Plath's work can come off as over-thought and too richly wrought, or, "worked on"; Ms Rich's poems come across as communiques from the clandestine press.
Just sitting at my desk, trying to change the world.
Ms Rich's poems are forthright, direct, polemic, conversational, spare, yet elegant distillations of, say, the Reuters News Service. Ms Rich has no interest in providing clues or masking her intent. She lays out her wishes, loudly and plainly, over and over again. It was her special talent that her style never seemed boring or pedantic. Because that is a very thin wire to walk even by twentieth century standards of "modern" poetry. She expresses human (and political; every frickin' thing we do in life is political) relationships as a quest for truth. There was probably never an instant in her work (or adult life, for that matter) that she hedged her bets to spare someone's feelings. Because she knew that Truth was always better in the end than hurt feelings in the meantime.
Rich was obsessed with "truth" and wrote about it constantly, throughout her life. The quest for truth, to me, is like the quest for perfection. It is something wholly unattainable, yet something all serious artists endeavor for, a Quixotic dream that separates great artists from the rest of the hacks and critics like me.
"There is no 'the truth', 'a truth' -- truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity."
One of my personal Holy Trinity of Movie Stars. (The other two are Barbara Stanwyck, Cancer; and Ingrid Bergman, Virgo.) I remember one time at a drama party back in 1989 or so, someone made fun of Ms Davis' Letterman appearances and complained about how old she looked. I mentioned All About Eve and how crucial that film was to anybody interested in the theatre. That shut him up real good.
There just never will be any movie starlike Bette Davis again.
2005 film, Pride & Prejudice. And the Scott Pilgrim Women from Edgar Wright's 2010 film, Scott Pilgrim vs The World. (Though both English, these two Wright directors are not related.) All of these women are Women Michael Loves.
See how easy it is, ladies.
Keira Knightley is my least favorite of this first group. Honestly, I do not think she is much of an actress. My favorite performance of hers is still as the chav Jules in Bend It Like Beckham. She is good in Never Let Me Go, too. And her and Carey Mulligan are reunited in that film, as well. Except in Never Let Me Go, Ms Mulligan gets to be the star.
Rosamund Pike (what a frickin' great name!) on the other hand is one of my favorite actresses working today. And she is so lovely. What a perfect face. Her performance in Made in Dagenham is small but powerful and her portrayal of the gorgeous, glamorous, yet hopelessly thick, Helen, in An Education is sublime, full of panache.
Meanwhile, the American actress, Jena Malone, who played Lydia in Pride & Prejudice, is about to start production on a film telling the story of another one of Michael's Women Michael Loves, Carson McCullers. Ms Malone will play Ms McCullers. Ms Malone will also play the lead in the film version of A Doll's House, too. Damn!
One of America's greatest novelists, Carson McCullers.
Talulah Riley got to literally perform the old noir Hollywood trick of taking her glasses off, letting her hair down and revealing herself a bombshell. In Pride & Prejudice, the exquisite Ms Riley played the plain bookish Mary. Four years later in Pirate Radio she was completely different and a knockout as Marianne.
Anyone who is reading this does not need me to elaborate on Ms Mulligan or on all the ways I am fond of her.
Kelly Reilly is not a Bennet sister, she plays Bingley's sister in Pride & Prejudice but she gets included here, too. I love her work, especially in Me and Orson Welles and as the only good thing in Mrs Henderson Presents.
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Like Pride & Prejudice, my least favorite of this next group is Mary Elizabeth Winstead, the female "star" of the picture.
My favorite Scott Pilgrim actress is Alison Pill. (Another amazing name!) I loved her as Zelda in Midnight in Paris.
Scott Pilgrim stars at the London Premiere.
Ellen Wong's CV is woefully short. And that is a shame. She should be bigger than she is right now.
Anna Kendrick was definitely the only good thing in the awful Up in the Air, that is for sure.
Mae Whitman is a splendid talent. You can see her every week in the teevee series, Parenthood. She has also done a ton of voice-over work, including appearances on Family Guy.
The sultry surly fantastic Aubrey Plaza is currently a part of Parks and Recreation. But she is prob best known for her astounding chat show performances.
And Brie Larson has been a child actor, a recording artist, cable teevee star, (w/ Toni Collette! in The United States of Tara) and a film actress.
I love them all and wish them fabulous happy careers.
Is next in Michael's fauxluxe series, Women Michael Loves.
Thank you, Ms Faludi for opening a young man's eyes.
I love all her books but Ms Faludi would deserve her spot in my own personal Hall of Fame for her book, Backlash, alone. And there is much to like about the book: The chapter on the backlash in Hollywood, discussing Fatal Attraction, Pretty Woman, Working Girl, and others; the chapter on television, discussing how the network brass were constantly messing with Cagney and Lacey and finally banished it to the hinterlands in order to get it canceled; the chapter on the media and all the numerous fake "trend studies" that the print and teevee media would splash all over their platforms, insisting that women could not have a career and a family, too, or, that all single women over the age of thirty-five were naturally doomed to a unrewarding profoundly depressing existence forever more.
There is so much to like in this meticulously, painstakingly researched book, all written in an expertly executed conversational style, but my favorite chapter is Dressing the Dolls: The Fashion Backlash, notably her essays on Victoria's Secret and Jockey's immensely successful Jockey for Her product launch. Re Jockey for Her: Jockey president at the time, Howard Cooley, despite vigorous opposition from everyone else in the company, launched Jockey for Her, anyway. Cooley even had his marketing research department interview scores of women of all types on what they were looking for in underwear.
The results: women want underwear that won't ride up, won't fall apart in the wash, and actually is the size promised on the label.
The brand [Jockey for Her] became an instant success; within five years, it was the most popular brand of women's underwear in the nation, with an extraordinary 40 percent share of the market.
Duh! It really helps your business actually talking to your frickin' customers instead of reading crappy news weeklies or watching cable news, hunh?
Ms Collette is such a smashing actress and has long been one of my favorite people to enjoy on the big screen.
There are two moments from her career that stand out to me. One only lasts a second or so and she does not even have a line. It happens in Little Miss Sunshine when Greg Kinnear and Steve Carell are arguing in the VW bus. Ms Collette is sitting in the passenger seat, smiling, half laughing, and you can see all the love she has for both of these flawed men. One is her brother (Carell) and the other is her husband (Kinnear). It is an astonishing, very simple piece of acting that gives me goosebumps every time I see it.
The other life-changing, profound performance from Collette that I treasure is the scene where she meets her prospective husband at the pool in Muriel's Wedding.
She is one of the best working today. I love Ms Collette.
"Isn't it funny how beautiful people look as they're walking out the door."
Hanging in the green room, talking about Kate Millet, I am sure.
Singer/guitarist for the spectacular post-punk geniuses, Au Pairs. (Next in Women Michael Loves.)
She eventually quit rock. She is a lawyer, living and working in London now.
Au Pairs first album, Playing with a Different Sex, and their armful of early singles: Kerb Crawler; It's Obvious, and You are feminist, political (sexual and otherwise) knives aimed straight at the hearts of the straight, white Western World.
Plus, the music they cloaked their message in is arresting, jarring, thrilling, and tense enough to snap at any moment. Scary, fantastic stuff.
