Earlier this week, Mary Robinette Kowal invited me to her apartment so I could poke her Campbell dress for a while. And I took pictures!
The best of these pictures got hacked up in Photoshop, since the dress (a soft pure gold in person) showed up as alternately chartreuse and acid yellow. My monitor, sadly vague when it comes to yellows, was of little use. I desaturated the detail shots and crossed my fingers for the rest. (It’s not much. My oohing and aahing skills far outweigh my photo editing skills.)
An abbreviated photo essay is below; for more pictures, check out the Flickr set.
This week’s Questionable Taste Theatre is Impromptu, which was written as a biopic, framed like an Impressionist painting, and cast like a handicap game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
Ye Olde Classe Picture
(Don’t you forget about me…)
Nutshell: so, George Sand is awesome. Most of her friends are not. Emma Thompson is awesome. Most of her dresses are not. Everyone else tries to be awesome, with varying degrees of success.
Okay, so, we begin with George Sand (Judy Davis – “The Break-up” with Jennifer Aniston – “Picture Perfect” with Kevin Bacon). She’s totally over-the-top in an awesome way, like that girl from high school theatre who had screaming fights with her college-age boyfriend five minutes before rehearsal started, but never insisted you call her by her character’s name or anything.
She wants to dump her latest boyfriend and decides to take refuge at the Artists’ Fortnight being held by Duchess d’Antan, played by the hysterical Emma Thompson (“Primary Colors” with Maura Tierney – “Welcome to Mooseport” with Marcia Gay Harden – “Mystic River” with Kevin Bacon). The Countess is the funniest character in the whole thing, and her vapid cheerfulness does a great job of highlighting exactly what all the Artistes are rebelling against, which is good, because a lot of the Artistes spend the two weeks acting like a bunch of spoiled teenagers. Awkward!
THIS DRESS IS NOT AWESOME. (…well, a little.)
Too bad George is being pursued by vengeful ex Alfred de Musset (Mandy Patinkin – “dick Tracy” with Madonna – “A League of Their Own” with Tom Hanks – “Apollo 13″ with Kevin Bacon)!
Franz Liszt (Julian Sands – “A Room with a View” with Judi Dench – “The Important of Being Earnest” with Colin Firth – “Where the Truth Lies” with Kevin Bacon) comes with his girlfriend Countess de Bernadette Peters, because let’s face it, everyone loves Bernadette Peters, but British period pieces are really not her thing. (Bernadette Peters – “Cinderella” with Whitney Houston – “The Bodyguard” with Kevin Costner – “JFK with Kevin Bacon.)
“It’s a note from Genevieve. It says you look like you’re at Actor Camp when you stand next to me.”
Franz Liszt is pretty cool in this movie, which is shocking since he’s played by perpetual creepfest Julian Sands in a pre-Fantasma role, back when he was still keeping up the charade he was a normal person.
Recognize the hair?
You don’t, right? It’s because it’s all his own hair. …FANTASMA.
Another invited guest is Frederic Chopin (Hugh Grant – “Two Weeks Notice” with Sandra Bullock – “A Time to Kill” with Kiefer Sutherland – “A Few Good Men” with Kevin Bacon), a sickly composer with whom George falls in love. Will those crazy kids ever get together?
Sadly, yes, though I can’t imagine it being possible based on their negative chemistry, and every time I see the movie I’m shocked anew that Hugh Grant was ever cast in anything again. Casting directors must not have seen this. What’s worse, his sociopathic aversion to facial expressions or his Sprockets German accent? You make the call!
Nice hat, at least.
There’s not a lot of plot here, but if you enjoy movies full of clever people smoking skinny cigarettes and being mean to each other for two hours (and god knows I do), this is your kind of movie. It’s also your kind of movie if you like Emma Thompson, or if you hate Hugh Grant, or if you like movies where people are often weird or foolish or desperate in that way that a lot of people are.
And by “a lot of people”, I mean, “theatre people”. (There’s lots of standing up and shouting, “Oh, for God’s SAKE!” and storming out of a room in this movie.)
Here, I’ll just show you the best part. Emma Thompson, looking for her husband and making a series of hilarious sounds.
