The End of the Affair

09Feb10

On this second day of posting trailers of some of my favorite romantic films to commemorate Valentine’s Day, I bring you The End of the Affair. Like I said yesterday, I prefer romantic films that don’t necessarily have a happy ending. There is an extraordinary beauty in longing and this becomes more poignant and  beautiful  in film. It simply gets me every time.

This film is so achingly wonderful. I first saw it when it was released and loved it immediately. The “secret” that is revealed at the end makes everything all that more painful, but beautiful nonetheless. A bittersweet ending. See it!

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Tags: film, graham greene, julianne moore, ralph fiennes, romance, romantic film, the end of the affair

Sade.

09Feb10

Valentine’s Day this week + Sade’s new album= Perfection!

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Tags: music, sade, soldier of love

Before Sunrise/Before Sunset

08Feb10

To commemorate Valentine’s Day I will post trailers of some of my favorite romantic films this week. I tend to prefer romantic films that don’t necessarily have a happily ever after type ending but sometimes I do, as long as they are well written.

The first two films that I absolutely love are Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. A before and after, if you will. If you haven’t seen either of these films I highly recommend them. They will leave you swooning and sighing, they’ll remind you of your first love and maybe even have you ponder a “what if” about the one that got away all in a span of a few hours.

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Tags: before sunrise, before sunset, romance, romantic films, valentine's day

Valentine’s Day cards.

07Feb10

I’ve always loved greeting cards. I love both giving and receiving them. To this day, I still have birthday cards that were given to me when I was a child.

A few years ago I was looking for a card to give to someone but even after looking for it at every greeting card shop I could think of, I didn’t find the right one. I’m very particular about cards, you see, they have to look and say just the right thing. After my failed attempts to find that card I simply decided to make my own!

I soon started making a variety of greeting cards including invitations that I started selling but then I stopped because my day job became so super busy, and frankly, by the time I get home I am exhausted.

Yet, with Valentine’s Day just around the corner I decided to start making cards again. I enjoy it so much and it’s such a great stress reliever. I am thinking about maybe even starting an Etsy shop but I’ll take it one step at a time. In the meantime these are some Valentine’s Day cards I made yesterday.

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Tags: greeting cards, handcrafted greeting cards, valentine's day

Lazy Saturday.

06Feb10

I was really looking forward to the rain today but it stopped raining in the morning. Nonetheless, I stuck to my original “rain plans” and did nothing. I slept in, lounged around, saw films, listened to music and snapped a few pictures. Relaxation at its best!

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Rain and the classics.

04Feb10

(A one minute synopsis of Wuthering Heights.)

The weather forecast for tomorrow and Saturday is lots of rain and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve had a very hectic last few weeks and  the rain will be perfect so that I can simply relax and watch a few films based on some of my favorite novels. Currently in my DVR is the 1939 film adaption of Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier and the first two parts of Emma that’s been showing on PBS. It’s the English major in me, I can’t help it!

So, this weekend as it’s raining I will be curled up with a big  blanket, sipping a nice warm cup of tea watching period films based on some great classics. I may just throw my Pride and Prejudice DVD with Colin Firth in  for good measure!

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Tags: classics, Emma, english literature, film, pbs, pride and prejudice, wuthering heignts

Versailles.

02Feb10

I haven’t had a vacation in  very looooong time. I am overdue for one and not a one or two week vacation, but at least a monthlong vaca somewhere far away. Yesterday after my post on Elliott Erwitt I  started going through some of my pictures of Paris and some of the other places I visited while in France, and  in a few minutes, and sans the jetlag, I transported myself there.

Years ago, I  traveled throughout the entire country and fell in love with it. I loved all the small towns like Blois and Amboise as well as the countryside, but Versailles simply took my breath away. I love period films and the gardens and everything there simply transported me to a different time and place altogether, making me feel as though I was in a period film myself!

Truly breathtaking.

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Tags: france, french history, palace of versailles, versailles

Paris in black and white.

01Feb10

I love Paris. Out of the  places I’ve traveled to, thus far, it’s  my favorite city in the world! I also love black and white photographs. Give me black and white photographs of Paris, and well, I may just about self-combust!

I  wish I could see Paris, an  exhibition of  photographs by Elliott Erwitt at the Magnum Gallery.

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Tags: black and white photos, elliott erwitt, magnum gallery, paris

Cinema Paradiso.

31Jan10

Cinema Paradiso is my all time favorite movie and though I have seen it numerous times, the final scene never fails to make me cry. This ending is perfection and to me the best ever in relation to how it brings the entire plot full circle. Simply a beautiful ending to an equally beautiful film.

I met the main actor, Marco Leonardi, about ten years ago at a lounge bar after he’d come up to talk to my girlfriends and I.  At first he looked awfully familiar but I couldn’t pinpoint where I knew him from. Then it hit me, it was Toto! He was just as gorgeous in person as he was in the film. We went on to talk for a long time and he was sooooo unbelievably sweet.

For a while we kept bumping into each other at various places around L.A. and he always remembered me and would always greet me with a kiss on the cheek and chat with me.  Needless to say that while the film was already my favorite before meeting him, after I met him I couldn’t stop recommending it enough!

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Tags: cinema paradiso, italian cinema, marco leonardi

Coming of age literature.

30Jan10

This past week J.D. Salinger died, but the character he created, Holden Caulfield, lives on, perhaps more than ever before because of his creator’s death. As many, I first read The Catcher in the Rye when I was in 8th grade and loved it.

Holden Caufield spoke to me as much as he did to everyone who is a fan of the novel, and although I understood him and related to his feelings towards “phonies,” the fictional character I related to the most as a teenager was not Holden, but rather an Irish boy named Stephen Dedalus.

Stephen Dedalus is the protagonist in James Joyce’s, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I read the novel a year after I’d read The Catcher in the Rye and although up until that point I’d  felt Holden spoke for me, it was Stephen’s  feelings of not quite belonging anywhere and his Catholic upbringing that made me connect with him. The “hell” scene in the novel sealed it for me and made me feel that Stephen was my male fictional counterpart.

Like Stephen, I never felt as though I really fit in. Granted, I was very well liked during my entire school years and I got along well with all the various cliques of kids, but I just always felt different from everyone. I didn’t like the things that other kids did and like Stephen, I was hypersensitive. I was obsessed with everything related to art and creativity, but like every “good” Catholic, and Stephen, I was also riddled with Catholic guilt.

Growing up I  often questioned elements of my religion. When I did things that were deemed as “bad” my guilt simply spiraled out of control. Music and other forms of art provided me with my religious experiences.  Attending mass didn’t. That and my hypersensitivity as a kid, particularly as a teenager, made for lots of sleepless nights filled with my own hell scenes. Looking back I realize how good a kid I actually really was and can’t  believe that I seriously thought certain things I did were bad!

Luckily, Stephen brought me hope. Like him, at the end of the novel, I  managed to  come to terms with the fact that it was actually fine to be different and that it was also okay to allow beauty and art to provide me with spiritual experiences. As for the Catholic guilt, well, I don’t think you can be raised Catholic and ever really get over it, I’ve just learned to quiet it down a little better. I still go to mass religiously (pun intended) and often that surprises people, yet I enjoy it a lot. However, all art forms and beautiful things are still awe inspiring and the things that make me feel the most alive. That’s something Stephen and I will always have in common.

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Tags: a portrait of the artist as a young man, art, beauty, catholic guilt, coming of age, j.d. salinger, james joyce, literature, stephen dedalus, the catcher and the rye