Me and the Future Mrs Jones

While watching (and being deafened by - it was so LOUD, whatever was going on with the speakers) Raiders of the Lost Ark in the IFI at the weekend, I found myself thinking what a great character Marion Ravenwood is. A hard-drinking, no-nonsense bartender in a dodgy Nepalese watering hole, defiant in the face of creepy Nazis and handy with a frying pan.


She's pretty much the exact opposite of the shrill, shrieking, painful waste of a female character that is Willie Scott in Temple of Doom. (Don't even get me started on Shortround. The Scrappy Doo to Indiana's Scooby.)


But back to lovely Marion. During the buildup to the big chase scene in Cairo, I found myself enamoured with yet ANOTHER pair of harem style pants. For someone who decided long ago that they were stupid, here I am writing about them again, mere weeks after I was all agog at Lady Sybil's blue Jasmine outfit. Although to be fair, neither of these have that ridiculous dropped crotch/full nappy effect. So if Sybil was blue Jasmine, that makes Marion red Jasmine, but without the unpleasant Jafar's sex slave part.


I was so entranced by her red pants that I noticed a great bit in one of the fight scenes where Indiana is being all manly and fighty and just a big ride in general, Marion is over to the right of the screen just repeatedly bashing a villain over the head with a tin box. The scene goes on for quite a bit, with all the action focused on Indiana's scrap and all the while Marion is there in the background resolutely whacking this guy over and over for the duration of the whole scene.

Smashy smashy.

Something I also noticed was during the scene where she's being held captive in a tent and Belloq unties her so she can eat. It seems that Pirates of the Caribbean completely rips off that entire sequence when Barbossa eats with Elizabeth Swann. Both women are given new frocks to put on, both women humour their captors by playing along and eating dinner with them, while surreptitiously hiding a knife, which both women then use to threaten the bad guy and attempt escape only to be immediately foiled. HMMM.

Coming To A Doctor's Waiting Room Near YOU!

I get excited about lots of things. Like the fact that I'm going to see Raiders of the Lost Ark on Sunday in the IFI, or when they have Wispas in stock at the coffee dock in work. But right now I'm REALLY excited that I've been featured in this week's issue of Woman's Way, as they have most kindly decided to include me in their 12 New Faces for 2012 article.


Look! There I am!


In case anyone was wondering, the post about Obama is here and the mermaids one can be found here. I'm happy dancing in my chair right now. Woo!

Shinier Than Your Average Bear

After eating my way through Christmas at home and drinking my way through New Year's Eve in a windswept cottage in the wilds of Joyce Country, it's back to Dublin, back to work and back to bleary-eyed early mornings where I'm counting down to the soonest time I can sleep in. I have to say though, Christmas was wonderfully good to me this year. By Christmas I mean the Bear and by good to me I mean gave me a present that has since become my most favourite thing ever.

Once I had pulled the wrapping paper off, I was left with this tin box. This gorgeous tin tea box, which had been beautifully decorated with typewritten quotes and cutout images of bears.


Completely puzzled as to what it could possibly contain, I opened it to reveal...


THE MOST AMAZING SILVER RING IN THE WORLD. 

A motherfucking BEAR, no less! It transpired that my crafty, brilliant boy had employed the services of our astonishingly talented friend Mirjam, a superhero silversmith who designed and handcrafted this ring as a jaw-dropping custom made piece.

I die! (Inset photo by Mirjam Schiller. The big legend.)

It's huge, it's heavy, it's utterly amazing. I LOVE IT TO PIECES.

Merry Happy!

Last night we attended a most delightful outdoor screening of Elf in Meeting House Square and as if going to see an amazing Christmas film in a gorgeous outdoor setting wasn't enough, there was free popcorn and hot chocolate being handed out. Free! That never happens! After Irishing up mine and the Bear's tasty hot chocolates thanks to a handy hip flask, we settled into our seats with enough sweets to induce a mild case of diabetes. During the film I was reminded how much I love Dreamgirl Deschanel's pink elf outfit at the end.

Cute!

Anyway, I'm off home to Waterford to stuff my face with Roses and Pringles and anything else within reaching distance, while also drinking far too much Tanora, now that they've thankfully seen sense and restored the flavour to its original awesome Christmassy self after scaring us all half to death with that disaster of a marketing move in June. So thanks everyone for reading and commenting and what have you all year and have a TREMENDOUS Christmas!

You Can Always Go...Downton

Late to the party as ever, I've been catching up with the rest of the world and haring through Downton Abbey recently in an effort to get it all watched before the Christmas special. I've only just started the second series so for GOD'S SAKE don't say anything about anything that happens in series two or I will end you.


Predictably enough, I'm completely enamoured with the show. The dresses, the impeccable hair, the elbow length gloves, the beautiful stately rooms, Thomas being such a BASTARD, Maggie Smith as Violet being so delightfully cutting, I love it all.


The costumes are so sumptuous it must be like wearing a diamond encrusted cake, or possibly something a little less messy. In terms of the characters, the rebellious, burgeoning feminist Lady Sybil was always going to be my favourite and it's to her that I can attribute the so-amazing-I-might-have-clapped-when-I-saw-it fashion moment of the series so far.


The blue outfit that shocks the entire house, as it incorporates PANTS, the feckless hussy. I just think it's supremely gorgeous. I don't even like harem pants but these are effing tremendous, not to mention the bodice and the headband. SMOKIN'. It looks like what would transpire if Princess Jasmine decided to try her hand at a lifestyle as a fledgling flapper girl.


Well played, costume people. Exceedingly well played.

Quelque Chose #15

Every so often when a burlesque show came shimmying into town, theatre owners in the more conservative areas of 1940s/50s America were forced to work a little magic on promotional photos for newspaper ads and what have you. The solution to this little conundrum was adding clothes to the bodies of the brazen showgirls in question with pen and ink. This picture shows a performer in a bra and knickers that were added afterwards, with the untouched photo shown in the inset. I don't know about you, but I love the idea that it was someone's actual job to draw clothes on previously more nudey ladies.

(via bhof)

Snow White Smackdown

As Hollywood is wont to do from time to time, two more than similar films are coming out quite close to each other next summer. We've had Armageddon vs Deep Impact battle for Asteroid Film Of The Year, Friends With Benefits vs No Strings Attached tussle for Friends-Who-Ride-Each-Other Film Of The Year and soon we'll have Mirror Mirror vs Snow White and the Huntsman bate the heads off each other for Snow White Film Of The Year. On one had, Mirror Mirror features Lily Collins (daughter of Phil!) and Julia Roberts as the princess and the evil Queen, while Kristen "I'm delighted to be a highly paid actress, no really I am" Stewart and Charlize Theron are squaring off and throwing dirty looks at them as their respective rivals.




Each film has a very different feel, Mirror Mirror is decidedly lighter, fluffier, funnier and Nathan Lane-ier, whereas Snow White and the Huntsman is an altogether darker, grittier and really rather deadly looking take on the story.


Lily's Snow White probably looks more like what you'd expected from a classic princess story, but Sourpuss Stewart definitely has the look of a girl who's about to do some damage rather than burst into song.

Sorry Julia, your red peacock ballgown loses out to Charlize's pointy black getup. Not least because she looks like she'd stab you in the face just for the craic.

In the Evil Queen category, Julia Roberts is playing her as a neurotic, insecure diva, which is all well and good, but to be fair Charlize Theron wipes the floor with her as a malevolent, properly wicked and scary witchy woman. She's eating someone's soul right out of their FACE in the trailer for flip's sake! No contest!


In the Obligatory Handsome Bastard corner, we have Armie Hammer with the big Disney prince head on him playing...twist!...the prince. The handsome bastard of Snow White and the Huntsman is none other than the Hunstsman himself, played by Kim from Home & Away. Or, y'know, Thor.


I have to say, I really like the look of both of these films. Snow White and the Huntsman looks great because of the big medieval style battles, the armour, the injection of darkness into a previously sweetened fairytale and the fact that Charlize's Evil Queen looks like she's going to be an utter DELIGHT to watch, what with the soul eating and milk bathing and general sultry divilment.


Whereas Mirror Mirror looks great because of the GIANT ASS DRESSES, the Nathan Lane comic relief and the fact that it's all so shiny and fun looking. It's also got Sean Bean in it as the king, which means he's probably going to die at some point, because it's Sean Bean and that's what he does in EVERYTHING. Seriously. Just watch THIS if you don't believe me. You just try to name something that he doesn't die in and I'll call you a damn liar.

Puts The Sexism Into Tea

There's a certain ad campaign of late that manages to instill a huge amount of annoyance and anger in me. It's not Ivan Answer (this time) and it's not even that awful, insipid "I love shopping.ie" radio jingle, even though that does send me into a panicked lunge for the mute button with a speed that could only be matched by my haste for the remote when the Hollyoaks theme tune starts.

But I digress somewhat. It's the most recent Lyons Tea tv and radio ads. Their whole "Richer Talk" campaign was all fine by me up until the point that they decided to air ads with such a passive-aggressively misogynist undercurrent that every encounter with them results in me thinking "FUCK YOU, LYONS TEA. FUCK YOU RIGHT IN THE EAR".



This is one of the tv ads in question. There's another one where the HILARIOUS Dad character makes a crack about his wife having the utter cheek to spend money on her hair. HA HA HA. Sure don't women only care about shoes and hair anyway! And if someone does decide to get her hair done, then OF COURSE she should be undermined in front of her child for doing so. HA HA FUCKING HA.

Fuckface.

Even worse is the radio ad that begins with Hilaro-Dad reading Mary Had A Little Lamb to his daughter, which prompts him to wistfully lament the fact that his white Ireland away jersey is now pink because "your mother" put it in the wash with red socks. Hey Mr. Dad, here's a revolutionary thought: why don't you do your own fucking washing in the first place and maybe then you won't be so traumatised you COCK.

In short, fuck you Lyons Tea Man.

Words With Friends

I actually meant to post this video ages ago, but was most likely distracted by something shiny. And/or chocolatey. Shiny chocolate, perhaps. The following video is for The Friend Song by EleventyFour. It was filmed on a drizzly Sunday in Rathmines, where the Bear and I joined an assortment of Eleventy's friends and partook in some frisbee throwing in the rain, eating so many Refresher sweets that our jaws were temporarily glued shut (that might just have been me, actually) and frantically miming our way through a game of charades.



The charades game was particularly fun, as I hadn't played it in years. The Bear and I weren't allowed to be on the same team though, as the others had decided to hold our track record of being really good at Cranium together against us and so we ended up on opposing teams. Those jerks. Each team was then given the task of coming up with the things the other team had to mime. Which means that it was ENTIRELY the Bear's fault when I pulled out a piece of paper for my turn, unfolded it and froze in horror.

THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES.

Are you fucking KIDDING ME. As I steeled myself for what was going to be the most embarrassing miming ever, two more friends of Eleventy's arrived, whom I've NEVER MET BEFORE IN MY LIFE. They sat down, joined a team each and looked at me expectantly from the couch.

And so I began.

Play....three words....first word....the!....third word....three syllables....

................

................

................

I had nothing. I was drawing a complete blank as to how I could possibly convey the word "monologues" with my increasingly erratic gesturing. With a resigned sigh, I signalled that I was moving on to the second word.

And pointed at my crotch.

They got it immediately. Thanks a lot Bear, you ASS.

Dial M For Moneypenny

I'm sure you're all aware by now that the next James Bond film is to be called Skyfall and that Javier Bardem will appear as a villain. All well and good, but what I was happiest to hear is that the (previously missing from the Daniel Craig reboot) character of Miss Moneypenny is back. Yay! English actress Naomie Harris is taking on the slinky secretary role, who turns out to have played the very cool Tia Dalma in two of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Well, she was cool when she was a Jamaican voodoo priestess at least, I wasn't crazy about the part where she turns out to be the goddess Calypso, grows eighty feet tall and turns into thousands of crabs, but there you go. (Insert your own STD joke here. I won't judge you for it. Ahem.)


Apparently Moneypenny is based on a few different women that Ian Fleming knew. In his first draft of Casino Royale, she had a completely different name and was called Miss Pettaval, inspired by the director of MI6's personal assistant Kathleen Pettigrew. Another possible inspiration was Joan Astley, a pretty badass old girlfriend of Fleming's who ran Winston Churchill's Secret Intelligence Centre during the war and was renowned for being warm and welcoming when senior officers came to her office to view top secret papers.

The first actress to play Moneypenny was Lois Maxwell, who flirted her way through a massive fourteen Bond films with Sean Connery and Roger Moore. Although you may think Moneypenny is little more than a lovestruck assistant, the character is actually a Lieutenant in the Women's Royal Naval Service, so clearly she can kick some ass when she needs to.


Caroline Bliss took over the role of Moneypenny in the two Timothy Dalton Bond films, The Living Daylights and Licence To Kill. Bliss was a much younger actress, but hardly appeared in either film at all, with her role essentially reduced to a cameo. Boo.


When Pierce Brosnan became 007, the aptly named Samantha Bond took on the Moneypenny mantle in the next four films. I always had a soft spot for Moneypenny, particularly when I was in college and utterly sick of being single, as I identified with her as being the girl who never got the boy she liked. Of course, that's all changed now, but I was still disappointed when there was no sign of my girl in Craig's Casino Royale.


There were two other actresses that portrayed Moneypenny, but they're deemed unofficial, as the films weren't real Bond movies per se. Barbara Bouchet appeared in the 60s spoof Casino Royale as a frankly outrageously sexy sixties kitten style Miss Moneypenny and Pamela Salem played her in Never Say Never Again.

Look at Barbara here, for feck's sake. She's wearing what appears to be a see-through bejewelled nightdress when she's meant to be ON BUSINESS. MOST unprofessional. Get your head in the game, woman!

Apparently, the shiny new Miss Moneypenny will start out as an MI6 field agent, before becoming M's go-to girl, so it sounds like she'll be doing more then sitting at a desk looking pretty. A more than welcome update of the character, I'm sure you'll agree.

The Curious Case of Madame

Over the Halloween weekend, between watching copius amounts of films and a sunny Sunday morning trip to the Hellfire Club, the Bear and I went charity shop shopping along our usual route. On this particular venture, we were on a mission to find Ross O'Carroll-Kelly books for my brother, although seeing as this meant intently perusing the bookshelves of all the charity shops on Capel Street, we ended up with enough books for ourselves to almost break the plastic bag that held them. However, as we made our way through all the second hand James Pattersons, Alexander McCall Smiths, Patricia Cornwells and Cecelia Aherns (SO MANY Cecelia Aherns) in the first shop, a certain book in perfect condition grabbed my attention.

THIS book, to be precise:


So many questions. Such as the back to front Es and WHY? They bewilder me entirely. They make me want to shake the book until they rattle back into their rightful position. What's the deal with Miss Floating Cloaked Girl here, out of proportion with everything around her? And why is there a tiny glowing map of Ireland hovering above the larger of the confused Es? As if all that wasn't perplexing enough, check out the back cover.


What the HELL is going on here? Did they copy and paste the text in and then forget to finish it? Also, I hate to sound like a mean and snarky bitch here, but that author photograph is HILARIOUS and missing an exposed chest and gold medallion. I'm sorry.

Anyway.

Having replaced the book on the shelf after shaking my head in puzzlement at it for several minutes, I noticed another copy. Like the first, it was in no way second hand. The spine was flat and smooth, the pages unthumbed and the cover all shiny. I thought it was a bit unusual, but off we ambled to the next shop. And the next. And the next. There are at least five charity shops on Capel Street and this book was in EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Multiple copies of it in fact. Scattered throughout the shelves, all of them in mint condition. It was only in the second shop that I decided to take a picture of each sighting in each shop. And check this out:


It was EVERYWHERE! It's all so MYSTERIOUS! Are they haunted books, planted in charity shops to trick the elderly and those who dig bargains into bringing one home and slowly take over the world with some manner of spooky book ghost mind control? Theories are more than welcome, but if anyone has Jessica Fletcher's number, you get her on the case quick smart before we're all doomed, ya hear?

Your Kids Are Gonna Love It

Way back in April, I was regaling you all with tales of a weekend spent cutting something like two hundred fish shapes out of coloured paper, sacrificing faithfulness to original film set design as my instinct to stay inside the lines while painting a banner took over and generally dancing till my feet were about to explode. It was all in aid of a terrifically fun video shoot for The Dead Flags and if you managed to somehow bypass me enthusing about the finished result on other quarters of the internet, well WORRY NOT.

But first some stills, as I'm super delighted with how the room looked in the final video and so glad that the wrist pains from all the scissors action and steady-handed letter painting totally paid off.


The Bear and I managed to pop up a fair bit in the video, jiving up a storm and doing our best not to trip over. There's also a bit where the lower half of my red dress looks quite cool and swishy, if I do say so myself.


Now, for your viewing and listening and Back To The Future loving pleasure, You Got It Wrong: