FIRST LOOK: Charlie Sheen and Bill Murray in 'A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III'
The movie, written and directed by Roman Coppola, stars Charlie Sheen as a brokenhearted playboy and Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman as his best friends, who try to pull him out of a surreal spiral after the love of his life dumps him hard.
A24, a brand new New York-based indie distributor, has acquired the U.S. rights to the movie and is announcing plans today to debut it in February 2013.
Check out some first photos from the film after the jump, along with an exclusive EW interview with Coppola, who explains the strange, soulful journey of this star-crossed character, who asks: Is it possible to love and hate someone at the same time?
Coppola, the son of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, previously directed the 2001 retro sci-fi movie CQ and is a frequent collaborator of director Wes Anderson, co-writing The Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom and working as a second unit director on The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III is also set in a stylized world, a skewed version of contemporary Hollywood where Swan, a famous graphic designer, has a charmed life that begins to fall apart when girlfriend Ivana abruptly ends their romance.
Swan turns to his fellow travelers Kirby (Schwartzman), Saul (Murray) and sister Izzy (Patricia Arquette) when the going gets rough.
EW: Is Charles Swan a wild man character? Because when you hear the name Charlie Sheen, that’s what pops to mind these days.
Roman Coppola: Charlie is so perfect for the role, but he’s not perfect because of the public profile we’ve seen in the news. He’s incredibly talented as an actor, he has tons of charisma, he’s very witty. He’s very funny and charming. You can use your charm sometimes as a problem solver — and my character, that’s what he’s been doing. He’s been sliding through on life, using his charm and wit and charisma to get past some problems. But the problems are still there, and that’s the story of the movie.
Are we talking about Charlie Sheen or Charles Swan now?
To relate it to Charlie as a person, he has all those qualities. But to say “wild man,” it doesn’t quite … it’s not what I would choose, those words. There are many similarities, but not what you’d expect. He’s not someone who’s out of control. I even hate to bring all that up because it only reinforces it.
I see the line in the film’s synopsis saying “Charles’ life falls apart and he swirls into a downward spiral of doubt, confusion and reflection.” It’s easy to think, “Oh — you know who would be perfect for this part …?”
[Laughs] Exactly. Well, I can say there is something that really fits, but it’s due to his great acting abilities. On the surface you could make a lot of parallels, but when you see it you’ll appreciate this character is one we invented together, and he as a performer drew from whatever talents and inclinations he has.
Is it kind of a “lost weekend” story?
It does take place over a short period of time, and there’s a lot of confusion, and there is a “lost weekend” evening where Charlie goes out and drinks a lot of Brandy Alexanders and gets a little crazy. So that’s part of the story.
It’s not strictly realistic. In the film, because some of the sequences take place in the imagination of the main character, it goes to fantastical circumstances and settings. There’s a western sequence, there’s an underground spy-agency sequence. There are some playful touches that, for me, are cued off this main character, whose professional life is creating imagery, stylized imagery like album cover art.
Is there a symbolic value to the graphic-design component? That’s a job about control of perception.
I never thought of that consciously. But there is something about controlling your world. It does pertain to creating the world around you. The way you dress and the people you surround yourself with. It’s a very sensual profession, where the touch and look and color is very much your world. The kind of designer this character is has a love of the female form, so there’s a lot of imagery about women and women’s bodies.
Let’s talk about the women! The lost girlfriend is named Ivana — who did you get to portray this ideal woman-of-his-dreams?
She’s played by Katheryn Winnick [a recurring charactor on Bones, who had small roles in Love and Other Drugs and Killers]. She’s done some TV performances and Cold Souls [a 2009 film with Paul Giamatti]. I just came across her randomly, watching television, and I tracked her down and looked her up. There was just something about her. Casting is mysterious. Sometimes something just infects you a little bit, and you fall in love with them. That’s how I felt about her. And I liked that she was less known, and therefore you kind of get to meet her as a character rather than a personality playing a role.
Aubrey Plaza and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are also in the film. How do these women shape the things going on in his head?
Aubrey Plaza is the producer of his design studio. She’s trying to keep him on the ball in terms of keeping him focused and applying his energy to getting his work done. His business is foundering a bit. And Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the best friend of his girlfriend who just broke up with him. She is not so supportive of their relationship.
(There goes my boner. MEW is playing a dominatrix in a fantasy sequence)
Kirby is Swan’s best friend. He’s a recording star and stand-up comic. He’s a very successful comic, and they know each other because Swan did all his album covers. The premise is when Swan loses his girlfriend and it really pulls the carpet out from under him, all he can do is reach out to the people he’s intimate with, and Kirby is his best friend. It’s a very familiar thing if you’ve ever broken up with someone. Maybe you haven’t …
I definitely have … [laughs]
Then you know, you want to talk about it. You want to understand it. You need to reach out. “Do I love her? Do I hate her? Was she a bitch, or was she great? Did I screw up? Did she screw up?” You tend to lean on your friends.
Bill Murray, who is possibly Earth’s coolest human, plays Saul. How does he fit into Swan’s life?
Bill Murray plays his business manager, who’s also a good close friend. I thought it was interesting that with Kirby, Jason is younger than Charlie, so he’s someone with a younger perspective, but his business manager is more mature and has another perspective on relationships and what happens when you spend more time with a person — and the good and bad of that.
Kind of a father figure?
In a way. I think you could say that. The idea is they are business colleagues, but once they get through business they really talk about their feelings. Bill plays it beautifully with this combination of being someone very professional, and then all of a sudden he totally shifts gears and goes personal.
The way you’re describing it makes him sound like a mentor-type.
But they’re all kind of flailing around. He’s a father-figure to some degree, but he needs advice just as much as Charlie’s character. He’s been together with his wife of 20 years and she wants to break up with him, so now he has to deal with similar feelings of confusion and alienation.
That brings us to Patricia Arquette as Izzy …
Izzy is Swan’s sister. They’re very close. I mean, I have a sister who I’m very close with. [Lost in Translation and Somewhere filmmaker Sofia Coppola.] It’s familiar to me, and she brings a woman’s perspective — someone who can shed light, and challenge him, and prod him. The hope is that through all these friends and family and colleagues, you work your way through it and everyone gives their advice and tries to guide you and gets frustrated. Her role is to be the loyal, beloved sister who can speak very frankly. She tells him he’s gotta get his s—t together, but at the same time can be compassionate.
A24, a brand new New York-based indie distributor, has acquired the U.S. rights to the movie and is announcing plans today to debut it in February 2013.
Check out some first photos from the film after the jump, along with an exclusive EW interview with Coppola, who explains the strange, soulful journey of this star-crossed character, who asks: Is it possible to love and hate someone at the same time?
Coppola, the son of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, previously directed the 2001 retro sci-fi movie CQ and is a frequent collaborator of director Wes Anderson, co-writing The Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom and working as a second unit director on The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III is also set in a stylized world, a skewed version of contemporary Hollywood where Swan, a famous graphic designer, has a charmed life that begins to fall apart when girlfriend Ivana abruptly ends their romance.
Swan turns to his fellow travelers Kirby (Schwartzman), Saul (Murray) and sister Izzy (Patricia Arquette) when the going gets rough.
Roman Coppola: Charlie is so perfect for the role, but he’s not perfect because of the public profile we’ve seen in the news. He’s incredibly talented as an actor, he has tons of charisma, he’s very witty. He’s very funny and charming. You can use your charm sometimes as a problem solver — and my character, that’s what he’s been doing. He’s been sliding through on life, using his charm and wit and charisma to get past some problems. But the problems are still there, and that’s the story of the movie.
Are we talking about Charlie Sheen or Charles Swan now?
To relate it to Charlie as a person, he has all those qualities. But to say “wild man,” it doesn’t quite … it’s not what I would choose, those words. There are many similarities, but not what you’d expect. He’s not someone who’s out of control. I even hate to bring all that up because it only reinforces it.
I see the line in the film’s synopsis saying “Charles’ life falls apart and he swirls into a downward spiral of doubt, confusion and reflection.” It’s easy to think, “Oh — you know who would be perfect for this part …?”
[Laughs] Exactly. Well, I can say there is something that really fits, but it’s due to his great acting abilities. On the surface you could make a lot of parallels, but when you see it you’ll appreciate this character is one we invented together, and he as a performer drew from whatever talents and inclinations he has.
Is it kind of a “lost weekend” story?
It does take place over a short period of time, and there’s a lot of confusion, and there is a “lost weekend” evening where Charlie goes out and drinks a lot of Brandy Alexanders and gets a little crazy. So that’s part of the story.
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| Writer-director Roman Coppola shoots the film’s composer, Liam Hayes, who turns up onscreen for this beach sequence — which obviously is a little untethered from reality. |
The movie is called “a glimpse inside the mind …” So I imagine things can get pretty weird, pretty fast. [Click for a larger version of the photo above for an example.]
It’s not strictly realistic. In the film, because some of the sequences take place in the imagination of the main character, it goes to fantastical circumstances and settings. There’s a western sequence, there’s an underground spy-agency sequence. There are some playful touches that, for me, are cued off this main character, whose professional life is creating imagery, stylized imagery like album cover art.
Is there a symbolic value to the graphic-design component? That’s a job about control of perception.
I never thought of that consciously. But there is something about controlling your world. It does pertain to creating the world around you. The way you dress and the people you surround yourself with. It’s a very sensual profession, where the touch and look and color is very much your world. The kind of designer this character is has a love of the female form, so there’s a lot of imagery about women and women’s bodies.
Let’s talk about the women! The lost girlfriend is named Ivana — who did you get to portray this ideal woman-of-his-dreams?
She’s played by Katheryn Winnick [a recurring charactor on Bones, who had small roles in Love and Other Drugs and Killers]. She’s done some TV performances and Cold Souls [a 2009 film with Paul Giamatti]. I just came across her randomly, watching television, and I tracked her down and looked her up. There was just something about her. Casting is mysterious. Sometimes something just infects you a little bit, and you fall in love with them. That’s how I felt about her. And I liked that she was less known, and therefore you kind of get to meet her as a character rather than a personality playing a role.
Aubrey Plaza and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are also in the film. How do these women shape the things going on in his head?
Aubrey Plaza is the producer of his design studio. She’s trying to keep him on the ball in terms of keeping him focused and applying his energy to getting his work done. His business is foundering a bit. And Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the best friend of his girlfriend who just broke up with him. She is not so supportive of their relationship.
(There goes my boner. MEW is playing a dominatrix in a fantasy sequence)
 |
| Jewish cowboy? Lots of Western heroes have worn stars on their shirts. Few have worn Stars of David. |
Tell me about Swan’s friends – Kirby, Saul and Izzy. Let’s go one by one – Jason Schwartzman as Kirby [Pictured above, in full beard, on horseback.] Who is he?
Kirby is Swan’s best friend. He’s a recording star and stand-up comic. He’s a very successful comic, and they know each other because Swan did all his album covers. The premise is when Swan loses his girlfriend and it really pulls the carpet out from under him, all he can do is reach out to the people he’s intimate with, and Kirby is his best friend. It’s a very familiar thing if you’ve ever broken up with someone. Maybe you haven’t …
I definitely have … [laughs]
Then you know, you want to talk about it. You want to understand it. You need to reach out. “Do I love her? Do I hate her? Was she a bitch, or was she great? Did I screw up? Did she screw up?” You tend to lean on your friends.
Bill Murray, who is possibly Earth’s coolest human, plays Saul. How does he fit into Swan’s life?
Bill Murray plays his business manager, who’s also a good close friend. I thought it was interesting that with Kirby, Jason is younger than Charlie, so he’s someone with a younger perspective, but his business manager is more mature and has another perspective on relationships and what happens when you spend more time with a person — and the good and bad of that.
Kind of a father figure?
In a way. I think you could say that. The idea is they are business colleagues, but once they get through business they really talk about their feelings. Bill plays it beautifully with this combination of being someone very professional, and then all of a sudden he totally shifts gears and goes personal.
The way you’re describing it makes him sound like a mentor-type.
But they’re all kind of flailing around. He’s a father-figure to some degree, but he needs advice just as much as Charlie’s character. He’s been together with his wife of 20 years and she wants to break up with him, so now he has to deal with similar feelings of confusion and alienation.
That brings us to Patricia Arquette as Izzy …
Izzy is Swan’s sister. They’re very close. I mean, I have a sister who I’m very close with. [Lost in Translation and Somewhere filmmaker Sofia Coppola.] It’s familiar to me, and she brings a woman’s perspective — someone who can shed light, and challenge him, and prod him. The hope is that through all these friends and family and colleagues, you work your way through it and everyone gives their advice and tries to guide you and gets frustrated. Her role is to be the loyal, beloved sister who can speak very frankly. She tells him he’s gotta get his s—t together, but at the same time can be compassionate.
SFX’s horror expert Penny Dreadful looks back at the highlights and lowlights of this year’s Film4 FrightFest that took place in London last weekend…
Sean Pertwee wedged in a pipe, a zombie/zimmer frame race, a killer clown riding a tiny bike, Dario Argento, Simon Pegg, Paddy from Emmerdale, A Chinese alien, moths, melons, monsters, and a mob of drooling gore fans – it can only be horror-Mecca FrightFest.
2012 could be the year of the women – in front and behind the camera. Jennifer Lynch’s intelligent serial killer and captive two-hander Chained and Jen and Sylvia Soska’s surprising, brave and lyrical body modification metaphor America Mary proved to be highlights.
Anthology gem V/H/S featured stories from a bank of hot talent including Ti West and Adam Wingard and included a wonderful, beautiful, vengeful and uncanny cat lady, as well as some awesome scares. Less joyful, though, were opening film The Seasoning House, and Chilean oddity Hidden In The Woods which included uncomfortable rapes setting off controversial conversations about whether levels of on-screen misogyny had rocketed this year.
Saturday was owned by the Italians with smart doc Eurocrime delving into the Italian cop and gangster movies of the ’70s kicking things off. Next was the Manetti brother’s frankly terrible Paura 3D – another one with lots of graphic nudity; some things you just don’t need to see in 3D. *Shudder*. Shame, since the Manetti’s The Arrival Of Wang, where a translator is drafted in to talk to a captured alien who only speaks Chinese, which showed in the discovering screen, was provocative, well made and interesting (if a little under developed).
The highly-anticipated giallo Tulpa took the 9pm slot and became the strangest screening of the fest – some dodgy dubbing and dubious acting, combined with the contagiousness of crowds and the British sense of humour meant the audience began roaring with laughter at around an hour in and never let up. The cast and crew was there. Very awkward. Not our finest hour.
But it was funny.
Thankfully scalpy remake Maniac rounded off the night to grateful applause.
Most notorious screening of the Sunday: the shorts programme, surprisingly. Part way through an impressive selection of horror minis an audience member had a seizure. Coincidentally it was during the most graphic and upsetting of the pieces, Tokophobia. Let’s hope they’re not going to be insensitive enough to put that in the marketing blurb.
Luckily it didn’t distract from Jaume Balagero’s Sleep Tight, a black-as-night torture comedy about a depressed concierge driven to madness and meanness by a cheerful guest. From this to Sinister, a slick Hollywood production which also happened to be smart, scary and very effective. One to watch.
Other films of note – Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut, running at over two and a half hours and made up of the original Nightbreed with original footage from a VHS Clive Barker found down the back of his sofa (or something) cut in. Cockney Vs Zombies (infinitely funnier than Strippers Vs Werewolves) proved, a pleasingly good natured zom-romp (you muppet!), while dreamy, circular, sound-scape Berberian Sound Studio was intoxicating and fascinating even if it was so concerned with plot. Another great year.
BEST OF THE FEST:
the Reviews so far : To the Wonder
Neil - Ben Affleck
Marina - Olga Kurylenko
Jane - Rachel McAdams
Father Quintana - Javier Bardem
Variety :
Never before has Malick explored sexuality so openly onscreen, and while the nudity is fairly discreet, the eroticism of flesh cradling flesh, even the gesture of a hand touching a shoulder, turns out to be a natural subject for Lubezki's exquisitely graceful camerawork.
Indiewire :
It’s also, it should be said, unexpectedly sexy in places. Malick’s always been one of the more sensual filmmakers out there, but there’s a bona-fide eroticism at work in places here.
Agi.it :
Former Bond-girl Olga Kurylenko appears naked in the only 'hot' scene of Malick's new movie 'To the Wonder'.
Ukrainian model and actress Olga Kurylenko appears naked in the only not-so-'hot' scene of film director Terrence Malick's controversial movie 'To the Wonder', which was met with hisses during its presentation to the press at the 69th Venice Film Festival this morning. The movie, starring Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko, is a story about human and divine love. Kurylenko's nude scene was arguably the only one that managed to give a shake to Malick's movie. Malick won the Palme d'Or prize for his movie 'The tree of life' at the Cannes Film Festival. . .
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Emma Watson in Glamour USA October
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Angelina Jolie calls Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson romance a publicity stuntSean Pertwee wedged in a pipe, a zombie/zimmer frame race, a killer clown riding a tiny bike, Dario Argento, Simon Pegg, Paddy from Emmerdale, A Chinese alien, moths, melons, monsters, and a mob of drooling gore fans – it can only be horror-Mecca FrightFest.
 |
| Chained |
 |
| American Mary |
Anthology gem V/H/S featured stories from a bank of hot talent including Ti West and Adam Wingard and included a wonderful, beautiful, vengeful and uncanny cat lady, as well as some awesome scares. Less joyful, though, were opening film The Seasoning House, and Chilean oddity Hidden In The Woods which included uncomfortable rapes setting off controversial conversations about whether levels of on-screen misogyny had rocketed this year.
 |
| V/H/S |
 |
| Tulpa |
But it was funny.
Thankfully scalpy remake Maniac rounded off the night to grateful applause.
 |
| Tokophobia |
 |
| Sleep Tight |
 |
| Sinister |
 |
| Cockneys Vs Zombies |
- American Mary
- V/H/S
- Sleep Tight
- Sinister
- Cockneys Vs Zombies
the Reviews so far : To the Wonder
Marina - Olga Kurylenko
Jane - Rachel McAdams
Father Quintana - Javier Bardem
Variety :
Never before has Malick explored sexuality so openly onscreen, and while the nudity is fairly discreet, the eroticism of flesh cradling flesh, even the gesture of a hand touching a shoulder, turns out to be a natural subject for Lubezki's exquisitely graceful camerawork.
Indiewire :
It’s also, it should be said, unexpectedly sexy in places. Malick’s always been one of the more sensual filmmakers out there, but there’s a bona-fide eroticism at work in places here.
Agi.it :
Former Bond-girl Olga Kurylenko appears naked in the only 'hot' scene of Malick's new movie 'To the Wonder'.
Ukrainian model and actress Olga Kurylenko appears naked in the only not-so-'hot' scene of film director Terrence Malick's controversial movie 'To the Wonder', which was met with hisses during its presentation to the press at the 69th Venice Film Festival this morning. The movie, starring Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko, is a story about human and divine love. Kurylenko's nude scene was arguably the only one that managed to give a shake to Malick's movie. Malick won the Palme d'Or prize for his movie 'The tree of life' at the Cannes Film Festival. . .
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Emma Watson in Glamour USA October
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by Tracy Dye
Ever since news broke last month of Twilight heroine Kristen Stewart's "momentary indiscretion" with married Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders, social media and news sites have exploded with the ever-unfolding fallout.
After Stewart confirmed in a public statement that she had cheated on boyfriend and Twilight costar Robert Pattinson with Sanders, fervor over the story escalated as a reportedly heartbroken and angry Pattinson moved out of the home the couple shared in Los Angeles, laying low at friend Reese Witherspoon's home in Ojai, California. Since then, Pattinson has come out of hiding and made the talk show rounds for his movie Cosmopolis, but stayed decidedly mum about his breakup with Stewart.
Despite the ongoing drama, A-list star Angelina Jolie took to her twitter, Jolie Project, to denounce Pattinson and Stewart's entire romantic relationship as a publicity stunt.
"Do you know that more than 90% of the stories are either made up by some magazine, or are a pr stunt," she wrote. "You play along when younger but end up realizing it's a bad idea. Studio gains, but you don't. (Kristen - Robert thing: classic)."
Baltimore Dating Examiner speculated that the photos of Sanders and Stewart nuzzling and canoodling appeared a bit orchestrated and the pair's blatant disregard for paparazzi could be indicative of a publicity stunt. However, Stewart's former costar, Jodie Foster, was passionate in defending the young starlet for the backlash she has received following the infidelity. Robert Pattinson is also reportedly selling the mansion he shared with Stewart and may even be moving back to London. On top of that, Pattinson, Stewart and fellow Twilight star Taylor Lautner have opted out of making appearances at the franchise's final four conventions.
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"i will know you (The Scream)" from Sophia Lou on Vimeo.
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Beware the NSFW Boobs in Rick Ross’s Video ‘Amsterdam’
Party at Rick Ross's house, no bikini tops allowed!
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Naked truths about female nudity
Why must a belly stand for something? When an ordinary woman strips on film it always becomes controversial. Can't a body just be a body?
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Focus of attention: Michelle Williams And Sarah Silverman in Take This Waltz. |
There's a scene in the latest Sarah Polley film, Take This Waltz, where Michelle Williams and Sarah Silverman shower with their ageing water aerobics class in a gangly soup of bellies and pubes and shampoo. It is not like most female nude scenes – it's brightly lit, it shows a variety of body shapes, and its purpose is not to titillate. "I'm standing like a caveman," said Silverman of the scene. "It's very DEAD… I'm a human body." Polley explains: "Every time you see a naked woman's body on screen, it's either in a sexual context — or if it's an older woman it's the scene in About Schmidt, where Kathy Bates gets into the hot tub and the whole audience is supposed to scream, and Jack Nicholson is so horrified. I've seen that over and over," she says, "and I find that really offensive that women's bodies are either objectified or used for comic value." And yet.
And yet this scene is discussed in every review, in every interview. The scene had been up and downloaded online weeks before the film even opened in the UK and, as with Lena Dunham's nudity in HBO's Girls (which comes to British telly later this year), critics have flocked around this unusual image of a naked woman with un-surgeried breasts and a convex stomach, hanging their entire conversation on the wobble of a thigh. Where a traditionally attractive woman's body would have been dismissed, plot-wise, as background music, a saggier breast must stand for something. It must be discussed with studied detachment.
The New Yorker saw the shower scene's display of "pudgy corpulence" as an arrow towards the film's underlying theme – that "though everyone is beautiful, some are more beautiful than others", while the New York Times said this single scene of nudity shows that, "young flesh will age; old flesh was once young; time wins in the end". Never is it not mentioned. Which is fine – it makes sense, these are scenes and bodies we rarely see, but in discussing them it exposes our squinting dismay. I wonder what the bodies in next year's Chloë Moretz remake of Carrie will be like – the original having such focus on body-horror, the original having the most naked shower scene ever. Will the new bodies be hairy, pasty, pendulous? Or will that distract from the plot?
It's odd, I think, that in order for nudity to be read as casual, as relaxed, real, the bodies must be anything but – the bodies must be tanned and toned enough to tell no stories at all. If they have bellies, the bellies must stand for something – Dunham was regularly described by critics as "brave", her body "shocking". Silverman warned fans to lower their expectations before watching her nude scene, pre-empting the inevitable analysis. Even when the nudity is meant to be casual, the response is complicated.
However hard female directors like Dunham and Polley work to diversify bodies on screen, throwing their actors and selves to the audiences like live bait, we're not there yet – we're not yet at a place where female nudity is read as anything but either sexy or transgressive. There is not yet an in-between – stretch-marks and cellulite will overshadow any affectionate portrayals of female locker-room intimacy. Anything other than perfection rings bells, provides headlines. Perfect is neutral; imperfect is a talking point.
But we are at the beginning of a curve. Perhaps it will take another generation of directors before their nude scenes are read in the casual way they intended. The more shower scenes we see that aren't styled like Pirelli calendars, the less analysis there will be of them, and the more we'll accept that some women (even beautiful actor women) have thighs the width of waists, and waists the width of chests. That bodies sometimes stand neither for desire, nor repulsion – that sometimes a woman's body is just a body.
* Holy crap! I thought they excised the shower scene from the remake. Chloë Moretz probably won't be naked. Other girls in the main cast includes Gabriella Wilde, Portia Doubleday.
And yet this scene is discussed in every review, in every interview. The scene had been up and downloaded online weeks before the film even opened in the UK and, as with Lena Dunham's nudity in HBO's Girls (which comes to British telly later this year), critics have flocked around this unusual image of a naked woman with un-surgeried breasts and a convex stomach, hanging their entire conversation on the wobble of a thigh. Where a traditionally attractive woman's body would have been dismissed, plot-wise, as background music, a saggier breast must stand for something. It must be discussed with studied detachment.
The New Yorker saw the shower scene's display of "pudgy corpulence" as an arrow towards the film's underlying theme – that "though everyone is beautiful, some are more beautiful than others", while the New York Times said this single scene of nudity shows that, "young flesh will age; old flesh was once young; time wins in the end". Never is it not mentioned. Which is fine – it makes sense, these are scenes and bodies we rarely see, but in discussing them it exposes our squinting dismay. I wonder what the bodies in next year's Chloë Moretz remake of Carrie will be like – the original having such focus on body-horror, the original having the most naked shower scene ever. Will the new bodies be hairy, pasty, pendulous? Or will that distract from the plot?
It's odd, I think, that in order for nudity to be read as casual, as relaxed, real, the bodies must be anything but – the bodies must be tanned and toned enough to tell no stories at all. If they have bellies, the bellies must stand for something – Dunham was regularly described by critics as "brave", her body "shocking". Silverman warned fans to lower their expectations before watching her nude scene, pre-empting the inevitable analysis. Even when the nudity is meant to be casual, the response is complicated.
However hard female directors like Dunham and Polley work to diversify bodies on screen, throwing their actors and selves to the audiences like live bait, we're not there yet – we're not yet at a place where female nudity is read as anything but either sexy or transgressive. There is not yet an in-between – stretch-marks and cellulite will overshadow any affectionate portrayals of female locker-room intimacy. Anything other than perfection rings bells, provides headlines. Perfect is neutral; imperfect is a talking point.
But we are at the beginning of a curve. Perhaps it will take another generation of directors before their nude scenes are read in the casual way they intended. The more shower scenes we see that aren't styled like Pirelli calendars, the less analysis there will be of them, and the more we'll accept that some women (even beautiful actor women) have thighs the width of waists, and waists the width of chests. That bodies sometimes stand neither for desire, nor repulsion – that sometimes a woman's body is just a body.
* Holy crap! I thought they excised the shower scene from the remake. Chloë Moretz probably won't be naked. Other girls in the main cast includes Gabriella Wilde, Portia Doubleday.
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“Kazantip” by Alexander Tikhomirov
Women are really one of the most beautiful creatures under the sun – apart from a few exceptions of course. And there seems an absolutely beauty overkill at the Kazantip Festival which is an electronic dance music festival in the Ukraine. Moscow based photographer Alexander Tikhomirov filmed rad 8 minutes of the lively hustle and bustle and we all should be happy now.
Sherlyn Chopra : on Twitter
Kate Middleton vows to help Prince Harry through his naked photo scandal
Duchess Catherine has vowed to help Prince Harry through his naked photo scandal. The duchess has a close bond with her brother-in-law and told her husband Prince William they should pledge their full support to him following the incident, which saw him pictured nude following a game of 'strip billiards' in his Las Vegas hotel suite.
A source said, "William called Harry straight away and gave him a bit of a telling off. But Kate pointed out he had already been through the ringer and deserved their sympathy.
"She's promised to support him as much as possible and offered to help him come up with a recovery plan to get his public image back on track."
Harry is said to be focused on getting back to work as an army helicopter pilot, even though he expects to be mocked by his pals.
The source added to LOOK magazine, "I think he'll be glad to be around his army mates, as though they're bound to give him a ribbing over his antics, they'll also understand that getting naked and larking about is just laddish behaviour."
* like Russell Peters famous catch-phrase 'somebody gonna get hurt'. This is not going to end well for William. Kate so far have demonstrated the qualities of demureness but you can never trust the quiet ones. Women. They marry nice guys but always attracted to assholes.
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