Movie sets that have inflamed the imagination with fairy-tale encounters taking place during the great eras in which luxury ruled are plentiful. But most of…
View More Seasons at HighclereCategory: Films
Using remarkable films as inspiration for literary design explorations can coalesce into brand elevating content and entertaining reads. I’m a movie lover so I’m always excited when I hit upon an idea that intermingles films, design and literature.
One of my all-time favorite films for the quirkiness of its set is The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson. It just so happens, it is also the favorite movie of a young writer, Miles Stephenson, who did a guest blog post for me after a trip we’d spent stalking the Lost Generation in Paris. His brilliant idea was to contrast and compare the writing of Ernest Hemingway and Anderson. Guess who we happened to bump into one evening at Chez Georges? The movie director himself, whose pictured in the post with Miles, a beaming fan!
I used a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, The Panther, as inspiration for an exploration of the film Assassination Tango coupled with a trip to the zoo in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which Robert Duvall’s character in the film visits in order to see the black panther there. Titled Ode to the Panther, the diary entry finds me reading Rilke’s poem to the lethargic panther who is languishing in the summer heat. It was one of my strangest literary adventures to date!
I’m also in Argentina when I channel Sally Potter and her film The Tango Lesson, traipsing around town photographing a young Argentine woman whose narrative I’ve invented finds her searching for her milonguero who has cut out on her! Potter’s film remains one of my favorites about this remarkable dance and its ability to break hearts, which I explore in The Architecture of Tango. There are many more posts in my repertoire that explore film. I hope you enjoy my quirky point of view as I’m looking at them from a cultural perspective.
Django Reinhardt Hot-Jazz Genius
This essay delving into the gypsy ways of Django Reinhardt is included in my most recent book The Modern Salonnière. The 34 other essays in the…
View More Django Reinhardt Hot-Jazz GeniusEarnest in Paris
This comparative look at Wes Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, Earnest in Paris, is a guest post by Miles Stephenson, a talented young writer whom I…
View More Earnest in ParisThe Architecture of Tango
I envy the pencil being held carefully between her fingers, the rasping sound the sharpener makes as a thin layer of wood peels away from…
View More The Architecture of TangoA Midcentury Cougar on the Prowl
The nickname cougar, signifying women who have “a thing” for younger men, hasn’t been around for as long as they’ve been cropping up in popular…
View More A Midcentury Cougar on the ProwlHeaven Shall Be Here
In the film A Little Chaos, Alan Rickman, who plays an unlikely Louis XIV, declares, “Heaven shall be here.” He’s speaking of a ballroom he…
View More Heaven Shall Be HereThe Seat of Scottish Power
As the opening credits roll during the film Her Majesty, Mrs Brown, a Markino marble bust, which has been tossed over a castle’s ramparts, tumbles…
View More The Seat of Scottish PowerHow to Set a Mood
The 1968 version of The Thomas Crown Affair starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway is a mercurial mélange of masculine and feminine charisma in equal…
View More How to Set a MoodThe Red Carpet Treatment
There is a momentum to writing that, once interrupted, is challenging to reboot. I’ve experienced this first-hand during the past two months as I have…
View More The Red Carpet TreatmentThe Grand Budapest Hotel
When the Writers Guild of America awards were handed out yesterday, Wes Anderson and Hugo Guinness won for the best original screenplay for their film The…
View More The Grand Budapest Hotel