Prada and Nike: Fleet-Footed Goddesses

I've been contemplating fleet feet for the last few days, as I had an unanticipated adventure in shoe deconstruction with my new Nike Air Max runners. 

To make a long story short, the left footbed (beneath the inner sole) contains an embedded plastic ring, into which one can insert a microchip for iPodding while running. 

This princess quickly felt the pea (had no idea that my two-day-old shoe came with such a feature) and, after my initial crankiness, removed the offending ring with a butter knife, whittled down some irritating arch support, took some anti-inflammatories, and, happily, find myself mobile again.

I would call these "dove" grey.

Always looking for some irony, or, at least, a little coincidence, I remembered that I had seen a new Prada shoe ad for Spring 2012 that showed some hot feet:

These might need an anti-inflammatory too.

I realize that the above shoes are about hotrods and engine-revving, but they reminded me of Mercury, the winged messenger:

And his wings, in turn recalled Henry James' devastating novel The Wings of the Dove:

In the 1997 film version, Charlotte Rampling wears some of the most gorgeous Poirot-inspired clothes:

Tomorrow I shall decide whether my running shoes are propelled by flames or feathers.

Rochas' Creme de Menthe Heroine Dress

This lovely dress by Rochas is inspired by, among other things, Hitchcock films.

I can see Tippi Hedren's sage-green suit in The Birds,

and Grace Kelly's suit in Rear Window,

but most of all, I can see the creme de menthe parfait that I would have as a child for Christmas dinner,

in the ballroom of the grand old Charlottetown Hotel.

Made in Buckingham

I watched the film Made in Dagenham for the first time right around the time when the Duchess and the Duke of Cambridge were leaving Calgary. 

In both productions a red dress featured prominently. 

The Duchess wore a Catherine Walker design, accentuated by her mother-in-law's large, glittering maple leaf pin.

Rita (Sally Hawkins' character) wore a borrowed Biba, with large, diamond-shape buttons.

The more I thought about it, the more the two narratives began to intersect.

Both Kate and Rita work for well-known institutions (The Firm and Ford Motor Company); both are commoners (though I dislike that word) who emerge as public figures while wearing a designer red dress.

Most importantly, both speak out on behalf of the oppressed: in lieu of wedding gifts the Duchess invited guests to donate to an anti-bullying charity, and Rita's persuasive speeches led to women receiving equal pay for equal work.

I read some reviews after I had screened the film and learned from a male English critic that the plot device of a posh, highly educated and bored wife (Rosamond Pike, the wife of a Ford exec.) lending a working-class gel the red Biba dresss is a "clunky attempt at female solidarity across the class divide."
But I think that dresses are a fitting way to bridge the class divide. Just look at how easily Rita and the female politician Barbara Castle (brilliantly played by Miranda Richardson) bond over frocks. Both working women share a recognition of quality (Biba) but own the much lesser priced C&A.

I'll argue that although women can and do unite over social and political issues, we can also build alliances through dresses. I know that I'm looking forward to seeing more of those dresses that are made in Buckingham.

Investigative Reporting

I watched The Kids Are All Right last night and was reminded once again, of my crush on Annette Bening (I have even chopped off my hair like hers, on occasion).

Mr. C and I have often chatted about how much she resembles the Columbia Pictures logo, so I thought it was time to engage in a little investigative reporting.

The hypothesis: Columbia adopted Annette Bening's face for its logo in 1993.

The sniff: Bening's star illuminated particularly brightly just before 1993, with leads in The Grifters, Regarding Henry, and Bugsy.  Plus she had married Warren Beatty in 1992, which was kind of like claiming a torch (as in the logo).


Bening and Clyde?

The minimum info necessary to write this blog post:  Some external source that links Bening with the Columbia logo.

The research:  Columbia used a model, Jenny Joseph, for its 1992 logo: 

But Columbia's face was a computer composite.  Kind of like when ELLE ran a cover of its "perfect beauty" back in the 1990s, which was a computer-generated face.  Could Annette's features be part of this composite?

The findings: Apparently my hypothesis is an urban legend.  The 2000 film What Planet Are You From starring Bening and Garry Shandling riffed on this myth by superimposing Bening's face on the Columbia logo.  (I think I've even seen this film.)

But still: that "composite" description nags.  I'm not sure my investigative report is completely closed.  What do gentle readers think?

Get a Grip Before You "Never Let Me Go"

I've been trying to get into the film Never Let Me Go, but its grip is not that strong, ironically.  My favorite character, played by Sally Hawkins, has just been fired, and I will warm up the DVD if you tell me that she reappears later.

Sally Hawkins is a remarkably compelling actress who played an impossibly upbeat schoolteacher in Happy Go Lucky.  Her character in that film was challenged by a--shall we say *difficult*--driving instructor.

[I remember when I learned to drive: I was nineteen (who needs to drive in the city?) and signed up for a course with Young Drivers of Canada, which sounds quite martial to me now.

My instructor arrived at my home and got our lesson off to a terrible start when he told me I looked like his ex-girlfriend.  I replied that he looked like my ex-driving instructor.  And requested a new one.]

In Never Let Me Go, though, Sally Hawkins shows warmth, compassion, a sort of engaged distraction, and commands the camera every time she's in the frame. 

I've just learned that she's playing Mrs. Reed in the new adaptation of Jane Eyre, and I am wondering how she will inhabit that unlikeable character.

The Windmills of "Volver"

I've been thinking about La Mancha recently.  Through a serendipitous coincidence, I'm reading Don Quixote on the (wedge) heels of having watched Pedro Almodovar's Volver, both of which are set in La Mancha.

Indeed, La Mancha is Almodovar's childhood home, and he builds the famed windmills into his plot.  As the characters drive from their Aunt Paula's home to Raimunda's home, they pass a row of modern windmills,

much different from these, which Don Quixote probably would have engaged in a jousting match.

All this rumination on windmills reminds me of the song "The Windmills of Your Mind," first performed by Noel Harrison, with music composed by Michel Legrand, who has written music for a number of films.  "Windmills," for instance, was used in The Thomas Crowne Affair (1968). 

I won't mention The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, for which he may be best known, because I've already mentioned it here, but will pause to give a fresh shout-out to the beautiful film Cleo from 5 to 7 by Agnes Varda, in which Legrand performs. 

Returning to La Mancha, to borrow from the title of Almodovar's film (volver means "to return"), a monument has been erected there to honor Almodovar, one designed to "frame" La Mancha in a cinematic manner. 

The architects used the "wide-screen" approach: