Life Lessons from Vivienne Westwood

Vivienne Westwood

Life Lessons from Vivienne Westwood

By Ernesto Macias

March 11, 2022

Welcome to Life Lessons. This week, in celebration of Women’s History Month, we’re revisiting Vivienne Westwood’s 2012 Interview feature. In it, the punk icon talks to Tim Blanks, the former Editor-at-Large of the now-defunct iconic fashion hub Style.com (and current Editor-at-Large of Business of Fashion). In their conversation, the then 71-year-old Dame of the British Empire gets candid with Blanks about her punk roots, her ever-evolving style, and aging with style. So sit back, grab a pen—you just might learn a thing or two.

Alain Elkann interviews Vivienne Westwood

Vivienne Westwood

by Alain Elkann

Fashion designer Vivienne Westwood: “People have never been so poorly dressed.”

Vivienne Westwood, what state is the fashion industry in?

“I make avant-garde things, but I hear from people that there is a crisis, and that it is quite serious. I don’t know how long it will last though. But then there are still many who can spend a lot for clothing. The message I would like to send is to buy less but choose well. And this is how my collection is. I say to create small scarves, use safety pins and old fabrics. If you spend a lot on one thing and you choose well, this is the right way to do it.”

Shaheen Baig / The mastermind casting director behind Peaky Blinders

Shaheen Baig

The mastermind casting
director behind Peaky Blinders

By Emma Brown

October 30, 2017

If you are a fan of contemporary British film and television—not the lace and pomp PBS period pieces, but those gritty, award-dominating independent dramas—you’re almost definitely a fan of Shaheen Baig. Originally from Birmingham, smack dab in the middle of England, Baig is the casting director behind all four seasons of Peaky Blinders and films like Control (2007), Lady Macbeth (2016), and God’s Own Country (2017).

ABOVE: SNOOP DOGG WITH HIS SON, CORDE.

New Again: Snoop Dogg

By Emma Brown and Adam Sandler

April 10, 2012

It must be difficult to think of new and exciting career ventures when you are Snoop Dogg. Already a rapper, actor, producer, philanthropist, Little League football coach, porn film director (Snoop Scorsese), clothing designer, candy maker, author; what else is left? The ever-inventive Snoop has found a new money-making, marijuna-motivated, creative outlet—publishing a book of his lyrics made entirely of rolling papers from Snoop’s new rolling paper line, “Kingsize Slim Rolling Papers” and hemp, with a match strip on the spine entitled Rolling Words: A Smokable Songbook. We suppose there’s no better way to re-use, recycle and reduce than by smoking some Snoop Dogg lyrics post-bedtime read.

Interview / Clint Eastwood / The man who would be Huston

New Again: Clint Eastwood

By graham fuller and Emma Brown

September 5, 2012

MAKE MY PREY: CLINT EASTWOOD WITH TIMOTHY SPALL IN WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART 

(1990)

Clint Eastwood’s political leanings are no secret. The actor, director, scowling icon, and soon-to-be reality star has publicly supported the presidential campaigns of Republican Richard Nixon (although post-Watergate, Eastwood did criticize Nixon’s morals during an interview with Playboy), and was once mayor of Carmel in California (apparently his platform concerned the removal of a ban involving ice cream). Most recently, Eastwood gave a colorful speech endorsing Mitt Romney at the Republican National Convention. Eastwood is a rare Republican spokesperson in Hollywood—a town that, according to Eastwood’s speech, is perceived as “left of Lenin.”

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

 

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly / Review by Pauline Kael

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

(1966)

Review by Pauline Kael

by Pauline Kael

The scale of the Italian-made Western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is what most differentiates it from American-made Westerns. My guess is that everything is made vast because Europeans love the wide-open spaces in our Westerns and because Sergio Leone, the director, wanted to outdo the scenic effects in American Westerns. If a man crosses a street in Leone’s Santa Fe, the street looks half a mile wide; a farmer’s hut has rooms-opening into rooms into the distance, like the Metropolitan Museum; the hotel in a cowtown has a plush lobby big enough for a political convention. The movie is like High Noon and The Ox-Bow Incident and a dozen others all scrambled together and playing in a giant echo chamber. The bad men must then be enormously, preposterously evil — larger-than-life parodies, as in a Kurosawa film — and each wound inflicted is insanely garish. Yet, stupid as it all is, and gruesome, the change of scale is rather fascinating. This Italian Western, set in our Civil War period, looks more foreign to us than an ordinary Italian film — which gives rise to speculation about how we alter the scale, and hence the meaning, in our movie versions of foreign stories. Because, although this huge Italian Western (shot in Spain) imitates the externals of American Westerns, it makes those externals so much bigger that what the American Western hero stands for — everything that audiences are supposed to identify with — would look too small, and so it has simply been omitted. The result seems to be popular with American men, who go to relax and enjoy the action; they probably hardly notice — and wouldn’t care anyway — that the Western theme is missing.

The New Yorker, March 2, 1968

SCRAPSFROMTHELOFT

 

Clint Eastwood at the AFI Fest premiere of “Richard Jewell.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Clint Eastwood’s ‘Richard Jewell’ earns an ovation as it enters awards race

BY GLENN WHIPP

ENTERTAINMENT COLUMNIST

NOV. 21, 2019 5:16 AM PT

Eastwood began shooting “Richard Jewell” in late June and wrapped in August, enabling Warner Bros. to get it in theaters on Dec. 13. The film could do well commercially, though unlike “American Sniper” or “Sully” — other Eastwood films depicting the dark side of celebrated heroes — it doesn’t have a star. Comedic actor Paul Walter Hauser plays Jewell (Jonah Hill was originally attached), and he makes the most of his first starring role, playing the title character as a kind of principled Paul Blart sad sack, an ordinary man who did an extraordinary thing.

Apocalypse Now / Review by William Cadbury

Marlon Brando
Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now (1979) 

Review by William Cadbury

What does Apocalypse Now mean—the film as we have it, considering the minimal difference between the 35mm version with the title sequence and the 70mm version without, but ignoring all the pre-­release stories and versions, preliminary scripts, and encrusted commentary? Perhaps a guiding thread might be a question of comparison. Consider this description: We are taken into the soul of a strong leader of a semi-military, semi-familial band of peasant foreigners who are engaged in a project purported to be alien from the American national purpose, but which is entirely congruent with it, and we watch that finally empty soul passed on to its natural inheritor, a son worth of his inheritance but left virtually catatonic by it, bereft of its illusions of morality. The Godfather? Yes, but Apocalypse Now too, in many ways.

The Historic Interview with Broadway’s Original Blanche DuBois

Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy
A Streetcar Named Desire

The Historic Interview with Broadway’s Original Blanche DuBois

BY COLETTE DOWLING

JUN 07, 2017

 

In this 1983 interview, Jessica Tandy gets deeply personal about her approach to acting and why she doesn’t consider actors “creators.”

Digging into the archives, we unearth the original articles printed in the Playbills of yesteryear.

At age 74, theatre legend Jessica Tandy returned to Broadway in a revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, which opened December 1, 1983, at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre. After originating the role of Blanche DuBois in the original 1947 production of A Streetcar Named Desire—a role that earned Tandy her first Tony Award—she was prepared to play Williams’ towering matriarch Amanda Wingfield.

Naomi Watts / Somerset Maugham / The Painted Veil

 

Naomi Watts / William Somerset Maugham

THE PAINTED VEIL

Remembering Screen Siren and Fellini Muse Anita Ekberg

Photographed by Peter Basch, Vogue, August 1956

Remembering Screen 

Siren and Fellini Muse 

Anita Ekberg

Anita Ekberg, who passed away Sunday, was best-known for the scene 

in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, where she wades into the Trevi Fountain.

Lynn Yaeger

January 12, 2015

“When you’re born beautiful, it helps you start in the business. But then it becomes a handicap,” Anita Ekberg, the incredibly stunning, famously pneumatic Swedish-born actress once observed.

Marie Sklodowska and Pierre Curie

Marie Sklodowska and Pierre Curie

Take a look at this wedding photo from 26 July 1895 of the most renowned couple in the history of the Nobel Prize: Marie Sklodowska and Pierre Curie – co-recipients of the 1903 physics prize for their research on radioactivity (along with Henri Becquerel).

Instead of a bridal gown, Marie wears the very dark blue outfit that would serve her for many years as a laboratory outfit. The couple were given money as a wedding present which they each used to buy a bicycle, and long, sometimes adventurous cycle rides became their way of relaxing. Their life was otherwise filled with work and study.

Marie was awarded her second Nobel Prize in 1911, this time in the chemistry category, for her "advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element." She was the first person to be awarded the Nobel Prize twice.

NOBEL PRIZE

The Best Day Trips From London by Train

Whitstable’s Old Neptune Pub, built from wood reclaimed from previous storm-tossed buildings on the site, invites long and ale-fueled afternoons.

Photo by Paul Martin/Shutterstock

The Best Day Trips From London by Train

October 24, 2019

Getting out of London, even for just a few hours, can bring a deeper understanding of the rest of the country. Seaside pubs, college towns, Roman baths, cutting-edge museums: We’ve rounded up great options for quick trips out of the city.

There’s a reason central London has 10 major train stations. Head almost any direction, and a quick train ride can carry you to castles, historic university cities, fantastic art collections, ancient ruins, and distinctive pubs. A day trip from the city can reveal more about the British character than afternoon tea at Harrod’s would. So all aboard: Get out of town for a full day of exploring a different side of England.

Ten Frank Lloyd Wright Houses

Fallingwater
Frank Lloyd Wright

10 Frank Lloyd Wright Houses You Can Visit Across the U.S.

Although he became famous for designing public works like the Guggenheim Museum, the American architect’s bread and butter was building private homes.

Ask anyone to name a famous American architect and chances are they’ll name Frank Lloyd Wright, and for good reason. Before Wright, who began designing in the 1890s, there wasn’t a definitive style of American architecture—the pinnacle of luxury was owning a European-esque home: think French empire, Italianate, and Gothic revival. To Wright, who was madly in love with America’s landscape, people, and democratic values, this was a tragedy. Throughout his seven-decade-long career, he would design over 1,000 buildings and put American architecture on the map with his innovative ideas and timeless aesthetic. Today he is recognized as one the most accomplished architects of all time. Though he created a number of famous public works like New York City’s Guggenheim Museum, Wright primarily worked with private homeowners to build the homes of their dreams—and his dreams, naturally. 

Amber Heard to appeal order to pay $10m in Depp defamation case

 

Amber Heard and Johnny Depp at the Fairfax county circuit courthouse in Fairfax,
Virginia on 16 May 2022. Photograph: Steve Helber/AP

Amber Heard to appeal order to pay $10m in Depp defamation case

Heard to appeal court’s ruling ordering her to pay ex-husband Johnny Depp, which came at the conclusion of a high-profile trial

Friday 22 July 2022

Amber Heard on Thursday appealed a Virginia court’s ruling ordering her to pay ex-husband Johnny Depp over $10m during a high-profile defamation trial that exposed the inner workings of their troubled marriage.

Heard’s lawyers filed documents in Fairfax county circuit court, where a six-week trial featured riveting testimony from both Heard and Depp. The document notifies the Virginia court of appeals that Heard intends to appeal the judgment, as well as rulings the judge made after the verdict, including rejecting Heard’s request to set aside the verdict and dismiss the lawsuit or order a new trial.

“We believe the court made errors that prevented a just and fair verdict consistent with the first amendment. We are therefore appealing the verdict,” a spokesperson for Heard said in a statement. “While we realize today’s filing will ignite the Twitter bonfires, there are steps we need to take to ensure both fairness and justice.”

Depp sued Heard for libel over a December 2018 op-ed she wrote in The Washington Post describing herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse”.

Depp’s lawyers alleged he was defamed by the article even though it never mentioned him by name. Heard filed counterclaims, alleging that Depp’s former lawyer defamed her by publicly characterizing her abuse allegations as a hoax.

The jury ordered Heard to pay Depp $10m in compensatory damages and $5m in punitive damages. The punitive damages were reduced to $350,000 under a state cap. The jury awarded Heard $2m on her counterclaim.

Much of the testimony during the six-week trial focused on Heard’s claims that she had been physically and sexually abused by Depp at least a dozen times. Depp insisted that he never hit Heard and that she was the abuser.

“The jury listened to the extensive evidence presented during the six-week trial and came to a clear and unanimous verdict that the defendant herself defamed Mr Depp in multiple instances,” a spokesperson for Depp said in a statement. “We remain confident in our case and that this verdict will stand.”

THE GUARDIAN

 

Ukrainian service members fire a shell from a M777 Howitzer at a front line
in Kharkiv as Russia's war on Ukraine continues. Photograph: Gleb Garanich/Reuters

Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 149 of the invasion

Russia and Ukraine expected to sign deal on Friday to resume Black Sea grain exports; Moscow’s forces ‘about to run out of steam’, UK intelligence chief claims

• Samantha Lock
• Friday 22 July 2022
• 
  

• A deal to resume Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports is expected to be signed by Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations on Friday. The agreement will be put in writing by the parties and signed at the Dolmabahce Palace offices at 1.30pm GMT, the office of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said. Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Oleg Nikolenko, added: “In summary, a document may be signed which will bind the sides to [ensure] safe functioning of export routes in the Black Sea.”

Roxanne Lowit / Celebrities

Shalom Harlow

PHOTOS

by Roxanne Lowit

Leonardo DiCaprio

 

BOOKS OF THE YEAR

The Death of Jesus by JM Coetzee review – a boy who challenges the world

The final book of Coetzee’s Jesus trilogy is also its darkest, keeping the mystery at the books’ heart intact to the end

Steven Poole
Sat 4 Jan 2020 07.30 GMT

Martin Amis once complained that JM Coetzee had “got no talent”, showing perhaps that obsessive ranking of talent (here used in a far more debased sense than TS Eliot’s) is a pastime favoured by those who are not, like Coetzee, writers of genius. Even more improbably, Amis claimed that Coetzee was not funny, which bespeaks a cloth ear for the more sophisticated kind of irony. It would certainly surprise readers of the hilarious Slow Man, or indeed the first two novels in this sequence, The Childhood of Jesus and The Schooldays of Jesus, in which a dreamlike mode of nowhere and no-when reminiscent of Kafka (and Coetzee’s own early Waiting for the Barbarians) is illuminated by sparks of sardonic humour or sheer childlike silliness. The final book of the trilogy, however, as one might with trepidation expect from its title, is a far darker affair.

The Death of Jesus by JM Coetzee review – a barren end to a bizarre trilogy

This empty-hearted conclusion to Coetzee’s allegorical saga feels like an elaborate joke at the reader’s expense

Alex Preston
Tue 31 Dec 2019 07.00 GMT

The Death of Jesus is the final book in the bizarre allegorical trilogy that Nobel laureate and two-time Booker-winner JM Coetzee has been working on for most of the past decade. The stories tell of a precocious orphan boy, David, who is taken into the care of a fellow refugee, Simón, and, eventually, a woman, Inés.

Pet-lovers and pet hates / Reviews by Steven Poole

 

Pet-lovers and pet hates

Steven Poole on The Black Veil | If Only They Could Speak

Steven Poole
Saturday 3 February 2004

The Black Veil, by Rick Moody (Faber, £8.99)

Moody's memoir of alcoholism and psychiatric hospitalisation could easily be read as a psychodrama whose antagonists are the italic and roman fonts. Indeed, as the proportion of italics grows in any given passage in this book, so do the strains of whining, insistent banality: to print, for example, the statement "any memoir is a fiction" in italics, as part of your climactic reflexive peroration, does not refresh the cliché. Furthermore, Moody belongs to the quantitative school of prose-writing, according to which any feeling or event is properly handled by redescribing it repeatedly in increasingly melodramatic terms over several pages, rather than trying to get the formulation right first time. Perhaps it is something more than statistical inevitability which has ensured that there are occasional funny jokes and thoughtful images. But the overall effect is like being told a very long story by someone who is alternately mildly irritating and very annoying indeed.

If Only They Could Speak, by Nicholas H Dodman (Norton, £11.95)

Nicholas Dodman, a vet, believes that "if pet lovers controlled the world, it would probably be a better place". Well, it would no doubt be a better place for pets, but since a lot of the pet-lovers described in this book seem a little bit weird, one may have some reservations about handing over the reins of power. Dodman offers a bunch of inspirational and heart-warming case studies of "troubled" cats and dogs, and how they were treated by him. The prevailing assumption appears to be that any odd behavioural quirks in a particular dog or cat must be "cured", although admittedly, when Seth the cat starts flying in a furry rage at his owner and trying to claw her to bits, we may agree that there is more of a problem. Happy are such pet-lovers as Julie, who tells the author: "I've had more love from my dog than I've ever had from a boyfriend." Quick, elect her president.

THE GUARDIAN