cinema – Miseducated

Mise en Snap: The Virgin Suicides

05/11/2011

Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides is a gorgeously dark movie that I just had to feature and study. As you can see from the screens, and might expect from a Sofia Coppola movie, it’s very lonely and feminine. The main characters are gorgeous girls who are isolated both because of their beauty and because of the recent suicide of their youngest sister. The film follows their lives as learned from boys in their class by reading Cecelia’s, the youngest sister’s, diary.

Aren’t the mise-en-scenes dreamy?

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Mise en Snap Visual Splendor

Mise en Snap: I Love You Alice B. Toklas!

08/10/2010

It’s about time I did another mise-en-snap!

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas is a deliciously tacky film from 1968 that parodies the 1960s counterculture. I watched it once and didn’t really pay attention.. the next time I saw everything and couldn’t stop laughing. (I always get a little mesmerized by 60s decor, trying to find ways to incorporate the hippie’s lounge pad into a family home.) The film is directed by Hy Averback and stars Peter Sellers and Leigh Taylor-Young (in her film debut). It features music by Harpers Bizarre, including the theme song that I still cannot stop singing — haha!

The title is a reference to writer Alice B. Toklas, who wrote a recipe for making cannabis Brownies released in 1954. I had the pleasure of learning about Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein during a college Hemmingway class and trip to Paris — they were both pretty cool cats.

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Mise en Snap Visual Splendor

Mise en Snap: A Woman is a Woman

08/04/2009

A Woman is a Woman (Une Femme est une Femme’) is a 1961 French new wave film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It’s colorful, quirky and adorable in it’s imagery and story. I found the interior shots to be clean, bright and simple, yet quaint and kitshy-cool. Reminds me of the delicious interior eye-candy to be gorged on in each of the Jeu de Paumes books.

The film centers around the relationship of an adorable exotic dancer Angéla (Anna Karina) and her live-in boyfriend, Émile (Jean-Claude Brialy). This films requires little-to-no serious thought, all of the discussions are completely trivialized and cute to watch. For instance they use book titles to argue and debate issues, pointing to titles that communicate the response that they would like to give.

Angéla wants to have a child while Émile does not, all the while Émile’s best friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo), constantly insists that he is in love with Angéla. It must be that every woman’s biological urge to have (bear, adopt, get a cat or chihuahua instead of) children kicks in at some point in their lives (even if just by passing thought!) no matter how much fun they may be having. *wink*

Have a taste!

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Mise en Snap Visual Splendor

Mise en Snap: Tales from the Crypt

12/24/2008

I recently had the fun of re-watching the 1973 movie edition of Tales from the Crypt. An absolute design gem in my opinion, you can find lovely mise-en-scenes in most old films (especially in Hitchock’s). Try watching some of your favorite old films for inspiration when designing anything. You’ll find as many tacky, funny goodies as you will absolutely sensational ones. Mind not the knives, terror-stricken faces and gore — as my grandmother LaVera once said, murder is necessary to tell a story.

All horror films should contain tea parties nestled within their gore!
Many Miseducated ladies are known to have fright fests
so why not get a little tea party motivation simultaneously?

I’m really digging the modular stereo with rainbow tuning.

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