Emma Thompson Please Date Me!

Emma Thompson is a goddess. And if I ever saw her in person I would probably do a half-bow, realize that I couldn’t be more uncool if I tried, trip over one of my feet, realize that somehow I’ve fumbled my meeting with Emma Thompson even more, throw caution to the winds and just make out with her. Probably.

As if my embarrassing girl crush hadn’t already reached a fevered pitch, in today’s Australian there was an interview with the woman herself – obviously a puff piece spruiking the impending release of Brideshead Revisited (23 October, I believe… not that I have a giant calendar in the corner of my room marking each hour that passes before the release). The article glossed over her authorial ambitions, the discovery of her acting talents during her sojourn with the Footlights theatrical club at Cambridge.

Nonetheless, there was still a lot of juicy info for a swooning fan-girl such as myself. Apparently, when Thompson found out that the actress playing Julia in the film was asked to lose weight before filming, she through a hissy-fit tantrum and threatened to walk away from the entire film unless they revoked their request.

Swoon.

Why am I here when I could be over there?

Tired. May embellish thought process later.

New York, I love you and miss you. And yes, I still dream of you.

What the Korean romantic-drama-dy has taught me about love. (Or, why crunchyroll ate up all my bandwidth.)

In 'My Sassy Girl' the doormats get the girls.

For some odd reason there was a time last year when I was addicted to Korean romantic comedies slash dramas (because their films can’t belong to just the one genre), I don’t even know why or how I got hooked on to them. And, no, it wasn’t because of the re-make of ‘The Lake House’ which had just been released, nor was it because of the buzz surrounding ‘My Sassy Girl’, which I picked up from reading blogs about J-Pop (don’t ask). Actually, I think I stumbled upon a link on YouTube of a trailer in English for ‘Ditto.’ You know how it is, you just keep clicking links on the Internet and suddenly it’s 2 in the morning and you find yourself watching reaction videos to 2 Girls 1 Cup, and then curiosity gets the best of you and so you actually watch 2 Girls 1 Cup, and it’s from that moment on that you realise you have a stomach of steel because you managed to sit through the whole thing without being affected.

Paris is Burning.

The birth of Vogue-ing.

Dir. Jennie Livingston

Released in 1991, Jennie Livingston’s ‘Paris is Burning’ is a documentary that focuses its lens on the lower class GBT community in the late 80’s and the elaborate ‘Balls’ that were held in the back alley dance halls of New York. The members of this community are thrice marginalized: they are gay, poor, and ethnic minorities (either black or Hispanic). As society has no space for the marginalized, Balls create this space for them to exist and to perform.

The film documents the Balls, the slang and jargon associated with them, the ‘Houses’ which are often metaphors for the homes in which many of them were no longer welcome at, and key characters who make up the narrative of the film and provide different perspectives and insight in to a world and experience that is foreign to the mainstream.

It offers an empathetic and non-judgmental lens to a community and sub-culture that, today, is often caricaturized.