Tag: Anne Hathaway

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Natalie Portman’s Black Swan Acceptance Speech at the Oscars

 

So what did you guys think of it? I tried to find a YouTube video but couldn’t find a free one. Interesting that companies are going to start charging for subscriptions for that kind of thing… Anyway, I love that she thanked and named all the professional dancers who trained her this time, and that she expressed how wonderful and enlightening it was to work with them all. She honestly elevated the film with her speech in my opinion.

And how sweet was it for her to try to bring Millepied up with her onstage! I watched E!’s red carpet show – mainly to see her – but she arrived last and seemingly without Millepied (since she was interviewed alone). I was like, where is he?! But he was there, of course.

Speaking of the red carpet show, I loved Mila Kunis’s dress.

 

And Scarlett Johansson’s, though it didn’t seem to go over too well with Kelly Osbourne and the other woman who was hosting the show:

 

And Helena Bonham Carter noted that her dress was by Colleen Atwood, who is the costume designer who ended up winning best costume design for Alice in Wonderland. She said she preferred to celebrate the movies rather than fashion on this night:

 

I thought all of the best actor and best supporting actor speeches were good. Loved Colin Firth’s, loved him in King’s Speech, but still love Jesse Eisenberg as well. Love that in her excitement, Melissa Leo used profanity. How’d they bleep that out so quickly? And did Kirk Douglas actually grab her butt? Someone on Twitter said they thought they saw that. He was kind of acting in an antiquated sexist kind of way, with all his flirting with Hathaway and all, so I totally believe he may have. He would have made me so nervous if I were Leo. Poor Leo, I thought. This is her moment, not his. Interesting (and proper) move, to include Douglas as a presenter, because Anne Hathaway and James Franco seemed to keep sending the message that they were invited to host because they represented the young, hip generation. Is that true? She seemed like a big, clumsy, awkward goof – probably the nerves, and he seemed to have taken a bit too much Valium (or something else) to calm his. Does Hollywood feel the need to pander to the young ‘uns too? Like ballet and the opera? How odd – movies are generally for the younger generations, I’d thought… Anyway, they bored me, those hosts. And Kirk Douglas scared me. Isn’t there, like, someone in between, who’s not too unsophisticated to take on that kind of role but who can also keep from violating current-day boundaries?

Anyway, overall a decent night. The end of the evening speeches made up for the poor hosting. Kind of.

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THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE IS NOT THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (BUT COULD USE MORE DANCERS!)

 

Over the weekend I went to see The September Issue, the documentary about Anna Wintour and Vogue, focusing on the mag’s — well, the fashion industry’s — most important issue of the year. I found it thoroughly entertaining, but not in the way I expected. I expected it to be a real-life Devil Wears Prada, but it wasn’t that at all. I remember from the book, Lauren  Weisberger’s main character constantly feeling like a horrid slob amongst all the fashionistas — or fashionista wannabes — who worked at the magazine, and I remember her even being ridiculed by everyone for wearing Ann Taylor, supposedly a cheap designer.

Of course Devil Wears Prada, the film, played up on all of that, having Meryl Streep lecture Anne Hathaway on her decidedly frumpy wardrobe and call her (a size 6) “fat.” But here, everyone who works at Vogue — particularly Wintour and other higher-ups like creative director Grace Coddington (who is really the emotional centerpiece of the film) are pretty mundanely dressed. They seem more like incredibly hard-working women who are far too busy to care much about how they look everyday at the office. No one wears much makeup, hair looks completely unstyled, Coddington munches on a rather bland-looking corner deli-bought salad while enthusing about the photo-shoots she’s designed and her romantic vision for the issue, talking about her past as a model and how she turned to the editorial side of things early on after a car accident ended her modeling career, and bemoaning the wasted money spent on photo spreads Wintour ended up not liking and axing entirely.

But my biggest surprise was how unattractive I found the models to be. And they weren’t — they were all really beautiful. But I think I’ve seen so much dance now that, as much as I used to admire models, I’m now almost horrified at their bad posture, their boney bodies, their completely uncoordinated frames, their sloppy-looking lines. During a shoot, this one model was playing around and she decided to do a kick — a battement — for the photographer and it was just about the worst kick I’ve ever seen. Her knee was bent awkwardly, her foot was doing nothing at all and gave her leg no line, and she almost fell over. The photographer seemed to think it was great though.

Made me think how much better dancers might be at making the clothes look good. I don’t know, maybe most dancers are too short or the fabric doesn’t drape as well over built musculature as it does over basically skin-covered bone.

 

This wasn’t the same model from the film — I can’t find a photo of her — but it’s taken from Italian Vogue. I mean the clothes look good — she’s pretty — but look at her lines underneath…

This in contrast to the New York City Ballet dancers, as photographed with this gorgeous flowing diaphanous fabric for NYCB’s Winter season calendar, which I just received in the mail today.