To Peter Jackson...

Just a quick question. Why, in your (visually magnificent but plotline poor) adaptation of The Lovely Bones, did you only include 14 seconds of Samuel Heckler?! He is obviously, obviously, the very best thing about the book, so WHY DID YOU MISS HIM OUT ALMOST ENTIRELY FROM THE FILM?

Not impressed. You may have recreated Lord of the Rings on the big screen for our eyes to enjoy, but you have still LET ME DOWN.

With disappointment, but still some love,

Emily. X

Closer To The Edge

Today's favourite: JARED LETO
He doesn't age. He is Dorian Gray. He is beautiful.

Color Me Katie

I have been reading past posts on my very favourite blog ever of all time ever, and I got to this one and I just had to tell anyone who might be reading this how wonderful it is! It just makes me want to look at life a different way.

Color Me Katie is the funnest, happiest, prettiest, loveliest blog that I have ever read. The woman who writes it is a beautiful lady who lives and works as a photographer in New York City, and who also works with Improv Everywhere, which runs some of the greatest projects ever! Check out their youtube videos - you will laugh forever. This is one of my favourites (I'm going overboard with the links here, but I have just figured out how to do it and I'm excited!)

And she has the cutest cat, Moo! He features in a lot of her photos.
(Photos from www.colormekatie.blogspot.com)


Inspired, I looked back through all the thousands of photos that I have taken over the past couple of years, and have decided to start posting some of them here. Starting off with a few of my favourites...
Buildings that look see-through!

Lovely light

Swinging

Breaking the rules

Hidden cats. Click the picture to enlarge and see if you can find him!

They are not as colourful or pretty or excellent as Katie's, but then again she is a professional and rather brilliant photographer. And it wouldn't do if we were all the same, would it?

I never liked anyone and I'm afraid of people.

Today I read Bret Easton Ellis' new novel, Imperial Bedrooms. I realise that most of my blog posts these days involve Bret, but this new novel of his - a sequel to Less Than Zero - is very blogworthy.

The book is beautiful. Physically, it is beautiful; the cover is incredible. And the novel itself is, the more I think about it, the only logical way that Less Than Zero could be continued without the story becoming tacky or
clichéd.

Clay, the protagonist, is, in Less Than Zero, one of my very favourite characters ever written. He is just so...vague. And yet there is definitely something there behind that that I find absolutely fascinating, but which is difficult to explain. In Imperial Bedrooms, this side of Clay that wants to 'see the worst', as he explains in LTZ, is explored in depth. He is such a creep. And I love it.

He is just such a great character. Everything he says is so distant and uncaring, and even when you think - or worry - that he is going to turn into some sap, he beats some lass up. Fantastic.

Reading this only confirmed for me that B.E.E is one of the greatest novelists of our generation. His style is so honest and real. Unlike some of his contemporaries - Douglas Coupland or Jay Mcinenry, for example - the speech is actual human speech, and for me that is one of the best things about his novels.

But in Imperial Bedrooms, it was the very last paragraph that did it for me. That last line, and the dates written there. I smiled. I think my jaw probably dropped. It was perfection.

Dreams

And so my obsession with Tom Ford continues...

The ever glorious and inspirational Tom Ford has just released his A/W eyewear campaign, featuring Freja Beha Erichson and, quite predictably and delightfully, Nicholas Hoult (who I happen to adore).

The pictures are stunning; very gothic and so different to other Tom Ford campaigns I have seen. Freja looks beautiful (as always) and Nicholas is pretty lovely also. And that midnight blue velvet blazer? Yes, I need one of those. Immediately.

'Her chest ached in that old, familiar way'

It was a summer of natural disasters, so Allie really should have been expecting the worst. First the temperature dropped steeply one afternoon, and the tourists, in their shorts and t-shirts and sandals, stumbled and shivered their way back to their guest houses, marvelling at how, on such a perfectly beautiful August afternoon, frost could be glazing car windshields. That night the pretty stream that ran through the town froze over, leaving the ducks to quack their indignation on the grassy banks. Then the next morning, as the local residents got up to go to work, they watched in wide-eyed wonderment as three feet of snow fell as they ate their breakfasts, and they shook their heads and muttered things like global warming , even though there was nothing warm about it.

Allie laced up her boots and got the shovel out of the cupboard under the stairs, where it had been buried since its last use in spring by coats and shoes and the old vacuum cleaner that Michael has said he’d try and fix, but which he had never gotten around to. Allie, usually carefully in tune with, and wary of, bad omens, dug her way up the garden path, shovelling fluffy white snow into glacial walls on either side of her, but she couldn’t think of what might be about to happen; all she could linger on was the last time it had snowed so hard and so fast, and the memory left a taste in her mouth that was as delicious as it was bitter and unsatisfying.

2008 was a good year.

When I was 18 I went to New York for the second time, for a couple of weeks with my dad; my uncle lives and works there, so my dad and I got to stay in his wife's apartment and for those two weeks it was like we lived in Manhattan. It is one of my favourite holidays that I have ever had; we went to New Jersey as well, which I thought was beautiful, despite all the bad press it gets (I think we went to the nice bit, though).

My hair was was rather insane and wild in those days. I miss it.

In New Jersey - across there is where the World Trade Centres used to be.

Central Park

In the film Cloverfield, some people die under that bridge.

Having a picnic in Central Park

The Naked Cowboy. He told me he likes redheads (and he wasn't even really naked).

Near my uncle's old apartment. I think you can just see the top of the Empire State. He now lives on the Upper East Side (how very Gossip Girl)

Brooklyn Bridge from Pier 17.

Wall Street

Soho

Staten Island - you can see both New Jersey and Manhattan from there.

Taken from the balcony of the apartment, looking in (it was the first night, thus the mess).

Taken on the Rockefeller Centre (if you ever go to NY, go up this building instead of the Empire State. Far better views).

Central Park

Van Gogh in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Me and Andy in the Met.

This needs no introduction.

Strawberry Fields

My dad in Hoboken, NJ (one of my favourite places that I have ever been).

Manhattan from Hoboken. I'm well proud of this photo.

The view of the Chrysler Building from our balcony.

I'm not sure which of them I am more jealous of.

I keep staring past the palm trees, watching the skies.

'My dreams start out calmly. I'll be younger and walking home from school and the day will be overcast, clouds gray and white and some of them purple. Then it'll start to rain and I'll begin to run. After running through all this falling water for what seems to be a really long time, I'll suddenly trip into mud and fall flat on the ground and because the earth's so wet, I start to sink, and the mud fills my mouth and I start to swallow it and it goes up through my nose and finally into my eyes and I don't wake up until I am completely underground.'

- Bret Easton Ellis, 'Less Than Zero'

The Return of Persephone

By Lord Frederick Leighton. One of my favourite works of art. I'm not especially fascinated by this style of painting, but this particular piece always makes me smile. The colours are stunning. It is in Leeds Art Gallery and is one of the most graceful and beautiful paintings I have ever seen. I visit it every time I am in Leeds.

‘Bitch, you’re Lady Gaga, you get up and walk the walk today. "

It's finally time for the Gaga post.
My God, I love this woman. Everything she does just makes me happy. Everything she says makes me wish that I had been the one to say it. Everything she wears makes me look at myself and realise how boring I am.Lady Gaga is a legend. She is a work of art. She is magnificent and she is sexy (I am ridiculosuly - and perhaps a little disturbingly - attracted to her) and her voice is absolute perfection (I have seen her live and she is off the scale amazing). Her work ethic is second to none, and her vision - whether it be in fashion or art or music - is beautiful. And she is absolutely off her rocker, which I personally find both exciting and refreshing in an industry where Cheryl fucking Cole can get a number 1.Lady Gaga is an icon. She is an absolutely incredible woman, and I respect her in every possible way. And if she is the one lingering image of our generation, well...that's cool with me.