red·carpet·green·dress

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Jake Sully: [as he pleads for Eywa's help in attacking the Sky People] See the world where we come from: there's no green there. They've killed their mother, and they're going to do the same thing here.

While her husband James Cameron promotes understanding other cultures and saving the planet before it's too late in the mesmerizing "Avatar," Suzy Amis Cameron is advocating for global connections and ecology too. At MUSE Elementary School in Topanga, California that she founded with her sister Rebecca, kids get hands-on learning (following the Italian Reggio model, which respects children most of all) about many essential things - including respecting the earth. They do regular beach clean-up, raise and eat organic food, use non-toxic cleaning products, and in other ways model a sustainable lifestyle.

When "Avatar" was nominated for many awards including Best Picture, Suzy came up with a contest idea based on this theme: "Caring for the planet is always in fashion." Why not give designers a chance to design her dress for the red carpet at the Academy Awards and bring attention to the idea of designing a beautiful garment in a way that is kind to the earth, and be a fund raiser for kids to go to her school who wouldn't otherwise afford it? So she put the challenge out there to designers around the world for a dress created from organic or recycled materials, or raised in sustainable ways. Here is her video pitch. You might recognize her as a former Ford model and actress (in movies such as "Fandango" with Kevin Costner; postscript: thanks, Susie, for commenting that Suzy met Cameron on the set of "Titanic" in which she played Rose's granddaughter).

I wouldn't have known about this dress design contest if I hadn't noticed it when I opened my university's home page at work Thursday. It was there because the winner is Apparel & Textile Design senior Jillian Granz at Michigan State! This is from the press release:

When submitting her design, Granz recommended the dress be made from peace silk, which allows silk worms to complete their life cycle, rather than be boiled, as is the case with traditional silk. Granz also recommended a no-waste pattern, in which every part of the pattern is utilized and put into the final garment rather than being discarded.

She designed it in her special topics class: Innovative Approaches in Apparel Design, and submitted her entry along with 15 other classmates. Here is Jillian Granz on the phone when Suzy Amis Cameron called her with the news. They'll fly Jillian out for fittings with Suzy and the dressmaker, Academy Award-winning costume designer Deborah Scott (designed for "Avatar" but wasn't nominated for an Oscar this time), and then for a pre-Oscar party March 3 (the Academy Awards are March 7) where they'll unveil the dress. Imagine having your design career launched while you're still an undergraduate, wow. She must feel like the Queen of the World!

Michigan State University is an agricultural school and prides itself on being "green" with a great recycling program. Even our school colors are Green & White, and the name for its Reduce, Reuse, Recycle program is Be Spartan Green. Unfortunately MSU is also infamous for its tight relationship with Monsanto, developing genetically modified (GM) seeds for that company, which makes many of us angry. I hope our Green & White school will evolve into being more famous for sustainable practices, like this green fashion statement. After the reveal March 3, I'll try to remember to post a photo of Jillian's dress. I wonder what color it is?

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1996 Oscar: one scene in The English Patient

I watch few movies now, and I can't for the life of me list the nominees for Sunday night's Oscars show the way I once did, let alone say I've seen them all. I know there's Pitt and Winslet, a Slumdog and a Wrestler.

So I'll do what aging people do when they start losing touch with the changes around them: I'll reminisce. About a 1996 film about WWII, too famous and parodied for you to be ignorant of it. But even so, it gets me thinking about how sorry we all are for this fractured world, and sorry for ourselves too.

So, in the movie, there is brutal war among the world's powerful governments trying to shape boundaries and mindsets in the decades to come. Human beings and Nature together have grown soft and muddy with grief, hatred and killing.

For Hana war is not just a story in the news. She has watched her best friend explode in a jeep that hit a mine. Then in the hospital tent under mortar attack she has discovered that her lover, an officer in another regiment, has been killed. As a war nurse, her ears are deafened with bomb blasts and agonized whimpers of broken men. She holds their torn flesh and bones like crushed fruit.

So when Kip the mine sweeper carries her on his scooter into town for an escape and a surprise, Hana's whole body lights up with childish anticipation. They enter an empty church where frescoed murals adorn the walls up high. Too high, and invisible in an unlighted church. Kip harnesses her on a hanging rope with himself as counter-weight on the other end, hands her a flare after lighting it, and hoists her to the level of the paintings. He operates the rope deftly as if he has practiced this every night for a week, causing her to sway gently in a hanging dance that he controls so she can examine the painted faces up close while she twists and dangles.

Kip knew Hana could not extricate herself from the plodding pain engulfing her, just as he himself had struggled to block out the strain of his mine sweeping job. As love surprised them, he shared a secret window of art and joy with her. I appreciate the grace of the scene for showing two people crushed with war fatigue determined to absorb available beauty, for each others sake as much as for their own.

a flick of a switch

While Don was recuperating from shoulder surgery, we got hooked watching "24," the TV show that started in 2001 about the CIA operative Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) and the counter-terrorist unit in LA. Now that we can queue TV shows on Netflix, four episodes on a DVD, we could watch interruption-free, one episode after another. The writing is quite good, and the acting is excellent.


We finished the third of the six completed seasons last week (the seventh season premieres January 2009). In a strangely oxymoronic way, the show displays politically progressive viewpoints, while in the context of the very structures Progressives would like to see changed or eliminated. The politics in it are complex, not black and white.

Each season became more intense, the violence more graphic and more personal. Sure, Jack Bauer is a great guy who only tortures someone because he needs to save a million Americans. But this past season (3) when he had to shoot a colleague in the head and deliver his body to the terrorist enemy (a former British MI-6 agent gone sour) to keep him from releasing a biological weapon that would kill millions of Americans, we decided to stop watching.



Two out of the five Oscar nominees for Best Picture this year were violent films, including the winner, “No Country for Old Men.” The other is “There Will Be Blood.” Today we decided to take “No Country” off our queue because it’s rated R for strong graphic violence. Everyone says it’s a great movie.



It’s sort of strange that we cover our children’s eyes to protect their developing minds from violent acts, but it becomes okay as adults to entertain ourselves with it. I know it's out there in the real world, but as my mom used to say, "you get hungry for what you feed yourself."

I dunno, I’m getting sick from feeding myself violence through the TV.

Hitchcock

Rear Window: Unlike Jimmy Stewart, I wasn’t really spying on anything or anyone fun, just a brick exterior wall.




Check out Vanity Fair’s online photography portfolio recreating classic Hitchcock scenes with current movie stars, by photographer Art Streiber.









When you click on the photo in the portfolio, the original Hitchcock scene opens in a new window.

• Charlize Theron as Margot (Grace Kelly’s role) in “Dial M for Murder.”

• Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem spying on their neighbors in “Rear Window.”
  
  


• Naomi Watts as the psychologically challenged “Marnie.” I just re-watched this. Sean Connery is great. Apparently Hitchcock was smitten with Tippi Hedren and wooed her, without success. After failing with her, he wouldn’t mention her name.
  
  


• Keira Knightley and Jennifer Jason Leigh as “Rebecca” and Mrs. Danvers. My favorite Hitchcock.




• Emile Hirsch and James McAvoy as “Strangers on a Train.” Eeww, this is a creepy, but good, movie. Robert Walker is forever a creep for me in movies after it, I can’t watch him in any other role and like him.
  
  


• Renée Zellweger in Kim Novak’s role in “Vertigo.” This one doesn’t quite do it for me, the movie or the Zellweger shot. She looks old! Not that old is bad. She just looks old for the role. But I like how she really got into this, which you can see on the video making this portfolio.
  
  
• Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr. in “To Catch a Thief.” I can kind of see Gwyneth as Grace, but the cliched choice for Cary would have been George Clooney I suppose.
  
  
• Jodie Foster in Tippi Hedren’s role in “The Birds.” Hmm, I don’t know about this one either. Did you know Daphne Du Maurier, author of Rebecca the book, also wrote the story for “The Birds”? Talk about two geniusly creepy minds, Du Maurier and Hitchcock.
  
  
• Seth Rogan in Cary Grant’s role in “North by Northwest.” Who is Seth Rogan? Although I love this movie, I always wondered why Cary Grant wore reddish brown shoes with a grey suit. Must be a ‘50s color scheme.
  
  
• Marion Cotillard (recent Oscar winner for her portrayal of Edith Piaf in “La Vie en Rose”) in the shower scene in “Psycho.” I love this one, I think she looks pretty good screaming. But how do you replace Janet Leigh’s panicked face?
  
  Here’s a video of the making of this cool project and here’s the background on making it, but I hope no one will ever remake these movies.
  
  Um, I guess they already have:


• “Dial M for Murder” became “A Perfect Murder” with Paltrow and Michael Douglas in 1998. It was pretty good actually.
  
  
• “Rear Window” remade with Christopher Reeve and Daryl Hannah in 1998. Um, not so much.
  
  
• “Rebecca” remade for TV. Didn’t see it, don’t know.
  
  
• “Strangers on a Train” – Hey, a remake is in production this year!



• “Psycho” – I didn’t see Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake with Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche as the screamer.

Do you have a favorite Hitchcock movie? As you probably already know, he never won an Oscar for Best Director, although “Rebecca” won best picture in 1940.

“You thought I LOVED her!?”

By the way, I'm not quite getting why the illustrator shoved the movie poster over Joan Fontaine's head:

update

As expected, Hal Holbrook was not chosen for the Oscar for best supporting actor, it was Javier Bardem for his role in "No Country for Old Men."

Here's a photo from the http://www.oscar.com/ site, with his wife Dixie Carter last night before the show.

Did anyone else think that was the most boring Oscar show ever? I expected more for the 80th, maybe a fabulous montage of Oscar's history at least. I liked the video clips from earlier decades' shows. Maybe the writers' strike is the reason this show was sub-par. Even Jon Stewart seemed a little off, although a few of his lines were funny, like this one from his opening monologue:

"Normally, when you see a black man or a woman president an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty."

Hal Holbrook and Oscar

I mostly remember Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain. No wonder, since he’s performed that guy for 40 years on stage and TV. He won a Tony for the Mark Twain role. He’s won lots of Emmys, including one for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln. Oh, and I remember his mouth from “All the President’s Men” in which he played Deep Throat, the mysterious informant to Bob Woodward/Robert Redford.

He said on NPR the other day that even though he’s performed Twain thousands of times, the humorist icon’s words still make him laugh. Such as: "We are all erring creatures, and mainly idiots, but God made us so and it is dangerous to criticise.”

At 83, Holbrook's got his first Oscar nomination for tomorrow night’s awards, for his supporting role in Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild,” based on a true story. Holbrook plays one of the characters Chris McCandless meets while he's hitchhiking to Alaska after giving his life savings away, burning all his identification and worrying his parents sick. I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s on my Netflix queue for when it’s released on DVD March 4.

Holbrook was nominated for the Broadcast Film Critics award and the Screen Actors Guild award too, losing to Javier Bardem in "No Country for Old Men" for both. Even though sometimes Oscars are awarded to those who deserve praise after such a long and respectable career, I'm guessing the results of this nomination will be the same as the other two.

Here’s a YouTube video of Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain, recorded in 1967. This is one of my best images and memories of growing up in the US: an actor of good sense and humor playing an author of good sense and humor, although this particular short clip is not humorous.

The Oscars

It’s almost time to watch the Oscars, and I am looking forward to it. I love clothes, and seeing what the women are wearing is lots of fun. I also enjoy hearing what the host (Ellen DeGeneres this year), presenters and winners have to say. I especially await the comedy, to see if the host and presenters can make me laugh. I think Ms. DeGeneres is pretty funny, and her deadpan persona usually cracks me up.

I think that this year I’ve seen fewer nominated movies than ever before. I couldn’t even tell you what’s nominated, even though I have a list somewhere. I know Helen Mirren and “The Queen” have lots of nominations. I’ll be plugging for her.

It’s a glitzy week, with the Democratic Presidential candidates gathering in Beverly Hills for fund raisers. All the hoopla about what Barak Obama’s fundraiser Geffen said about the Clintons. All the wealthy celebrities, and who they will support. I heard that just for California each candidate needs $20 million for their campaign.

All this money being waved around, the million dollar Swarovski curtain on the Oscars stage, the millions spent for a presidential race (it will be billions before all’s said and done), well, you can’t help think about that, can you?

Remember what I wrote about global climate change and the idea of carbon offset programs a couple weeks ago? I’m still researching it, and I don’t know what is legitimate and what isn't. But I think I’m going to do something as a starter. Carbonfund.org has a campaign to raise money for carbon offset (developing renewable resource energy options) as a way to send a message to the Oscars this year, supporting Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth,” which is nominated for best documentary. If you donate to this carbon offset program, they’ll send a message to the Oscars about the campaign.

Remember last year when many stars arrived in hybrid vehicles instead of limos? It might seem like a gimmick, but gimmicks get people’s attention. And lots of people wait for someone else to bring attention to issues before they wake up.

Is this about allaying guilt? Will I feel better about myself watching all that glitz if I do something helpful? I dunno. I think it's about balance. Every choice I make has an effect.