ABOVE: I'M SORRY, but Greg Evigan was ablaze in that Speedo.
BELOW: Keep reading for one of my more sex-drenched roundups, but plenty of politics, too ...
In We Live in Time, the relationship of a couple passionately engaged with life and each other is revealed in a nonlinear series of scenes, a novel way of getting to the meat of who they are as individuals, and who they are together.
The story is complicated by their unconventional meeting, their being at odds over whether to have children, her devotion to her career as a chef and, most dauntingly, multiple bouts of cancer.
Almut (Florence Pugh) is a driven Type A personality, an accomplished chef who knows exactly what she wants. Her life takes an unexpected detour when she bumps into Tobias (Andrew Garfield), a glistening-eyed, handsome divorcé, and they fall hopelessly in love. Their chemistry is undeniable — it's not hard to believe that she could talk him into letting her fight it out in a grueling cooking competition while undergoing cancer treatment, or that he could convince her to have a child.
The best thing about the film, which features rich performances from a pair of beautiful stars, is the way in which its unorthodox telling teases out issues of what makes life worth living, and who makes it worth living, not the mention jump-starting conversations about how we would like to go out, and how we would like to be remembered.
The worst? It is twee in parts, a little too feel-good to counteract the feel-badness of cancer, and Almut's decision to get pregnant — under her circumstances — had me squirming.
In the end (as in the beginning and middle), We Live in Time is an achingly deeply felt, grown-up drama that speaks to anyone thinking of settling down, or who did so long ago and may be considering acting up.
Farrah Fawcett sat for a legacy interview with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation in 2006 and they've just gifted the world with it. Fascinating.
ABOVE: What a sweet song for the moment.
BELOW: Keep reading for vintage nudity, vintage porn and all-too-current fascism ...
(Image via Tamara de Lempicka Estate)
The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & the Art of Survival from director Julie Rubio just had its world premiere on October 11 at the Mill Valley Film Festival October 11 in advance of what the filmmaker hopes will be a wider availability on a streamer.
The film is not lavish and stylized and artful like its subject, one of the most important painters of the 20th century, but what it has going for it is an unabashed curiosity not about her sensational personal life but her artistry — and her tenacity.
Taking this tack, the doc is inherently feminist, but not in a superficial, girl-power way, in an unapologetically academic way. Her life and oeuvre are dissected in minute detail via lively interviewrs with experts and even her direct descendants, with an accent on de Lempicka's dramatically modern viewpoint.
What would shock us today from an artist? What is left? It is hard to imagine, but exciting to learn more about a woman who accomplished many firsts just 100 years ago, including being a rare woman artist capturing female nudes, and portraying female sensuality and eroticism.
The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & the Art of Survival is especially helpful in its inclusion of a wealth of her original sketches and paintings, not just the famous ones.
The more recent aspects of the artist's fame — her co-opting by Madonna, Barbra Streisand's ownership of her work, her record-setting auction sales — provide the denouement, which makes an excellent case for the belief that this artist is, to this day, shamefully underrepresented in major U.S. museums. It's a shame the recent Broadway musical failed, as it makes one wonder when her time will truly come.
Watch the trailer:
ABOVE: The late, great Luke Perry, who had no problem going from teen dream to baring it all on Oz.
A reminder to check out this film! (Image via MarcSaltarelli.com)
(Images via Netflix)
ABOVE: Chad Michael Murray is offering a Magic Mike-drop with The Merry Gentlemen, an upcoming Netflix Christmas dick flick.
BELOW: Keep reading for dumb women, hot guys and a Gypsy woman ...
(Image via Allan Carr Films, Inc.)
Jeffrey Schwarz has uploaded a pristine copy of Magic Night, a 1980 TV special created to plug Can't Stop the Music ... which went on to become one of the biggest bombs in movie history.
It's fascinating — time capsule does not begin to encompass it. You've got June Havoc, Hugh Hefer, Barbara Rush (she was only 52 or 53, and marveling at how at that time in her life she was finally in a musical) and the Village People raving about Allan Carr...
