BLOG SAUVAGE
sundries, miscellany, and ephemera
Chinatown [1974, Roman Polanski]
The horrified and horrifying beauty of a woman who knows too much, every jewel and accessory in place, but a mind unruly, brittle, traumatised, and driven to survive…
Nefertiti is the oldest woman I’ve ever looked at and thought, “Wow, she’s really hot!” (And by “oldest” I mean “most ancient in the chronology of human existence,” not “oldest in terms of birthdays had.” Going by the second definition, I think the hottest-oldest would probably be Helen Mirren.) Call me a body-negative asshole, but I just don’t find the Venus of Willendorf attractive. Granted, if I were a starving hairy Austrian caveman, I’m sure I would be all over her decadent well-fed fertility, but since I’m not, I’m not.
Fun fact: According to a scholar mentioned in the Holy Book of Wikipedia, the Venus of Willendorf is possibly connected “with a mushroom cult, based on visual similarities between the figurine and typical young Amanita muscaria mushrooms, a natural psychotrope.” Can you really blame me for favoring a charismatic god-empress who shared unprecedented power with her husband, over someone who was designed to look like a magical fungus?
Second fun fact: This isn’t even the first Tumblr post in which I’ve praised Nefertiti’s hottness! You are hereby invited to travel down memory lane to one of my favorite posts on The Smoldering Screen…
I have a magical talent for recognizing Helmut Newton photographs. I’ll be on some blog, looking at art or photos, and my eyes will fall upon a nude (because, well, whose eyes aren’t drawn to naked people?) But then, instead of moving on, I’ll become viscerally fascinated by some almost surreal detail (like the fallen hair here), by some rich and bizarre combination of sensuality and abstraction, by something at once blank and sinister in the face of the model, by some strange alchemy in which the blunt eroticism of the photo makes it more hermetic, not less…
Anyways, when I feel this very particular and somewhat unsettling feeling, I’ll scramble to find out who took the photo. And voilà, nine times out of then: Helmut Newton.
(By the way, have any of you guys read William Gibson’s Spook Country? Whenever I see a Helmut Newton photograph nowadays, I am instantly reminded of a minor scene in Spook Country where the characters visit a memorial to the photographer — except that this memorial is a decadent locative art installation that is only visible to people wearing virtual reality glasses at a particular location in Los Angeles. I’m not explaining this very well…)
hotparade:

Helmut Newton - Arielle after a haircut, Paris 1982
Kaboom [2010, Gregg Araki]
Juno Temple was very sexy, and her outfits were delightfully eccentric. The whole movie was lots of fun — a witty apocalyptic sex comedy about really cool college students. And people in animal masks…
The world needs more gorgeous British girls in fezzes.
Don’t tell me this doesn’t remind you of Blue Velvet. She even has basically the same hairstyle as Isabella Rossellini’s character.
Eva Green
I find the costume of saccharine, hyperbolic femininity a bit creepy and off-putting, but on the other, hey, it’s Eva Green!