bennet_7

1. Tonight's episode of The Chicago Code was the weakest so far but still enjoyable. There was a greater focus on the crime solving, rather than the corruption, so maybe that was it. But there were still a lot of excellent character moments and I continue to love the relationship between Jarek and Teresa. You really get a sense of the history between them and I like that when he pushes her buttons, she pushes right back. On other shows with this kind of power dynamic (woman in charge of male hero), the man is generally allowed by the show to be as disrespectful to her authority as he likes because he is always right and also, she is generally a shrill wet blanket. But there is so much mutual respect between them and sometimes they are downright playful with each other. It's great.

And at this point, I really hope they stay just friends. The actors have great chemistry and I wouldn't be opposed to reading fic, but I'm not in a 'shipping place with them - their friendship/professional relationship is far more interesting to me.

2. I don't know if you've heard, but there's a new Gossip Girl web series called The Dan and Blair Show and it gets uploaded here. As someone who checked out of Gossip Girl in season two because it wasn't good, I've been really impressed with the quality of the writing, pacing, and acting of The Dan and Blair Show. We've watched them go from a crime-fighting duo, to work rivals, to secret friends, and now, perhaps, something more. I am sure the writers will find a way to mess this up, but for now I am enjoying the references to The Philadelphia Story, the way they support each other's career aspirations, and the banter. I think they should run off to a pocket universe together.

3. Speaking of pocket universes THERE IS A WEB COMIC ABOUT ADA LOVELACE AND CHARLES BABBAGE FIGHTING CRIME IN STEAMPUNK VICTORIAN LONDON, SOMETIMES WITH THE HELP OF ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL. MY LIFE IS COMPLETE!

Ahem.

For those of you who have not heard of Ada Lovelace, she was Byron's (yes, that Byron) only legitimate daughter. Her mother, fearing that she would take after her father, raised her on a steady diet of maths, science, and maths, so that when she grew up she was one of the few to understand the design and purpose of Charles Babbage's analytical machine, an early precursor to the computer. Because she wrote an algorithm for the machine, she's considered by many to be the world's first computer programmer. In reality she died at thirty-six from cancer, so it's nice that she's been pulled from the pages of history to be awesome and fight crime.

4. It just now occurs to me that I only really care for people fighting crime when that's not their actual job. So have some ficlets about non-canonical crime fighting duos:

( From Gilmore Girls: Lorelai and Michel )

( From Inception: Arthur and Ariadne )

It's rare that contemporary costume design in a film makes you sit up and take notice. Sometimes while watching a movie I'll think to myself "Hey, that's a cute dress!" or "How can she run in those heels?" or "How the hell can that character afford this wardrobe?!" but it is few and far between where I look at contemporary design and feel admiration and appreciation for the costumes as a whole.

Inception is one of those films. From start to finish I am in awe of designer Jeffrey Kurland's work. He had the difficult task of creating costumes for a largely corporate world set five minutes in the future and that could have resulted in everyone wearing futuristic suits of the same cut. Instead, the looks in this film are modern takes on classic silhouettes which magically equals fashion forward somehow. There are a few great stand out pieces, some subtle referencing of fashion archetypes that serve as characterisation shorthand, and there are a lot of unglamorous everyday looks that give authenticity to the characters' lives.

Clothing, especially the suits, is a huge part of the Inception fandom: there has been a tonne load of suit!porn, writers generally mention what the characters are wearing, it frequently informs the characterisation (especially of Arthur, but also Eames), and there has been a lot of fantastic art drawn to showcase the characters' outfits. There have even been a couple of great guides with hackthis's tutorial How to dress your man/character and butterflythread's essay on Dressing Arthur. Fandom, on the whole, loves Kurland's work.

You want to know who isn't loving it? The critics who hand out awards for such things. Now I never expected Kurland to win any awards because contemporary design is rarely recognised when there are period and fantasy films to contend with. Any film featuring kings and queens of the past is a shoe-in for a nomination (crowns! ceremonial robes!); add in films about classic literary figures or based on the work of classic literary figures (corsets! frock coats!), musicals (sequins! fringe!), fantasy epics (armour! tunics!), and sci-fi (uniforms! shiny!), and contemporary design starts to look like something you could buy at the mall.

The last time a film with contemporary design won the Oscar for best costumes was 1994 and as that film was The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert it still featured a high quotient of sequins and fringe. The Queen and The Devil Wears Prada were both nominated in 2006 and the former had the benefit of royals and being a biopic, while the latter was actually about contemporary fashion and its importance, and they still couldn't win (losing out to Marie Antoinette, natch).

Warner Brothers has done some campaigning on Kurland's behalf (see here and here for the 'For your consideration' ads) but, generally speaking, in order to win the big awards (or even get nominated for them) you need to build up momentum by getting recognition from the smaller, earlier awards. And as of this posting Kurland has received just one nomination for his work. This is in the contemporary category of the Costume Designers Guild Awards (because they do have specific categories for contemporary design as well as period and fantasy) and will face stiff competition from Black Swan, which has also been nominated for a BAFTA. The award ceremony will be held on the 22nd of February.

So the purpose of this picspam is to examine the work that went into these costumes, tease out what they say about the characters, and generally just heap praise upon Jeffrey Kurland because, dammit, someone should.



( And hey, if you don't like Inception but you do like good looking men in suits then just sit back and enjoy the pretty. )

Ho hum. I've actually got a couple of Inception fics half-written that I'm not sure I'll finish but I wanted to inspire myself to do so. So, I wandered over to the Inception kink meme, looking for a prompt I could quickly dash off in the comments. Well, this is ended up being rather more than a dash. Also, I twisted the prompt a little so that I could write about Arthur being a badass.

Title: Better run, better run, outrun my gun
Fandom: Inception
Characters: Arthur, Ariadne, Cobb, Eames, Yusuf, Mal, Saito (slight A/A)
Rating: PG-13 (some language and violence, natch)
Word count: 1,488
Summary: For the inception_kink prompt "Five times Arthur protected the team and one time they protected him." Basically, Arthur is a BAMF.
Author's notes: Title from 'Pumped Up Kicks' by Foster The People.

( Arthur, will you please remove the stick from your arse and hit some of these projections with it! )