bennet_7

Apparently we have Joseph Gordon-Levitt to thank for Arthur's wardrobe in Inception:

You know, I gotta say when I first started working on Inception, some of the drawings they showed me of their ideas for that character was uh sort of schlubby, sort of like, well he’s the tech guy, he runs the machines, you know, so maybe he should be wearing some sneakers and a plaid shirt et cetera and I was like “No, no, no.” This guy is in charge of making sure everything goes right. The Cobb character that Leonardo DiCaprio played, he’s like the artist and this guy’s like the producer. So, uh, I thought of my friend Jared, who is a theatre producer by day and he’s a very spiffy dresser. And I was like, “No, I want tailored suits and I want to slick back my hair, I want this guy to seem like meticulous, like he pays very close attention to detail.”

- source

*flails*

On the fuglification of Richard Armitage: Oh Peter Jackson, how could you do this to Richard Armitage? For those not familiar with Mr Armitage, he normally looks like this. Better, right?

On Harry Potter: I'm not super fannish about Harry Potter. I only went to the midnight screening because a friend organised it and I've never been involved in the fandom. Occasionally I feel the urge to read fic for certain characters - I went through a Tonks/Lupin phase last year and right now I'm reading a quite good James/Lily fic (though it does have the most appalling overuse of epithets I've ever seen. The Gryffindor/the redhead/the witch/the prefect - just call her Lily).

( Random thoughts on Slytherin and house rivalry )

On Inception: Five ways I would describe Arthur in canon: loyal, capable, intelligent, sarcastic, well-dressed.

Five ways I would describe Arthur in fanon: repressed, aloof, unimaginative, cold, constantly wearing a three-piece suit.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately as I've gotten a couple of comments during the past month on the costume meta that I wrote and they've all mentioned that they also think that canonical Arthur is nowhere near as uptight as the fandom generally writes him. ( More on characterisation )

On Harry Potter and Inception: My dashboard on Tumblr was 40% Harry Potter and 40% Inception all weekend. So I sent the dream team to Hogwarts.

( Fic: Construction )

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 )

Jeffrey Kurland, whose amazing costumes for Inception that I love and picspammed the hell out of, lost out in the contemporary film category of the Costume Designer Guild Awards to Amy Westcott of Black Swan.

And I'd so gotten my hopes up. I totally thought that the CDG, the only institution to recognise Kurland's work with a nomination, would also give him the award. I was like: "Yep, everyone else is blind to these absolutely fantastic costumes, but it's ok, Kurland's peers will get it. They will see the effort and the skill and the creativity that went into these costumes. They will understand what "bespoke" means and will be suitably impressed that almost every item of clothing the main characters wear was made specifically for this film. He will win."

This would sting less if Black Swan deserved it but in my opinion it doesn't. It seems I'm not the only one cynical enough to think that Amy Westcott was given the award - at least in part - as a sign of guild solidarity after the controversy involving the designers from Rodarte claiming more credit than they deserved for their involvement with the film.

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. )

Is there anything better than a DVD rip leaking a month before the official release?
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Well, Christmas is pretty good. So is winning the lottery. And getting into grad school (which is what I should have been trying to do instead of making icons).

Still, I was pretty pleased when Inception appeared on the internets last weekend as I've been enjoying the hell out of the fandom. Rewatching the film, the flaws I mentioned previously (characterisation, dialogue: Nolan, get better at these!) are still there but they don't diminish my enjoyment of the film overmuch and hopefully it won't fall apart the more I view it.


The quality of this copy isn't the greatest but it was decent enough for me to waste a couple of hours making icons.



( The fruits of my labour )

So, like everyone and their mother, I saw Inception. And I thought it was pretty good. Great concept, great cast, great costumes, and great effects. However, I think Nolan isn't as skilled when it comes to dialogue and characterisation as he is with plot. Luckily, that's where the Inception fandom kicks ass and takes names. There is so much good fic out there, it's unbelievable. People are writing wonderful backgrounds for these characters, going into their motivations and relationships. I think that the reason Inception fandom is chugging along so nicely is that the lack of characterisation on Nolan's part allows for so many different interpretations of the characters.

I came away from the film looking for fic because if the characters weren't fully dimensional on the page, the actors made them compelling on screen. I particularly liked Arthur because: 1) played by JGL, whom I've crushed on since he cut his hair in the later seasons of 3rd Rock, 2) he is a loyal friend and incredibly competent at his job, 3) GQ-ness, 4) badass zero gravity fight. Ariadne was basically there to ask questions that the audience wanted answered and act as Cobb's therapist, but she took control of situations, called Cobb on his bullshit, and Ellen Page imbued her with enough spunk that I really liked her too.

Shipping them? Well it's kind of canon, but never has so much been made of so little. Still, I latched onto those teeny tiny moments and have been blessed with a fandom offering an unproportional response. Arthur/Ariadne fans: you're awesome.

I swear I was humming 'Slow Show' by the National as I left the theatre. Some of the lyrics work so well that it immediately became their song in my head, but from Arthur's perspective. Now, the traditional response would have been to make a fanmix but the fandom was flooded with those in the early days (hasn't much let up of late, either) and plus, I couldn't find many other songs to suit.

But I have always wanted to try one of picspammy's challenges and in this one, 'illustrate a song with a fandom', seemed like the perfect opportunity to mash 'Slow Show' and Inception together. The only problem was the lack of usable images. This was cobbled together using two different trailers, a couple of production stills, screencaps from (500) Days of Summer and Whip It, and various photoshoots that JGL and Page have done. Trying to make images from different sources of varying levels of quality, colouring, and lighting look cohesive was impossible. In the end I decided to embrace the variety and thus this picspam is a little schizophrenic.

I only used lyrics that I felt were relevant but this is still quite long - avoid if you're on dial-up.



( I dreamed about you )