Movie Classics: Christmas edition

I've been watching plenty of christmas movies this christmas (and I've still got a couple left). I thought of doing a real review, but I think I'm saving that for next year (Yes, I plan too far ahead). The short plot summaries are from imdb.com


The Bishop's Wife
(1947)
Runtime: 109min
Director: Henry Koster
Cast: Cary Grant, Loretta Young, David Niven

"A bishop trying to get a new cathedral built prays for guidance. An angel arrives, but his guidance isn't about fundraising"

Holiday Inn
(1942)
Runtime: 100min
Director: Mark Sandrich
Cast: Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire,
Majorie Reynolds, Virginia Dale and Walter Abel

"At an inn which is only open on holidays, a crooner and a hoofer vie for the affections of a beautiful up-and-coming performer"

Miracle on 34th Street
(1947)
Runtime: 96min
Director: George Seaton
Cast: Maureen O'Hara, John Payne,
Edmund Gwenn and Natalie Wood

"When a nice old man who claims to be Santa Claus is institutionalized as insane, a young lawyer decides to defend him by arguing in court that he is the real thing"

It's a Wonderfull Life
(1946)
Runtime: 130min
Director: Frank Capra
Cast: James Stewart, Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore

"An angel helps a compassionate but despairingly frustrated businessman bu showing what life would have been like if he never existed"

I'll Be Seeing You
(1944)
Runtime: 85min
Director: William Dieterle
Cast: Ginger Rogers, Joseph Cotton,
Shirley Temple, Spring Byington and Tom Tully

"A soldier suffering from battle fatigue meets a young woman on Christmas furlough from prison and their mutual loneliness blossoms into romance"

Christmas Holiday
(1944)
Runtime: 93min
Director: Robert Siodmak
Cast: Deanna Durbin, Gene Kelly and Richard Whorf

"A young femme fatale-type woman realizes that the wealthy man she married is an incorrigible wastrel"

White Christmas
(1954)
Runtime: 120min
Director: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye,
Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen and Dean Jagger

"A successful song-and-dance team become romantically involved with a sister act and team up to save the failing Vermont inn of their former commanding general"

The Shop Around the Corner
(1940)
Runtime: 99min
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Cast: James Stewart, Margaret Sullivan, Frank Morgan,
Joseph Schildkraut and Felix Bressart

"Two employees at a gift shop can barely stand one another, without realizing that they are falling in love through the post as each other's anonymous pen pal"

Christmas buys

A few gifts I bought for myself from Etsy:

The Secret Garden crdigan clip (from AmbivalentRelics)

Vintage tiki ratan and wood floral handbag (from C3L35T3)

50s turquoise mink blend cardigan (from reverievintage)


Pictures taken from etsy

TV Costumes

Boardwalk Empire
pt 3
(2010)
Costume designer: John A Dunn.
More stills from the wonderfull series.
These are from episode 8-9.
You can find stills from earlier episodes here and here.
(better quality in full scale)

Merry Christmas

I've been abit out of it today. Was up all night with a terrible headache that kept going on all day. At the same time I've received some terrible news. It has something with the news I received last fall which I though was over a long time a go. I'm not sure how to handle it, but I will try to not make it ruin christmas and the blog entires I've got figured out.

Here are some pictures of some of the gifts I've wrapped:


I've watched so many christmas movies lately, but I've still got a few left to watch. I hope it can keep my mind off things...

Retro inspired editorials #5

Lara Stone by Mert & Marcus for Vogue US
(September 2010)
Fashion Gone Rogue describes this shoot as classic with a modern twist. I love how comfy the clothes look, how pretty her hair is and all the soft colors.

The winning book is....

Actually, there was a tie between Owen Meany and Kafka on the Shore, but since I feel more like reading Owen Meany at the moment, the final vote is mine.

Thank you so much for the help!
You are all so wonderfull!

Music for Christmas

Here are some songs that give me that bittersweet christmas feeling
(the songs are linked)

Loreena McKennitt: The Holly and the Ivy
Loreena McKennitt: The Seven Rejoices of Mary
Sufjan Stevens: O Come O Come Emmanuel
Peter Auty: Walking in the Air
Loreena McKennitt: Snow
Tori Amos: Winter


picture from weheartit

book voting

My exams are finished and I'm free from school for a month. I just want to say hi to the new followers. Thank you! I've spent the day making christmas cards and wathcing two christmas movies: Miracle on 34th Street and The Shop Around the Corner. Two wonderfull heart warming movies.

I'm starting work (for christmas) tomorrow and will have two days off the next couple of weeks. I will still try to read some wonderfull books and I'm starting with The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson. Hopefully I will get the chance to read more than one book, but there are so many to chose from. This is where you guys come in. If it wouldn't be too much to ask for, I would like to have your vote on these books. I'm thinking three votes per person, and the book that gets the most votes is the book I'm going to read. Why do I make it so difficult and doesn't just pick one? well, I do love lists, and make every excuse to make one.


Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (1989)
"It tells the story of John Wheelwright and his best friend Owen Meany growing up together in a small New England town during the 1950-60s. Owen is a remarkable boy in many ways; He believes himself to be God's instrument and journeys on a truly extraordinary path"


Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (2002)
"Teenager Kafka Tamura, goes on the run and holes up in a strange library in a small country town. Nakata, a fiender of lost cats, goes on an odyssey across Japan."


Cracks by Sheila Kohler (2000)
"Forty years after the disappearance of a beautiful schoolgirl, thirteen members of her swimming team gather at their old boarding school for a reunion, and look back to the weeks leading to her disappearance. As teenage memories and emotions resurface, the women relive the horror of a long-buried secret"


My Summer of Love by Helen Cross (2001)
"It's 1984 and one of the hottest summers Yorkshire's seen. Mona is 15 years old. She's a drinker, a thief and a fruit machine addict. Things are already going badly in the pub where she lives with her obese step-brother PorkChop. But when Mona meets posh Tamsin Fakenham, a sassy girl wih beautiful breasts, things very quickly get much worse"

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton (2010)
"Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long lost letter arrives with the return address Milderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother's emotional distance masks an old secret"


Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)
"Clarissa Dalloway is the elegant, vivacious wife of a Member of Parliament. On a hot summer's day in London at the end of the First World War, she is preparing for a party that evening - her old lover, Peter Walsh, has just returned from India"


To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)
"Provides the author's own early experiences, and while it touches on childhood and children's perceptions and desires, it is most clear when exploring adult relationships, marriage and the changing class-structure in the period spanning the Great War"


The Waves by Virginia Woolf (1931)
"Conveys the rhythms of life in synchrony with the cycle of nature and the passage of time. This book presents a searching exploration of individual and collective identity, and the observations and emotions of life, from the simplicity and surging optimism of youth to the vacancy and despair of middle-age"


Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf (1941)
"Set in the summer of 1939 on the day of the annual village pegeant at Pointz Hall, the book weaves together the musing of several disparate charachters and their reactions to the imminence of a war which is to change the pattern of history"


Northanger Abby by Jane Austen (1817)
"Tells the story of a young girl, Catherine Morland who leaves her sheltered, rural home to enter the busy, sophisticated world of Bath in the late 1790s"


Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (1814)
"Fanny Price is unlike any of Austen's previous heroines, a girl from a poor family brought up in a splendid country house and possessed of a vast reserve of moral fortitude and imperturbability"


Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (1811)
"A comedy of manners in which the sisters Elinor and Marianne represent these two qualities. Elinor's character is one of Augustan detachment, while Marianne, a fervent disciple of the Romantic Age, learns to curb her passionate nature in the interest of survival"