My Bloggy Makeover

I've made a couple of changes to this blog template, most visibly, to the title bar above. I've set it up so that the four images can be cycled out and around, depending on my current whims. As I make changes, I'll blog about them. Hopefully, this will give me an excuse to blog about more than shit I'm writing elsewhere and professional acquaintences who are doing better than me. Notes on the curent lineup:

1. Anita Loos.
The pioneering early-film lady-screenwriter (she wrote the subtitles for Griffith's Intolerance, adapted the movie version of The Women from the play, and wrote the novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), circa 1920 or thereabouts, lookin' like she just stepped out of Misshapes. This should remind me to pick up a copy of her first memoir, A Girl Like I; I read her second, Kiss Hollywood Goodbye, something like twice a year.

2. Detail from Kitchen Frenzy (Bernhard and Anna Blume, 1986).
Nick and I saw this at MoMA last weekend and freaked out. Absolute genius. My favorite is the part where the lady is thrown off her chair by the force of the potatoes, but that wouldn't fit in by little module. Check out the full piece here.

3. Bridgitte Bardot, from Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt
Taken straight from my old homepage. Quoting Charles Taylor, from a 10-year-old (!) story in Salon:

Contempt evokes an era when the belief that movies mattered was an article of faith, when there seemed no turning back from the endless potential of movies, and when an eager (if not always large) audience existed for the directors ready to realize that potential.

Also, she's gorgeous. But next week, I'll probably change it to the part of the frame that shows Michel Piccoli rubbing her foot.

4. Peter Finch, from Network

In the spirit of calling bullshit.