Dress Up and Play

Where The Wild Things ARe

This isn't exactly costume related, but it's a great little featurette on the upcoming 'Where The Wild Things Are' directed by Spike Jonze. It's talks with the original illustrator and author of the book, Maurice Sendak, and touches on the visual life of the film.

It's Summer

This has been the busiest summer I've ever had! I didn't even know I was this social.
I will resume film studies and sussing out info of coming attractions... I'm excited about Mamma Mia!

But until that happens, we're going to stick with fun costume history references and design details.

Did you know that the Dover site has a cool feature where you can sign up and get free pics and clip art ever week- they send it right to your email along with info on sales and such. (Just check the "Free Samples" link on the left side.) Even if you're not a clip art user, I always save these pics every week and find them a great design reference.

This week one of the books featured was a great Women Illustrated book- check out this cutie bathing suit! I wish I had it for my Sunday beach trip... ooof I've been to too many BarBQue s this summer to keep sporting my old two piece. This would be much cuter:

SciFi's "Tinman"

Ugh... If I have to travel anymore....

Tonight I caught the first installment of the SciFi Channel's the TinMan, and I'm taping the second episode, which aired tonight, so I can watch that tomorrow. I'd really been looking forward to it, the trailer seemed really exciting. Like remember when there was that whole NBC trend that got into Gulliver's Travels, and Merlin, and Alice in Wonderland in the early 00's? I kinda thought it had that whole thing going for it. Anyway...

The costumes were designed by Mr. Angus Strathie, previous award winner as the co-costume designer (with Catherine Martin) for Moulin Rouge and the other Red Curtain films. My take on the Tinman thus far is that if you zoom out, it's great.... if you zoom in- as one who likes this kind of stuff does- it kind of had it's moments that made me wince just a teeny bit. I love love love the scarecrow, the aging jacket was fantastic. I'm not so into Azkadellia's character, who is a modeling on the wicked witch. Her costumes were a bit too leathery, dominatrix, Anime type for me. I'm not really a Leather, Dominatrix, Anime type of gal anyway. But I guess it works. And I have to concede that I'm sure this didn't have the budget that Moulin Rouge did, so there you go. But props to anyone who wants to take this one. Who could ever redesign one of the most famous costume design movies of all time? Quite a challenge.

DG (or Dorothy Gale) is wearing pants and a leather jacket. Okay... I didn't know how I felt about this at first. But the more I watched it, I just really want those pants.

I dunno. They're great costumes, but this whole vibe is just not my bag. The male characters were superb and there were these beautiful dresses on the little girl characters of both DG and Azkadellia. I'm just partial to the older aged type of things. So in other words I liked 90% of it.

If you go to the website they have this cool character breakdown under "compare to the book" in the Cast section. Some nice full shots of the characters in costume.

This guy really is one of the best costumes of all time.

Love in the Time of Cholera

The designer of this movie, coming out next month, is Marit Allen. She has a varied work history including Mermaids, The Witches, Brokeback Mountain, and Scarlett (tv movie). The scenes here translate beautifully. This time period set in South America is one rarely seen in film, and the texture it affords us is incredibly rich.