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[cleolinda]

Guess whose giant Christmas package not only didn't get lost in the mail after all, but finally reached Vladimir on Valentine's weekend? I WIN AT LIFE.

More stuff, glorious in its stuffness:

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory stills!

Just added: Hi-res Bride and Prejudice pics from OutNow.ch.

A Salon primer on Lovecraft. Actually in reference to his horror of race-mixing (oh... dear), but: "Like a lot of people who proudly declare themselves to inhabit the territory of pure reason, Lovecraft had difficulty policing the borders." Which is... about the way of it, really. Lovecraft's personal flaws aside, I happen to love his stuff--it's this gorgeous, neurotic collision of The Horror of Which We Cannot Speak and really purple, overwrought prose. That, and I think I've just always been fascinated by the things we can't see or hear or name--which is why a movie that leaves something unseen and to our imagination will always score points with me.

Note on current music: This is the song in the Sin City trailer that people have been so crazy to get hold of. I didn't think all that much of it until I heard the whole thing--and it's funny, because the lyrics are so mundane ("We ate Chinese/ off our knees/ and looked for each other in the TV screen/ Everyday I'm at my desk/ at my desk I'm like the rest/ All I do I wanna do with you") but the music is so dark and scary and thrillery. Love.

P.S. Sin City people? GO GET THE NEW ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. I mean, it's not worth bronzing or anything, but that doesn't mean I wasn't snuggling with it last night. Excerpt from the cover story, as posted on ew.com:

Bits of flesh and severed noggins, sadistic brutes and femmes fatales — and we haven't even mentioned the Yellow Bastard, who is literally yellow and actually a rapist. Sin City might be a comic-book movie, but you won't find masked marvels patrolling these scuzzy streets. ''I told my mom I was dressed like an S&M superhero,'' says Rosario Dawson, who plays a hooker in the $40 million marriage of crime saga and special effects. ''She was like, 'What's your name?' I said 'Gail.' She said, 'No, your superhero name?' I said, 'No, Mom, I'm not actually a superhero...'''

But there is a creative Superman behind Sin City: Frank Miller, 48, whose original comic series drew fans with its spartan storytelling and smashmouth violence, rendered in jet black and angel white and a periodic gush of color. Since 1991, Miller has produced seven volumes' worth of Sin ''yarns,'' none better than his shock-of-the-new first. Its hero was a hulking killer with a billowing trench coat named Marv (played by Mickey Rourke in the movie), out to avenge the murder of the only woman who dared love his ugly mug. His growling thoughts were pure pulp poetry: …and when his eyes go dead the hell I send him to will seem like heaven after what I've done to him. I love you, Goldie.

El Mariachi wunderkind Robert Rodriguez, 36, had been a Sin City fan since the beginning. In September 2003, the director won a reluctant Miller over with his pitch: ''I don't want to adapt Sin City,'' said Rodriguez. ''I want to translate it.'' In January 2004, Rodriguez invited Miller to Austin to demonstrate how computer animation could replicate Miller's shadow world. The ''test'' material was Miller's two-character short story ''The Customer Is Always Right,'' with Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton playing the roles. '''Test,''' says Miller. ''That was the stealth name for 'first day of photography.''' (In fact, ''Customer'' serves as Sin City's opening sequence.) ''Coming to Austin finished the deal. Robert knew it would.''

Soon after completing ''Customer,'' Rodriguez and Miller (who's acting as codirector on the film) got a $40 million green light from Miramax/Dimension. The plan was to make Marv's tale, plus ''The Big Fat Kill,'' in which Clive Owen's Dwight and Dawson's clan of hookers find themselves up crap creek after a fateful encounter with a very bad Benicio Del Toro, and ''That Yellow Bastard,'' about a good cop (Bruce Willis) with a bad heart who tangles with the titular monster (Nick Stahl) over a lasso-twirling exotic dancer (Jessica Alba).

For Elijah Wood, who plays (brace yourself) a mute cannibal serial killer, Miller's hands-on role was a big plus, especially during the greenscreen filming: ''Having the man who created this world on set was invaluable — especially since we couldn't technically see it.''And Willis? He was sold even earlier, by the ''Customer'' test: ''About a minute into it,'' the actor recalls, ''I said, 'No matter what else I see, I want you to know I'm in.'''

"Bits of flesh" refers to the beginning of the article--the funniest part, actually, which is the reporter talking to Clive Owen while they both watch Rosario Dawson film a scene where she, like, bites [another actress's] "ear" or something off and spits it out. And Clive Owen's sitting there trying to expound on the finer points of the enterprise blah and finally he just stops and says, "That's wrong. Just wrong."

Comments

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

Judging from one of her icons, I think her name comes from Cleopatra Jones (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069890/)...which suddenly makes me understand why "Cleolinda Jones" has such a ring to it.

Maybe the title of the book should be Cleolinda Jones and the Fifteen-Minute Movies of Gold.