we LURVE drew

-she's as cute as a button. she has attitude to spare. she marches to the beat of her own drum.

-she produced DonnieDarko and had her own production company (flower films)
WAAAAAAAAAAAY before it became a fad for all actors.

-she's hollywood royalty, dammit. (granpa john romanced garbo in grand hotel...ah).




- when i was but a tot and saw my first-ever movie, E.T., there she was. wide-eyed.




- we love her autobiography (little girl lost). written when she was 13. a child's descent into sex, drugs and lots of coke by the time she was 13 ( i know i've said this already. 13). she had DONE IT ALL.


- we love her transformation from slutty bad girl to the dimply and cherubic fluffy thing everyone wants to take care of




- she flashed her tits on the DavidLetterman show totally randomly, as you do

- she was caught having sex in an opera booth

- she's a pisces. am a sucker for that sign

- she's a go-er

- she is of irish stock. addiction and brilliance course through the veins

``Sometimes I bust out and do things so permanent. Like tattoos and marriage."


god bless PeopleMagazine this year for picking someone original as the Fairest of them all. angelina...? Pffft. over that bridge you go...shag, marry drew.

Travesty!

flavia tucks into a healthy and inviting plate of PUNTARELLE

two second later her lips starts swelling at an alarming rate..

f: flash. erm...ate some puntarelle and now my lip has grown elephantine. and not in an angelinajolie type of a way
b: Sorry, kid - sounds like what you have is an allergy to the family of chicory plants, of which puntarelle are a giant member. It's "pas grave" if not accompanied by other symptoms, such as anaphylactic shock.
f: erm...looks like a blotched lip job.
b: that's much more tragic. you may be suffering from MegRyan syndrome.

didn't get much sympathy from other friends either:
f: i could have died you know
sicily: where did you rollerblade to
f: LISTEN. i have a LIP problem
sicily: so you learn where you put them...

the perils of roller skating in rome

in the city of Potholes and cobbled streets, it takes one silly cow to hit the roads with her rollerblades.
that silly cow would me.
in a never-ending string of scooter badluck, i found myself mourning yet another two-wheeler. (no more i say, at least for a while).
AND with summer upon us..
AND the prospect of bikini/sarong wearing/baring imminent ...
AND my aformentioned plans to breakfast/snack/lunch/dine on gelo di anguria...

i am left, frankly, with no option but to put on those skates and just go with the flow. to the sounds of Brand New Key ("don't go too fast, but i go pretty far")

i emerged from my first day on the streets, unscathed and enboldened. it really isn't that bad. you catch some lovely views. work up a sweat. look like a total red-faced Plonker. knock down a few fat tourists. infuriate a coupla taxi drivers when you find yourself without a pavement and hopping on the road.

tomorrow am going to work on BREAKING more elegantly.. at present i look like i'm about to go to the loo. i feel i'm putting off innocent bystanders. wouldn't want to give them the wrong impression of the eternal city as one inhabited by constipated loonies let loose with wheels attached to their feet.

goddam those sicilians..

gelo di anguria

plan on feasting all summer on this and of course my other favourite thing in the world, latte di mandorle. naturally my ass will double in size and may hit the floor by the time september rocks up. but hey, so be it.

this week's they-just-don't-make-em-like-they-used-to

the original trailer


mundson: Gilda, are you decent?
Gilda: Me?

the role that made her. the role that haunted her..

“Every man I knew went to bed with Gilda... and woke up with me.” Rita Hayworth

stick it!

from the makers of teen-crud classic ``bring it on'' a tale of errrrr........Gymnastics....and one HAPPY coach (none other than my one and only Jeff Bridges (here's looking at you kid...)

"she loved the farmer"

were more beautiful words spoken in film?

i was reminded of my love/adoration/worship/obsession for terrence malick on seeing Days of Heaven erm. for the umptieth time. and while i am LOATHE to see him made fun or trivialized in any shape or manner i have to admit this spoof of him is pretty flapping hilarious.



but before you giggle...see why no living man, with the exception of wong kar wai, has his eye (visconti kicked the bucket and well, so did kubrick).




mmm... ``she loved the farmer''

this week's underrated gem

i can't really talk about this movie. i get a bit overwhelmed. and nostalgic and choked up. i first saw it with my BFF (BestFriendForevah) at the time, jimbob, in the flat in chelsea we shared with la snooze. he was a monastic non-practicing sodomite who starved himself on a diet of cocacola light and popcorn until he looked like a giant popsicle. we affectionately called each other `heft.'
how we loved this movie. the sing-a-longs had: his imposing tenor to my er...enthusiastic yet sadly lacking and err... cracked and tone-deaf er..mezzo soprano.
sure, on the surface, grace of my heart has all those elements to make it a staple for the friends of dorothy and their faghags (strong female lead, men who are cads, triumph over adversity) but in actual fact it's that very rare thing, an unpretentious indie film that inexplicably slipped through the cracks in spite of an outrageously impressive array of acting and musical talent, for being, well, not quirky at a time perhaps when odd was all that was required.



`` A lovely moment in Allison Anders' "Grace of My Heart" finds Denise Waverly (Illeana Douglas) and Howard Cazsatt (Eric Stoltz), her lover and songwriting partner, in the legendary Brill Building on Broadway, sitting at the piano discussing a number about teen-age romance.'' (New York Times)



``The career of Carole King is this film's unmistakable starting point, even if a mainstay of New York pop has been unaccountably transported to the Philadelphia Main Line. Edna Buxton (Douglas), a WASP heiress, has been brought up by her starchy mother to sing songs like "You'll Never Walk Alone," but she makes her break for independence in the film's evocative opening scene. Edna enters the singing contest that will start her on the road to success in the musicbusiness and Anders invites the audience to look right over her shoulder.'' (NYT cont.)

favourite lyrics, hands down

She took me off my guard with disappointment
I got sucked inside of her apartment
She's got dried-up flowers, flaky skin
A beaded necklace and a bottle of gin

She's a nightmare Hippy girl
With her skinny fingers fondling' my world
She's a whimsical, tragical beauty
Self-conscious and a little bit moody

It's a newage letdown in my face
She's so spaced out and there ain't no space
She's got marijuana on the bathroomtile
I'm caught in a vortex
She's changing' my style

She's a nightmare Hippy girl
With her skinny fingers fondling' my world
She's a whimsical, tragical beauty
Uptight and a little bit snooty

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

She's a magical, sparkling' tease
She's a rainbow choking' the breeze
Yo, she's busting' out onto the scene
With nightmare bogus poetry
She's a melted avocado on the shelf
She's the science of herself
She's spazzing out on a cosmic level
And she's meditating with the devil
She's cooking salad for breakfast
She's got tofu the size of Texas
She's a witness to her own glory
She's a never-ending story
She's a frolicking depression
She's a self-inflicted obsession
She's got a thousand lonely husbands
She's playing' footsie in another dimension
She's a goddess milking her time

For all that it's worth


** from beck, the (hot) genius **

am salivating

from the Guardian:
``There is a fairy-tale quality to the book, in that everything that follows seems inevitable. The minute currents of tension that change a conversation and a life are so crucial to McEwan's method that it would be unfair to give away every last turn in his narrative. Towards the end, when fates have been sealed, it seems to Edward 'that an explanation of his existence would take up a minute, less than half a page'. Such is the deft compression of McEwan's art here that, in his hands, such a formulation does not seem far from the truth.''

buffy weepfest

disclaimer: le duc casually launched the challenge of compiling ``a list of Buffy moments that make me weep'' knowing full well i could not pass up on the opportunity of indulging in my favourite obsession. i suspect our picks may be quite different. afterall, my heart is made of stone when it comes to anything angel-centric so needless to say buffy dispatching her miserable vampire lover into a hell dimension had me cheering ``good riddance'' rather than hiccuping in violent sobs. so off i go......

1. The Wish
a humiliated Cordelia, unbeknowningly, ``wishes'' to Anya (a vengeance demon) that buffy summers had never come to sunnydale. result: the most moving episode of buffy. in this alternate reality the town is in the hands of the master and his cronies who have set up camp at the bronze, sunnydale's only nightspot. willow and xander are leather-clad sadistic vamps. an emasculated angel is locked in a dungeon as kinky willow's sex/torture toy. buffy when she does rock up from cleveland is a heartless and cold cynic. The master, sensing her death wish, snaps her neck in one crack of the wrist. oz stakes dominatrix willow. cordi, desperately trying to take it all back, dies anti-climatically. the scoobies, you see, never were. in such a world you casually slay your best friend, kill the love of your life, with reckless abandon.




2. Selfless
I will confess to my bias. No character in Buffy breaks my heart as much as Anya ("You speak your mind, and are annoying""), the 1,000 year-old vengeance demon turned human against her wishes only to learn to love the unfathomable human race and ultimately sacrifice herself for it. not just once. but twice. there is one moment, and it's a fraction of a second, when she's fighting buffy half-heartedly and lays herself on the floor putting her arms down, a crucifix on the ground, willing almost begging the slayer to end her pain by ending it all. of course the tragedy is made all the more poignant by hilarious flashbacks to anya in her bunny-loving days as a norwegian milkmaid.
hearbroken at xander dumping her at the altar, anya gets her old powers back. but, she finds, wreaking revenge just isn't that much fun anymore and when she unleashes a heart-devouring spider into a frat party, she knows she's not leaving buffy any choice but to go after her. our anya, nobly, tries to take it back, and the ending foreshadows her death which won't happen till later.........
“You should have killed me.” whispers Anya.
D’Hoffryn chuckles. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. ‘From beneath you, it devours.’



3. Chosen
I will be brief, staying on the Anya motif. Well, in short she gets sliced in half. suddenly. unexpectedly. the genius was exactly in that. no build-up. very much like the buffy neck-snapping moment, it's seeing life end in an instant. that is what makes it so powerful and moving.



4. Help
A young girl, Cassie, has a premonition she will die. Buffy becomes convinced instead that there is some supernatural, demonic explanation that can be superseded. So many deaths in Buffy are reversible. but there are three glaring and very banal examples when all the superhero powers in the world are of no use. be it the cancer of buffy's mother, or tara's fatal gunshot or very simply the case of this eerie and precocious teen, strangely resigned and composed about her fate. her clairvoyance also foreshadows other important events when she looks at Spike and whispers:
“She’ll tell you. Someday she’ll tell you...”




5. Once More, With Feeling
When buffy moves to sunnydale we surmise that her parents have separated and buffy is raised by her mom, sees her dad from time to time. her relationship with giles, her watcher, evolves over the seasons until he, for all intents and purposes does become a father to her. there are several touching moments between them where their rapport is tried and tested. in the famous musical episode, it is giles swansong to buffy that tugs at my heartstrings...when he realizes he has to let his slayer go...``I wish I could lay your arms down and let you rest at last, Wish I could slay your demons, but now that time has passed....''




there are OTHER moments of course, and no doubt i will be going back to this list and adding a few more, here and there. but for the time being. this will do. le duc, over to you............

flaming and pink and hot

for the quaint medieval hamlet of titignano, tucked away somewhere in umbria overlooking thousands of hectars of olive trees, life is about to change forever....the countdown to May 5-6 begins.

day...........



night........

last stop CCCP 6:23 a.m.

in some other bloke's words because i'm spent:
``Kitsch, totally tacky and decked out with strange decorations. 20s music plays, the bartendress looks like a flapper girl. Russian mafia...''

a bit later.
f: mmm i could do with a kebab
P:ok

10 minutes later
f: i think i could have another
P: mmmm. ok.

5 minutes later
f: i think my flight leaves in 3 hours. i should head back
P: mm yes

letting NY go...

as i plummet into berlin decadence...(possibly the one capital in the civilized world where you can still smoke in bars) something in me still wants to wake in a wet black sweater with random mustard stains, which somehow stand for the infinite possibilities and tireless fun and utter unpredictability of this great city.
so randomly.
here is to z.
and the half day i spent with you, deciding what you would wear to a wedding. and the remaining half you spent silently clucking at my appaling behaviour at aformentioned nuptials. and here is to another day spent idling around the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) arguing about our characters. and here is to the final day saying our sad goodbyes.

teenage kicks

after the 5th G&T at berlin's wonderfully cavernous Fire bar, impressions of John Peel (the legendary Radio One DJ) came thick and fast. how i laughed. how i cried. and well, here's to our john, a real cracker as i like to say. a maverick. a one-off. thom yorke paid him a most loving tribute.
and here is what he names as his favourite all-time song. a man after my heart..

"say na more, john!!!...."

pre-fame pre-it all

i have no words.

going once. going twice. SOLD to the random in the corner..

(Christies photo auction May 31)

how the mighty fall

back in the day i used to have QUITE the crush on this austrian acting powerhouse. how could i not after mephisto? (too bad too many people remember him as a bond villain). possibly the greatest actor living. and what presence! alas i bumped into him in berlin yesterday..after a fluster of excitement, i took a double take, to observe him sadly bloated, tragically aged, digging savagely and silently into a rather large whole chicken in the company of a rather unattractive young woman, clearly bored in his company. he didn't look so good our klaus. erm...time to rewind to out of africa days when he gave karen blixen/meryl streep a lovely STD. those were the days. he's still got SOMETHING, but one should never see ones heroes up close and personal or at least not going about everyday business.

you know who you are

"Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence"

canadians do it better? eh! Abut!

degrassi more than a decade ago kindled my love for all things teen and cruddy..now it's the Next Generation...JOY!

Around the same time, out-and-proud Jersey boy Kevin Smith kindled my love in the garden state with his classic trilogy (Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy)...

Ten years later...Silent Bob aka Smith has endeared himself ALL THE MORE by agreeing, out of love for Degrassi, to film one of the most inspired and hilarious cameo/skits ever with his partner in caper mischief, that foul-mouthed yet sexy in an utterly compelling yet repugnant way ...Jay
(incidentally, a rather dark, raven-headed chick bares an uncanny resemblance to our very own sicily or maybe it was that cowboy hat on her head that threw me off. )


i LOVE canada! i love NJ!

FLASHBACK!

The New Jersey Turnpike. bopping at hundreds of miles an hour in a rusty carcass of a car foisting a horrifically sweet roadside coffee called waawaa in one hand. a cigarette alight in another. driving fast. but not so fast. i am not behind the wheel. the window is down. i poke my head out to feel the wind whack me back inside. playing loudly from a rackety old cassette is the theme song of a 22-year-old flavia, on her first trip to the states.

I am the son
And the heir
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and heir
Of nothing in particular

You shut your mouth
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am Human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does

NY revisited

DIGGING THE SNOW QUEEN CAPE.




I LOVE NJ



MISCHIEF MAKERS




last few moments of sobriety before things spiralled out of control

great minds think alike

it's nice to be wanted...

so i hoisted my slim self into mina, leaving unpaid fines and stolen scooter and broken laptop woes behind me, and spluttered to casa dei pucci. determined not to drink, possibly fast and act fittingly glum in view of recent events and disasters that have rightly earned me the moniker POD. in a strange act of telepathy i packed my nun habit and the cross, hoping to solicit a Lady V snort of appreciation.

alas all my firmest resolutions went, as we like to say, TITS up. rocking up to the sounds of the stone roses (i am the RESURECTION la la la) the sight of virile activity put me in an instant good mood. men with tight shirts chopping wood and working up a sweat is all it takes when you are a BL. i sit back and enjoy the view, the sun sinking into the hills. an anorexic-looking maude grovelling devotedly. am told we're having lamb for dinner. wonderful. i hate lamb so it will be all the easier to fast.

graham, tim and lady V rock up. inexplicably carrying bag upon bag of groceries (food shopping seems to a compulsive activity on tuscan soil). the fact that we're leaving the day after doesn't seem to deter the ardent shoppers. lady v trots along for a bear hug and soon enough we're smoking, drinking, talking trash and filth and mischief had or wanted or sought but seldom found. she has brought along a little treat for us: behind convent walls (a late masterpiece from the art exploitation school of 1970s filmaking). am ecstatic since i've brought along tis pity she's a whore and now the expanding film collection can have another category (arty trash) next to the teen crud.

sat around a table we make merry. alberto pots about like a house frau and bakes and stuffs tomatoes with rice. tim tends to his manky finger which he managed to shred into a gangrenous mess (i suggest amputation). john sits quietly in a corner looking like a young marlon brando in the streetcar named desire era. graham leafs through vogue trying to shut out the girlie chatter. food is eaten. bruce springsteen is played loudly. a guilty pleasure for some. an unadulturated joy for others. Shag Marriage Bridge is played (lady v slips AGAIN into BLism waters). glorious film watching ensues. we run out of fags. i roll some of the worst cigarettes imaginable.

i wake up and can't remember where i am.

i miss you all.
end of rant

revel in the mire

``Movies are so rarely great art,'' Kael wrote, ``that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them.'' (rolling stone cites)

2007 just got kind of dark

"That which is not yet, but ought to be, is more real than that which merely is."

zoe lund

it's all a blur