7 x 7 Award

Oh, darling Neve. Why would you give an award like this to a self-destructive cinéaste who subconsciously deters the interest of any one like minded by being awfully sarcastic, morbid and childish? A woman who just watches her blog slowly wither away into oblivion and nothingness?

*dramatically covering eyes with arm and falling down to the floor with a loud bounce*

Please, Neve... if these are my last words... remember... The Baz... I believe... in... you... *croak*

Thank you, darling.

The point of this award is that once you are the recipient of it, you are supposed to highlight seven blog posts of your own (following the highlighted directions below), and then pass the award on to seven other bloggers you feel deserve the punishment of forced false modesty.

I will feel like a defiler of graves, since my answer to all these questions will consist of links to really old blog posts. Welcome to the Lolita Mausoleum:


1.Tell everyone something that no one else knows about you.

I believe that I already share too much about myself that you now know about me, but would prefer not to. But I can share something with you. I know that I am cool and all that. Super cool. Tough. Ice cold Queen of Scandinavia. But I'm afraid of spiders, which is totally ridiculous. Snakes - no problem, I grew up with them. I don't even mind the big, hairy tarantulas. No, the spiders I'm afraid of are those icky buggers with teenie tiny bodies and enormously long legs. (A quick Google search informed me that the correct Latin appellation is Daddy Longlegs.)
I blame my father, who traumatized my big sister by chasing her through the house with a spider in his hand. Guess he mistook her crying for hysteric laughter. So, some cognitive behavioral therapy:

2. Link to one of the posts that I think best fits the following categories:

a. Most beautiful piece:

My top 20 favorite actors. Obviously. Lots of sexy dudes there.


b. Most helpful piece:

Pictures Galore: Paul Newman. Seems like I helped my readers regain their sanity with sexy pictures of the late Mr. Newman. Going on my bitchy remark in the beginning of the post, it seems like I  in the previous post had tried to demoralize my readers by shoving post-colonialism in their cute and naïve little faces. Sorry about that.

c. Most popular piece:

According to the statistics, my review of Barbarella (1968) is the post with the most pageviews, closely followed by Ilsa, Swe Wolf of the SS (1975). Dear readers: you are filthy.

"Whaat? I'm just sittin' here lookin' all innocent with a fallic symbol in my hands."

d. Most controversial piece:

Controversial? Petite moi?

Well, perhaps The Strong White Man vs. The Rest might qualify. I was pretty brutal in my sarcasm with that blog post, and those who didn't get that... probably thought that I would enlist with the KKK any moment now. I think it was after that post I put up Groucho excaliming "Warning! Sarcastic bitch blogging" at the top of this site, for those who thought this was a genuine article:

"Interesting thing that natives from other countries can show their breasts and genitals all they want in photographs and in films, but we normal people just get censored. I bet it's because animals have no concept of moral". - A quote I just made up

I recommend to any one going the Cinema Studies route to throw yourself at a colonialism class when the opportunity arises. You may get sick to the stomach, but it's fascinating and important.


e. Surprisingly successful piece:

I'm surprised any piece of this blog is successful, if it is. But I enjoyed the reactionson Lars von Trier's Cannes fiasco (or rather, Cannes' fiasco of banning someone who just didn't express his sarcasm clear due to language difficulties)  in the comment section to my post "I understand Hitler, I do". Come on, it's one of our greatest modern auteurs. Let him be a little clumsy...


f. Most underrated piece:

Boney M. - Rasputin (1978). I am sad that so few people see the value of teaching history with the help of disco. Too further prove my point, here is the absolute, true, historically correct story of Ma Barker:



g. Most pride-worthy piece:

If one takes pride in exaltation without limit, slightly bad English and inexplicable amounts of bold text (don't ask me... I guess I thought it was a good idea at the time for those who only want to read little snippets of a text): Inglourious Basterds (2009). There's a lot of (perhaps too much) love and nerdiness there. I would love to feel that rush I had when I wrote that piece again. Without the help of cocaine, that is. (But one should never underestimate substance abuse.)


I nominate the following seven bloggers. Let your cinematic slime swirl to the surface so that it, once again, can see the light!


David C. - The Marx Brothers

Matthew Coniam - The Marx Brothers Council of Britain

Dymon Enlow - Happyotter

Kate Gabrielle - Silents and Talkies

Millie - ClassicForever

Flapper Flickers + Silent Stanzas

Particular Girl

Guilty pleasure: Elvis Pelvis

I certainly understand why women in the 1950's and 1960's went crazy over Elvis Presley's sexy movements on stage. They may seem ridiculous today, but... not for me. Watching Elvis move like he had an electric shock, shaking his legs like they were made out of jelly, studying his constant face twitching (see the Paramount screentest in color below)... it's just a very guilty pleasure of mine. It serves as a kind of nostalgia for me: Elvis (his music, good looks, Jailhouse Rock) was my entry to the world of classic film and retro music. My classic film craze owes a lot to Elvis with the Pelvis. Most people seems to like his 1970's songs more, but the gospel/patriotic approach has never been of much interest for me. I've always been more of a rock'n'roll chick.

The clip with Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan show (well, one of the times he was there, at least) is a favorite of mine. He teases the audience - he knows they love him. But the best thing is how he presents the song he is about to perform. It is a sad song, it has a message. Beautiful lyrics. It's "Hound Dog".

Boney M. - Rasputin (1978)

It was so amusing when my cousin told me that her kids loved this song and liked to sing along with it. "You do know that Rasputin was a drunk rapist bastard, right?" Of course, she had no idea who Rasputin was, but was probably happy that her children didn't understand the English lyrics just yet. Of course, I was brought up believing that Men At Work sang "Do you come from a land down under, where women blow and make wonder", so I guess that my cousin doesn't have to worry too much about destroying her children's minds.

Anyhow. In 1978 the adorable sadomasochistic disco band Boney M. had a hit with this song about Rasputin, and I must say that they have managed quite well in summarizing this special human being in one little song. And what a catchy melody it is!

Although the song was popular in the Soviet Union and made Rasputin famous again, the song was deleted from their records sold there, and they weren't allowed to perform the song on their Moscow tour in 1978.

The real history behind:

Grigori Rasputin (1869-1916), aka "The Mad Monk", was at first a Russian farmer like everyone else: he drank vodka, beat his wife and plowed the fields. After a few religious revelations however he started a pilgrim voyage, and soon he was known as a holy man. He was introduced to the Tsarina of Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna (granddaughter of Queen Victoria) and became her personal adviser and healer. To return the favor of being allowed to roam the palace, he often got drunk in random pubs and bragged about his close relationship to the Tsarina and disgracing her mousy husband, Tsar Nicholas II.

There lived a certain man in Russia long ago

He was big and strong, in his eyes a flaming glow

Most people looked at him with terror and with fear

But to Moscow chicks he was such a lovely dear

He could preach the bible like a preacher

Full of ecstacy and fire

But he also was the kind of teacher

Women would desire

This bad behavior, his influence in politics via the Tsarina and the fact that the Tsarina refused to listen to any bad talk about Rasputin, insulted the Russian people and made them reluctant toward the Tsar. Of course, the situation in Russia was already turbulent with the Revolution about to break out, so a dirty monk in the palace didn't help the Tsar's bad reputation as a lousy ruler.

But when his drinking and lusting and his hunger

for power became known to more and more people,

the demands to do something about this outrageous

man became louder and louder.

Rasputin was assassinated in 1916 (a popular story on the verge of being a myth), and the Tsar, Tsarina and their four children were assassinated in 1918 by a group of hotshot Bolsheviks who wanted to abolish the Tsar in favor of Lenin. They succeeded.

You all heard the story about Anastasia, right? Disney film and all. She was one of the children of the Tsar family, and no, she did not survive - but she was however the last one struggling to stay alive after being bombarded with bullets from the murderers. The bodies of the Tsar family were later that day burnt in the forest by an abandoned mine in order to destroy evidence of the assassination. The family had however sown in valuable jewels into their clothes, fearing to be robbed by their capturers, and these did not burn up. Farmers living nearby found the jewels (among skeleton parts and fancy shoes), and realized that something terrible had happened their. In short: covering up the assassination of the Tsar family did not succeed. (Hadn't they watched enough CSI to know how to get rid of evidence? Jeez.)

Tsar Nicholas II and his family, all assassinated July 17, 1918.

Oh yes, and the assassination of Rasputin. He was lured to attend a party and was poisoned, shot, beaten and then drowned. They also cut off his naughty bits, which were unusually huge. For the morbid readers (I don't blame you), I give you a link to a picture of them in a jar.

RA RA RASPUTIN

Lover of the Russian queen

They put some poison into his wine

RA RA RASPUTIN

Russia's greatest love machine

He drank it all and he said "I feel fine"

RA RA RASPUTIN

Lover of the Russian queen

They didn't quit, they wanted his head

RA RA RASPUTIN

Russia's greatest love machine

And so they shot him till he was dead

I like the phrasing "they shot him till he was dead", even though it wasn't entirely true. When his body was hauled in for an autopsy, water was found in his lungs pointing toward a death by drowning. His body was supposedly frozen in a position that indicated that he had tried to claw his way through the ice, so obviously the assassins hadn't exaggerated when trying to kill him with poison, gun shots, beating and drowning.

But why was the Mad Monk assassinated? I don't understand, he seemed like such a nice man. I mean, he strongly believed in cleaning oneself from sin: and to do so, one had to sin to get rid of the temptation. He supposedly engaged in wild erotic adventures and drank Vodka like it was water. There are plenty of rumors about Rasputin, for instance that he once raped a nun, but the evidence is of course quite lacking.

RA RA RASPUTIN

Russia's greatest love machine

It was a shame how he carried on...

A love machine he was, even though it probably often was his initiative. He did however succeed in relieving the pain for Tsarina Alexandra's son, Alexei, who had haemophilia. He was never the Tsarina's lover, opposed to popular rumors.

He ruled the Russian land and never mind the czar

But the kasachok he danced really wunderbar

In all affairs of state he was the man to please

But he was real great when he had a girl to squeeze

For the queen he was no wheeler dealer

Though she'd heard the things he'd done

She believed he was a holy healer

Who would heal her son

"Mmm, glorious beard... Glasnost, perestrojka and wha'evva."

I'm Too Sexy (1991)

"I'm Too Sexy" is sung from the point of view of a self-satisfied fashion model. The song's lyrics express (over)confidence that his personal level of sexiness makes him too sexy for numerous things, most notably his shirt.

That's the lovely Wikipedia definition of Right Said Fred's 1991 hit. So funny. This song happens to be one of the three main ingredients in my party recipe, alongside Men Without Hats' "The Safety Dance" and Dead or Alive's "Spin Me Like a Record". Just so you know. Oh, and:

I'm too sexy for my hat, what d'you think about that?

Don't forget: This Monday I will announce the winner of the portrait competition, so hurry up if you still want to participate!

Happy New Year from Sweden!

How can one celebrate New Year in Sweden without ABBA?
The song "Happy New Year" is featured on the group's 1980 album Super Trouper, but the song originally had the much more creative working title "Daddy Don't Get Drunk on Christmas Day". I wonder why they dropped that name.
Did I mention that every woman with Swedish ancestors can sing like Agnetha Fältskog? It's because of some gene mutation, according to a magazine I read once.

Well. Soon we enter an entirely new decade of films, which Tim Burton starts off in a (hopefully) spectacular manner with Alice in Wonderland (Swedish premiere March 12th). No one can stop me - I will see it at the theater! I mean, Stephen Fry is the friggin' Cheshire Cat.

Happy New Year everyone!

Mia Wasikowska as Alice.

Helena Bonham Carter as The Red Queen.

Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter.

Anne Hathaway as The White Queen.

Mr. Monotony with Judy Garland

I saw Easter Parade (1948) the other day. What a lovely film! Not as perfect as The Band Wagon (1953), but not really far from it. I love to see Fred Astaire playing grouchy and sometimes almost rude, as his character is every now and then in both movies mentioned. And I can't help but fall in love with Judy Garland, even though I know it's a cliché to love her. (I like Marilyn Monroe too! Ha!)

I found a cut out scene on the extra material. Usually that kind of extra material is quite boring (the reason why the scenes where cut out can be quite obvious), but I always watch them if it's from an old movie. It feels like taking a trip back in time - "This wasn't in the movie! It's magic!"

However, this scene was not boring. In fact, I can't understand why it was cut out - the film couldn't suffer too much of being two and a half minutes longer, could it? It is however a song and dance number with Judy Garland and a swinging song called "Mr. Monotony". I know I talk a lot about Cyd Charisse's legs, but there was nothing wrong with Garland's either!

I will only include the finished version of the song. There was a lot of re-takes that were fun to watch (isn't it awfully interesting to see the actors/actresses go in and out of character?), but if I would have included those it would have reached a time of 25 minutes. Just buy the DVD, and don't complain!

Here's Judy Garland with "Mr. Monotony"!

Nobody puts Baby in the corner

What a coincidence. I had a song stuck in my head when I woke up this morning (well, if 1:30 pm can be called morning) - (I've had the) Time of My Life. Singing it in the shower and while making myself coffee, I didn't think much about it. It's a fun song to sing, and I wound awful while doing it.

Then my boyfriend came home from work and told me that Patrick Swayze had died of pancreatic cancer. He was 57 years old.

Well, here's to you, Swayze: The Time of My Life, not sung by me. Jeez, how many times did I not watch Dirty Dancing (1987) while growing up? Sigh.

Broken Blossoms (1919)

Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl

Director: D. W. Griffith

USA 1919

90 min

Starring: Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess and Donald Crisp, among others.

Not being one of the motion picture pioneer D. W. Griffith's usual mastodon pieces, this is an unobstrusive dramatic story about forbidden love between a poor, abused girl, Lucy (Gish), and a Chinese man, Cheng Huan (Barthelmess), who travelled to the United States to spread the learnings of Buddha.

When Lucy, after having been brutally beaten by her father, ends up fainting at the doorstep of Cheng's store, he instantly becomes fascinated with the beautiful, unhappy girl. He takes her up to a room above the store, treats her well and sees that she recovers. When her father, Battling Burrows (Crisp), finds out that she is having a relationship with a "simple China man", he takes her back and prepare to learn her a hard lesson.

Following is a hideous scene, one of the most frightening I've ever seen in a film. Scared to the bone, Lucy panics and hides from her insane father in a closet, desperately hugging a doll Cheng had given her. All the while her father bangs on the door, Lucy tries to appeal to her father's feelings, yelling that "They will hang you!" and "T'was nothing wrong!".

To prepare for the scene, Gish supposedly visited an insane asylum to learn how to imitate the feeling of pure horror. She managed so good that people walking by the studio during filming tried to rescue her when hearing her screams.

Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess.

G. W. Bitzer's photography is simly amazing. He and Griffith collaborated to find ways to soften the light and bring out the dreamlike feeling of the surroundings. They used different filters, they greased the camera lens and came up with tons of other ideas of how to make the perfect cinematography. It has to be seen to be understood.

For the untrained eye (i.e. to those who do not think much at all), this film might seem like racist propaganda. Racial slurs like "Chinky" are used, and the Asians (always smoking a hookah) are mostly played by Kaukasians in yellowface. This does however have explanations.

[Updated for clarification.]

The racial slurs are not meant as offensive, they are mearly a product of the time. Several times in the film Battling Burrows is actually pointed out as a common racist (see lines like "He didn't like people who were born in another country").

Why Kaukasians play the roles of Asian people is simple to explain: the production code at the time forbid non-Caucasians to kiss the Caucasian leading actor/actress on-screen, thereby reducing the possibility of a non-Caucasian having a romantic leading role at all. (At this time the only big Asian name in Hollywood was Sessue Hayakawa, and soon Anna May Wong [post about her and difficulites like these here] would enter the scene.)

Yes, it's racism - but it had however nothing to do with the director's choice directly.

Broken Blossoms was the first film to be produced under the name of United Artists, a production company founded by Griffith, Mary Pickford [post], Douglas Fairbanks and Charles Chaplin. Initially it was supposed to be released through Adolph Zukor's Artcraft company, but when Zukor saw the final production he got furious.

"How dare you deliver such a terrible film to me!"

Griffith returned to Zukor's office the next day with $250 000 in cash and bought the film back from him, releasing it himself.

Well done, lucky us. It's a fantastic film, even though it's a true tearjerker.

D. W. Griffith.

Adolph Zukor.

I went through the trouble to put together the famous closet scene from Broken Blossoms with a Mike Oldfield song, since I think it's such fun to mix old and (relatively) new. The song is called "Evacuation", and you can find it on the soundtrack to The Killing Fields (1985). I kind of liked the result!

You can call it blasphemy if you want, but then you should know that I at first considered The Beatles' "Help!" and The Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man"...

I Wake Up Screaming (1941)

The American working title, "Hot Spot".

Used for the UK release.

I Wake Up Screaming

Director: H. Bruce Humberstone

USA 1941

82 min

Starring: Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Betty Grable and Laird Cregar, among others.

In classic film noir manner, the audience enters the picture in the midst of action. Frankie Christopher (Mature) is being interrogated about the murder of a young model, Vicky Lynn (Landis). Frankie's account on what he knows about the murder turns into a, by him narrated, story that unfolds to us.

Vicky Lynn has been found murdered in her apartment. Frankie's relationship to the dead model is that he discovered her as a waitress, exploiting her into becoming a model and socialite. The night she was murdered was the night she was leaving her modelling career for a future in Hollywood - something that made Frankie feel betrayed and makes him the prime suspect.

The narration repeats with the sister Jill's (Grable's) story. When Jill enters the crime scene she sees Frankie kneeling over the dead body, but she is sure that he is innocent. Romantic feelings develop between Frankie and Jill, which further complicated the investigation with suspicion from the police.

And here's where the fascinating Laird Cregar [portrait post here] enters as the suspecting police inspector Ed Cornell. He is certain that Frankie is responsible for the murder, and follows him around like a shadow.

Laird Cregar as Ed Cornell.

Is Cornell right? Is he wrong? Or can he, perhaps, be wrong with purpose? That's what going through your mind all through the film the first time you see it. When Frankie starts dating Jill you can't help but feeling that something fishy is going on, even though it logically shouldn't be that way.

Deleted Scene: Betty Grable sings "Daddy" in a scene that was deleted to be able to promote her as doing an entirely dramatic role. I thought it was really charming (and I recognize those slimy looks from her boss, ew...), but it was a good idea to cut it. It doesn't feel right in this movie.

I Wake Up Screaming is a suspenceful crime film, with several plot turns and a sweet, "not cheesy" romantic sub-plot. Even though Carole Landis is "the beautiful one" in the film, I am more charmed with the curvy figure and soft lips of Betty Grable, who gives a wonderful performance in the role of the victim's sister. She's charming, alright! I simply adore the scene where she and Mature break into a bicycle shop, and while talking she's working hard with releasing him from his handcuffs with a saw.
I wish to see more of Grable's dramatic performances, but I guess they might be pretty rare...

By the way - am I the only one feeling that all the male characters' fascination and devotion for the dead model rather reminds you of the film Laura, that came three years later?

Carole Landis as Vicky Lynn.

I've already told you the tragic fate of Laird Cregar, who died three years later in 1944. His was not, unfortunately, the only sad story of the cast. Carole Landis took her own life with Seconal in 1948, at the age of 29. It is believed to be the combined tragedies of four failed marriages, a career that never took off, financial problems and a passionate affair with the married Rex Harrison that finally broke her down.

Some fun trivia though... Betty Grable actually says "Thanks, Victor!" to Victor Mature in one scene, even though his character was named Frankie! And of course I'm kind enough to give you proof:

I mostly think about the title of the movies I see, and wonder why they were chosen. Some are obvious, like Casablanca (1942), Sunset Blvd. (1950) [review] or The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Others are named after a line or reference in the film, like All About Eve (1950) [review], The Philadelphia Story (1940) [review] or The Lost Weekend (1945) [review].

But others, like I Wake Up Screaming, just leaves you wondering. I can't recall any character in the film waking up screaming. Maybe it's more apparent in the original novel by with the same name by Steve Fisher. Maybe it's a metaphor for the feeling of being constantly watched and hunted for a crime you didn't do. Anyway, it's interesting.

The Birth of Venus, 1486.

Just one more thing I thought about. It seems like there are some obvious references to art in this film. The most apparent thing, to me, was when Frankie's original name was revealed as Botticelli. Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter during the Early Rennaissance, and his most famous work is probably The Birth of Venus from 1486. (Some of my high school kknowledge still stick!)

Another art reference is when Cornell unwelcomed visits Jill at her apartment, and makes a remark about a painting she has called "The Garden of Hope", asking her if she believes in hope. I can't find any specific art reference to this, but it is still a little remark they thought was important enough to leave in the final film. Anyone knowing more about this?

Betty Grable and Victor Mature look great together.

Anna May Wong - These Foolish Things

I'd like to mention that I, in my heart, is a perfectionist. But I'm working hard not being one, since that would result in me never being able to finish things. (That's why I seldom re-read the posts I write. Sorry for propably uncountable typos.)

I hereby present to you my own music video to These Foolish Things, Bryan Ferry's version. I have probably said it seventyeleven times already, but this song is probably my favourite ever. And you know how I hate to rank things. Bryan Ferry's version is at least without a doubt the best version of the song.

Since Anna May Wong was the inspiration to Eric Maschwitz when he wrote it, I have combined clips of mentioned actress to the tunes of this wonderful song. As I said, I could as well have been working for months with finding the exact right clip to the exact right time in the song, but I won't to it. I see it as a part of my training to get things accomplished without constantly underappreciate myself.

But I did add text to the video, so nobody can escape the lyrics!

It's not perfect, but I like it very much. I hope you do, too.

Day After Day with James Stewart

Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart in The Shopworn Angel (1938).

Yeah, I know that the wonderful Elizabeth at the always thrilling blog Oh By Jingo! Oh By Gee! already posted this. But since it gives me goose bumps all over, I simply need to have it on my blog also! It is James Stewart singing Day After Day, and he really sings wonderful.

Queen - I Want to Break Free (1984)

Dear readers.
I've decided that I in thos blog also will include music videos, since that also is a kind of cinematic art. And I will start this new tradition with Queen's in the USA rejected music video to their 1984 hit I Want to Break Free.

I Want to Break Free
Director: David Mallet
United Kingdom 1984
4:28 min


Parts of this very amusing music video (when the band members are dressed up as women) is a parody of the northern British soap opera Coronation Street, broadcasted in the 1960's. The music video also contains the band members in what to seems to be a coal mine in their normal look, but that soons turns into a section containing the Royal Ballet where lead singer Freddie Mercury has shaven off his infamous moustache to portray ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.

But here is the funny trivia. This video ruined Queen in America, and it was banned by MTV until 1991! Although the song reached the top-ten list in most other countries, it never got farther than the 45th place in the USA.
But I say the same thing as Peter Griffin in Family Guy: Freddie Mercury can't be gay, he has a moustache for Christ's sake! That is equal to a wedding ring. I can't see what the Americans were so afraid of?