It's so cold in Zaragoza these days I can't breathe properly
(Marilyn Monroe opening a box). In Christmas season we receive a lot of gifts if we've behaved correctly!
What Gifts I'd like to receive for Christmas:
a pair of small wings
a good pair of boots (Ava Gardner with Santa wardrobe)
Christian Louboutin silver high heels
My hubby and me are inseparable like the muppets Sid and Sara
I know I'm lucky with my husband, José Luis, but I wouldn't mind meeting some heartthrobs (only to talk about politics, of course):
a healthy dose of love of Jake Gyllenhaal
James Franco
Emile Hirsch
Leonardo DiCaprio
Stephen Dorff
a bicycle ride with Brad Pitt
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, etc.Two great gifts that will have to wait to next year 2011:
Sweet Smell of Success (Criterion Collection) (DVD): (February 2011)
Tony Curtis as Sidney Falco in "Sweet Smell of Success" (1957)SPECIAL FEATURES:
New, restored high-definition digital transferNew audio commentary by film scholar James Naremore
Mackendrick: The Man Who Walked Away, a 1986 documentary featuring interviews with director Alexander Mackendrick, actor Burt Lancaster, producer James Hill, and more
James Wong Howe: Cinematographer, a 1973 documentary about the Oscar-winning director of photography, featuring lighting tutorials with Howe
New video interview with film critic and historian Neil Gabler (Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity) about legendary columnist Walter Winchell, inspiration for the character J. J. Hunsecker
New video interview with filmmaker James Mangold about Mackendrick, his instructor and mentor
Original theatrical trailerPLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Gary Giddins, two short stories by Ernest Lehman featuring the characters from the film, notes about the film by Lehman, and an excerpt from Mackendrick's book On Film-making Source: www.ropeofsilicon.com
"Harlow in Hollywood - The Blonde Bombshell in the Glamour Capital, 1928-1937" book by Darrell Rooney and Mark A. VieiraScene 1: Harlean Carpenter comes to Hollywood.
Scene 2: Hollywood creates Jean Harlow.
Scene 3: Her legend lives forever.
"At last, the story of how Hollywood shaped a myth and determined a young woman's reality. A town, a remarkable town, became the backdrop for one of Hollywood's most incredible stories, a life rife with glamour, pleasure, power, and--in the end--utter sorrow. Her story lives in the pages and breathtaking pictures of Harlow in Hollywood.
When Jean Harlow became the Blonde Bombshell, it was all Hollywood's doing. She was the first big-screen sex symbol, the Platinum Blonde, the mold for every famous fair-haired superstar who would emulate her. Yes; even Marilyn Monroe followed Harlow's lead. In her short decade in Hollywood, Harlow created a new genre of movie star--her fans idolized her for her peerless image, her beautiful body, and her gorgeous façade. Harlow in Hollywood is the story of how a town and an industry created her, a story that's never been told before.
In these pages, renowned Harlow expert Darrell Rooney and Hollywood historian Mark Vieira team to present the most beautiful--and accurate--book on Harlow ever produced. With more than 280 rare images, the authors not only make a case for Harlow as an Art Deco artifact, they showcase the fabulous places where she lived, worked and played from her white-on-white Beverly Glen mansion to the Art Deco sets of Dinner at Eight to the foyer of the Café Trocadero". Source: angelcitypress.com"Tough Without a Gun - The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart" by Stefan Kanfer (release February 2011):
"Humphrey Bogart was 42 before in 1941 he broke through as an A-list star in The Maltese Falcon and High Sierra. He was dead of lung cancer a mere 16 years later. Yet, as Kanfer points out in his revealing account of Bogart’s life and legacy, Bogie, in those few short years, established a cinematic identity that lives on across generations. 
Kanfer thoroughly covers the relatively familiar ground of Bogart’s upbringing as the rebellious child of blue-blood parents; his long apprenticeships, first in the theater and then playing bad guys in the movies; and, finally, his brief but iconic years of stardom. Beyond that, though, what separates Kanfer’s book from other Bogart bios by David Thomson, Jeffrey Meyers, and Richard Schickel is the emphasis on the actor’s “afterlife”, the way that somehow his persona — “integrity, stoicism, sexual charisma accompanied by a cool indifference to women”— has never gone out of style.
Bogart divided the world into “professionals and bums”, and Kanfer makes a convincing case that, with so many bums surrounding us today, the real pros never grow stale". --Bill Ott Booklist
