It Just Feels Wrong

I've recently been introduced to a new form of art: book sculpture! There are thousands of pictures and tutorials available (easily accessible via Google!), and I'm finding them to be quite beautiful. Books are, as a whole, one of my favorite things. Here are a few I'm quite enthralled with, all credits to their creators:

I'm also currently making my own, though it's nowhere near as complex as Alice in Wonderland. I'm using a short story collection of F. Scott. Fitzgerald's. Hint: my theme goes along with "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz". Really an incredible story- it feels almost sinful folding and tearing it!

Play it Again, Sam! (or not)

I've just finished a watched of "Casablanca", that swoon-inducing movie that practically invented romantic clichés. Surprisingly, the ever-quoted "Play it again, Sam!" line isn't actually in the film. Here, however, are several other beautiful lines:
There's the ever popular: "We'll always have Paris."
Or, my special favorite: "...I have a feeling this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Word of the Moment

Vivacious, adjective: [vi-VEY-shUHs] lively or animated

Humming On the Road

A week ago, I made the mistake of saying something like "Everything with Bing Crosby is good!" My friend had just watched White Christmas, eighty-degree weather apparently aside, and I was quite thrilled with the remembrances. It is quite a good movie, after all, and thus inspired me to look up some of Bing's other hits.
I watched Road to Singapore, a 1940s film with Bing Crosby (naturally) and Bob Hope. It had a few fun songs, and I'm now quite the Bob Hope fan.
I do not, however, recommend the movie. I'm still rather disappointed that Bob's character didn't get the girl. He was definitely the better person in the film, and, though the girl (played by Dorothy Lamour) was rather stupid, he certainly deserved her. A man who can sing and dance, and talks about making a home with her- and oh, yes, she chooses the one who left with his fiance.
I really don't understand it.
And so, while Bing and Bob are simply marvelous, I cannot add Road to Singapore to any recommendation list. It's good for a laugh, and maybe for a sappy, romantic mood, but it is certainly not any follow-up to the previous night's Field of Dreams.

Screaming about curtains is no match for If you build it, he will come.

September Calling

As I said in a post a few days ago, fall is close at hand! I happen to be one of those people who is absolutely giddy about fall, and I'm on the edge of my seat. The cool weather is not yet approaching, but hopefully, it'll begin at about the twentieth- perfect timing! I apologize to people who don't live in the Northern hemisphere, although, spring is a lovely season too.

The Game is A-Font

I know that I stated earlier that I was decently certain I was done fooling around with blog designs for a while, but once I found this marvelous title font I simply had to use it. Comments on the new look would be simply lovely- as would be any layout tips.
With ever so much love,
the eclectic authoress herself

Herald of Heaven

It is the very last day of August, and, naturally, fall is approaching. Soon it will be sweater-weather!

Coppola and Luhrman

This will be a sort of review, and a sort of venting post. It's a subject I feel rather strongly about, strangely enough, and after trying in vain to explain it to a friend, I thought I'd have a go here. I recently watched the movie "Marie Antoinette", directed by Sofia Coppola (of recent "The Bling Ring" fame). It was a movie with awkward blackouts and strange shots, and entire scenes with no dialogue at all. It was light on action and heavy on beautiful sets, and somehow, the picture was altogether very sad.

Even so, I think that overall I liked it, and this is why: the characters were vapid and greedy, but you saw their vulnerabilities and understood them. Hollywood characters are so often black and white, good and evil, and people in real life are not that way. Marie Antoinette spent France away, but you understood what it was like to be in her high-heeled, fur-lined shoes. The entire picture is overwhelmingly sad, with the lives that can only be describe as "pomp an circumstance". Even so, the last image is a single room inside of Versailles, wrecked almost beyond recognition, and you think that maybe Marie and her husband were people after all.

No one could glorify them into heroes, and Coppola didn't even try it. The characters were deeply flawed, but this made them seem real. It reminded me, honestly, of Baz Luhrman's recent release "The Great Gatsby". No one will say that Daisy or Nick or Tom or even Gatsby are good, but they also aren't evil.

So while the beautiful costumes and sets of "Marie Antoinette" didn't overshadow the rough edits, the beautifully and realistically woven characters certainly did.

The Eclectic Authoress Recommends...

38. esmeandthelaneway.blogspot.com
It's an absolutely beautiful blog that belongs to a twenty-something fashionista sharing her love for vintage down in Melbourne. She was a Modcloth featured blogger, and her pictures are absolutely to die for.

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37. Notebooks

I'm terribly sorry for the awkward positioning- working on mobile has its problems.