Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Four or five years ago I was browsing in blissful Daunt Books in Belsize Park when a wonderfully designed plain grey book cover caught my eye. It was a copy of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson. This was the beginning of my love affair with Persephone Books, a privately owned imprint based in London’s Bloomsbury. They specialise in re-discovering out of print and forgotten classics by (mostly) women authors from the twentieth century, ranging from novels to cook books, memoirs to travel.

Published in 1938, and set a few years earlier, Miss Pettigrew fits into the genre of gorgeously romantic, often bittersweet, beautifully written period literature that includes Nancy Mitford & Georgette Heyer’s entire oeuvre and The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

The movie of the book opens here this week, and I attended a preview screening this evening. The casting is excellent,(Amy Adams is perfection as the ditzy co-lead, nightclub singer Delysia Lafosse) the set design ravishing, the costumes fabulous, but the cinematography is gloomy and the simplicity and charming heart of the book has been replaced by rather too much moralising and some shocking liberties with the plot that don’t really stand up to much scrutiny.

Still, it’s enjoyable and lovely to look at, even if the trailer cherry picked all the good moments.

Sex and the City movie full length trailer

I could be all po-faced about the Sex & The City movie, pointing out that there isn't a lot to admire in a series that posited that a woman's main obsessions in life are shoes and finding a husband, that a woman must be judged solely on her fashion sense regardless of the arena she inhabits, that neuroticism is obligatory and anal-obsessed naval gazing is the norm.

But that would be to imply that I didn't enjoy the series, which I did, enormously. What annoys me is that SATC has become another stick with which to beat thirty-something women. In an ideal world, men would never be allowed to watch it, to avoid them taking it seriously (why do men seem to treat it as a documentary?)

Anyway, preamble over: here is the full-length trailer that was released on Friday. The movie is released May 30 in the USA.

Best Costume Design Oscar Nominations

Across the Universe Albert Wolsky
Atonement Jacqueline Durran
Elizabeth: The Golden Age Alexandra Byrne
La Vie en Rose” Marit Allen
Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Colleen Atwood

For this dress alone, the perfect example of how a costume can work seamlessly with a script, I hope Jacqueline Durran wins for Atonement.

Hemingway's Garden of Eden & James Scott Linville

To lunch in Highgate Village today for baskets of dim sum and pots of jasmine tea with the magnificent James Scott Linville, who flew in from New York last night. His latest project is the screenplay for the feature film of Hemingway's The Garden of Eden. Starring Mena Suvari, Jack Huston, Matthew Modine, Richard E Grant, Caterina Murino & Carmen Maura it'll be hitting the festival circuit this year, before going on general release.

I hear that the costumes are fantastic (the film is set in the 1920s), although there are no images available to press yet. Definitely one to watch out for later on this year. Linville also hosts a writer's blog at The Main Point where poems, essays, short stories and the like from himself, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Janine di Giovanni and more are posted regularly. Highly recommended - and not just because Mr Linville & I are friends.
Photos:
The car used in Garden of Eden
William Styron, The Paris Review co-founder George Plimpton, and James Scott Linville celebrating the magazine's anniversary

Saturday occupation

I had a perfect Saturday, which ended up in the Union Square cinema with a bag of popcorn watching the sugar-sweet new Disney romance-fest, Enchanted, starring MacDreamy & Amy Adams, and a hamming it up Susan Sarandon & Timothy Spall.

I spent the day writing, checked out Project Runway for the first time on TV (so much better then the English one), and then popped on my heels and cabbed it to Sushi Samba (made famous by Sex & the City) on Park Avenue & 20th for girls' supper. Friday & Saturday nights in the city are flooded with weekend warriors. Everywhere is rammed, and the streets, especially in the East Village, are filled with drunk twenty years olds. So, a quiet, healthy, alcohol-free supper is exactly the way forward.

The girls were on their way home by nine fifteen, so I trotted down to Union Square to Virgin and bought the new Killers & The Cribs albums (both excellent), plus some My Bloody Valentine and Louder Than Bombs - The Smiths' 1987 America-only album, both of which I have on cassette. Does that show my age? After the movie, I marched home to the West Village in the sub-zero temperatures, dancing along to Editors and The Pixies.

The Heartbreak Kid

LW & I went to an advance screening last night at Soho House of the Ben Stiller vehicle The Heartbreak Kid, out here & in London on October 5. A remake of the same-titled 1973 Neil Simon Oscar nom-ed pic, it's truly dreadful: overlong with clunky pacing, and more ham than my local deli counter.

The Farralley brothers do love their frat boy humour and gross out gags (Dumb & Dumber, There's Something About Mary) but the misogyny and racism in this movie are jaw-dropping. Set mainly in Mexico, the film never misses a chance for an offensive Mexican gag, whilst women are vapid, vain, neurotic, one-dimensional, ultimately disposable sex objects.

The movie starts out well, with a neat set-up and an accurate evocation of singledom hell at a wedding. It all goes rapidly downhill from there, and whilst there are a couple of laugh out loud moments, but they didn't make up for the rest of the deathly unfunny movie.

Ben Stiller's mendacious, slimy bottom-feeder takes any trace of hero out of the concept of the anti-hero.

There were several (female) walkouts, although I stayed to the bitter end (never say die). I noticed a distinct cultural divide: the Americans in the audience were creased up, the English were playing with their crackberries and twitching. Variety gave it a rave, so maybe I'll be proved wrong at the box office.

Harry Potter and the never ending saga...

I'm so used to films opening on a Friday in England that I managed to completely miss that Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix opened here in New York on Wednesday. Anyway, seeing as it has broken all box office records so far, I thought I'd hop down tonight for a dose of English nostalgia. It was very pleasant, kind of like the visual equivalent of a nice long warm bath. Absolutely true to the novel, packed full of the Royal Shakespeare Company's finest hamming it up in true panto fashion, and lots of cute teens gurning for the camera. Whatever reason most of those kids were cast for, it wasn't for their acting skills. Emma Watson, I am afraid, is set to be the Kiera Knightley of her generation: ravishing on screen, not an acting bone in her body.

Manhattan bulletin

Manhattan is sunny again, which is a relief: reviewing rooftop bars is no fun at all in the rain. The only flipside is that I have a week of concerted bar going to get through in the name of research. My poor, poor liver.

Aside from the detrimental health effects of my latest commission, everything else is good. JSL is bouncing around the apartment (he’s staying for a few days) looking like he is suppressing a lot of unholy glee at the news that his screenplay went into production in Spain yesterday. An adaptation of Hemingway’s Garden of Eden, it stars Mena Suvari, Jack Houston, Caterina Murino, & Richard E Grant.

Last night I took JL to Soho House for the latest in the Grand Classics series: Kevin Spacey introducing Preston Sturges’ 1941 film, Sullivan’s Travels, starring Joel McCrea & the ravishing Veronica Lake; a pointed tragi-comedy about a director of musical comedies who wants to direct socio-realistic movies. Bumped into Poppy & Daisy de V, with their mother, & L afterwards. After supper I cabbed it to the Lower East Side to The French Diner, then was persuaded to 151 Rivington, a dark, deep & dirty basement bar, to meet more people. So much for a quiet Monday night: in at 1-ish.

Eurovision Heaven: Borat writers' next project

Oh My God. Variety has announced that the team behind Borat are making a...wait for it... EUROVISION SONG CONTEST movie.

The genius of this is so enormous that it's difficult to know where to start. Christ, the costumes alone.... Eurovision has something like 600 million people watching worldwide. This movie will be HUGE. Sod America: this is a film for the Euros. And, lest we forget musical giants including ABBA, Céline Dion and Buck's Fizz, the guiding lights of my childhood have won Eurovision. (I could do their entire dance routine with nifty skirt ripping off movement - not bad for a 9yr old)

Perhaps the script could rotate around England, France & Spain rebelling against the political block voting of the ex Eastern Bloc countries, thus righting a HUGE wrong. Ok, I know Jemini weren't really that good, but this year's entry wasn't THAT bad. (Hey, I may be in New York, but that doesn't mean I am giving up on my cultural heritage).

And, of course, there would have to be a major, major role for Terry Wogan. And his bottle of the hard stuff. ( For the Americans who are so kind as to read this blog, he is the septuagenarian Irish housewife's choice presenter who always gets progressively drunkerer as the live transmission continues.)

Lily in bloom

Pic: vogue.com

Lily Cole was photographed yesterday in her costume as Polly in the remake of the St Trinians movie. But the reason I posted this pic is because dear Lily fills her smashing tank top admirably.

During London Fashion Week the Evening Standard has run front page photos of Lily showing her sticky legs with a screamer along the lines of "Super thin model shocker". Lily may indeed have the legs of a daddy long legs but she's no bag of bones - as any editor who has seen her splendid bosom on show on the catwalk can testify.

I was a super skinny, thin legged, large bosomed teen who ate like a horse (sigh) so I find this persecution particularly irritating as I know you can be shaped like Lily & be thoroughly healthy. Gah. There really is no hope for a sensible debate on eating disorders in the fashion industry when the media itself fans the flames erroneously.

Easter bunnies

It's dislocating being in Manhattan when London is cheerfully on holiday. The Easter break, (which encompasses Good Friday & Bank Holiday Monday) means that England pretty much shuts down for four days. I don't miss home but I miss my annual rituals: eating a vast quantity of chocolate, village church on Sunday and a delicious lunch cooked by my mother for all my friends and relations. I'm going to have to build my own in Manhattan. I suspect they may be somewhat different.

So far, they include: drinking beer, dancing, eating chinese take out, burning around the village on my Schiaparelli Pink bike, the movies (Blades of Glory - utterly fabulous) and general hanging out with JD & A. Tomorrow JD & I aim for focus: The Frick, The Guggenheim & The Met, combined with a strenuous walk in Central Park. We'll see.....