Darjeeling Limited

Off to see this movie with a bunch of friends from college and work tonight. I read recently that the problem with Wes Anderson's films is that "...they're all good, even when they're not."

Visually, they're so satisfying and emotionally so rich, yet understated, that I always feel I am hypnotized into loving them. Rushmore though, never resonated for me. Maybe because the kid's angst is so familiar in its tragedy - too close to home somehow. Or maybe cause that movie isn't gorgeous in the lush way that The Royal Tennenbaums or The Life Aquatic are.

I'm still wrestling with Life Aquatic. I own it now and watch it sometimes wondering, "Is it because this is good? or just visually (deeply) pleasing? or now familiar?"

I'm going to see Darjeeling Limited for wholly aesthetic reasons. Anderson's cinematographic palette and Adrian Brody's amazing face.

Stalin was gorgeous. Discuss.

There's a new book out called Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore. The first photo you see here, of Stalin at 24 years old, graces the cover and caused an uproar of blushing and deep ambivalence among my fellow booksellers when we saw it last week. Even now, as fountain-haired young Joseph stares back at me, I search the nobly un-smitten crevices of my mind for words to tell you what I am feeling. Words don't come, but this image does.

The 20th century has morphed into a lush, primeval jungle swamp, and I stare, enchanted, at this face which is now the massive siren bloom of some bewitchingly decorative, flesh-fueled monster plant. My life-and-death encounter is scored by the chirping, whirring creature sounds of fellow swamp-dwellers. Their disinterested emissions become a horror film's tension-inflating string section and within me, the signal "Threat! Threat! Threat!" struggles to overpower my urge to gaze on with abandon. Beneath me, my froggy legs shudder and twitch as I summon the survival-loving restraint of my raw amphibian brain to keep from springing forth into the smug and gaping mouth of this gorgeous carnivore.

Back here, in the 21st century, I crave information about this man for the first time ever. Well-done Montefiore.

Discussing the subtleties of beauty with Fabio.

I met a man named Fabio the other night, and in this case he was a neatly dressed, friendly Italian graphic designer living in New York City. When he asked what I did, and I told him that I write about beauty, he nodded politely, paused and confessed his difficulties with that word.

Fabio's boss often says his work is beautiful, and that makes Fabio cringe. Not because the man abuses the word making it mean less each time, but because for this designer, the word smacks of inconsequential, meritless surface fluff--nothing he wants his work to embody.

I countered that there is more to beauty than its surface and that in terms of design, beauty can refer to the excellence of form and function working together as in nature where everything looks the way it does because it must.

He hadn't considered that aspect of beauty before, and appreciated my perspective.

Terrific.