Groundmagazine is a platform for photographers, graphic designers and writers founded and edited by photographer Mieke Woestenburg. Issue #18 is dedicated to the talented Antje Peters and is definitely worth click click clicking through. Lorelinde Verhees wrote the accompanying text.
Hedwig van Driel wrote a piece for The Gallery of Cool on Queen Cool herself, Lana del Rey, whose music is featured in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby.
A bevy of prestigious artists
contributed to the soundtrack for The Great Gatsby. The xx. Florence and the
Machine. Jay-Z, as well as Beyoncé. Bryan Ferry. Jack White. NPR made the
entire thing available on their website for a while, and I was happy to take
advantage of that (it can still be found on YouTube for now, in case you're
curious).
The thing is, the song that's been stuck
in my head for the past week isn't from any of these luminaries. No: it's the
sensual, hypnotizing Young and Beautiful by the oft-mocked Lana del Rey.
It's easy enough to ridicule the self-styled “gangster Nancy Sinatra”.
Her artificial persona is usually pointed out as a reason to dismiss her, but
what pop culture icon nowadays does not have a meticulously crafted image?
Perhaps, then, it is the specific persona she chose that bothers people, a
strangely retro construction that harks back to a time long before grrl power
or the cultivated strangeness of a Lady Gaga. “Lana del Rey” is a gorgeous,
exquisitely bored rich girl singing about her “aching soul” without a trace of
irony. It's music through an Instagram filter, if you want to be flip about it.
Honestly, I'd rather distance myself from anything like that too.
Listening to Del Rey's music doesn't fit my
carefully cultivated image: I should be too cool and too intellectual to be so
easily seduced by her languorous voice. When I heard she'd joined the hundreds
who recorded covers of Leonard Cohen's music, my first impulse was to roll my
eyes. But then I listened to her Chelsea Hotel #2, and I had to admit: damn,
that's kind of beautiful.
It has to be said, too, that Lana del Rey was a perfect choice to record
a song for the Gatsby soundtrack.She
and Daisy Buchanan (played by Carey Mulligan in this new version, and by Mia
Farrow in the Redford one) are practically the same. In Fitzgerald's novel,
Daisy's voice is described as low and thrilling, and as “[...] full of money –
that was the inexhaustable charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it,
the cymbals, song of it... High in a white palace the king's daughter, the
golden girl.” You could use those same words to describe the allure of Del
Rey's voice.
What's more, both are privileged white girls with all the money and
beauty they could wish for, who are nonetheless restless and discontent. The
layer of ennui may be skin deep, more an aesthetic choice than anything else.
But if you happen to be in the mood to feel glamorously unhappy for an
afternoon, nothing beats listening to Lana Del Rey's music – except, perhaps,
re-reading The Great Gatsby. Hedwig van Driel is a physicist by training but a
cinephile at heart. She spends way too much time on the internet, and
overthinking movies and television.
Summer is slowly, VERY SLOWLY, making its way to Holland. The fact that the sun is finally shining just might be the reason for this shamelessly cheerful mixtape in the Dancing on My Own series. We'll be humming Shiny Happy People all weekend, people!
Sometimes the anticipation of a good movie is more exciting than the movie itself. So why not indulge in pre-release daydreaming?Here are the movies we're particularly looking forward to.
I'm still catching up on the pretty impressive oeuvre of French director Claire Denis but consider myself a fan based on her excellent Beau travail and White Material. Her newest effort is called Les salauds(international title: The Bastards) and it's been selected for the Cannes sidebar Un Certain Régard.
Sofia Coppola is one of those directors that grew on me, which probably makes me the one person on earth who liked Somewhere better than Lost in Translation. With her latest project, The Bling Ring, Coppola once again digs into the theme of fame. The trailer reveals some small similarities to Harmony Korine's terrific Spring Breakers, mainly because of its airhead protagonists who curiously combine materialism with spirituality.
Check out the brand new trailer:
Then there's also the Susanne BierDepression-era drama Serena to look forward to, featuring Silver Linings Playbook-duo Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. We've also got a new Kelly Reichardt movie coming up, calledNight Moves, with Dakota Fanning and Jesse Eisenberg leading the cast.You might know Reichardt from Wendy & Lucy or western Meek's Cutoff, both excellent. And something else to get excited about:Abus de faiblesse, Catherine Breillat's latest effort, starring the always wonderful and ever busy Isabelle Huppert.
As for exciting performances, I can't wait to see Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Samantha Morton and Olivia Wilde rock Spike Jonze's Her. Wes Anderson has got a way of writing fine female parts and his next movie The Grand Budapest Hotel credits great actresses like Saoirse Ronan, Tilda Swinton and Léa Seydoux.
O, and speaking of Tilda Swinton: she's also got interesting parts coming up in Jim Jarmusch' new movie, Only Lovers Left Alive,and Snowpiercer,by my favorite Korean director Bong Joon-ho.
But the one female performance we're all looking forward to is this one:
Good
news for Léa Seydoux fans (and let's face it, we're all Léa Seydoux fans): our girl has landed a part in the highly
anticipated new Wes Anderson movie.
The Grand Budapest Hotel is said to be coming
out later this year, though there's no definite release date yet. In fact, the
whole project is pretty mysterious, so it shouldn't be a surprise that there's
also no information on either the seize or the nature of Seydoux' role. But
it's going to be awesome all the same, that much we do know.
The first time I saw
Léa Seydoux was in La Belle Personne (Christophe
Honoré, 2008), in which she portrays a high scool student caught in a love
triangle. Yes, this movie is very, very French
but definitely worth your while, for several reasons besides Seydoux.
Seydoux has kept
herself busy since then. I've spotted her in small parts, like in Jessica
Hausner's Lourdes and in Woody Allens Midnight in Paris (where she plays the boring
part of The Right Girl Owen Wilson's character ends up with). I've spotted her
in larger parts, like opposite Diane Kruger inLes adieux à la reine and in
Ursula Meier's L'enfant d'en haut (Sister). She also played the lead in Rebecca
Zlotowski's impressive but obscure Belle Épine.
And then she did some big time Hollywood stuff like Robin Hood, Inglourious Basterds
and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (which I haven't seen but apparently features Seydoux in a cat fight with some
other impossibly hot girl).
Furthermore,
Seydouxjust finished shooting Le bleu est une couleur chaude, a film byAbdellatif Kechiche, whose previous film is
the extraordinary Black Venus. Something
to look forward to, for sure, with Seydoux playing the female lead.
Not sure in which movie you might have seen Léa Seydoux? Check out her résumé on IMDb.
Watch Léa Seydoux in the trailer for La Belle Personne
Watch Léa Seydoux in a three part commercial Wes Anderson made for Prada
Marnie Stern might just be the coolest girl currently working in the music business.This New York based singer-songwriter-with-a-band knows how to handle a guitar, comes up with the strangest lyrics and doesn't follow any rules or logic when constructing a song. Pitchfork once wrote about her:
In a scene of bands that rely on technical prowess to sway fans (-)
Marnie Stern appealed to the heart. Her music didn't just aim to
impress, but to move. For a couple of weeks, I thought of her as an
emotive technician, but it became clear she was something else: A dizzy
heir to Sleater-Kinney, or Helium-- arty, feminine guitar-rock that
infiltrated Guyville without a mission statement.
Now, Stern has a new album out, The Chronicles of Marnia. You can preview it here. By the way, back in 2009 Subbacultcha had me interviewing Marnie and her drummer over shoarma. Fond memories. You can read the interview here:
