lay lady lay, lay across my big brass bed

I love the idea of spending lazy weekend afternoons laying all day in my bed, swallowed by my mass of pillows and blankets. I am a summertime bum, and I lounge in my sleepwear all day like it's my job. Apparently I have a few tricks to learn from these glam vixens, who make laying in a swath of pillows an art

A model for Biba looks her vamp finest 

Genius use of the tiger rug as a blanket over the coach - and I want that marabou-and-silk robe, and that long cigarette holder (and I don't even smoke!)

I love Brittany Murphy's penthouse in Uptown Girls

Penelope Tree looks divine in her equally as divine surrounding 

The 'fabulous destiny' of Amélie apparently also included the coolest digs in all of the 18th arrondissement

From Urban Outfitters' latest catalog - minus the orgy-like setting, I want everything that's in this photo

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart lay outside in style - and quite literally In Style 

A scene from Emmanuelle 

Lauren Hutton is in model form in these gorgeous dresses and chairs

There is nothing I do not covet in this photo of Louise Ebel 

Mia Farrow matches - or clashes, depending on who you ask - with this flowery red couch in an equally as much floral frock

Sylvia Kristel - star of Emmanuelle - rivals her own onscreen photo in this mass of pillows and lace

Nicky Samuel matches dress to rug to tapestry to perfection while modeling Ossie Clark

Stripped down, chrome and glowing, Olivia Wilde is va-va-voom in Tron: Legacy

Peggy Lipton reviews scripts and snuggles up in a knit blanket for Life Mag

Tina Aumont, captured in all her bohemian glory in a home movie

I want all of Peggy Moffitt's pillows here - she wouldn't mind, would she?

Jane Birkin - a goddess in furs

Truman Capote in his glam apartment 

Title: from "Lay Lady Lay" (Bob Dylan)

she’s well-acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand like a lizard on a window pane

The troubling thing about writing a retro-themed blog at times is that many of the actors and actresses that I admire are either dead, or even worse, still have that inevitable fate in front of them. For many of us, death comes much too soon; our lives are cut short before we can do all the things we wanted to do. All we can hope for is that we have experienced enough and truly lived enough in our lives to have no regrets when the final bell rings.
Such is the case with Maria Schneider, who passed away in Paris today at the age of 58. The actress is best-known for her role in Bernardo Bertolucci's film Last Tango in Paris.
Cast at the tender age of nineteen, Maria played opposite Marlon Brando as two steamy lovers about to part. The role in Tango brought her a lot of attention, but her acting merits warranted it - she does a terrific job in the film, balancing the emotional extremes of the film's narrative. Schneider struggled with the aftermath of her role in the controversial film, once saying, "I was too young to know better. Marlon later said that he felt manipulated, and he was Marlon Brando, so you can imagine how I felt. People thought I was like the girl in the movie, but that wasn't me."
As she looks down upon all of us this wintry night, I hope Maria doesn't mind my paying tribute to her great life, as the star of Last Tango in Paris.

Title: from "Happiness is a Warm Gun" (The Beatles)

but love is never easy, it’s never silky smooth, there’s always something tempting in the wilderness of youth

I don't know how informative a post this will be because the film I am writing about is one that I haven't actually seen. I haven't built up the nerve to watch it, mainly because of the explicit sexual content (I get squirmish and immediately revert back to my fifth grade self). This film is Emmanuelle, a 1974 French erotica film that spawned over a dozen sequels and spurred on a movement in film that briefly made softcore chic.

The plot is simple enough to follow: Emmanuelle (Sylvia Kristel), the beautiful much-younger wife of French diplomat Jean, flies to Bangkok to be by her husband’s side. In typical, post-sexual revolution fashion, the couple is very tolerant of each other’s sexual whims and extramarital affairs are encouraged. In Bangkok, Emmanuelle embarks on a series of trysts with both men and women, adopting the same laissez faire attitude towards love that her fellow expats have. She allows herself to be guided in life by desire instead of logic and reason.

On strictly the level of the cinematic norms it shattered, Emmanuelle is a significant piece of film history. Now, I'm not advising you to run out and watch softcore film, but there are some merits to this film as a watershed moment in the redefinition of what cinema is capable of producing. The sexual content of Emmanuelle is less like a sleazy Van Wilder film than it is a test to see how far a film can push its boundaries. Instead of reworking the film to avoid an X-rating, the film embraced its tawdry reputation, creating a certain allure around the otherwise dreaded ‘X’.

The film was much more than a softcore movie – it was a worldwide smash that explored the psyche of the new sexual dynamic and promoted the modern female who had achieved liberation (sexual and otherwise). An estimated 300 million people went to the cinema to see Emmanuelle, with most of the audience was female.

The settings are lushly filmed in a soft focus lens, making everything resemble a sort of dreamlike state. The stills that I’ve seen of Emmanuelle are gorgeous – her bedroom is decorated with richly draped fabrics, heavy ornate furniture, and taxidermied leopards, while her dressing room is shown covered with vases of flowers and antique sculpted busts.

While the film can easily be written off as simply of the softcore porno variety, it has arguably done a lot to advance the way that sex, sexuality, and the feminine embracement and assertion of that sexuality is portrayed on screen. While I am probably part of the group that unfairly judges the film without ever having seen it (because I am forming an opinion that I shouldn’t see it before I’m actually well-informed enough to make that opinion), I do recognize its merits. How could Carrie Bradshaw and her City girls be embraced by audiences not just on HBO, but also on the silver screen (twice!) and now basic cable, becoming icons of the modern 21^st century woman, without Emmanuelle first paving the way? 

Title: from "Sweethearts Together" (The Rolling Stones)