Showing posts with label Love & Friendship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Love & Friendship. Show all posts

Sunday, May 29, 2016

"Sweetbitter" Is A Savory Saga Of Restaurant Life And Love


Love & Friendship Movie CLIP - Disaster (2016) - Kate Beckinsale, Chloë Sevigny Movie HD

At the beginning of Stephanie Danler"s new Sweetbitter, there"s an image of a girl, Tess, driving over the George Washington Bridge. We don"t really know much about her. She"s come to New York City to leave her past behind a common experience. She falls into a job at a landmark restaurant, loosely modeled on Union Square Cafe.

And what she thinks is going to be a temporary job, a placeholder, becomes her life. She falls in love with it and that"s the arc of the book, her love affair with this world. Danler tells NPR"s Rachel Martin that while she has a lot in common with Tess, "she quickly became a character, and is in many ways much better and much worse at life than I was at that age."

Interview Highlights

On why she didn"t just write a memoir

I wasn"t interested in it. I really loved the freedom of fiction. I loved that I"ve been working in restaurants since I was 15 years old, and I got to compile all of those restaurants into this restaurant. And all the servers that I"ve known, and all the men that I"ve known, and all the mentors I"ve had ... it"s thrilling, that"s the thrill, that"s why we write novels.

On why she set the book in a restaurant

If the guests had any idea of the rich life that is going on behind the scene, and the drama and the sexual tension and the sadness and the joy and the friendship, I think that those currents add a lot of energy to restaurants.

Well, I had this expertise in restaurants ... I"ve worked every position from hostess to the general manager and the beverage director. So I had this knowledge that, you don"t notice your servers, they"re invisible mostly. But I would always think to myself, that as I was waiting tables, if the guests had any idea of the rich life that is going on behind the scene, and the drama and the sexual tension and the sadness and the joy and the friendship, I think that those currents add a lot of energy to restaurants. I prefer to dine in places where I can feel the staff a little bit, they have a little bit of a personality. But I hadn"t ever seen it written about, I saw that there was a space to create something there.

On figuring out how to write a good s*x scene

s*x is the undercurrent of the whole book, because what we"re really investigating is Tess"s appetites across the board. And also her becoming more of a woman, this transition fromg girlhood to womanhood. And s*x is a big part of that, figuring out l**t and desire. So I knew it was essential to the novel that I write a s*x scene. And you have all these technical choices as a writer, which is, am I going to fade to black? What kind of language am I going to use, how far am I going to go with this? And there were drafts in which I went much further. And then I went back, and I thought, what is true of Tess"s voice? ... and so when I was writing about s*x, it was sexy, because it was sexy to Tess.

On whether Tess"s experiences were good for her

That"s a great question. Because I am still so grateful for my experience and I just stopped waiting tables like a year ago ... she is grateful. It does change the way that you pay attention to the world, it does change the way that you interact with your senses, this kind of education. And I don"t think we know much about what"s going to happen to her. And we know that she"s going to continue to make mistakes, because this is not a linear path that she"s on. But she"s wiser. She has more knowledge, and that is her power.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2016/05/29/479769563/sweetbitter-is-a-savory-saga-of-restaurant-life-and-love

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Saturday, May 28, 2016

Love & Friendship


Love & Friendship Movie CLIP - Disaster (2016) - Kate Beckinsale, Chloë Sevigny Movie HD

Besides X-Men and Alice, theres also Love & Friendship at the box office this weekend. Thats Kate Beckinsales new comedy set in 18th century England. Decos good friend, Chris Van Vliet has all the lovely deets.

Lynn, Shireen in Love & Friendship, Kate Beckinsale is a woman of high society and questionable virtue. It may be a mans world but Kate plays by her own rules.

Love & Friendship is based on an early work by legendary English author Jane Austen. Kate Beckinsale is Lady Susan Vernon, dodging rumors of her many affairs. The lady could be bitter and cold, but shes not.

Kate Beckinsale: In that my character is quite naughty and ruthless and manipulative and cunning and actually, the whole movie is sort of not what you expect cause its very, very funny.

It didnt take much to get Kate to commit to the role. It was love at first sight.

Kate Beckinsale: I love the characters where youre looking at them on the page going Oh my goodness, I cant believe shes doing this stuff, yet at the same time, youre also applauding her for her spirit and all that. Im attracted to those kind of characters.

Lady Susans views on love and marriage seem very modern but thats not the case, says the woman whos come to know her quite well.

Kate Beckinsale: She is of her time. Shes very much observant of all the social codes and conditions. Its just that shes found very clever ways to kind of subvert them and kind of squeak past them.

Chlo Sevigny plays Ladys Susans close friend, Alicia Johnson. The two worked together on The Last Days of Disco back in 1998, so Love & Friendship was a reunion for them.

Kate Beckinsale: There wasnt this kind of gulf of several decades in between. We did sort of quite easily fall back into a fairly familiar pattern with each other, which was lovely.

Dressing up in 18th century clothing was part of the job for Kate on this film, and it took a bit of getting used to.

Kate Beckinsale: Its quite difficult walking around in those costumes, especially if the doorways very wide. I had some outrageous hats on quite a lot, so you know, youd have to devise a sort of special technique to get through doors sideways.

You can find Love & Friendship in theaters now. And if youre going to have a celebrity crush, do they get any better than Kate Beckinsale? Kate Hot-insale as I like to call her? Isnt she the best??

Copyright 2016 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://wsvn.com/entertainment/love-friendship/

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