I haven’t seen the film, and I suppose I won’t, since the critics took a total shit on it (15% at RT) and the internet is ridiculing it mercilessly (3.8 at IMDb – lower than Plan 9 From Outer Space).

And let me point out that the 15% at RT is deceptively high. Some of the positive reviewers loved it because it was hilariously bad, driving home the comparison to Plan 9. The reviewer from Slate said this about Madame Web: “It’s a travesty, a disaster, a blight on the history of superheroes and cinema itself. I enjoyed the hell out of it.”

Oh, well. The movie may suck, but this does not:

Sexy photoshoots from the WSJ? Word.

Are they the next Hustler? Well, they are great at evaluating assets, they know when to take a position, they how to straddle, and I’ve often read in the Journal about looking at the spread. And when they write their movie reviews, they are only interested in the box.

Full pictorial here.

Sample:

Kaia-Gerber-WSJ-Magazine-2024-Photoshoot07

It may seem that Hallmark and the candy companies invented this holiday, but the celebration of this feast on Feb 14th dates back 1500 years

Saint Valentine of Rome was martyred on February 14 in AD 269. The Feast of Saint Valentine, also known as Saint Valentine’s Day, was established by Pope Gelasius I in AD 496 to be celebrated on February 14.

Of course that feast originally had nothing to do with romance. St. Valentine was the patron saint of funny hats. I made that up, of course, but the truth is almost as silly. He was the patron saint of epilepsy and beekeeping.

The feast acquired its modern meaning about 600 years ago, and the romantic associations were either invented by or first documented by ol’ Jeff Chaucer himself: “For this was on seynt Volantynys day Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.” (The last three words would be “choose his mate” in modern English. The rest is self-explanatory.)

The fact that Chaucer was the first to mention the romantic angle could have happened because Chaucer was pretty much the only significant English author in that era, and few came before him. That was an era when few were literate and those who could read and write were generally reading and transcribing classical texts and sacred works. The printing press had not yet been invented. Anybody who scribbled an original thought, and was in a position to distribute it to literate people, could rise immediately to second place on the most-read list. (The Bible had a centuries-old stronghold on the top spot.) It is therefore possible that the association of Valentine’s Day with romance existed undocumented for centuries before Chaucer wrote about it.

Both Shakespeare and John Gay commented on Chaucer’s reference to the mating birds of St. Valentine’s Day.

  • Shakespeare wrote in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (around 1590): “Saint Valentine is past. Begin these wood birds but to couple now?”
  • John Gay wrote in The Shepherd’s Week (1714): “Last Valentine, the day when birds of kind their paramours with mutual chirpings find.”

The weather of England must have been quite mild in those days if they associated February 14th with chirping birds.

The printing press appeared in the century after Chaucer’s, and soon thereafter came the earliest surviving, well-documented “Be My Valentine” note that we know of, in a subsequently published letter that Margery Brews wrote to her fiancé John Paston in 1477, calling him her “right well-beloved valentine.

In the original text: “Unto my ryght welebelovyd Voluntyn, John Paston, Squyer, be this bill delyvered.”

Bottom line: That lovey-dovey Valentine crap has been in the English-speaking world for a good while, since long before Whitman invented the sampler.

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Most macabre St. Valentine trivia:

The flower-crowned alleged skull of St. Valentine is exhibited in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome.

This is a new Mexican series about Pedro Infante, a noted singer, musician and actor in the 40s and 50s.


Paulina de Alba and an unidentified actress in episode 3

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Vico Escorcia in episode 4

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Daniela Alvarez in episode 7

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Ana Claudia Talancon is the leading actress, but she keeps her clothing on. Film clips of Talancon and all of these other women can be found here.


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The setting is Paris in the 1940s and 1950s. The basic story is the fashion rivalry between Coco Chanel and Christian Dior, but it’s not just shallow fashion bullshit. There are plenty of socio-political aspects to the story, as there was a sharp contrast between the perceived patriotism of Dior and Chanel.

Dior’s sister was a prominent figure in the French resistance. Catherine Dior was eventually captured by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp, but survived. She lived until 2008 as a glorious embodiment of France’s struggle against Nazi rule.

Christian Dior himself was not quite so pure. Although he fought in the French army, he made a living during the occupation by designing elegant dresses for the wives and mistresses of Nazis. That sounds worse than it was. He was just a guy making a living in the only way he knew how, and it’s reasonable to say that designing dresses didn’t help the Nazi cause in any way. In fact, the opposite was true because he used much of the money he earned from the Nazis to shelter and finance his sister and her colleagues in the resistance.

On the other extreme, Chanel was considered to have been in league with the Nazis. Many have speculated that the only thing that prevented Chanel from being tried as a collaborator was her friendship with powerful people like Winston Churchill, who intervened on her behalf. She may have avoided the justice of the courts, but she could not evade the judgement of the people, so her unpopularity in Paris drove her to live many years as an exile in Switzerland.

Recently declassified documents revealed that Chanel had collaborated directly with the Nazi intelligence service, although the script in this series tries to take a measured view of that. It portrays her as a desperate woman with no choice but to deal with the Nazis in order to get back a company that was stolen from her by unscrupulous partners. Conveniently for her, the men who swindled her were Jewish, which meant that the Nazis were more than eager to help – in exchange for her co-operation. The moral cost of that co-operation drives much of the show’s momentum.

This is a new series from Apple+, featuring a powerhouse cast of award winners: Ben Mendelsohn (Dior), John Malkovich, Juliette Binoche (Chanel), Glenn Close and Emily Mortimer. Maisie has the plum role of the acclaimed French patriot, Catherine Dior.

1080hd film clip here.

2160hd film clip here.

Maisie is forced by the Nazis to undress in episode 3, but we only see her in her slip.

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New and noteworthy:

Kim Higelin topless in Le Consentement (2023)

Noah Cyrus topless