Hi all,

Yet another gay rights post - I promise I will soon return to my regularly scheduled dose of black and white squee and other assorted randomness, but this is really important. As you all may or may not know, right now in California the Prop 8 trial is going on - as in, a number of gay couples are suing the state of California because of its repealing the law that enabled gay marriage within the state. These people's marriages have essentially been turned null and void from one day to the other, which is, oh wait, kind of really wrong. As far as I understand, the main argument the pro-gay-marriage side has in mind (apart from the common sense, let's not discriminate and hate on nice lovely people, ones) is that a ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. Which it is, since it means not everyone has equal rights, which ought to strike most people who did NOT hold a high position of authority within Hitler's Third Reich as something really bad.

Because it's not being televised, some nice people at the Courage Campaign are liveblogging the entire trial on http://prop8trialtracker.com/ ... these people are doing a huge effort to ensure transparency in regard to this really, really important basic human rights trial, and I heart them for it. If any of you are interested, check out especially the Daily Summaries of the five days of the trial so far. They're a real eye-opener because honestly, the side that is against gay marriage is not making any sense. None at all. All they seem to do is shout things like 'BUT GAYS ABUSE CHILDREN!' and 'BUT GAYS MARRYING WILL HARM THE INSTITUTE OF MARRIAGE!'. The first notion is completely ridiculous and has never been proven whatsoever. It's a plain lie. The second notion - let me tell you a thing or two, Sherlock. Gay marriage has been legal for going on six years in my country now. Gays marry. Heterosexuals marry too. As much as they did beforehand. Without the divorce rate growing or decreasing significantly. In short, the only result of legalizing gay marriage is that gays can marry. Which as far as I can see is not going to bring about the end of the world. Right? Right!

Love,

Lies

PS: If you agree with this, spread the word about that website! More people should be aware of what's going on there! :)

Hey Americans on my flist (and others too, really),

Unless you're a raging homophobe, which I'm assuming you're most likely not, LOL, please go check out this petition here:

http://immigration.change.org/actions/view/special_visa_for_binational_lgbt_spouse-perma-partners

and perhaps first read the original article here:

http://lezgetreal.com/?p=24121

It's to do with the outdated American immigration law which prohibits same-sex couples from sponsoring each other for a green card. Needless to say, this is pretty close to my heart, and I think it's downright criminal that a supposedly free country would willingly impose such suffering on a significant number of its citizens.

I also don't think it is remotely Christian to oppose same-sex immigration or same-sex anything, really - and I'll say what I always say about things like this; if you think about it, Jesus would probably have been first to take up for oppressed groups like this. Because he was cool like that.

So, if you so wish, please sign this petition / spread the word / eat cookies?

Thanks!

I am in the mood for a picspam, and after my latest Friday spam post I did promise some of you a proper spam of Norma Shearer (and, considering she was literally who the halter top was invented for, her fabulous shoulders), so here it is. Assorted pictures of THE NORMA being glamorous at any point between say, the 1920s and the 1940s.

Since this includes two of the infamous Naked Pictures (DONE VERY TASTEFULLY TYVM) this is probably not SFW. Although to be honest, they're adorable more than anything.



( I'm afraid my legs are not my best feature, Mr. Hurrell.Collapse )

Love,

Lies

I finished my Norma music video...



Since I am shameless and have been thinking about this video for about a century, I may pimp it around a bit so, apologies if you come across it more than once, LOL.

Love,

Lies

So, my dear friends list, after (yet another) far too long absence, I come back bearing gifts, in the shape of the fabulous nose of the even more fabulous Miss Norma Shearer (or Mrs Norma Thalberg, whichever you prefer). The aforementioned Miss Shearer starred in the 1931 version of Private Lives, which cracks me up like nothing else, and is, in my opinion, sadly underappreciated. Therefore, lo! 234 (!!!) screencaps of this glorious woman in this glorious movie! I am sure you all rejoice!

...

Or maybe that's just me. No, but seriously, if you like the play, you should watch the movie sometime. Norma and Robert Montgomery are, in my opinion, really very good as Amanda and Elyot. That, and Norma's silent-movie-faces are just adorable.

( 'Shall we get roaring, screaming drunk?'Collapse )

Love,

Lies

SCREW MODESTY, I GRADUATED WITH A FIRST.

And that's really, really good.

What with the Harriet, Janet and Mary Stuart fangirlings going on lately, I thought I could as well make a couple of icons to spread the love - only 8 of them in total, but I still hope, dear flist, that you shall find a way to properly appreciate them ;).


1. 2. 3.


4. 5. 6.


7. 8.


Feel free to steal as many as you want, but credit would be nice. Thanks :).


Love,


Lies

... and happy death day, too, I guess, for the Fabulous Swede was born on August 29th, 1915, and died on the same day, 67 years later. Obviously, there is no better excuse for blatant, cheesy, weepy, obsessive fangirling. Thus, I bring you ramblings by moi, then quotes by people who know far more about these things than I do, and last but not least, PICTURES. Most of those I scanned from my own collection, so I really hope there's some you haven't seen yet :). Anyways...



Ingrid Bergman is probably, of all the people I fangirl, the one I feel closest to and maybe the one I can identify best with. I feel, when reading about her, that I can understand what she was about, and I like her. These days, she is mostly remembered for the 'good girl' image she had in the 1940s, but really, she is so much more interesting and complex than just that.

Once, in the late 1940s, Ingrid said that she dreaded going back home (to her first husband), because then she’d have to ‘go back into the cage, sit in the sun, obey Petter, be sober and look eighteen years old’, and I think that was a very accurate description of what not just Petter, but the film-going world expected of her. She had made it big in Hollywood with an impossibly innocent, almost virginal public image - an image she had contributed to herself, because she was too clever not to realize how exactly she was being sold in the USA – and for a while, that worked fine. When she first came to America, after all, she was pretty young and pretty naïve, but throughout the following years, as she got more famous, she adapted and grew up and that image became much more like a cage, because she did smoke and she did drink and she did stay out late and she did a lot of the things other stars did, as well. Part of her problem was that she couldn’t conform anymore to the role the world, the studio, her husband and, perhaps, she herself had created for her; that of a kind of modern Virgin Mary, one star they could safely idolize and name their children after.

And Ingrid was far more than that, in many different ways. She was a lot smarter than people gave her credit for and she could be very cool and level-headed in matters of business, and yet at the same time, too, in her private life, there was this side to her that was deeply insecure and extremely sensitive. She had a healthy dose of common sense, a lot of strength and good humour, and yet at the same time she could be very dramatic, very unhappy and always a little bit lonely.

About this, she once said that her main problem was that in a way, she spent all her life searching for a romance like her parents had had. Her mother and father had both died when she was a young child, but she had read their love-letters when she was eighteen, and she believed that one day, she would find something similar to what they had experienced, and then everything would be alright, but she never did. I think she loved her three husbands very much, and they were three completely different people who were very strong characters in their own completely different ways, but when one tries to find the One True Love of Ingrid’s life, I think the answer would be ‘her work’ more than anything.

She blamed herself for losing Lars, her third husband, because she felt she had failed to give him the time together than he needed so badly. While that was partly due to the great guilt complex she always felt towards her loved ones, that idea was probably partly accurate, as well, and although she understood the problem, she didn’t adapt because she knew that her work was really what she lived for. She did, however, take more than a year off work in the 1960s when her daughter Isabella was seriously ill.

There’s so much more to be said about Ingrid Bergman, but I’ll end here - she was so beautiful and smart and naïve and sweet and cold and warm and reasonable and temperamental and level-headed and melodramatic and talented all at once, and I love her for all those things. She may not have been a saint, but she was undeniably… human.

WARNING. This LJ-cut is probably NOT dial-up friendly. At all. Sorry for that!


( There where you go, there blooms the earth.Collapse )


“Ultimately, most movies remain locked in their period, even if the personality of the star manages to transcend that period. It is only the greatest stars who achieve those half-dozen or so films that remain perpetually seductive, films that render them, in effect, immortal: Casablanca, Gaslight, Spellbound, Notorious, Journey to Italy, Indiscreet, Autumn Sonata.

Ingrid Bergman died in 1982.

Ingrid Bergman lives.”


Love,

Lies

I bring you... Roslinfic! Spoilers ahead!

( Outside The BoxCollapse )

Love,

Lies