Category: Casual
New Girl – Nick’s Holiday Party Tweed for “The 23rd”
Jake Johnson as Nick Miller on New Girl (Episode 1.09: “The 23rd”)
Vitals
Jake Johnson as Nick Miller, grumpy bartender
Los Angeles, December 23, 2010 (“Christmas Eve Eve“)
Series: New Girl
Episode: “The 23rd” (Episode 1.09)
Air Date: December 13, 2011
Director: Jason Winer
Creator: Elizabeth Meriwether
Costume Designer: Debra McGuire
Background
Nick: All dressed up. What, are you in The Temptations tonight?
Winston: That’s so cute, Nick, you’re intimidated by my style. But one of us is walking out of here with a job.
Nick Miller is easily the least fashion-conscious of the dwellers of the 4D loft. Between Winston Bishop (Lamorne Morris) with his colorful printed “bird shirts” to the materialistic Schmidt (Max Greenfield), who is obsessive about his tailoring and whose heart could be won over by a pair of gray Calvin Klein slacks, Nick is the most content to roll out of bed in a stained henley shirt and unwashed sweatpants before heading straight to work at his bar. Continue reading
All That Heaven Allows: Rock Hudson’s Red Holiday Plaid
Rock Hudson as Ron Kirby in All That Heaven Allows (1955)
Vitals
Rock Hudson as Ron Kirby, ambitious and independent-minded landscaper
New England, Fall to Winter 1955
Film: All That Heaven Allows
Release Date: August 25, 1955
Director: Douglas Sirk
Background
Among the many classic movies commonly associated with Christmas – It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, and White Christmas to name a few – there are countless additional fine films from that same nostalgic postwar era that relied on the warmth of the holidays to set the scene.
Though it was released in London four months earlier, the Douglas Sirk-directed melodrama All That Heaven Allows made its United States debut on Christmas Day 1955. Continue reading
Joe Kidd
Clint Eastwood as Joe Kidd in Joe Kidd (1972)
Vitals
Clint Eastwood as Joe Kidd, former bounty hunter
Territory of New Mexico, Spring 1902
Film: Joe Kidd
Release Date: July 14, 1972
Director: John Sturges
Background
After more than a decade as a rising star, particularly in the genre of Westerns, Clint Eastwood took on the title role in Joe Kidd (1972), an idiosyncratic revisionist Western written by Elmore Leonard that would be one of the last films directed by the legendary John Sturges.
We meet Joe Kidd when he is locked up for poaching on Native American land in the small town of Sinola, New Mexico, on a spring day in 1902, ten years before New Mexico would become the 47th state admitted to the U.S. A former bounty hunter, Joe remains neutral when he is invited to join a landowner’s posse tracking down the Mexican bandito Luis Chama (John Saxon), but he is eventually convinced to join after one of Chama’s attacks hits closer to home. Continue reading
Mogambo: Clark Gable on Safari
Clark Gable with Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly in Mogambo (1953)
Vitals
Clark Gable as Victor Marswell, big game hunter
Kenya, Summer 1952
Film: Mogambo
Release Date: October 9, 1953
Director: John Ford
Costume Designer: Helen Rose
Tailor: H. Huntsman & Sons, London
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
In my home state of Pennsylvania, the Monday after Thanksgiving is considered an unofficial holiday among hunters as the opening day of the state’s firearms deer season, a day when hunters are expected to bag approximately 25% of the season’s harvest, according to the Tribune-Review.
The 1953 adventure Mogambo stars Clark Gable as a hunter on safari in Africa with his eyes on even bigger game than deer: the hearts of Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly.
The Shining – Jack Nicholson’s Corduroy Jacket
Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance in The Shining (1980)
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Vitals
Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance, stir-crazy writer
Silver Creek, Colorado, Winter 1990
Film: The Shining
Release Date: May 23, 1980
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Costume Designer: Milena Canonero
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Happy Halloween, BAMF Style readers! What better way to observe the most haunted holiday than with a look at one of the scariest and most suspenseful psychological horror movies, The Shining.
Three years after Stephen King’s novel was published, Stanley Kubrick brought his own adaptation of the story to the big screen with a screenplay co-written by novelist Diane Johnson, significantly altering the characters and motivations of the source novel.
Perhaps most significantly – and certainly cited as one of King’s greatest dissatisfactions with the movie – was Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of the central character, Jack Torrance, the new caretaker who brings his family to the Overlook Hotel for the winter and hopes the seclusion will help him with his writing… and to continue overcoming his battle with alcoholism. “Instead of playing a normal man who becomes insane, Nicholson portrays a crazy man attempting to remain sane,” wrote Cinefantastique editor Frederick S. Clarke in 1996. Continue reading
Top Gun – Maverick’s G-1 Flight Jacket
Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis in Top Gun (1986)
Vitals
Tom Cruise as LT Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, hotshot United States Naval Aviator
NAS Miramar near San Diego, Summer 1985
Film: Top Gun
Release Date: May 16, 1986
Director: Tony Scott
Costume Design: Wingate Jones, John Napolitano, Bobbie Read, and James W. Tyson
Background
On March 3, 1969 the United States Navy established an elite school for the top one percent of its pilots. Its purpose was to teach the lost art of aerial combat and to insure[sic] that the handful of men who graduated were the best fighter pilots in the world.
They succeeded.
Today, the Navy calls it Fighter Weapons School. The flyers call it: TOP GUN.
In 1922, the same year that the U.S. Navy commissioned its first aircraft carrier, Navy Day was established to commemorate the birthday of Theodore Roosevelt, whose vast accomplishments included serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy before the ascended to the presidency. On Navy Day, it’s hard to think of a movie more associated with the United States’ naval warfare branch than Top Gun, which celebrated the talents and competition among U.S. Naval Aviators.
James Caan in Misery
James Caan as Paul Sheldon in Misery (1990)
Vitals
James Caan as Paul Sheldon, successful but cynical romance novelist
Silver Creek, Colorado, Winter 1990
Film: Misery
Release Date: November 30, 1990
Director: Rob Reiner
Costume Designer: Gloria Gresham
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Stephen King’s novels have provided the basis for some of the most enduring horror cinema, from Carrie and Christine to The Shining and The Stand. With Halloween a week away, I wanted to focus on a request I received to take a look at the protagonist’s style in the thrilling and witty adaptation of King’s self-inspired 1987 novel Misery. The novel was partly inspired by King feeling trapped both by his demanding, horror-loving fans and his own drug and alcohol demons, all embodied in the form of the obsessive tormentor Annie Wilkes. Continue reading
