Tagged: Band-Collar / Neckband Shirt

The Wind That Shakes the Barley: Cillian Murphy’s Olive Irish Tweed Jacket

Cillian Murphy in The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)

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Cillian Murphy as Damien O’Donovan, Irish Republican Army soldier

County Cork, Ireland, 1920 through 1921

Film: The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Release Date: June 23, 2006
Director: Ken Loach
Costume Designer: Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Last year on March 17, I commemorated St. Patrick’s Day by watching The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a fictional chronicle of two brothers from County Cork during the Irish conflicts of the early 1920s. Cork native Cillian Murphy stars as Damien O’Donovan, who joins a local Irish Republican Army flying column led by his brother Teddy (Pádraic Delaney).

The brothers fight alongside each other during the Irish War of Independence, but the circumstances of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and Irish Free State deepen the divide between the increasingly radical Damien and more pragmatic Teddy as the two find themselves on opposing sides of the subsequent Irish Civil War. Continue reading →

Coup de Torchon: Philippe Noiret’s Khaki Uniform

Philippe Noiret in Coup de Torchon (1981)

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Philippe Noiret as Lucien Cordier, ineffective yet conniving colonial police chief

French West Africa, Summer 1938

Film: Coup de Torchon
(English title: Clean Slate)
Release Date: November 4, 1981
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Costume Designer: Jacqueline Moreau

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

For the 12th anniversary of my first-ever BAMF Style post, today’s entry is a labor of love analyzing the style from the French adaptation of one of my favorite novels, Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson. Born 118 years ago tomorrow on September 27, 1906, Thompson specialized in hardboiled crime fiction that has frequently been adapted into movies, including The Getaway, The Grifters, and The Killer Inside Me.

Published sixty years ago in 1964, Pop. 1280 is a darkly comic retread of the themes Thompson explored in The Killer Inside Me, following a southern sheriff whose mild-mannered persona masks his psychopathy. Set during the 1910s, Pop. 1280 is narrated by Nick Corey, the blissfully lazy “high sheriff of Potts County,” the 47th largest in an unnamed state of 47 counties. Nick presents himself as a dimwitted pushover, while secretly manipulating and murdering his way through his friends, family, and mistresses, all while nurturing delusions of being God’s agent sent to punish the sinful town of Pottsville.

Though there are rumors of a future adaptation directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (who seems well-suited for the material), the only major screen adaptation to date is Bertrand Tavernier’s Coup de Torchon, which earned ten César Award nominations and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 55th Academy Awards.

Adapted by Tavernier and Jean Aurenche, Coup de Torchon maintains the story’s center around a lazy lawman living with his domineering wife and her overly affectionate and slow-witted, uh, “brother”, in a small town where he’s the constant target of bullies, from those in his own household to a boastful fellow lawman who works several towns away. However, the setting is shifted to the fictional French West African town of Bourkessa on the eve of World War II, and the protagonist is reimagined as Lucien Cordier, played by Philippe Noiret, a two-time César Award-winning actor born in Lille on October 1, 1930.

“Doing nothing is my job, I’m paid for it,” Cordier explains to the two snappily dressed pimps who regularly torment him, adding with some earnestness: “At times—not always—I think I’ve found paradise on Earth.” Continue reading →

Legends of the Fall: Brad Pitt’s Tan Leather Car Coat

Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall (1994)

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Brad Pitt as Tristan Ludlow, tough bootlegger and World War I veteran

Montana, Fall 1925

Film: Legends of the Fall
Release Date: December 23, 1994
Director: Edward Zwick
Costume Designer: Deborah Lynn Scott

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Legends of the Fall may be a biblical title, but the style is autumnal, set amidst the network of the fictional Ludlow ranch in Montana across the first quarter of the 20th century.

Family patriarch William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins) had been a decorated Army colonel before leaving the service in protest of the government’s treatment of Native Americans, raising his sons Alfred (Aidan Quinn), Tristan (Brad Pitt), and Samuel (Henry Thomas) on their remote ranch, where they learn to be the self-sufficient types that can survive bear confrontations… and if they don’t survive them, at least put up enough of a fight to earn “a good death.”

Portraying the tough but troubled Tristan Ludlow provided a breakthrough opportunity for Pitt, continuing the momentum he’d built in a similar role two years earlier in A River Runs Through It, though Tristan is arguably a more rugged character than Paul Maclean. By the mid-1920s, Tristan had seen and done it all, as a cowboy, soldier, big-game hunter, and now a bootlegger whose rumrunning runs him afoul of his own Volstead-voting brother Alfred and his nemeses, the crooked O’Banion brothers. As blood spills on both sides of the conflict, Tristan fears that those he love most are damned to die before him, only to be saved by the bonds of his family. Continue reading →

“Nuns don’t work on Sunday…” — One of Magnum’s Striped Band-Collar Shirts

Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum on Magnum, P.I. (Episode 2.13: “The Jororo Kill”)

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Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, private investigator and former Navy SEAL

Honolulu, Hawaii, Fall 1981

Series: Magnum, P.I.
Episode: “The Jororo Kill” (Episode 2.13)
Air Date: January 7, 1982
Director: Alan J. Levi
Created by: Donald P. Bellisario & Glen Larson
Costume Supervisors: Denita Del Signore & James Gilmore

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Nuns don’t work on Sunday…

Though perhaps not as iconic of a line to Magnum, P.I. fans as Thomas asking Ivan if he saw the sunrise, this brief moment from the series’ second season—followed by Tom Selleck’s heel turn to shoot a figure dressed in full habit—has found renewed life in meme format, often paired with captions like “80s detective shows rocked” or “the best scene in movie[sic] history”.

Of course, the context of the scene helps audiences realize that Thomas Magnum doesn’t have a trigger-happy reaction to monastics who divert from his expectations of their schedule.

The episode featuring this moment, “The Jororo Kill”, first aired 42 years ago today on January 7, 1982. Continue reading →

Get Out: Chris’ Blue Denim Neckband Shirt

Daniel Kaluuya as Chris Washington in Get Out (2017)

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Daniel Kaluuya as Chris Washington, Brooklyn photographer

Upstate New York, Spring 2016

Film: Get Out
Release Date: February 24, 2017
Director: Jordan Peele
Costume Designer: Nadine Haders

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

As today (October 23) has been newly declared National Horror Movie Day, today’s post looks at one of my recent favorites of the genre, the 2017 psychological thriller Get Out.

Filmed in only 23 days from his own Oscar-winning original screenplay, Jordan Peele’s directorial debut follows Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya), a levelheaded black photographer from Brooklyn who accompanies his new girlfriend Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) upstate to meet her family for the first time. Continue reading →