Blue Is the Warmest Color

The other day my friend Kim and I went to the local art house to see the French film, “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” about a love affair between two French girls, one a high school student when they first meet, the other an artist with blue hair who’s a few years older. The movie’s been in the news lately because the sex scenes are very graphic and prolonged and in fact the film got banned in Idaho for being too racy. I think if someone went just for the sex scenes, though, they would be disappointed, as it’s really a very intense love story of how another person can imprint themselves on one’s soul, for better or worse. Some of the scenes near the end are achingly painful and the actresses are amazing, especially Adèle Exarchopoulos, from whose perspective the story is told. She doesn’t seem to be acting but rather channeling her desperate cravings from some inner depths.

The movie’s also gathered a lot of attention because the author of the graphic novel on which it’s based isn’t happy with how the film turned out, calling the sex scenes porn. And also the two young actresses have publicly complained about the difficult and exhausting working methods of the director, one of the actresses saying she would never work with him again. So there’s a lot of drama surrounding the movie, but as they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. If you enjoy foreign films with a slower non-Hollywood pace you’ll probably be very moved by this one. Definitely worth seeing.

Halloween in West Hollywood 2013

This was the third year that I’ve made it out to the West Hollywood Halloween street party, going with my friend Kim again, and we had a blast. We’ve learned that it’s a good idea to get there early and go out to eat first before hitting the boulevard, as things just get crazier and more claustrophic the later it gets. As always it’s a mix of people and some really creative costumes, and loads of gay boys and drag queens everywhere. We shot a bunch of pictures and I found myself casually getting felt up a couple times by the not-so-innocent bystanders.

Later on we were able to meet up with Ikaras Jones who was decked out in an amazing full-body latex outfit and who was accompanied by none other than bondage legend Lorelei and her boyfriend Jon Woods. Wherever they went there was a big crowd of people waiting to take pictures with the bound and gagged Lorelei. As we continued on the crowd just continued to swell and eventually Kim got separated from us. There was a frantic moment of “Uh oh, what now?” but eventually I was able to get a text message through and we finally met up back at the car. My feet were killing me by then, even with my low heels and we fought the traffic out of Hollywood and back to the Valley. It was another fun and very memorable time and hopefully we’ll be back again next year…Oh, and I still have no idea what’s going on with that guy with the thing on his head in picture nine below!