Wednesday, 1 October 2014

Summer Project - Part 2

For the second part of our summer project we were asked to choose two films from a list provided in the brief and analyse them. As someone who loves watching movies this was a great task! I chose True Romance as it is one of my all time favourites and The Great Gatsby which I watched for the first time this summer and thoroughly enjoyed.

True Romance

True Romance is a 1993 romantic black comedy. It came out a year before Tarantino’s breakthrough Pulp Fiction.The main characters are Christian Slater who plays Clarence Worely, a shy, socially awkward loner who works in a comic shop and Patricia Arquette who plays Alabama, a beautiful blonde hooker who is a birthday gift to Clarence from his boss. It is a story of love at first sight. Clarence promised Alabama she didn’t have to see her pimp again and told her he would go and get her bag of belongings. This ended in a fight breaking out and Clarence killing Drexl, Alabama’s pimp. During all the commotion Clarence grabbed the wrong bag which they later discovered was full of cocaine, cocaine with a value of five million dollars. After this Clarence and Alabama marry and elope with a plan to sell the cocaine, get rich and move to Cancun in Mexico to start a family...unaware that they were being followed by gangsters who wanted the drugs back. After many scenes of extreme violence and near death experiences, the film ends with Clarence and Alabama on a Cancun beach with their son Elvis.                                                                                    
The reason I love True Romance is not only because it’s a cult classic, it is because the viewers get to see the ending they wanted. Make-up and fashion in True Romance really mirrors the time it was set, everything about the styling says the nineties. As it was set in the time when it was made and not the past the fashion and make-up was a less important part of the film. Colour in True Romance is very important, when everything is going well and the Worely couple are falling in love and happy bright colours are used and when the colours become duller they are unhappy. Alabama Worely is the “It” girl of the nineties fashion-wise for me, I love the garish, bright colours and bold prints. I also love her platinum blonde bob and signature red lipstick. Clarence on the other hand will be most remembered for his colourful Hawaiian shirt.
I believe that the clash between terrifying, violent situations and an addictive love story, teamed with the style, hair and make-up that is retro to us is what makes this an iconic cult classic. 

Make-up artist – Ellen Wong
Hair stylist – Ron Scott

Wigs – Mary Barnard




 


The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is a drama film based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. It is set in the height of the roaring twenties on Long Island. The Great Gatsby is a love story about a man called Nick Carraway who after attending Yale moves to New York, Long Island to a place called West Egg. Across the water on East Egg lives his cousin Daisy Buchanan with her husband and child. Carraway befriends Jay Gatsby, his cryptic millionaire neighbour who confides in him that he is in love with Daisy who he has a history with, and asks for Nicks help to bring them back together. Daisy and Gatsby eventually come together again. The Great Gatsby is most notable for the lavish parties Gatsby throws in order to bump into daisy and eventually ends in tragedy. Daisy betrays Gatsby, and Gatsby is killed. It is a film about the dark side of the American Dream and to some extent shows that even the man that has everything materialistically will still die trying for the one he loves.

Fashion, make-up and hair is very important in The Great Gatsby, at the 86th Academy Awards it won Best Costume Design. As the film is set in the 20’s but made in 2013, it was very important to get the clothes, hair and make-up right to show the time that was being recreated in a modern and stylised way, this to me is why it is so iconic. The costumes, hair and make-up show off the glamorous and luxury lifestyles some of the characters have. Leonardo DiCaprio is a style icon by his own rights, however he often outside the film looks and dresses like Mr. Gatsby. Pin curls, flapper style, slicked back hair, fur, suits, glitz and glamour define the film.
Key make-up artist – Wizzy Molineaux

Key hair stylist – Ashley Johnson

Wig maker – Kylie Clark




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