By Susan JAMES Have you ever searched for that perfect word? You know, the one that will send Twitter into viral paroxysms or Facebook into spasms of Googling? If you have then have I got a website for you! For over a decade popping into my e-mailbox every morning is a word of the day, […]
By Susan JAMES As little as two years ago conventional wisdom in Hollywood believed that casting a woman as the lead in a superhero tentpole movie or going with an all-black cast would mean the kiss of death at the box office. Then came Gal Gadot in “Wonder Woman” (grossing over $800 million worldwide) and […]
By Susan JAMES Running through April 12 with free admission to the public, the 27th annual exhibition of Oscar-nominated costumes is now open at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles. On display are over 100 costumes from more than 25 movies released in 2018, including the five films whose costumes were […]
By Susan JAMES Two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle I wasn’t expecting to find gourmet cuisine. Yes, Oslo has six Michelin-starred restaurants offering sophisticated spins on Nordic food, but I was exploring my Norwegian roots in Tromsø, so far north it seemed like the edge of the known world. Nansen and Amundsen had […]
By Susan JAMES For those of you out there who are enthusiastic followers of the work of auteur writer-director M. Night Shyamalan, “Glass” is the third in his myth-making Eastrail 177 trilogy, a spin on superheroes, comic book connections and the othering of people with special gifts. For those of you for whom Shyamalan’s best […]
By Susan JAMES One of the strengths of the Harry Potter series was the way in which it reflected the wondrous nature of magic. Funny things happened. Mysterious things happened. But Harry’s particular gift, as Dumbledore told him so many times, was the ability to love. Love equals hope. In the second installment of “Fantastic […]
By Susan JAMES Marie Josephe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie de Beauharnais de Bonaparte, known to history as Napoleon’s Empress Josephine, was a woman who defined an age. Where she led, fashion followed. Known for her élan, her beauty and her extravagance, she was arguably the founder of the French fashion industry and the originator […]
By Susan JAMES Through Saturday, Oct. 6, the 12th Annual Art of Television Costume Design Exhibition is open free to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) on the corner of Grand Avenue and 9th Street in Los Angeles. Over 100 costumes from 24 featured […]
By Susan JAMES Viewer alert: If you fall anywhere on the spectrum from “heights are not my thing” to “I get nose bleeds in two-story buildings,” maybe you want to wait to see Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in “Jumanji 2.” Because height is everything in writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber’s “Skyscraper,” a movie about tall buildings […]
By Susan JAMES After the majesty of “Black Panther” and the shocking ending of “Avengers: Infinity War,” the new entry in the Marvel Universe, “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” arrives on screen as comic relief. Director Peyton Reed, who helmed the original “Ant-Man,” has stepped up his game aided by a snap, crackle and pop script […]