Monday, February 27, 2012

What's Hot and What's Not: The Oscars

The Oscars are usually the biggest fashion event of the year - especially if there are designers/stars brave enough demonstrate unique sense of style. Regretfully, the truly remarkable pieces of fashion during the 84th Academy Awards were quite few, instead we got a lot of really scary-looking skinny stars. 

What's Hot?
Being Unique

Leslie Mann's Roberto Cavalli dress blended a disco look with traditional red carpet cut without going into extremes. It just had enough of each to make Leslie Mann appear mature and stylish at the same time. The set up could have been also nicely matched with a prominent necklace. Mann's disco teamed dress was the only one that was not overly-flashy. I would love to see this one under the night sky.

Leslie Mann
Image CopyrightsMondo Moda Blog

Berenice Bejo's Haircut

While her husband was busy winning the most prestigious Academy Awards with "The Artist" (i.e. Best Picture and Best Director), Berenice managed to demonstrate a unique haircut that is both simple and stylish. It would have benefited from a little bit of "sparkle" in the hair (i.e. jewelry or highlights) but even as it is it still light years away from the "tried" and "recycled" look of most of the other red carpet stars. 5 stars for Berenice's hairdresser.

Image CopyrightsMondo Moda Blog

What's Not Hot?
Anorexia

After Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston's untimely deaths there was a public outburst that their prior drug-induced misbehavior was actually a cry for help. Well, the red carpet shape of some of Hollywood's stars this year is also a cry for help. There is another problem among the stars that has nothing to do with drugs and pills - it is anorexia. The bigger issue, however, is that not only are they mistreating their own bodies but they are influencing a lot of young girl on their approach to food, diet, and healthy lifestyle. 

Angelina Jolie

Angelina should not wear anything that even remotely reveals her legs or arms. If she loses a little bit more weight, she might shrink completely. It's scary to think how such a naturally beautiful women can appear so unhealthy. The only excuse to have knees and elbows in this shape, is to be suffering from food deprivation - with her fortune, this is definitely not the issue. Furthermore, the form of the dress actually underlined rather than tone down Angie's problem. Recently, it seems as if somebody has artificially sewed her head to the body of somebody else.

Image CopyrightsMy Daily

Rose Byrne

Rose Byrne does not fair a lot better with Vivian Westwood's black disco dress. She is really skinny and frankly also quite flat so wearing black from the waist up should not be an option from her. I dream about the old days in which colors were actually used to optically reveal (or hide) what is necessary to be shown (or avoided). Byrne's head also looks enormous atop her tiny torso.

Image CopyrightsShopping Blog

Giuliana Rancic

There is one simple rule for skinny and flat women - never wear low waist dresses. The missing waist outline just further emphasizes the lack of femininity in their bodies. A far better solution is an "Empire" dress that optically magnifies even small busts. Just as with Jolie and Byrne - huge head on top of a small body is cute only if you are a baby.

Image CopyrightsCelebuzz

Rooney Mara

So much wasted potential! Mara's dress is actually quite nice but not in combination with her extremely skinny neck and shoulders. Just like the other four stars in this session - Rooney's face made me think of concentration camp survivors.

Image CopyrightsSTYLEITE

Conclusion

No, a star or a model is not just a hanger for clothes!!! Anorexia should not be encouraged during public events.

If you liked this post, you might also like What's Hot and What's Not: Make Up and What's Hot and What's Not: Cocktail Dresses.

The TV Triangle: True Blood

The last post was about two vampires and a human and so it this one. What can I say - fantasy is not the strongest side of recent vampire-obsessed literature and TV. The main characters here are the human waitress/mindreader Sookie Stackhouse and the (fatally) attractive vampires Bill Compton and Eric Northman.

Sookie, Bill and Eric

Image Copyrights:Blue Blog

Sookie met the Civil War veteran Bill Compton during the first episode of the series and has been on and off with him ever since. He was actually her first man. Everything was peachy until Sookie got to meet Bill's boss the 1000 year-old viking Eric. Northman was initially attracted to Sookie's mindreading abilities but soon became fascinated by ..mhm.. other parts of her body besides her brain. Both vampires used tricks to make the little blond waitress desire them (as if Alexander Skarsgard and Stephen Moyer need those) - they fed her their blood (which in the True Blood universe creates a bond of attraction and shared emotions between the vampire and the human - in Sookie's case these were some very steamy dreams). So Sookie was still dating Bill but she was also pining over the giant viking.

Sookie was just about to get engaged to Bill when they broke up over his dishonesty over his initial interest in her (Compton was sent by the vampire queen of Louisiana to gather intelligence on the blond temptation). And after that she did not need a lot to succumb to her growing attraction to Eric Northman (who can blame her?). Just as the thing were about to start getting normal between her and Eric after a few days of intense lovemaking, Bill had to feed Sookie his blood to save her life. So at the end of season 4, Sookie found herself again attracted to the two vampires in the same time.


Solution: Even though Sookie was dreaming (as in the video above) about a solution in which she could have both of them, at the end of season 4 she desided that it would be best to let both vampires go. It's not over yet, though, because even after that the two of them demonstrated they were willing to rebel against any kind of (vampire) authority to protect Sookie. And it has been a recurring part of this triangle that both vampires are willing to do crazy things to protect the blond mindreader. 
For her own good, Sookie at least knows what she wants, even though she thinks she cannot have it. In comparison, Vampire Diaries's Elena is completely in denial of her feelings for Damon. I wish there was an alternate universe in which Sookie, Bill and Eric could have a peaceful threeway (not that Eric and Bill seem to be completely opposed to sexual relations with their own sex, they just cannot stand the idea to share).

Complication: The complication for this threesome is a real world one - Stephen Moyer (Bill) and Anna Paquin (Sookie) are real life couple (together since the pilot and married since season 2). So Alexander Skarsgard is a little bit like the third wheele there. On the other hand, it seems that Alex and Stephen are really good friends, as Paquin's husband admits that he could hardly trust anybody else as much to do the steamy sex scenes between Sookie and Eric as he does Alex. Even if those steamy moments are no problem for the three of them, it seems that they are problem for the TV show writers that decided to tone down Sookie and Eric's sexual encounters, probably in an effort to spear Stephen's feelings. Additionally, sometimes it is just to obvious how much Paquin and Moyer love each other, it would be quite impossible to imagine her playing Sookie completely devoid of love towards Bill.

If you like this post, you might also like my post the Vampire Diaries TV Triangle or Skarsgard's 2011 movie Melancholia.

Really Cool Exoplanets

Exoplanets are planets that orbit other stars. Until 20 years ago, the only planets known to mankind were the nine around own Sun. Fast forward to 2012 and Pluto is no longer a proper planet, so we are left with just eight companions in the solar system but (mostly through the extremely successful Kepler mission) we now know of hundreds of planets in other systems. Some of them are really cool (metaphorically, most of them are extremely hot!). Here are my personal favorites.


Methuselah

Scientifically designated as PSR B1620-26b, Methuselah is the oldest known exoplanet. It is located in the globular cluster Messier 4 and along with the stars in this cluster (globular cluster members form almost concurrently), the planet is estimated to have formed 12.7 billion years ago. This is merely 1 billion years after the Big Bang. Imagine how different the universe was back then - there were small irregular galaxies and very few heavy elements (there was not enough time for a significant number of supernovae to ignite). And as if being the oldest exoplanet is not awesome enough, Methuselah also is a member of a very curious binary star system. The pair that harbors Methuselah includes a white dwarf and a pulsar. Yes, both of those are dead stars but this also means that at some point in the lifetime of the planet, one of its hosts went supernova! Born just after the Big Bang and survived a supernova - this is what I call a fighter planet. Even if Methuselah only formed around the white dwarf and was later trapped by the pulsar, having those two very dense "parents" is still quite cool.
Messier 4 Globular Cluster
Image Copyrights: Messier


GJ 667Cc and GJ 667Cb

GJ 667Cc and GJ 667Cb are two exoplanets in a triple star system. Gliese 667 is located mere 22.1 light years away from the Earth in the constellation of Scorpius. According to the laws of celestial mechanics, triple star systems are quite complex and unstable, just like in human relationships most of the times one of the threesome gets kicked away. This is actually considered to be the source of energy for globular cluster core-collapse. Gliese 667, however, is not part of a globular cluster and the system is stable. As in most other instances of stable three body systems - two of the  component stars orbit each other quite close (GJ 667A and GJ 667B) , while the third one GJ 667C is relatively distant. And as if three stars are not gravitational headache by themselves, Gliese 667 also has planets! Research until now has confirmed at least 2 planets orbiting GJ 667C. The planets are both a lot closer to GJ 667C than our home planet to our favorite star (0.049 and 0.23 respectively) and therefore their parent star looks quite enormous on their horizons and is joined by B and A for truly spectacular sunsets and sunrises.


 Image CopyrightsMix Techno News

HIP13044b

HIP13044b is literally an alien world - it is an exoplanet from another galaxy. This planet and its star are part of the Helmi Stream of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. This stream consists of the remnants of a dwarf galaxy consumed by the Milky Way 6 billion years ago - i.e. before the Sun or the Solar System even formed. HIP13044 is also a very old star which is already past its red giant stage and is currently fusing helium into carbon. HIP13044b, however, orbits its primary quite close so when the star was a red giant it is possible that the planet spent a lot of time physically inside its star! Deep fried but still standing. So to sum up - this little warrior survived the collision of its galaxy with the Milky Way (which is not such a danger - the chances of two stars colliding are minuscule - just like the atoms, galaxies are mostly empty/dark matter filled space) and the red giant phase of its star but it still kicking. I wonder if (alien) life is as resilient as these alien worlds?




Image CopyrightsBad Astronomy Blog

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Which is your favorite (exo)planet? Please share in the comments.