The Oscar project- "My Fair Lady"

In the latest installment of "The Oscar Project", I watched My Fair Lady , which won the best picture in 1964. This movie stars Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle, and Rex Harrison as Professor Henry Higgins. Apparently, Cary Grant was up for the role of Henry Higgins, but he turned it down, and said that he would not even go see the film if Rex Harrison was not cast. Audrey Hepburn's singing is dubbed in, and it's a little bit obvious. This movie was okay, but I found it to be a waste of Audrey's talent. This is definitely not her best role. She also has some bizarre costumes in this film. For example, I love this dress , but if you look at the back of her head, her hair looks like it's been replaced with a loaf of French Bread. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a picture which highlight that detail.

It's obvious that "Pretty Woman" was based on this film. There are many parallels and common scenes between the two movies.

However, I had many problems with "My Fair Lady". Usually, I am able to swallow my feminist viewpoint and watch dated movies. This time, I wasn't able to do that. I found Henry Higgins to be a disgusting character and found the way he treated Eliza to be deplorable. I also couldn't understand why she could fall in love with a boorish, disgusting, condescending man. Ick!!

Best submission call I've seen in a while

VEN is looking for authors for an upcoming collection of short stories and poetry from within the vampire community. Submit pieces to syd7@email.com.



There's a vampire community?!?!!?!

This news just in from Mixed Media Watch....

Woohoo! The New York Times reports that the racist-ass clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Co. has agreed to pay $40 million to black, Hispanic and Asian employees and job applicants to settle a class-action federal discrimination lawsuit that accused the clothing retailer of promoting whites at the expense of minorities.

You may remember that Asian-Americans were up in arms in 2002 when Abercrombie released a line of t-shirts mocking Asians, including the infamous "Wong Brothers Laundry Service -- Two Wongs Can Make It White" T-shirt. (See Mimi Nguyen’s excellent essay, “Orientalist Kitsch” for more about this.) But Abercrombie’s racism went far beyond the products it sold:


“In an unusual step, the settlement calls for Abercrombie to increase diversity not just in hiring and promotions, but also in its advertisements and catalogs, which have long featured models who were overwhelmingly white and who seemed to have stepped off the football field or out of fraternities or sororities. Plaintiffs' lawyers said they insisted that the company agree to add more diversity to its marketing materials so as not to discourage minorities from applying for jobs.


In another unusual move, the settlement requires Abercrombie to stop focusing on predominantly white fraternities and sororities in its recruitment. Many Abercrombie workers have said that company employees were often told to go to college campuses and to urge good-looking fraternity and sorority members to apply for jobs.”