POLANSKI, PAINTINGS, PYJAMAS...

Carnage
I had been meaning to get to a screening of Carnage for ages, but for some reason I kept failing to make it. Perhaps I was subconsciously put off by the description of it as tense and fraught. Also knowing it was a stage adaptation (I'm strangely allergic to theatre) I assumed that meant it was one of those actor-y films that big-time actors (in this case Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) do to really "inhabit" their characters and get all luvvie about their "craft." (I'm looking at you, Winslet.) But because it's a Roman Polanski film I finally went along last week. When you're sitting in a screening room full of film critics and everyone is cracking up laughing for all the right reasons you know you're onto a winner. The premise is that two sets of bourgeois liberal Brooklyn parents meet to politely discuss a playground fight between their two young sons in which one of them has been injured. I would imagine it stays very faithful to the play - the action doesn't stray from the four in the apartment, adding to the claustrophobia. Within the first half hour the mask of civil cordiality starts to break down, finally irrevocably. But it's all handled so deftly that the slightest detail can make you wince or burst out laughing. {Carnage is released in the UK on 3 February.}

The Last Nude
When I was poorly a while ago, my very kind friend Lauren (who thankfully will be visiting London soon, which is dull without her) sent me a care package containing all kinds of lovely things. One of those things was The Last Nude by Ellis Avery, an imagined account of the love affair between Tamara de Lempicka and Rafaela, her muse in 1920s Paris. This is the book that dragged me out of my reading drought - a very evocative, gripping read. As luck would have it, my other friend Lauren (who thankfully is MOVING from Paris to London this week) has written a fine review of it here.

Poplin PJs at Avenue 32
I wear mens' style pyjamas - it's one of my things. I say mens' style, not mens' because I don't like that gap they have, you know. For a long time I'd wondered about those silk Olatz pyjamas, that really chic people seem to own and rave about. But those really chic people are clearly also really rich because these PJs cost an arm and a leg (or a Schnabel) and are dry clean only. I don't currently have a maid so I was thinking of going for cotton instead. Olatz pyjamas do come in cotton but they're still priced for the 1% crowd. What I wanted was contrast piping pyjamas  - like Coco Chanel wore. These cotton J. Crew PJs might work now that my favourite stripy flannel Toast ones are falling apart, though I still have my APC Madras cotton polka dot PJs er, and some stripy Princesse TamTam ones. I like pyjamas a lot, ok? I thought you could get the J. Crew ones monogrammed, but maybe I made that up because I can't see that option now. Finally I found Poplin Pyjamas which might just be the answer. The proportion looks a little off but that might be a case of real person proportion photographed on a lanky model. The best thing is it's a London label and you can buy them from Avenue 32, also UK based, making things less complicated for me with shipping than J.Crew. I might go for the Shrimpton.