Alice's Challenge from The Queen of Hearts Dessert Fair

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is often used as the motif for themed cafes and restaurants in Japan, namely for its fantastical blend of quirky characters and the curious world in which the story unfolds. The Hilton Tokyo, located in Shinjuku, is also a fan, and from September 3rd, the hotel will be offering an Alice in Wonderland-themed dessert buffet inside its Marble Lounge for Alice and dessert lovers everywhere.

The buffet, officially titled “Alice’s Challenge From The Queen Of Hearts,” will offer around 30 different desserts that will all transport you to the world of Alice and the Queen.

Many of the desserts are reminiscent of specific scenes from the Disney movie, such as the fruity Card Tarts with white chocolate ganache and your choice of blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, or cherries, the Paint It Red Roll Cake adorned with red and white roses much like those painted by the Queen, and the extravagant Queen’s Chocolate Fountain.

 

This gorgeous buffet will last until October 31st, with the second part of the dessert fair including sweets, sandwiches, pastas, and pies to celebrate this year’s Halloween. Whether an Alice in Wonderland fan or not, this scrumptious buffet is sure to satisfy anybody’s sweet tooth.

Alice’s Challenge From The Queen Of Hearts Dessert Fair

Location: Hilton Tokyo, Marble Lounge
Date: 9/3~10/31/2016
Time: 2:30PM~5:30PM

 

... now, go make something beautiful!

¸.•´¸.•*´¨) ¸.•*´¨)(¸.•´ 

(¸.•´♥ Tristan ♥

 

 

 

 

Come Up and See Her Sometime ...

Happy Birthday, Mae! 

 

Mary Jane West was born in Brooklyn, New York, on August 17, 1893, to parents involved in prizefighting and vaudeville, "Battling Jack" West and Matilda Doelger. Mae herself worked on the stage and in vaudeville from the time she was five years old. She never was academically inclined because she was too busy performing. She studied dance as a child, and by the time she was 14 she was billed as "The Baby Vamp" for her performances on stage.

 

Later Mae began writing her own plays. One of those plays, "Sex", landed her in jail for ten days on obscenity charges in 1926. Two years later her play "Diamond Lil" became a huge Broadway success.

 

 Mae caught the attention of the Hollywood studios and was given her first movie role with George Raft in Night After Night (1932). Although it was a small role, she was able to display a wit that was to make her world-famous. Raft himself said of Mae, "She stole everything but the cameras."

 

She became a box-office smash hit, breaking all sorts of attendance records. Her second film, She Done Him Wrong  (1933), was based on her earlier and popular play that she had written herself. The film was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Picture. It also made Cary Grant a star. 

Her third film later that year was I'm No Angel (1933). The controversy aroused by these two films resulted in the studios establishing the Motion Picture Production Code, which regulated what content could be shown or said in pictures. As a result of these codes, Mae began to double-talk so that a person could take a word or phrase any way they wished. This was so she could get her material past the censors, and it worked. She really felt she had a vested interest because it was her written work being scrutinized. She had already written and performed these for the stage with the very material now being filmed.

Her next film, Belle of the Nineties (1934), was an equal hit. By 1936, with Klondike Annie (1936) and Go West Young Man (1936) she became the highest paid woman in the US. After 1937's Every Day's a Holiday (1937), she didn't make another film until 1940, when she co-starred with W.C. Fields in another film she wrote herself, My Little Chickadee (1940). It was well known she had little use for Fields and his ways, which were crude even for her.

After The Heat's On (1943), Mae took a respite from the film world, mainly because the censors were getting stricter. She decided she would be able to have greater expression in her work if she went back to the stage. Mae continued to be a success there. When censorship began to end in the 1960s, she returned to film work in 1970's Myra Breckinridge (1970).

Her last film was 1978's Sextette (1978). Mae suffered a series of strokes which finally resulted in her death at age 87 on November 22, 1980, in Hollywood, California. She was buried in New York.

  The actress, who only appeared in 12 films in 46 years, had a powerful impact on us.

There was no doubt she was way ahead of her time with her sexual innuendos and how she made fun of a puritanical society. She did a lot to bring it out of the closet and perhaps we should be grateful for that.

 ...as Letitia Van Allen in Myra Breckinridge, 1970.

Mae as Letitia Van Allen in Myra Breckinridge, posing in the agent's infamous white office. 

Mae's final film, Sextette, based on her early 20th century play. Former Mr. America Reg Lewis was an alumnus of West's 1954 Las Vegas act

Her films are credited with single-handedly saving failing and debt-ridden Paramount Pictures from bankruptcy in the early 1930s.

... now go make something beautiful!

¸.•´¸.•*´¨) ¸.•*´¨)(¸.•´ 

(¸.•´♥ Tristan ♥

  

Happy Birthday, Hitch!

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, , (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director and producer, at times referred to as "The Master of Suspense". He pioneered many elements of the suspense and psychological thriller genres. He had a successful career in British cinema with both silent films and early talkies and became renowned as England's best director. Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in 1939 and became a US citizen in 1955.

Over a career spanning more than half a century, Hitchcock fashioned for himself a recognisable directorial style. His stylistic trademarks include the use of camera movement that mimics a person's gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism. In addition, he framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative forms of film editing. His work often features fugitives on the run alongside "icy blonde" female characters.Many of Hitchcock's films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of murder and other violence. Many of the mysteries, however, are used as decoys or "MacGuffins" that serve the films' themes and the psychological examinations of their characters. Hitchcock's films also borrow many themes from psychoanalysis and sometimes feature strong sexual overtones.

Hitchcock became a highly visible public figure through interviews, movie trailers, cameo appearances in his own films, and the ten years in which he hosted the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In 1978, film critic John Russell Taylor described Hitchcock as "the most universally recognizable person in the world", and "a straightforward middle-class Englishman who just happened to be an artistic genius."

Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades and is often regarded as the greatest British filmmaker. He came first in a 2007 poll of film critics in Britain's Daily Telegraph, which said: "Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from viewers) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else." Prior to 1980 there had long been talk of Hitchcock being Knighted for his contribution to film. Critic Roger Ebert wrote: "Other British directors like Sir Carol Reed and Sir Charlie Chaplin were knighted years ago, while Hitchcock, universally considered by film students to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, was passed over". Hitchcock was later to receive his knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in the 1980 New Year Honours. In 2002, the magazine Movie Maker named Hitchcock the most influential filmmaker of all time.

... now, go make something beautiful!

¸.•´¸.•*´¨) ¸.•*´¨)(¸.•´ 

(¸.•´♥ Tristan ♥

 

Robert Cummings and Grace Kelly in 1954's "Dial M for Murder"

 

Meet Cora Pearl ...

Cora Pearl  was a 19th-century courtesan of the French demimonde who enjoyed her greatest celebrity during the period of the Second French Empire.Working as a street prostitute, she made a connection with a procurer, a “Monsieur Roubisse,” who set her up in more suitable quarters, taught her the business rudiments of her new trade and tutored her in refining and broadening her repertoire of professional skills. After six years, she despaired of ever freeing herself from his all-encompassing influence. However, fate stepped in, the procurer died of a heart attack, liberating Emma.

 Cora Pearl (1835 - 1886)

Her first lover of distinction was the multi-titled, twenty-five-year-old Victor Masséna, third Duke du Rivoli, and later fifth Prince of Essling. He set her up in opulence, showering her with money, jewels, servants and a private chef. He provided her with funds for gambling when she visited the casinos and racecourse in the fashionable resort of Baden, Germany. He bought her the first horse she ever owned, and she became an accomplished equestrienne; it was said “she rode like an Amazon” and “was kinder to her horses than her lovers.” Her liaison with Masséna lasted five years. While cultivating Masséna, she was simultaneously sharing her favors with Prince Achille Murat, a man much older than Masséna.

By 1860, Pearl was one of the most celebrated courtesans in Paris. She was the mistress of notable aristocrats, the Prince of Orange, heir to the throne of the Netherlands, Ludovic, Duc de Grammont-Caderousse, and more significantly Charles Duc de Morny, who was the half-brother of the Emperor Napoleon III. The Emperor’s brother generously contributed to the opulent life Pearl demanded.

 In 1864, Pearl rented a chateau in the region of the Loiret. Known as the Chateau de Beauséjour (“beautiful sojourn”), it was a luxuriously appointed residence of stained glass windows, costly decorations and immaculately maintained interiors and grounds. Her boudoir boasted a custom-made bronze bathtub monogrammed with her intertwined initials. The château was conceived for gala entertainments. There were rarely fewer than fifteen guests at the dinner table, and the chef was instructed to spare no cost on the expenditure for food. Pearl was known for devising entertainments of an unexpected and outrageous theatricality, of which she invariably was the star attraction. On one such evening, she dared the group assembled around the dinner table “to cut into the next dish” about to be served. The meal’s next course was Cora Pearl herself, presented lying naked on a huge silver platter, sprinkled with parsley, and carried in by four large men.

 

Her most dedicated benefactor and enduring admirer was Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte, the Emperor’s distinguished cousin. She met the extremely wealthy prince in 1868 when he was forty-two years old. Their liaison lasted nine years, the longest relationship in Pearl’s career. He bought her several homes, one a veritable palace: “les Petites Tuileries.”

In 1860, Pearl made an appearance at a masquerade ball attended by the elite of Parisian society. She caused a sensation as a scantily costumed Eve, whose degree of nudity diverged little from the biblical original. Invariably enthusiastic about exhibiting her physical charms to an audience, she took the role of a singing Cupid in the Jacques Offenbach operetta Orphée aux Enfers, (Orpheus in the Underworld) performed at the Theatre Bouffes-Parisien in 1867. It was written that “Cora Pearl made an appearance half-naked on the stage. That evening the Jockey Club in its entirety, graced the theatre. All the names…of French nobility were there…It was a success of a kind…” The chronicle of the evening continued, “Apparently the beautiful Cora Pearl had already munched up a brochette (“skewer”) of five or six historical fortunes with her pretty white teeth.

 Cora Pearl and  Prince Achille Murat(1865)

The high point of Pearl’s career as courtesan were the years 1865-1870. In his biography of Pearl, The Pearl From Plymouth (1950), author W. H. Holden writes that there is evidence that Pearl regularly sent money to both her mother in England and father in America. For Cora Pearl, money was for spending, for accumulating the luxuries of life and buying her way to a coveted perch in the upper echelons of society. Her jewel collection alone was valued at some one million francs; at one point, she owned three homes, and her clothing was made for her by the renowned couturier Charles Frederick Worth. As her career prospered, the gifts from her suitors needed to be both costly and imaginative. She pitted her admirers against one other, raising the price for her favors as the game between competitors escalated. In her heyday, she was able to command as much as ten thousand francs for an evening with her.

 ...and we think celebrities are scandalous today!

Thanks for visiting Enchanted Revelries and spending a few minutes with Cora Pearl and myself ...

now, go make something beautiful!

¸.•´¸.•*´¨) ¸.•*´¨)(¸.•´ 

(¸.•´♥ Tristan ♥

 (Special Thanks to The Vintage News)

El Ateneo Grand Splendid - Wow!

I know it's been so long since I posted here! I've been busy having surgery and recovering ... yes, I'm fine ... but when I discovered this wonderful, exquisite bookstore via my friend and sharer-of-all-things-spectacular, Shirley, I knew I had to share it with you!

Just a reminder - click on any photo and will magically grow for you!

Tucked away in Barrio Norte, Buenos Aires is a beautiful bookshop called El Ateneo Grand Splendid. It is built within the almost 100-year-old Grand Splendid Theater, which opened in 1919.

 

The theatre was later converted into a cinema and eventually, in 2000, it was converted into the El Ateneo Grand Splendid bookshop, which currently welcomes over one million visitors each year.

 

The stunning building was originally designed by architects Peró and Torres Armengol, then later converted from a cinema into a bookshop by architect Fernando Manzone, who retained many parts of the theatre, including the stage, the balconies, the incredible architectural details and even the red curtains.

 In 2008 El Ateneo Grand Splendid was named the second most beautiful bookshop in the world by The Guardian, and that’s no surprise considering it’s elaborate décor and classic 1920’s theater feel.

 According to a recent study by the World Cities Culture Forum, Buenos Aires has more bookshops per inhabitant than any other city in the world. With a population of around 2.8 million, Buenos Aires has at least 734 bookstores – roughly 25 bookshops for every 100,000 inhabitants. Worldwide, only Hong Kong comes close, with 22 bookshops per 100,000, followed by Madrid in a distant third with just 16 and compared to a mere 10 bookshops for every 100,000 for London. Sadly, America isn't even on the list.

You can find out more about this fantastic bookstore at their official website.

Thanks for visiting Enchanted Revelries today - it's good to be back in the writer's chair! And thanks to Shirley for introducing me to El Ateneo!

...now, go make something beautiful!

¸.•´¸.•*´¨) ¸.•*´¨)(¸.•´ 

(¸.•´♥ Tristan ♥