Star Trek: The Motion Picture -- A costume design nightmare.

Previous Star Trek posts. 

I came to Star Trek: The Motion Picture pre-warned. Kind of. It's famous for being The Worst Star Trek (a title for which there is already some stiff competition) and I'd already heard the various nicknames: The Motionless Picture, The Motion Sickness, etc. But even that didn't prepare me for what was in store. I mean, what were they even thinking?



In fact, watching The Motion Picture, it's pretty clear what they were thinking. They were thinking, "Let's make 2001: A Space Odyssey!" Except it turns out that if you give Gene Roddenberry a quadrillion dollars and too much creative leeway, what you actually end up with is a three-hour screensaver interspersed with shots of William Shatner emoting into the middle distance. Plus music. There are whole sequences where nothing happens except kaleidoscope space-travel effects and an impressive orchestral score for minutes at a time. Come to think of it, it's probably a great movie to watch while high. Thanks, 1979.

Fight Like A Girl.

Just realised I'd posted this on Tumblr, but not on my blog! Along with a variety of cool sci-fi/fantasy/YA writers from around the world, I'm participating in the Fight Like A Girl short story anthology, a book focusing on strong female protagonists like Katniss Everdeen, Hermione Granger or Lisbeth Salander. If you're into fandom at all, you might recognise the screennames of a few of the authors involved: gyzym, jibrailis, bookshop, eleveninches, and many more!

We've already received an amazing amount of support for our Kickstarter, which has almost reached its goal of $8,300, so we only need a few more people to pledge before we can get this thing published! And we have a bunch of awesome additions we can implement if we get much funding over the original goal. 

You can pre-order the book from our Kickstarter, along with a bunch of other rewards for funding pledges. Plus, a few of the authors (including me!) are going to be on the podcast/radio show fandomspotting tonight! If you have any questions for myself or any of the authors involved, send them to fandomspotting's Tumblr askbox or tweet us @fandomspotting and we can answer them on-air! Plus we can read/answer any questions or comments sent to the show while it's still in progress. Fandomspotting's youtube channel is HERE, and we'll be on air at 7pm EST/11pm GMT.

Capitol Couture: Catching Fire.

Previously: Capitol Couture in The Hunger Games.

Capitol Couture is back, but I'm a lot less optimistic about it than I was last time round. Although I love the Hunger Games books and thought the first movie was an excellent adaptation, the costumes leave much to be desired. I'd hoped that they might kick the weirdness up a notch after the relatively tame aesthetic of the first movie, but these publicity images seem to imply the opposite. From Star Trek to Blade Runner, futuristic sci-fi offers an opportunity to dream up some seriously interesting clothes that often end up influencing real-world fashion trends, but most of the costumes in the Hunger Games could easily be from everyday photoshoots of the actors.

Katniss Everdeen

In the books, a great deal of emphasis is put upon the lavish eccentricities of the people who live in the Capitol. On top of that, all the Tributes have stylists whose job it is to make them look as unique and eyecatching as possible. Why, then, did all the costumes in the first movie look like they'd been bought at the same store? And why are the promo pictures for Catching Fire so damn similar? Katniss, Effie and Johanna are all wearing some variety of frilly Alexander McQueen gown, while almost all of the men are wearing some type of suit.

Costume design and movie/TV review masterpost.

In an attempt to make Hello, Tailor easier to navigate, I try to update my masterpost every few months. This post obviously doesn't include every post on the blog, but if you feel a real yearning for reviews of catwalk shows from six months ago then feel free to faff around with the tags. Try stuff like fashion week for more general posts, or Spring 2012 for more specific timeframes. More recent fashion posts are also organised by designer, ie Chanel; Alexander McQueen. Aside from that, the rest of the blog is mostly dedicated to costume design and TV/movie reviews.

My favourite costume design posts can be found under the movie costumes I have loved tag, which begins with A fan's introduction to costume design. Otherwise, I've divided this masterpost into various movie and TV subcategories, which are probably easier to browse than my tags.

Movie costumes I have loved.

Master & Commander Part 1 and Part 2. 

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Hanna

A Knight's Tale

True Romance

Doomsday

Skyfall: the costumes.

Dolce and Gabbana, Fall 2013.

Entirely by accident, this season's Dolce & Gabbana turned out to be incredibly topical. Inspired by the Vatican and showing at Fashion Week just after the news broke about the Pope's retirement, this collection was guaranteed to appear prominently on the pages of every fashion magazine in the known universe. The only thing better than tall thin ladies wearing sparkly clothes is tall thin ladies wearing sparkly clothes in a newsworthy context. For this reason, I'm going to take a few moments to consider the implications of our briefly Popeless world. NEWS.

photos from Style.com

You know in movies when there's a retired cop (probably played by Bruce Willis) who is brought back for One Last Job? Well, I'm kinda wondering if it's the same with popes. Like, if in the next couple of weeks there's an unexpected demonic armaggedon, can we call Pope Benedict XVI out of retirement to lead the faithful into holy war? Ignoring the fact that it's kind of illogical already to be able to hand in your resignation from being the earthly voice of god, I'm curious about the Pope Emergency issue. Hopefully we can still rely on Ratzinger to come to our aid in times of Biblical disaster.