A Handful of Dust, featuring the always-amazing Kristin Scott Thomas

I consider the years 1984 and 1988 the two best years of the 80s for films. Those two years contained many wonderful movies and noteworthy performances. One of those performances that stands out to me is that of Kristin Scott Thomas in the 1988 film A Handful of Dust. Directed by Charles Sturridge, the film is set in England during the 1930s. Scott Thomas plays Brenda, the wife a landed aristocrat named Tony. The duo reside in a large estate in the countryside with their young son. Despite the fact that nothing appears to be lacking in Brenda's life, she seems to have grown bored with the relative isolation and the monotonous routine of living in Tony’s ancestral home, known as Hetton Abbey.

After a weekend visit from a friend of Tony’s named Thomas, who’s of a lower social rank, Brenda decides to spend time in London, as she has developed a special interest in Thomas. She fancies Thomas and wishes to get to know him better. She thus begins traveling back and forth from Hetton Abbey to London on a fairly frequent basis, first under the pretext that she’s going visit her sister. Later, she decides to rent a flat in London. It just so happens that the woman she’s renting the flat from is the mother of Thomas. Brenda then very willingly enters into an affair with Thomas, seeing him whenever she’s in London, all the while maintaining the illusion that she simply wants to spend some time away from the idleness of Hetton Abbey to relish the liveliness of London.

Brenda’s trusting and unsuspecting husband has no clue of what’s really going on, though a couple of other people within their social circle are fully aware of the circumstances. She even convinces him to let her sign up for an Economics course -- more of a reason to spend time in London. It’s during one of her stays in London that an unexpected family tragedy leads her back to Hetton Abbey. Once there, she’s determined make the definitive choice to leave Tony. She returns to London to reunite with Thomas, and writes a letter to Tony to inform him that she had been having an affair with Thomas and intends to marry him. She then files for divorce from Tony and seeks a large financial settlement from him, which incidentally would require him to lose his ancestral home.

Tony refuses to grant Brenda the divorce, and instead chooses to travel abroad for a few months. He ventures to South America with an explorer friend of his, and that voyage, as it turns out, will change his destiny and that of Brenda.

The role of Brenda was the breakout performance for Scott Thomas, and it’s a pity that she wasn’t nominated for an Oscar. Though I must admit that 1988 was a very competitive year for actresses in leading roles. The film boasts a great cast which includes Judi Dench, James Wilby, Rupert Graves, Angelica Huston, and Alec Guinness who plays an elderly loner living amidst native Indians in the Amazonian jungle. Altogether, this a very good film which managed to snag an Oscar nomination for its beautiful costume design.

“Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy jeans that you’re wearing?”

In the late 80s, the Bugle Boy clothing brand released a couple of comical commercials which featured a man clad in Bugle Boy jeans who gets asked by a woman if those are Bugle Boy jeans he’s wearing…and it turns out that that’s all she wants to know from him.

One of the commercials dates from 1989 and features a man in a condominium situated amidst the backdrop of the Miami skyline. He’s sitting in a chair, and he receives a phone call, at which point a woman’s voice on the other end of the line asks if he’s wearing Bugle Boy jeans. When he says yes, she thanks him and hangs up.

Another commercial takes place on a nearly empty desert road. It features the same guy from the previous commercial, standing on the side of the road, seemingly waiting for someone to stop and give him a ride. Suddenly, a black Ferrari speeds right past him, only to quickly stop and go back in reverse to where the man is standing. The driver of the Ferrari turns out to be a woman, who happens to ask him, “Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy jeans that you’re wearing?” He says yes, she thanks him, and then drives off.

By the way, the woman in this commercial is a British former model named Annabel Schofield, who had appeared in Versace ads in 1985.

 

 

There’s some debate as to the year in which this latter commercial aired on tv. The person who posted the video of this commercial on Youtube listed the year as 1988. However, someone left a comment on the video‘s page saying that they believe the commercial is from the 1990-1991 period. It’s likely that the commercial was still being aired in 1991. Though I know for certain that it aired in 1990 because I traveled to New York that year and I went shopping for clothes there with a cousin of mine. One of the items I bought was a pair of Bugle Boy jeans, and later that day, my cousin and I were joking about the Bugle Boy commercial, mentioning that “the girl takes off after asking the guy if he’s wearing Bugle Boy jeans.”

One interesting thing about this latter commercial is that it went on to be quite well-known by the public -- it became a meme of the popular culture of the late 80s/early 90s -- and was even parodied various different times, including in a music video by the band Genesis.

Polanski's inner Hitchcock meets Grace Jones

Polanski during the filming of Frantic

Roman Polanski's films span the gamut of genres: lush epics, engrossing dramas, suspenseful thrillers, clever comedies, and even horror. Despite that, in the decade of the 80s, Polanski directed only two films (or three, if you include his 1979 film Tess, which was released in the United States in 1980 and was nominated for Best Picture at the 1981 Academy Awards). In 1988, Polanski seemed to have channeled his inner Hitchcock by making the suspense movie Frantic.

Set in Paris, the movie deals with a doctor (played by Harrison Ford) who goes on a search for his wife after she mysteriously goes missing from their hotel room. In his quest, the doctor crosses paths with a beautiful young female smuggler (played by Emmanuelle Seigner, Polanski’s wife in real life) whom he was inadvertently led to due to a suitcase mix-up. Eventually, she agrees to help him find his wife. Along the way, he discovers that the reason his wife was kidnapped was that a group of Middle Eastern gangsters were looking for a nuclear detonating device that was hidden in the suitcase that his wife mistook for her own.

Unlike the director of this film, Harrison had a well-rounded filmography during the 80s, what with his turns as Han Solo and Indiana Jones, as well as the other films he was in.

One notable detail about this film is that Grace Jones' hit song “I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)” can be heard playing in the background in a couple of different scenes. Here's a clip of one of those scenes, featuring Ford and Seigner dancing to the song.

Jean-Paul Gaultier - "How To Do That"

A few days ago, Madonna launched her latest world tour (the "MDNA Tour"), in Tel Aviv, Israel. The tour's costumes were designed by a handful of fashion designers, including the legendary French fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier. Gaultier is probably best known for having designed the costumes for Madonna's infamous 1990 world tour, the "Blond Ambition Tour." This time around, he designed a conical bra corset for Madonna similar to the ones she wore in the Blond Ambition Tour. Her current Gaultier-designed corset features cutouts that make it resemble a cage, and it's made of patent leather on the outside and metallic leather on the inside to give it a 3D effect.

As a fashion designer, Gaultier is sometimes referred to as the "enfant terrible" of the fashion world, mainly due to his provocative and controversial avant-garde designs. One thing many people may not know about Gaultier is that he recorded a dance music single in 1988 titled "How To Do That".

The whimsical video to the song features 80s models Claudia Huidobro, Naomi Campbell, Cameron Alborzian, and John Francis among others, all wearing Gaultier fashions.