I've been gone all day and I come home to one of the most moving and personal things I've ever read. That it is in an HTF Draft is a truly amazing thing. Thank you Zen. Your mother was a woman to admire and respect, and with such compassion after all she'd been through, revere! You, sir, are a very lucky man. This moves me especially since my own relationship with my mother was terribly fractured. She died in '82 and we never got everything settled. I envy you for your mother, your relationship to her and your goodbyes.
Absolutely wonderful! I did want this Draft to be more about people (in whatever form) than about T&A (not that the other drafts are all about that, but they're skewed).
Brad is up. I'm going to see a couple of movies (a sneak of Raising Victor Vargas, and Spun) so I'll be home late.
Of my 30 choices, 10 will be real women who are not in the entertainment industry, 10 will be real women who are involved in film, television, music, the photographic arts, etc., and the final ten will be fictional characters.
Unless there is strong objection from the participants or Vickie, the fictional characters may have been portrayed by actresses who are on someone else's list.
I may or may not rank my lists at the end, but the order that I draft in does not necessarily reflect a ranking.
So without further ado...
Audrey Hepburn
In an era when leading ladies seemed to be overrepresented by buxom and blonde or dark and mysterious, Audrey brought a playful, feminine, charming presence to the screen. She seemed as natural playing a princess as she did a chauffeur's daughter (or a Cockney flower girl). Her doe-like eyes and slender form made her seem unreal, as if she had been concocted by Disney animators, but every wonderful thing about her was genuine. There was no pretense in her appearance or her manner, what you saw was what you got. I've always been fond of the childlike aspect to her voice as well, as if she were perpetually twelve years old. She suffered and persevered through many hardships in her life, including philandering husbands and multiple miscarriages. And if her beauty, talent, grace, and character weren't enough to win over the most hardened cynic, she spent most of her last several years traveling the globe on humanitarian efforts as the Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF.
BTW, if anyone else wants my spot, let me know. I've been thinking about it and I'm kind of burnt out on drafts. I've been spending far too much time on the HTF anyway.
Of course, if you're not voting, I suppose it doesn't matter how many people you have in the draft. So if you don't mind, I think I will bow out.
Here's who I picked in the "Dream Girls" draft:
Ingrid Bergman Bjork Janeane Garofalo Billie Holliday Joni Mitchell Moira Shearer Kate Bush Donna Reed Teri Garr Anne Francis
Here's who I would have picked if it had gone another 10 rounds:
My god, Sophie is breathtaking! That's a truly gorgeous photo. I also love that picture of Audrey.
Chuck, I'm sorry to see you drop out. Especially with interesting choices such as Barbara Manning, Elizabeth Frasier, Sandy Denny, Kendra Smith and Jarboe (as well as all the others).
I'd love to do a female musical artist draft at some point. Would you be interested? Would anybody else here? The only reason I haven't started one already is that my Shoutcast is down, and I would LOVE to have it so that people can actually listen to the people they may not have heard of. Our DSL provider went out of business and we had to go with Cable modem, and THEY won't let us keep a web server up to do Shoutcast. Argh. I'm at loose ends about it all now. There's no point if people can't hear other people's choices.
Chuck, are you going to give a pick? I wish you would.
In any case, it's been 12 hours so Chris can go again. Great photos of Natalie, btw. I've liked her since I saw the video for "Scorpio Rising" on 120 Minutes, and then bought The Wishing Chair.
I too would like to know more about Rosalind Franklin. If you don't want to write something up Angelo, perhaps a URL?
To make an extremely long story short, Rosalind was a molecular biologist and x-ray crystallographer who provided essential data used by Watson and Crick, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine for 'their discovery' of the 3-dimensional structure of DNA.
Franklin was never formally credited for her contributions in her lifetime. Despite that, she continued to work on the Watson/Crick model after it was published, doing confirmatory studies, and never seeking recognition.
An amazing woman. There's a great book, "Rosalind Franklin and DNA," by Anne Sayre, which sets the record straight. If you've only read "The Double Helix," you don't know the whole story...
Many of my choices will be talented female musicians. I think we will get to see plenty here, with two already awesome pics with Bush(a personal fave) and Merchant
I'm sure all of my pics will be very talented (IMHO) singers and actresses, with a few writers thrown in.
Next is an one of the greatest actresses ever who I have been a fan of ever since I saw Excalibur in 81, Helen Mirren. She is great in everything but favorites are: The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover; Gosford Park; and The Prime Suspect series.
Well, okay, but I dunno if I'm gonna do the whole draft thing. I might just throw up a name every once in a while.
Since I can't stop listening to the debut Papas Fritas album lately, I'll give a shout-out to drummer/back-up singer/songwriter Shivika Asthana.
I haven't heard the latest album (Buildings & Grounds) but I like the second one (Helioself) and I LOOOOOOOOOOVE the first one (Papas Fritas). Shiv's a snappy, no-nonsense drummer with a sweet voice. And she's cute too.