War and Peace

Tolstoy’s epic novel ‘War and Peace’ is currently being shown on the BBC in an equally epic costume drama.

It stars actress Tuppence Middleton as Helene Kuragina, who uses her sexual attraction to move in Russian society. As a result, there’s a fair bit of stripping off, apparently. I’ve read the book, but wouldn’t be disposed to block off a period each Sunday evening to watch it unfold (although I might be tempted by it as a box set).

War and Peace BBC Episode 3 Pictured Tuppence Middleton plays Helene Kuragina in bed with Aneurin Barnard plays Boris Drubetskoy a young army officer Credit BBC Grabbed from Preview site for Christopher Hastings


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This has prompted esteemed British actor Sir Anthony Hopkins, who starred in another BBC version of it, made in 1971, to be interviewed in respect of the new ‘sexed up version of Phoar! & Peace’ (you can tell it’s the Daily Mail who get all hot and bothered under the collar about a bit of nudity).

We felt it only right that we should try, in a small way, to re-enact the scenes above within SL.analiya1

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Emily in the role of Helene Kuragina, and Jake in the role of another lover who will aid her rise through Russian society, with ballroom scenes taken at Wilanow Palace, and bathroom & ‘production’ shots taken at Bumrose Club on the Eden Estate

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Abigail

 

Oscars 2016

As we’re examining the state of play regarding skin colour in SL, it was interesting to read about some controversy going on regarding the forthcoming Oscars ceremony, and a boycott by black actors.

I couldn’t care less. Stay at home, black actors. Indeed, while we’re on the topic, stay at home white actors. It’s an awards ceremony. Not something that should be ‘up there’ in vexing any of us.

I get dragged to the cinema once in a while, and come out feeling…rested. Best 90 minutes power-nap I’ll have had today. Sorry, but I don’t identify with actors’  work. I couldn’t care less for their portrayal of …whoever. Nope. Couldn’t care less. It doesn’t make me fool good, feel sad, feel anything, other than bored and sleepy. Someone can tell me what happened at the end in the car on the way home.

My other half is a cinema enthusiast. I’d prefer to be home, cooking something up,  listening to the radio, washing my hair or watching paint dry than stuck in a cinema with an overly loud soundtrack (we aren’t deaf, you know),  while numerous people, or various skin colours, who couldn’t hold down a proper job if they wanted to, be someone else for a while and then talk about their ‘art’. Ha-ha-ha.

An absence of black actors being nominated for this year’s awards has led to a boycott and a hashtag #Oscarssowhite.

Spike Lee, who is apparently a director, said he wouldn’t go, then an actress married to Will Smith said she wasn’t going. (I’ve heard of him, but don’t know who she is, other than as Mrs. Will Smith).

British actress Charlotte Rampling weighed in and said ‘perhaps the films just weren’t good enough’.  Those boycotting were being ‘racist to white people’. Cue another social media storm about that too. She then said she regretted remarks being misinterpreted, by which point I’d long lost interest in a story that just doesn’t go away. How needy are you luvvies anyway?

Then Ice Cube, the rapper turned actor/director, weighs in on British TV. ‘I don’t know what the controversy is about’, he says.

I don’t know, or care, enough about The Oscars history to know if it has undertones of racism in how it hands out awards, but I’ve also learned that they’re planning to change their membership rules to include more minorities and women in determining who gets an award. It seems that 6000 (!!!!) people get to cast a vote, subjectively of course, to determine the winners. I don’t know, the whole process seems as purposeful as saying ‘this is the greatest piece of music made last year, in the last decade, ever’. An entirely abstruse ‘argument’.

Ultimately, this comes down to a particular luvvie being told by a group of luvvies how luvvly they were. ‘And the award for best petit pois on a plate of peas goes to…’ It’s that pointedly pointless.

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Anyway…there’s no such racism at the SL Naturist Awards ceremony, as both main characters in the film ‘Confessions of a Linden Lab Mistress’ are up for gongs (yes, there’s a lot of nudity involved. Why else would we cover a story about a bunch of stupid real life black and white actors saying stupid things about not getting stupid awards for their stupid films?).

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A scene from ‘Confessions of a Linden Lab mistress’

Abigail

 

Topless in NYC (in RL & SL)

It’s legal to be topless in New York City. (link goes to a gallery showing women exercising their right).

The mayor wants to put a stop to this freedom, but apparently has a bit of a fight on his hands.

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NYC topless rights activist Moira Johnston

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The police don’t seem too bothered, do they? 

Why the Mayor wishes to get involved, I’ve no idea. Wait, I do! He’s a politician who feels he needs to interfere with people’s lives, people’s freedoms instead of concentrating on bigger, more important issues. New York’s a great place, everything seems to work well and it has long gone past the days when it had an image of being a dangerous place for tourists and its own citizens alike. I like the vibrant, bustling, colourful melting pot that it is.

Second Life has a fantastically good New York sim. It’s listed as New York 2036, a role-play sim, but teleporting in you’re faced with instructions in German, which I don’t speak, so I can’t actually tell you what sort of RP is involved. The sim has an associated blog, also in German, and a site where the builder(s) list numerous excellent items they designed (descriptions of the buildings in English). What I can say that it’s not some sort of post-apocalyptic imagining, despite some indication that that’s its function. It looks just as NY would look today. There’s no allusion to futuristic cars or anything, the yellow cabs are just the same. The little German I do have suggests it’s maybe a different kind of RP, a gentler one. ‘Kein Force RP’ – no force RP. Having wandered around at length I didn’t see any pose balls or scenes of a specific sort, either, so it would seem that the usual twisted sexual ideas of ‘the future’ are refreshingly absent.

It would be rude not to adopt the ‘top free in New York’ policy while there, though, wouldn’t it? 🙂

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This young man wanted his photo taken with me

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And the SL-NYPD seem as unperturbed by top-freedom as their RL counterparts.

All in all, an excellent sim, fantastically photogenic, and refreshingly different. Well worth visiting. Be sure to exercise your top-free rights! 😉

Abigail