Happy Halloween!

My top 10 fave movies for Halloween

I stayed in today watching horror flicks and it got me thinking of some of my favorite movies to watch on Halloween. Some of these might not be necessarily scary but I still love to watch them every year. Here are my faves in no particular order:

1)The Lost Boys




2)The Omen



3)The Birds



4)Halloween



5)Alien



6)Amityville Horror



7)Invasion of the Body Snatchers



8)Jeepers Creepers



9)Carrie




10)Practical Magic




What are your favorite movies to watch?

Halloween Fun and... Snow?

At around 12:30 this afternoon it started snowing! Say it isn't so! It's way too early for this! My son of course is thrilled. I'm just hoping it won't stick to the ground. It's mixed with rain so hopefully it won't stay. It's NYC, by the way.




Last week my son and I painted these little pumpkins. Every year we do something crafty like this or bake cookies or a cake for Halloween. He can hardly wait for Halloween which is Monday. Here are some pics I took:





SPOOKY





Last year's pumpkins:

Halloween Lovely: Yvonne De Carlo

I remember Yvonne De Carlo mostly from the tv show "The Munsters". I recall loving the way she looked, her long black hair with white streaks, her black nails, her pale pink vampire ankle length gown and most of all, her bat necklace. She was in her 40's when she started the show. Years later, I watched "The Ten Commandments" and was stunned to find out that the beautiful woman who played Moses's wife was the same Yvonne De Carlo from "The Munsters". Since then I've seen pictures of Yvonne De Carlo when she was much younger in her acting career and can't believe how gorgeous this woman was! I loved her in "The Munsters", but I would never have known how beautiful she truly was under all that "monster" makeup if I hadn't seen the "The Ten Commandments" or found her pictures on the internet.
Other movies she made include, "Salome Where She Danced", "Criss Cross", "Slave Girl", and "Sombrero" just to name a few.
Here are a couple of pictures of her as Lily Munster and a YouTube tutorial if you want to be Lily Munster for Halloween. The rest of the pictures are of her gorgeous self:

Dita Von Teese: Femme Totale

"I wanted it to be a perfume that smelled exactly how I imagined it. I doubt the perfumers in Paris imagined that I would be in their shop almost every day for an entire year,” says Dita Von Teese, describing the work she put into her first perfume. Very few international stars are as closely and passionately involved in the process of creating their own perfume as she was. “There were enough moments when I could have easily said ‘this is how the perfume should smell.’ But I wanted it to be perfect, and threw out many previous compositions and refined them. I gave samples to friends, and tested how others reacted to me and to my perfume. This process continued until I found the exact composition that was perfect both for me and for others,” she says, describing her perfume’s elaborate development process. The result is “Dita Von Teese” – an extremely sensual perfume, perfectly feminine, exciting, and mysterious. Dita Von Teese created a timeless scent which opens with a head note composed of fresh peonies, fizzy bergamot, and slightly spicy Bourbon pepper. The heart of the perfume beguiles the senses with a full and at the same time pure bouquet of Bulgarian rose, Tahitian Tiaré petals, and fresh jasmine. And in the base note, the mystical and warm scents of patchouli, musk, and smoky Gaiac wood and sandalwood captivate all who smell it. “A scent needs to reflect all the different facets of my personality. It had to be elegant, glamorous, sophisticated, sexy, dark, and mysterious,” says Dita Von Teese, characterizing her odeur.

Movie that I watched yesterday

Yesterday I watched "The Young Savages", on TCM. I have never seen this film before. It takes place in Spanish Harlem, NYC in 1961. Three Italian young men are members of a street gang named the Thunderbirds. They have an ongoing turf war with a Puerto Rican gang called the Horsemen. The three members of the Thunderbirds attack a blind young man from the Horsemen and stab him to death. The district attorney (played by a very handsome Burt Lancaster) is given the case despite the fact that it is discovered that one of the boys mother was his ex-girlfriend.
At first he seeks the death penalty for the boys, but as he gets deeper into the case he realizes what appears to be cut and dried on the surface, is really more complex. It's directed by John Frankenheimer, also stars Dina Merrill, Shelley Winters and Telly Savalas.
It was an interesting movie over all. I always love seeing old movies that were filmed in NYC (I still live here).





I got a kick out of seeing a young Telly Savalas in this film.