never too old to color: Ready for a sneak peak?
Clear and Simple Stamps next release will happen on July 15th so how about a sneak peak of the MVP set that will be released next week as part of the Summertime Collection release. This is such a fun set to work with. Great for creating cards and gifts for your MVP and the coaches.
Be sure to check out the Clear and Simple Stamps blog along with the other design team members for more sneak peaks of the sets to be released on July 15th. Links to all of the design team members blogs are available on the right sidebar.
I will be showing more sneak peaks on my blog also so please stop back. Thanks so much for stopping. I hope you're having a great day!
Wow, these are all fantastic projects showcasing this set! I love the little coaches bag!
All your new cards are just wonderful! And I'm glad you got to get away for vacation - looks like a great place to spend time.
Fantastic projects! I love the combination of spots and stripes on the pennant card.


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Santo Stefano di Valdobbiadene is a small village nestled among the vineyards of the Prosecco hills.
Here is the headquarter of the farm Le Colture, which since 1500 has been run by the same family.
In 1983 Cesare Ruggeri started the sparkling wine business, and today he is the repository of an extraordinary wealth of experience, made up of small and big production secrets, from the knowledge of the territory and its grapes to the innate sensitivity for the health of the vineyard.
For some years now, Cesare's three sons, Silvia, Alberto and Veronica, have been working at full speed in the company, where they have brought a breath of enthusiasm and the necessary innovation typical of the younger generations, without forgetting the love for their land and respect for traditions.
The bottles that are produced every year on the farm are the result of the constant commitment of a solid and close-knit family team in which each one is directly involved in all the production processes from the management of the vineyards to the selection of the grapes, from the different phases of vinification to the sparkling wine making, up to the marketing.
Rosé Brut Sparkling Wine - Le Colture
It is a long charmat method sparkling wine obtained from a blend of selected grapes of Merlot and Chardonnay from the farm vineyards on Montello. It has a seductive bright...
Valdobbiadene DOCG Prosecco Spumante Brut Rive di Santo Stefano Gerardo - Le Colture
This brut, which we wanted to dedicate to our grandfather Gerardo Ruggeri, comes from the oldest vineyards (35-40 years old) of Santo Stefano, in homage to the passion with which...
Valdobbiadene DOCG Prosecco Spumante Brut Fagher - Le Colture
It is without doubt the most modern and internationally successful Valdobbiadene DOCG. Its most attractive elements are enclosed in its delicate scents rich in hints of citrus fruits and fresh...
Valdobbiadene DOCG Spumante Extra Dry Pianer - Le Colture
It is the classic version of Valdobbiadene DOCG, the most sold wine at regional and national level. It combines the aromaticity and velvety sapidity with the clear liveliness of the...
Valdobbiadene DOCG Spumante Dry Cruner - Le Colture
Sparkling wine obtained from an exclusive selection of Glera grapes coming only from vineyards in the Valdobbiadene area, of particular value where the combination of a sweeter microclimate with a...
Valdobbiadene DOCG Spumante Superiore di Cartizze Dry - Le Colture
Cartizze, from the ancient dialectal name 'gardiz' the trellis on which the grapes were placed to dry, is a subdenomination that affects a very small area in the municipality of...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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A sweet, smooth, full bodied, medium to strong coffee bean blend. A beautiful combination of Brazil, Nicuraguan and Indonesian Fair Trade certified, organic coffee beans. These coffee beans cost a little more, but the benefits are many. FairTrade is about better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. Bay Beans Fair Trade Organic coffee beans are roasted fresh the day you place your order. Packed in zip-lock, one-way valve, foil lined bags for ultimate freshness. Buy Fair Trade coffee beans.
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Hey, A Local! Love Bay Beans, Love Coffee, love organic.


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It's a soccer frenzy at Gateway
Virginia Olson
For the Argus Leader;
World Cup fever is everywhere. But in Sioux Falls, there's no better place to catch a game than the Gateway Lounge.
Carrying all 64 televised matches through July 13 on 20 flat screen TVs, Gateway has been hosting day-long watch parties with rabid fans (minus the vuvuzelas). The days Team USA plays will draw crowds of more than 200 people.
"When Team USA played Ghana on Monday, it was our busiest day of the year," manager Jackson Rentschler says.
Rentschler is proud of the fact that Gateway, picked by Buzz feed.com as the top South Dakota bar in its Best Bars to Watch World Cup in all 50 States list, has been a favorite hangout for soccer fans since 2010. It's also home to South Dakota's American Outlaws Chapter, supporters for the U.S. men's national soccer team.
"We expected to be a busy place, so we prepared for World Cup. We have decorated from floor to ceiling with red, white and blue scarves and memorabilia. We also added four new TVs, including two 70-inch flat screens," Rentschler says.
During the numerous watch parties, Gateway promises giveaways, like memberships to the American Outlaws, and drink specials. As for the food, Rentschler says Gateway will "stick with what we are good at and what we know best." Customers can order hot beef sandwiches, chicken fried chicken or hand-cut steaks, but Rentschler expects to serve the most of Gateway's signature item: the Monster Burger ($5.89).
"We are a soccer-loving bar," Rentschler says. "Like our sign says, we are Sioux Falls' World Cup headquarters."
Question: How did it come about that Gateway Lounge first got connected to soccer?
Answer: When the World Cup was in South Africa in 2010, time zone issues meant the matches were on TV early in the morning. A few of my friends started watching the games and cheering for USA at my house. After the group outgrew my living room, we decided we needed to convince my father, Jack Rentschler, to open Gateway so we could watch World Cup as early as 7 a.m. The first game drew 15 to 20 people, but by the third game, we probably had 50 people showing up early in the morning.
Q: Who are the American Outlaws?
A: They are dedicated supporters of the U.S. national soccer teams with a goal to unite and strengthen USA fans. They are loud, passionate and dedicated. Currently, there are 131 chapters across the U.S. The only chapter in South Dakota is in Sioux Falls. There are about 130 members in Sioux Falls.
Q: What is Gateway's most popular beer?
A: We are your average American sports bar, so we are all about domestic beer. Bud Light followed by Coors Light are the favorites.
Q: What is your hottest drink?
A: Captain Morgan is most popular, but our hottest drink right now is Smirnoff vodka with Sparkling Ice kiwi strawberry. It's low calorie and refreshing.
Q: What is the key to running a good bar?
A: Gateway is a family-owned and operated bar that opened in 2003. Any good bar has hands-on owners, like my father, the general manager. He is behind the bar seven days a week serving lunch. My grandfather, the owner, is always there in the mornings for breakfast or lunch. It adds a real family feel that customers appreciate.
Address: 3408 S. Gateway Blvd.
Hours: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday and 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. Sunday


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New research highlights post pandemic benefits of building social rented homes
New research highlights post pandemic benefits of building social rented homes 13/10/2021 Labelled as Development, Legislation, Tenants
Ahead of the Chancellors Spending Review later this month a new report,Building post-pandemic prosperity, jointly commissioned by ARCH, the Local Government Association (LGA) and the National Federation of ALMOs (NFA), sets out the case for building 100,000 green social homes for rent each year as part of the recovery from COVID-19, to help deliver net zero housing and "level-up" the nation.
As at March 2020 there were already over 1.1 million households on council housing waiting lists with one in ten households in need of housing stuck on council waiting lists for over five years as a result of the chronic shortage of affordable homes. The report estimates there are a further 500,000 families with hidden housing needs than currently recorded on housing waiting lists.
The research reveals that as a result of the pandemic, the number of households on council housing waiting lists could increase significantly over the coming months due to the impact of the winding down of Covid-related support schemes and a potential increase in homelessness.
Giving councils the powers and funding to provide 100,000 social rented homes each year - a third of the government's current target of building 300,000 new homes each year - would deliver a return of £24.5 billion into government coffers over 30 years through savings in housing related support, tax yields from builders and supply chains and reduced spending on the NHS as people move into decent affordable green housing.
The report's research argues that investing public money into construction of social rented housing would support the Government's levelling up agenda by creating jobs, both nationally and for the communities most in need of new, good quality and affordable housing. It would enable the targeting of investment to less prosperous local economies and hold it, in the form of new homes and the income they generate, in the national infrastructure.
Arch is supporting the LGA's call on the Chancellor to use this month's Spending Review to give councils the powers and funding to build 100,000 social homes for rent each year, which would not only achieve a third of the Government's annual housing target but would support the Government's ambitions to "Level Up" and improve the public finances over 30 years by £24.5 billion.
Further reforms to the Right to Buy, by allowing councils to retain 100 per cent of receipts, have flexibility to combine Right to Buy receipts with other government grants and be able to set the size of discounts locally would assist.
Launching the report, John Bibby, ARCH Chief Executive, said:
"The supply of social rented housing is simply not keeping up with demand. This report highlights that, unless action is taken now to build more social rented housing, the situation for many households on low incomes and in insecure employment is likely to become worse over time".
"The Government accepts that the housing market is broken and if the promises to "level up" and "build back better" are to mean anything for those seeking a secure, affordable home then we must start immediately by addressing the needs of the 1.1 million households already on council housing waiting lists and the 95,000 homeless households living in temporary accommodation".
"This report highlights the benefits that building social rented housing will bring to those who simply cannot afford to buy or rent in the private housing market and the significant economic, social and health benefits that investment in a building social housing will bring to post-pandemic Britain".
Cllr David Renard, LGA housing spokesperson, said:
"There is a desperate need to build more social housing in this country, which should be a central part of the Government's ambition to level-up and build back better following the pandemic. Social housing gives families the security and stability of a decent home, as well as being a route to owning your own home through Right to Buy.
"Now is the time to reverse the decline in council housing over the past few decades. The benefits are clear - a programme of 100,000 social homes a year would shorten council housing waiting lists, reduce homelessness and cut carbon emissions, while delivering a multi-billion long-term boost to the economy.
"Councils stand ready to work with the Government to tackle our housing crisis but need the powers to build homes with the right infrastructure on this scale in the Spending Review."
Sarita-Marie Rehman Wall, NFA Chair and Tenant Board Member, said:
"The struggle to find a good home, and a home you can afford, is now very real and very tough for millions of people.
"Our national housing shortage isn't just hitting one small group. It is creating hardship for all kinds of people in all walks of life, whether we're talking about young people just heading out into adult or family life, or older people whose income drops at the very time when their need for support and the right kind of home increases.
"The housing struggle is also real for many of our key workers, who have to manage on less than generous wages, and for those who work 40 hours a week and still can't manage without help. It's real for those on precarious contracts that don't guarantee them enough hours, and those who have lost savings, jobs and homes in the pandemic.
"And even if we personally aren't among these people, this report shows how the whole country is suffering in some way from lack of investment in social housing.
"We all need these extra homes. We all need the economic boost, the new jobs and the investment in our communities that building them will bring. Everyone will benefit if we change this now."
Click here to download a copy of the report "Building post-pandemic prosperity", jointly commissioned by ARCH, the Local Government Association (LGA) and the National Federation of ALMOs (NFA),


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December 15th at Market Street Cinema according to the main blog..
This film is really doing well with the critics. It has a 94% Cream of the Crop rating from rottentomatoes.com. There are very positive reviews from Stephen Holden of The New York Times, Lael Lowenstein of the LA Times, Bill Zwecker of the Chicago Sun-Times, Richard Roeper, Joe Morganstern of the Wall Street Journal and Lou Leminick of The New York Post among others.


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Nowadays, the girls are known, "the body shoulder width" is an advantage, but it often ignores some other factors, such as fat, there is some short-lived women, do not choose some tight clothes, result I have a big loss, so too much. Even if the real "大肩 宽", it is not very light, many girls often don't think so, after all, I have such a big body advantage, but I have no legs, why can't I try to wear a variety of wear, you are Don't you want to pass? For real "大 肩 宽", don't wear it, let you prevent you! I don't know if you find a problem. Many girls are very good. They are often ridiculous, and some female stars are the same. Why is this? Not because of the importance of wearing, the good body has no clothes, you are also difficult to show, or how can it say that seven points look, three-point look, it has been outlined here, wear Take a often more important. Like this lady's figure, it is a typical "大肩", and is also affected by the body's weak fat, but her dressing is also particularly careful. She didn't want to choose a tight pants, but wearing a long skirt of a bunch of waist, there are many advantages to wear, including the shortcomings of covering the thick legs, for some women who are slightly fat, discover? Secondly, relatively tight pants, this long skirt is not so close, and it will not expose its own shortcomings. At the same time, it can also play the role of the waist shaft, and can solve the problem of "大", is it not very Ok? It is to grab your own strength advantage, then use the lining of the dress to show your own graceful posture. Compared to the last beautiful dress, this lady must be inferior, from the perspective, there is obvious "elephant legs" trouble, with the body shape with shoulder shoulder, obviously she doesn't consciously At this point, I don't know how my body is, but she has chosen a slim jeans. As we mentioned above, the tight pants is good, but for this bloated body, it has become a disadvantage, it will expose the shortcomings of their legs, and will not be squeezed out of meat, Not very embarrassed? From her wear, we will see the result, why do you say this? As we mentioned above, she is taking her shortcomings, come to do a variety of attempts, haven't you understood? I originally bloated, but also to choose this slight pants. Is this not a shortcoming of ourselves? But in a little bit, this pair of "leopard shoes" played the role of relief, using its trendy personality, achieving the effect of dispersive attention, and is also indirectly buffering, and does not really solve the problem. For the real "big shoulder width", it should be this figure, just like this beauty, not only has a tall figure, but also with the advantage of "the shoulder shoulder width", this can be called an advantage No matter how you choose to wear, there will be no mistakes. However, if you want to show your beauty, try to choose this kind of bunch of styles, after all, you can use the advantage of "大", just like the waist dress wearing the woman, grab the core of the wearing. The rest are all accompanying, everything is naturally solved, do you understand?
Alexandra? Dadarrio's acting and color is very popular in the United States, Alessandra? Dadarrio's most famous TV series is true, in this TV series Mi Dadla? Dadario is a famous name, really amazing a lot of netizens, then Alexandra Daddaurio explores the lens for a few minutes. Really explored the lens Alexandra? Dadarrio is very big in the true probability, the car's drama does not have to say the brain, the US size is itself than our China's scale. Be big, their actress itself is super open, and Alexandra? Dadario is known as a sexy goddess in the United States, and she shooting in the United States, causing a sensation, visible, how big is the scale . True Probe Beam Alexandra? Dadario played a supporting role in exploration of this movie, but successfully took away the alarm of the heroine, Alessandra? Dadario Playing in the play is the ex-girlfriend of the male lead, so there are not many dramas. Only four episodes, but these four episodes are fully like everyone to show Alexandra? Dadario's good figure is really super sexy . Alexandra? Dadarrio shooting this TV drama is not a three-level film, so everyone don't misunderstand, Alessandra? Dadario is not photographed three-level film, this TV Central Asian Misundra? Dadarrio is getting off, it is a dedication to art, not true and male, many of the shots. What is the name of the real probing head? Alexandra? Dadarrio explores the lens in the first four episodes, the second half is also a lot of big-scale play, but there is no Alexandra? Dadarrio, it is a trick of other characters. It is worth mentioning that everyone can look at it, this episode is compared to Alexandra Dadario The first four episodes must be exploded.
The first electric concept car of French car brand Citroen Citroen Ami, the whole vehicle is equipped with a 5.5 kWh, the battery pack ends can reach 43 miles about 70 kilometers. According to European household power outlets, it requires three hours. Left and right, a small model of a small 1.39M is born for urban driving. Citroen AMI can drive in Europe without a full driver's license, because the AMI is small and the maximum speed is below 28 mph, which is about 45 yards. It is not considered a car according to the EU regulations. It is from a technical point of view. It is a "four-wheeler". Its manufacturer Citroen also said that this means that AMI can drive from a 14-year-old French and young people in 16 European countries. As a four-wheeled car for energy-saving and environmentally friendly, AMI not only contributes to urban energy conservation, but also provides a new solution for urban travel. The model is expected to be mass-produced in March this year, and will use the free2move of Citroen to put a practical use of $ 23 per month. If you want to buy AMI, you need to pay 6,000 euros to RMB 40,000 6 A thousand yuan.
South Korea's kimchi is very delicious, so many netizens who like to watch to eat are specially watched Korean network red live eating pickles, and the most famous is the Mercedes-Benz brother of Korea. There are many of his live broadcasts about kimchi. With China's fans, he also started to broadcast China's food, but unfortunately did he saw him in half a year, then what happened to Mercedes, South Korea? How did South Korea's Mercedes-Benz brother will not live broadcast because he is reported by South Korea's prosecution, and the Korean prosecution has prosecuted Mercedes-Benz brothers because of the products sold by Mercedes-Benz, and the Korean prosecution is given. The response is: "The accused food for the food to help reduce the oil stains in vivo, making advertisements for deceiving consumers." But Mercedes-Benz brothers are dissatisfied. How is the Mercedes-Benz little brother in Korea? Mercedes-Benz brother found the lawyer to argue the words of the person to publish itself on his personal social network website, all the postscript written by the user, not advertising, just sharing your own experience, but The Korean court finally sentenced to Mercedes-Benz brothers for half a year, which is why Mercedes-Benz brothers have no live broadcast. It is worth mentioning that Mercedes-Benz brother has just been married, which means that Mercedes-Benz brother's honeymoon is not, it is going to stay in Korea, Mercedes-Benz brother and girlfriend have been married for three months, really honey In the stage of oil, it is estimated that the bride did not think that his newly wed is a person who is spent. If you want to know more about Mercedes-Benz, please pay attention to a lot of information. South Korea, Mercedes-Benz, is now what happened to Mercedes-Benz, and our domestic domestic management is actually not in place. Many of the net red is a false advertisement, especially to lose weight makeup, now a lot Young people like to Net red, they are not perfect for non-identification, I hope to be able to manage network red.
Recently, Medicom Toy "Japan Toy Manufacturer" released a new BE @ rbrick doll. This time, "Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey", "Super Against" Actress Harley Quinn is a prototype, presenting a colorful new doll. It is worth mentioning that the doll and the character image of the shadow have the same case, and the pink vest and red sling of the bright printed long sleeves, cropped effects, and with red green hair, with a heart shaped small tattoo and eye-catching in the face. Red lips. It is reported that this Medicom Toy brings only 400% size. Medicom Toy "Harley Quinn" be @ rclick new role dolls have been launched in CJMART official website, and the price is $ 101.
The son of Coat Brother Zhu Siwei held a grand wedding with his wife Chen Yaan during the 11th period, and the coats were very influential in Heze in Shandong. This son married is also the local news. Zhu Singwei has been married, he will definitely Having attention. These days after marriage, Zhu Singwei and his wife Chen Yaan are almost shadow, and the two go home together, go to do things, shopping, play, dinner, recent, Zhu Singwei and Chen Yaan appeared in a hot pot shop and family gathering together. In addition to Zhu Singwei couple, there are several families. Chen Yaan did not sit together with her husband, but her two girls sat together, the opposite is Zhu Singwei, the seat next to Zhu Singwei put a mobile phone, it is estimated that it is still in a male relatives and friends. The daughter of the coat brother Zhu Xuemei also participated in this family dinner, and the videos of their food were also filmed by netizens. Compared to the other three sitting chat, Zhu Xuemei is standing with eating, just this scene. Shooting by netizens, she also succeeded in attracting attention, grabbing your brother and brother. Seeing Zhu Xuemei's eating, there are netizens who have also ridicule "big augs are hungry." And Zhu Xuemei also successfully grabbed the mirror in this dinner because of this time.
Whether it is season, the shirt is always a must-have item in women's clothes. The more and more abundant shirts are no longer a shirt full of workplace a few years ago. Whether it's my own evolution or wearing, the shirt is slightly As long as you spend your mind, you can wear the shape of your avant-garde. Even if you are a solid color shirt, you can change your material. Song Zuer is very familiar. As a non-critical child star, the long-lasting Song Zuer has no longer disability, not only in the face of children, but the body is also more and more refined, especially dressing, this The little girl in the 95 is really a woman's 18th change, more and more delicate, especially every time she sees her sexy fashionable dress, very bright. The shirt said that the truth is really a forgothip of the trend of women, which is in the rise of the rolloves. These top-bearing tops are more or less affected by a silk, but the shirt is also very resistant. It is also self-contained. Change, you are deeply like, such as leather shirt, compared to basic shirts, it is more calm style, completely getting rid of a monotonous. This time, the National Day self-portrait, Song Zuer also chose a leather shirt, a white fashion element, a personality, very eye-catching. The shirt has a formal serious feeling. It is quite difficult to change its style, but weaken this temperament is still very easy, and it creates a different feeling through the dressing of the clothes. If you like a bias, you can choose the front-garde dress, take a tube top or a styles of the umbo rollies, and the open clothes are full, instantly put the shirts out of sexy taste. Song Zuer is really open, and the leather shirt deliberately buckled, semi-half-wear, revealing the pink cartoon pattern, the top of the top, the shape is extremely amazing, too charming, where is it like a 20-year-old Little girl. When you choose to dress clothes, you often don't put your treasure in your clothing. The details are also a thing they like, through the decoration on the details, let the shape makeup, such as the simplest makeup, Song Zuer is obviously based on the sexy and light, the hair style is obvious, and the ponytail is naturally pleasant as a general-purpose hair style. I saw Song Zuer's horsetail with her skin white red lip's beauty, elegant There is a feeling of a young girl who has a young girl. Of course, the most amazing or this straight shoulder, it is really a girl to see the acid. This holiday Song Zuer chooses such a stunning dress, it is really a look, completely can't think of the young girl, the sexy goddess that turns into the leather shirt, and the skin shirt is not a deduction, this straight side is really The girls have to look for sour, saying that they are the favorite, too fascinating, simple and atmospheric makeup, very charm. But then, don't look at Song Zusher's young, and the style is still very much. Senior Sweet Fan Dear Even if other clothing is prominent, for women, the dress is unable, especially the female star, the charm of different styles is also different, like a dress skirt sexy, perspective The yarn is even different, and the beauty is different. Song Zuer's simple atmosphere will wear a high-level feeling. Trendy eye-catching faiuni umbilical dress has been a hot air in the circle, regardless of the older women, it is favored to the navel, indeed a short rollover not only optimizes women. The size of the body, can also improve the legs of the driver's legs. For small children, it is called high artifact. On the match, no matter whether it is short, it is unfortunate, very stunned and eye-catching, It is not only a fashionable sensation, and it is very chic, but also improves the utilization of the item. Aged girl T-shirt trousers short skirt For little girls, age is an advantage, seemingly simple style, through the matching of clothing, completely wearing different fashion effects, especially girl wind, There is no signs of dupidity, just like Song Zuer, a simple solid color T-shirt with trousers, all kinds of screens can feel the girl's feelings, so beautiful. This time, Song Zu, changed the woman's style, boldly controlled sexual shape, and did not read it. Disclaimer: Text original, picture from the network, if there is any infringement, please contact us to delete, thank you. If you like this text, welcome to share forward to a circle of friends.
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Women steal the show at the 2018 Platinum Awards in New Westminster
Cayley Dobie	/ New West Record
Business Person of the Year Lorna Stewart, pictured with Vu Lam for presenting sponsor Starlight Casino. Stewart owns Essence Hair and Fashion Accessories on Carnarvon Street.
Photograph By Briona Sutherland
Lifetime achievement award 50 years in business winner, Westminster Savings' Gurpal Siekham, left, with presenter Tom Corsie .
Business of the Year Award winner Cap's Bikes' Gordon Hobbis, left, with presenter Neil Mulholland.
Community Spirit Award winner Thornebridge Garden's Debbie Clarke and Amanda Hill with presenter Quinn Waddington, right.
Not For-Profit of the Year winner Rotary Club of New Westminster's John Berry, right, with presenter Chris Keane.
Subraaz Abdullah, left, and Christopher McFadden of Piva Modern Italian accept the award for New Business of the Year with presenter Blair Fryer, the city's manager of economic development, communications and public engagement.
Women dominated the Platinum Awards on Thursday night, taking home two of the three top honours.
The annual awards, which recognize businesses' and individuals' achievements and contributions to the community, were handed out at an annual gala event held at Starlight Casino.
Organized by the New Westminster Chamber of Commerce, this year there were 14 categories up for grabs, including Citizen of the Year, Business Person of the Year, Bernie Legge Cultural/Artist of the Year, Larry Tamkin Community Spirit, Customer Service Excellence, Home-Based Business of the Year, New Business of the Year, Community Spirit Award, Green Business of the Year, Innovator of the Year, Not-for-Profit of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year Under 40, and Lifetime Achievement Award – 50 Years in Business.
For the first time in recent years, all the nominees for Business Person of the Year were women, with Lorna Stewart, owner of Essence Hair and Fashion Accessories on Carnarvon Street, named the 2018 Business Person of the Year at the annual awards ceremony. The other nominees were Karima Jivraj, owner of Bosley's PetValu at Columbia Square; Vivien Wong, manager of Precious Early Years Childcare; and Trudi Goels, director of operations, Billard Architecture.
Leanne Ewen, president of the Arts Council of New Westminster, meanwhile, was awarded the Bernie Legge Cultural/Artist of the Year award, beating out former City of New Westminster arts coordinator Biliana Velkova.
Another New Westminster resident well known in the arts community also took home the coveted Citizen of the Year award. That was Stephen O'Shea, executive director of the Arts Council of New Westminster.
This year's Platinum Awards also recognized the first recipient of the Larry Tamkin Community Spirit Award, an award sponsored by local resident and lawyer Dale Darychuk in honour of the man most residents knew as the Woodward's and Royal City Centre Santa Claus.
The Larry Tamkin Award recognizes those who work tirelessly behind the scenes for the love of the community and for their exceptional contribution to the welfare of residents of New Westminster.
The inaugural award was given posthumously to Bill Radbourne, who passed away last October.
Born and raised in Sapperton, Radbourne made his mark on the Royal City in a myriad of ways. He worked for the New Westminster Fire Department more than 38 years, starting the department's first Boot Drive and pub crawl for muscular dystrophy. He was also involved with a variety of community organizations, including the Remembrance Day committee, the Ancient and Honourable Hyack Battery, the Hyack Festival Association, the Massey Victory Heights Residents' Association, the B.C. and Alberta Guide Dogs, and the New Westminster Youth Ambassador Society.
In 2010, he was named New Westminster's Citizen of the Year.
And the winners are:
Citizen of the Year: Stephen O'Shea
Business Person of the Year: Lorna Stewart
Bernie Legge Cultural/Artist of the Year: Leanne Ewen
Business of the Year: Cap's Bicycles
Larry Tamkin Community Spirit: Bill Radbourne
Customer Service Excellence: Jolene Foreman
Home-Based Business of the Year: Daxio Design
New Business of the Year: Piva Modern Italian
Community Spirit Award: Thornebridge Gardens
Green Business of the Year: Sylvis Environmental
Innovator of the Year: 7- Eleven
Not-for-Profit of the Year: Rotary Club of New Westminster
Entrepreneur of the Year Under 40: Dr. Allana Polo
Lifetime Achievement Award – 50 Years in Business: New Westminster Savings
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text:
Film Download PDF
Supporting Roles
In the French film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, about a man who is incapacitated and has the use of only one eye, there are at least three lovely women, all probably in their mid-to late thirties, fussing around our central character as well as a younger woman who was his lover whom we see in flashback. While the young woman is Marina Hands, and in a first full flush of youthful comeliness, what might seem so surprising is less her beauty, which is astonishing in the glow of her skin, the robust general health and the clearness of her eyes, than the other women's attractiveness. Could American cinema conjure up three women of equally delicate but not youthful beauty, and if so, who would these women be? One proposes Maria Bello, Ashley Judd and Naomi Watts – no matter if the latter is of course an English born Australian working in American film. We want to concentrate here though on Maria Bello, and suggest that her best work resides in three films, The Cooler, A History of Violence and Assault on Precinct 13. David Thomson sensibly believes in a review of A History of Violence in Have You Seen…? that Bello is "one of the most attractive women in cinema", and the word attractive is much more accurate than beautiful it seems. For beauty is closer to an a priori state than attractiveness, and can often best be expressed in a picture or on a catwalk where the originality of the self is secondary to the fundamental aspect of the beauty. In Ways of Seeing, John Berger interestingly writes "…one reason why expressive photographs of the naked are even rarer than paintings…is that nakedness is a process rather than a state." He believes "the easy solution for the photographer is to turn the figure into a nude which, by generalizing both sight and viewer and making sexuality unspecific, turns desire into fantasy." Maybe we can say much the same in relation to beauty and attractiveness where beauty lends itself well to the general, while attractiveness demands the specific. When watching The Diving Bell and the Butterfly one senses Hands would look as good in a still photograph as in the film's moving images; the other women, who include Anne Consigny and Marie-Josée Croze, are attractive not least because their attractiveness comes through as readily in what they do as in what we could call the cosmetic impact.
Beauty, then, is cosmetic impact; attractiveness 'permeating impact', a subtler, less immediate comeliness, and is perhaps not so much given as earned. When one thinks of Hands' beauty in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and also in her role in Lady Chatterley, it seems no more than genes and upbringing: the good looks say so little about the person possessing them. If Thomson is right that Bello is one of the most attractive women in American film – "a honey" – then one feels in his compliment he is saying a great deal about Bello, not only about the plastic aspect that is still photograph or catwalk display.
What Bello does especially well is vulnerability. This might seem odd considering she plays tough throughout Thank You for Smoking and her feistiness is central to the spats with Ethan Hawke in the early stages of Assault on Precinct 13, but how can we forget her brutal removal before the end of the latter film, and how vulnerable she seems in almost every scene in The Cooler? In The Cooler the combination of her character's sensitivity, her emotional vulnerability, physical asides alluding to her appearance, and the cellulite we see in one scene where Bello and her co-star William H. Macy sit up on the bed and bang the headboard to annoy the usually annoying neighbours, all hint at the vulnerable. As she says "I'd given birth to my son the year before and I was about 40 llbs overweight. I had cellulite on my ass, which I still do, but I thought that was a good thing to show." An example of the physical aside comes from one of the bosses of the club Bello and Macy work in, where he reckons waitresses should have bigger breasts, obviously larger than those of Bello's Natalie.
That takes cares of the physical vulnerability, but there is also the emotional. In one scene in The Cooler Bello sees a young child at the fair, and though this gives space for a predictable moment of back story reminiscence, Bello offers a touch that goes beyond the cliché. As the boy some yards away turns and faces in her direction, she smiles back, allowing a brief "hi" to exhale from her mouth, as she feels her estrangement from the child she had years before. Yet nothing is quite so moving as when she sits up in bed and admits to herself that she is in love with Macy's character, Bernie. "I think that I love you" she says hesitantly. Before adding "I don't think. I'm pretty sure of it". She says that he blind-sided her, completely took her by surprise, and this is evident in a comment earlier in the film where Bernie's son arrives in La Vegas and can't believe the father's landed so lucky, saying to Natalie that he must be paying for her ass. It also turns out to be a true statement because, as we find out later in the film, Natalie's ass was bought: the boss at the club basically persuaded Natalie to hang out and seduce Bernie to keep him working in the club. Bernie is what is called a cooler: a guy with such monumental bad luck that he's employed to go over to winning tables in the casino and make the gamblers lose by his mere bad luck presence. He wants to leave the job; the boss wants him to stay. Natalie is employed by the boss to persuade him to do so by any means available.
Natalie's love though transforms him from a loser to a winner: knowing that Natalie really is besotted changes Bernie's fortune, and people start winning in his presence. Maybe a 'beautiful' actress couldn't have pulled off the role; that the cosmetic impact of her presence would have led to an egoistic attitude on Bernie's part. Though obviously Bernie's son can't believe Natalie's with him, and at one stage the boss asks incredulously what she sees in the hapless Bernie, the role needs to be played by somebody a little lived in. For example when Natalie admits she initially went out with him for money, she adds that she thought it was just another opportunity to make a buck, yet another moment in her life where she's looked after number one. This is consistent with the back story info she has provided earlier in the film: where she tells Bernie she had a baby when she was really young, looked after him for a year, and then had him adopted because she wanted her life back.
Now there is perhaps a certain internal logic to the character that the film wants to deny – if Natalie adopted her child at around eighteen and she is still hustling more than ten years later – can we believe that she would be so transformed by Bernie's decency? The answer in this instance is a cautious yes, and chiefly through the idea of permeating impact; that there is enough of this permeation in Bello for enough of it to come through in the character. Obviously for many this would be a dubious line of reasoning, where it seems one's equating the actress with the role, and yet this has nothing to do with who Bello happens to be in 'real life', but the physical presence she unavoidably brings to the role. When she first propositions Bernie as she stands waiting for him after he's finished work, her head is tilted slightly to the side as if in acknowledgment that he possesses qualities that she's summing up. It resembles the moment where Bernie first seems to make an impression on her: earlier in the film after she smiles as a casino customer cusses at his bad luck. As Natalie smiles, the customer turns on her and Bernie comes between them before the bouncers throw the loudmouth out. As Bernie walks away, the shot is held and Natalie tilts her head in momentary admiration.
It is a gesture we find also in A History of Violence, even if it serves a different purpose. Here Bello's character Edie early in the film tilts her head seductively where she has dressed up as a cheerleader for hubby Tom Stall. Yet what is so charming is that this isn't an unequivocally erotic moment; it is couched in the vulnerability of a woman who is still clearly extremely attractive but for whom sex is part of a busy, easily interrupted life. Shortly before, we've seen Tom and his wife woken by their daughter's screams as she awakes from a nightmare.
Bello, whether playing the busy, lawyer wife in A History of Violence, the waiting wife whose husband has been trapped in the twin towers in World Trade Centre, or the neurotic psychologist in Assault on Precinct 13, knows how to offer not only vulnerability, of course, but a firmness within the vulnerable: someone who can play at the same time assured, mature and exposed all at once and thus convey range. The apparent pity is that she has generally only been allowed to offer this range in secondary roles, or, more appropriately, supporting ones: roles in which she is not the narrative drive but more the emotional support, even love interest. Where Judd and Watts have occasionally played leading or joint leading parts – in Ruby in Paradise, The Passion of Darkly Noon and Bug, in Judd's case – Mulholland Drive, 21 Grams and Funny Games in Watts's – Bello's occasional leading roles in films like the horror film The Dark have been much less memorable than the supporting ones. She may claim on the DVD extras to The Dark that she liked the range of emotions she was allowed to express in a genre piece, but though she gets to play yet again a woman for whom others are immensely important, she does so here playing a selfish mum who hyperbolically and supernaturally goes to great lengths to save her daughter and prove how much of a caring mother she happens to be. But we might say she is much better at plausible support than in implausible leading parts. Where Judd seems fine but wasted in Heat, and Watts superb in The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Bello supports brilliantly in a twin sense of the term. She is extremely good at suggesting an emotional core beyond the centre of the frame, and, even if we may wish to see her given more screen time than she usually receives, perhaps that edge of frame emotional centre is really her forte.
In Secret Window, for example, Johnny Depp is clearly our central character, with Bello very much the ex-wife hooked up with her new man elsewhere. But on at least a couple of occasions she phones and asks how is doing, and we may wish for more of the emotionally confused Bello than the increasingly solipsistic Depp, whose self-absorption turns out to be the very subject of the film: it is a film basically from inside the character's head. The solipsistic central character is also there in Auto-Focus, in the very title and in Bob Crane's masturbatory habits. At one moment in their marriage, Patty Crane (Bello) says "I just want someone here. You're never home anymore, and when you are you are downstairs editing your videos." It echoes a line from Secret Window where she says that …"you weren't there anymore…even when you were with me you were gone…up in your head"
One of Bello's great strengths as an actress is her emotional engagement with the film, and generally a rational core at that. When she says friends give her DVDs of Truffaut and Bergman and that she never watches them, she prefers watching escapist films, theGuardian interviewer Ryan Gilbey admits he finds this ironic. The films she makes are often serious or she offers a serious dimension within them: the sort of aspect Gilbey believes would make Bello interesting in a Bergman role. But Bello isn't an especially neurotic actress, no matter her part in Assault on Precinct 13, saying in an interview with Rebbeca Murray in About.com, "I think she has to go more off the deep end and I think that just because she is a psychiatrist, she doesn't have to be straight." But this seems consistent not especially with an actress looking to portray the twisted; more the complex. Though she says in the Guardian interview that she likes escapist films, she is often the least escapist aspect of the movie, and do her characters not so often countenance confronting reality and not escaping from it? It is there in her characters' comments in Auto-Focus and Secret Window, and is vital to A History of Violence when she realises that her husband is not who she believed him to be. "Tell me the truth…please, you can do that can't you?" she asks.
Now there are several things that we have worked towards here. The first concerns the attractive as opposed to the beautiful; the second that Bello often plays the emotional core of the film though this is often manifested in supporting roles that nevertheless give to the word support its emotional significance, and the third is that she is often the character most given to exploring the texture of the film's reality. If Secret Window proves so minor and silly a film, and a waste of Bello, it lies in what the film could have been if it had been turned inside out. Imagine if it wasn't a thriller with a twist where Depp is the writer lost in his own head, but a film from the position of the ex-wife who still has strong feelings for both men trying to start a new life with one, while worrying about the sanity of the other. That this alternative narrative can be extracted from the one we're given, though, says much about how Bello can give texture to a role that remains mainly off screen.
This capacity for the complexity of feeling is also what makes Bello so attractive. Certainly writers and critics mention Bello's beauty – in an interview by Paul Fischer in Film Monthly.com, he calls her a 'beautiful actress' – while there is an interesting anecdote she tells in the same interview that brings out a quality that seems more consistent with beauty than attractiveness as we're choosing to define it. When she was a struggling actor in New York a man come up to her while she was catering at a party and said he would like to paint her. She thought all he wanted was to get her to take her clothes off, but the painter said that wasn't what he was looking for: that he simply had never seen anyone so on the verge of insanity. She explains that she was a "very sad, sad person at that time, so I ended up going through this man's studio for three months, sitting in this one position for four hours a day and he would paint me." This is closer to La Belle noiseuse, the crazy courtesan of Jacques Rivette's film with Emmanuelle Beart, where beauty and madness co-exist, and this is a common narrative in French cinema, evident in Isabelle Adjani films like One Deadly Summer and Camille Claudel; and in Beart works like J'embrasse Pas and Nathalie. Here the actresses play less the emotional core than the hermeneutic centre: the tension in the film often resides in complex inner motivation that the filmmaker or another leading character within the film searches out. But even in a film like The Cooler,where initially Natalie is playing Bernie (even though we don't know at this stage that she has been hired to do so), Bello creates little inquiry around the apparent anomaly of so attractive a woman being with so apparently uncharismatic a man as Macy's character. She quickly convinces us that she sees qualities in Bernie nobody else can see. It goes back to that moment where she tilts her head in appreciation of Bernie's fairness.
This is the attractive quality of observation, over the beauty of egocentricity, and Bello may be a great example of a sort of concentric attractiveness – a sense of self that is larger, more observant and realistic than the egocentricity that may often drive the narrative but not give it very much emotional texture. This is present even in a film that actively seems deliberately to be a work of no redeeming features: the Mel Gibson starring Payback, which she made early in her film career, back in 1998. This is a remake of Point Blank with a steely, grey colour scheme to match the grim brutality of its leading character. Bello, though, gets to play the humanity around the hard-men and the hardware: she's the woman who acts without self-interest to help Gibson's character out. When she helps him kidnap the son of the head of the crime outfit he is seeking money from, Bello's high-class hooker still seems more concerned for Gibson's well-being rather than worrying about the mess that she is also in. There is a nice moment in the film where, as in the old days when they knew each other, and Gibson was her chauffeur, they are driving along with Bello in the back of the stretch limousine and Gibson driving, when she looks at him, her head slightly tilted, clearly intrigued and attracted. Once again she provides the emotional core, no matter the generally brutal stupidity of the proceedings.
Perhaps we can generalise here: a supporting character, at least in mainstream film, ought to possess qualities different from a star, if we assume that the star is the agent of the film, and the supporting player the reactor to the events. Thus central to good support is the capacity not so much to act but react, to absorb the narrative elements that more prominent characters get to interact with. In most of Bello's films she has to react to another's actions. In Secret Window, Amy is seeking a divorce from her unstable husband, and shows constant concern for his mental well-being; in A History of Violence Edie needs to decide whether to stand by her man when she finds out that he is a man with a violent past. In The Cooler, near the end of the film, Bernie is inside gambling, while Natalie waits outside in the car not even sure whether he will come out of the casino alive. In Paybackthe situation is similar: Bello's character stays with the kidnapped son, pacing the room, while Gibson's character tries to get his money back off the main movers in the firm. In each instance Bello's support, though often thankless, is far from irrelevant.
If we're correct in saying that she frequently plays the emotional core, then her reaction can give texture to the fore-grounded action. Would A History of Violence have the density it possesses without Bello's support? In one scene Edie is trying some shoes on and suddenly she realises her daughter is no longer in the shop. As she kicks off the new shoes that the shop assistant won't allow her understandably to walk out of the shop with, Bello goes and finds her daughter nearby. This is clearly an obvious scene (and Cronenberg's film has many similarly 'conventional' ones) and yet it is a though Cronenberg wanted to make a film full of convention yet with plausibly 'deep' emotion. Like Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven, there is a post post-modernist element here as the conventions become clear, but the emotions are still complex. Bello gets to play the dutiful wife but instead of playing with this dutifulness to generate greater brutalization – as we find in The Long Kiss Goodnight, for example, as it offers a post-modern would be feminism as Geena Davis becomes the leading character and gains credibility by acting like a man in a man's world – the dutifulness remains but an emotional complexity replaces the post-modern feminist tweaking. In yet another example of Bello waiting at home while a man has to do what he's gotta do, Tom goes off to take on his brother back in Philadelphia, while Edie waits at home. Yet she gives meaning and purpose to that waiting in the closing shots of the film. As Tom returns to the family fold, Edie serves up dinner but this is a series of cold cuts as the family must re-acquaint themselves after the violence that begat so much violence. As Edie spends most of the time with her head down as if in prayer, it isn't until the second last shot in the film that she looks up and her face beseechingly gazes at Tom with a mixture of deep love and disbelief. Tom looks back and it is the closing shot of the film, as Bello once again extracts the core emotions.
This is also true of Assault on Precinct 13 as Bello plays a psychologist caught in the precinct of the title. Two thirds of the way through the film Alex is alarmingly dispatched after making an escape with one of the others on the say so of the group in the precinct. This death is surprising as Bello's character has been set up in the romantic action tradition of one half of a sparring potential couple, à la Out of Sight. But it is also resides in Bello's performance, which is textured to give her death meaning. It resembles in some ways Famke Potente's death at the beginning of the second Bourne film, The Bourne Supremacy, but Potente has been given an entire film first to lay out her character and make her death meaningful. She has also become Bourne's lover and thus her death has immense impact on his character. In Assault on Precinct 13, Bello's been given only around sixty five minutes to engage the viewer emotionally, and Ethan Hawke and Bello's characters have not become lovers. Yet her death is the most significant moment in the film. As she is shot in the head the film offers an overhead shot of Bello lying in the snow, the blood turning the snow red, as it cuts to an overhead shot of Hawke at his desk, clearing it in a fit of anguish.
Yet what we've noticed in so many of Bello's films is that she has played supporting roles, no matter if she has given them a complexity equal to a leading one. In certain instances one suspects the films would have been subtler and more interesting works if the supporting role had become central (as in Secret Window), but generally what makes Bello so intriguing an actress is how she gives significance to a supporting part. Could Tom's return to the house have had the impact it does were it not for Bello's ability to indicate the emotional rupture in A History of Violence, would the death of the token love interest at the end of the second act in Assault on Precinct 13 have been as effective with another actress in the role, and would Natalie have just been another tart with a heart in The Cooler if she were played by the numbers?
At the beginning of the article we mentioned The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and the three supporting actors who are attractive rather than beautiful, and central to this was the attractive gesture over the beautiful pose: the degree to which the three characters support the multiply disabled central figure. There is a potential conservatism to this; that the woman is the carer in an essentially man's world. This we've noticed time and again in Bello's films, from Auto-Focus to Secret Window, from A History of Violence to The Cooler, but for better or worse there are truths in these qualities, often much more so than a would be militant progressiveness that much cinema in recent years has practised. InThe Long Kiss Goodnight, GI Jane, Terminator 2, Out of Sight and others, the women have been as tough as the men, but have they gained in action but lost in reaction, lost that emotional centre that can allow a woman to live in a man's world but call that world into question as they wonder what the limitations of this man's world happens to be? Bello's look at the end of A History of Violence says a great deal. It is neither the look of the woman as beautiful icon who becomes the hermeneutic centre, nor at all the woman who replicates the man in violent intensity. She is instead the deeply attractive woman who can show what matters: the emotional life that can give a film its heart even if she does not quite provide it with the narrative focus.
In the French film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, about a man who is incapacitated and has the use of only one eye, there are at least three lovely women, all probably in their mid-to late thirties, fussing around our central character as well as a younger woman who was his lover whom we see in flashback. While the young woman is Marina Hands, and in a first full flush of youthful comeliness, what might seem so surprising is less her beauty, which is astonishing in the glow of her skin, the robust general health and the clearness of her eyes, than the other women's attractiveness. Could American cinema conjure up three women of equally delicate but not youthful beauty, and if so, who would these women be? One proposes Maria Bello, Ashley Judd and Naomi Watts - no matter if the latter is of course an English born Australian working in American film. We want to concentrate here though on Maria Bello, and suggest that her best work resides in three films, The Cooler, A History of Violence and Assault on Precinct 13. David Thomson sensibly believes in a review of A History of Violence in Have You Seen...? that Bello is "one of the most attractive women in cinema", and the word attractive is much more accurate than beautiful it seems. For beauty is closer to an a priori state than attractiveness, and can often best be expressed in a picture or on a catwalk where the originality of the self is secondary to the fundamental aspect of the beauty. In Ways of Seeing, John Berger interestingly writes "...one reason why expressive photographs of the naked are even rarer than paintings...is that nakedness is a process rather than a state." He believes "the easy solution for the photographer is to turn the figure into a nude which, by generalizing both sight and viewer and making sexuality unspecific, turns desire into fantasy." Maybe we can say much the same in relation to beauty and attractiveness where beauty lends itself well to the general, while attractiveness demands the specific. When watching The Diving Bell and the Butterfly one senses Hands would look as good in a still photograph as in the film's moving images; the other women, who include Anne Consigny and Marie-Jose Croze, are attractive not least because their attractiveness comes through as readily in what they do as in what we could call the cosmetic impact.
Beauty, then, is cosmetic impact; attractiveness 'permeating impact', a subtler, less immediate comeliness, and is perhaps not so much given as earned. When one thinks of Hands' beauty in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and also in her role in Lady Chatterley, it seems no more than genes and upbringing: the good looks say so little about the person possessing them. If Thomson is right that Bello is one of the most attractive women in American film - "a honey" - then one feels in his compliment he is saying a great deal about Bello, not only about the plastic aspect that is still photograph or catwalk display.
What Bello does especially well is vulnerability. This might seem odd considering she plays tough throughout Thank You for Smoking and her feistiness is central to the spats with Ethan Hawke in the early stages of Assault on Precinct 13, but how can we forget her brutal removal before the end of the latter film, and how vulnerable she seems in almost every scene in The Cooler? In The Cooler the combination of her character's sensitivity, her emotional vulnerability, physical asides alluding to her appearance, and the cellulite we see in one scene where Bello and her co-star William H. Macy sit up on the bed and bang the headboard to annoy the usually annoying neighbours, all hint at the vulnerable. As she says "I'd given birth to my son the year before and I was about 40 llbs overweight. I had cellulite on my ass, which I still do, but I thought that was a good thing to show." An example of the physical aside comes from one of the bosses of the club Bello and Macy work in, where he reckons waitresses should have bigger breasts, obviously larger than those of Bello's Natalie.
That takes cares of the physical vulnerability, but there is also the emotional. In one scene in The Cooler Bello sees a young child at the fair, and though this gives space for a predictable moment of back story reminiscence, Bello offers a touch that goes beyond the clich. As the boy some yards away turns and faces in her direction, she smiles back, allowing a brief "hi" to exhale from her mouth, as she feels her estrangement from the child she had years before. Yet nothing is quite so moving as when she sits up in bed and admits to herself that she is in love with Macy's character, Bernie. "I think that I love you" she says hesitantly. Before adding "I don't think. I'm pretty sure of it". She says that he blind-sided her, completely took her by surprise, and this is evident in a comment earlier in the film where Bernie's son arrives in La Vegas and can't believe the father's landed so lucky, saying to Natalie that he must be paying for her ass. It also turns out to be a true statement because, as we find out later in the film, Natalie's ass was bought: the boss at the club basically persuaded Natalie to hang out and seduce Bernie to keep him working in the club. Bernie is what is called a cooler: a guy with such monumental bad luck that he's employed to go over to winning tables in the casino and make the gamblers lose by his mere bad luck presence. He wants to leave the job; the boss wants him to stay. Natalie is employed by the boss to persuade him to do so by any means available.
Natalie's love though transforms him from a loser to a winner: knowing that Natalie really is besotted changes Bernie's fortune, and people start winning in his presence. Maybe a 'beautiful' actress couldn't have pulled off the role; that the cosmetic impact of her presence would have led to an egoistic attitude on Bernie's part. Though obviously Bernie's son can't believe Natalie's with him, and at one stage the boss asks incredulously what she sees in the hapless Bernie, the role needs to be played by somebody a little lived in. For example when Natalie admits she initially went out with him for money, she adds that she thought it was just another opportunity to make a buck, yet another moment in her life where she's looked after number one. This is consistent with the back story info she has provided earlier in the film: where she tells Bernie she had a baby when she was really young, looked after him for a year, and then had him adopted because she wanted her life back.
Now there is perhaps a certain internal logic to the character that the film wants to deny - if Natalie adopted her child at around eighteen and she is still hustling more than ten years later - can we believe that she would be so transformed by Bernie's decency? The answer in this instance is a cautious yes, and chiefly through the idea of permeating impact; that there is enough of this permeation in Bello for enough of it to come through in the character. Obviously for many this would be a dubious line of reasoning, where it seems one's equating the actress with the role, and yet this has nothing to do with who Bello happens to be in 'real life', but the physical presence she unavoidably brings to the role. When she first propositions Bernie as she stands waiting for him after he's finished work, her head is tilted slightly to the side as if in acknowledgment that he possesses qualities that she's summing up. It resembles the moment where Bernie first seems to make an impression on her: earlier in the film after she smiles as a casino customer cusses at his bad luck. As Natalie smiles, the customer turns on her and Bernie comes between them before the bouncers throw the loudmouth out. As Bernie walks away, the shot is held and Natalie tilts her head in momentary admiration.
It is a gesture we find also in A History of Violence, even if it serves a different purpose. Here Bello's character Edie early in the film tilts her head seductively where she has dressed up as a cheerleader for hubby Tom Stall. Yet what is so charming is that this isn't an unequivocally erotic moment; it is couched in the vulnerability of a woman who is still clearly extremely attractive but for whom sex is part of a busy, easily interrupted life. Shortly before, we've seen Tom and his wife woken by their daughter's screams as she awakes from a nightmare.
Bello, whether playing the busy, lawyer wife in A History of Violence, the waiting wife whose husband has been trapped in the twin towers in World Trade Centre, or the neurotic psychologist in Assault on Precinct 13, knows how to offer not only vulnerability, of course, but a firmness within the vulnerable: someone who can play at the same time assured, mature and exposed all at once and thus convey range. The apparent pity is that she has generally only been allowed to offer this range in secondary roles, or, more appropriately, supporting ones: roles in which she is not the narrative drive but more the emotional support, even love interest. Where Judd and Watts have occasionally played leading or joint leading parts - in Ruby in Paradise, The Passion of Darkly Noon and Bug, in Judd's case - Mulholland Drive, 21 Grams and Funny Games in Watts's - Bello's occasional leading roles in films like the horror film The Dark have been much less memorable than the supporting ones. She may claim on the DVD extras to The Dark that she liked the range of emotions she was allowed to express in a genre piece, but though she gets to play yet again a woman for whom others are immensely important, she does so here playing a selfish mum who hyperbolically and supernaturally goes to great lengths to save her daughter and prove how much of a caring mother she happens to be. But we might say she is much better at plausible support than in implausible leading parts. Where Judd seems fine but wasted in Heat, and Watts superb in The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Bello supports brilliantly in a twin sense of the term. She is extremely good at suggesting an emotional core beyond the centre of the frame, and, even if we may wish to see her given more screen time than she usually receives, perhaps that edge of frame emotional centre is really her forte.
In Secret Window, for example, Johnny Depp is clearly our central character, with Bello very much the ex-wife hooked up with her new man elsewhere. But on at least a couple of occasions she phones and asks how is doing, and we may wish for more of the emotionally confused Bello than the increasingly solipsistic Depp, whose self-absorption turns out to be the very subject of the film: it is a film basically from inside the character's head. The solipsistic central character is also there in Auto-Focus, in the very title and in Bob Crane's masturbatory habits. At one moment in their marriage, Patty Crane (Bello) says "I just want someone here. You're never home anymore, and when you are you are downstairs editing your videos." It echoes a line from Secret Window where she says that ..."you weren't there anymore...even when you were with me you were gone...up in your head"
One of Bello's great strengths as an actress is her emotional engagement with the film, and generally a rational core at that. When she says friends give her DVDs of Truffaut and Bergman and that she never watches them, she prefers watching escapist films, theGuardian interviewer Ryan Gilbey admits he finds this ironic. The films she makes are often serious or she offers a serious dimension within them: the sort of aspect Gilbey believes would make Bello interesting in a Bergman role. But Bello isn't an especially neurotic actress, no matter her part in Assault on Precinct 13, saying in an interview with Rebbeca Murray in About.com, "I think she has to go more off the deep end and I think that just because she is a psychiatrist, she doesn't have to be straight." But this seems consistent not especially with an actress looking to portray the twisted; more the complex. Though she says in the Guardian interview that she likes escapist films, she is often the least escapist aspect of the movie, and do her characters not so often countenance confronting reality and not escaping from it? It is there in her characters' comments in Auto-Focus and Secret Window, and is vital to A History of Violence when she realises that her husband is not who she believed him to be. "Tell me the truth...please, you can do that can't you?" she asks.
Now there are several things that we have worked towards here. The first concerns the attractive as opposed to the beautiful; the second that Bello often plays the emotional core of the film though this is often manifested in supporting roles that nevertheless give to the word support its emotional significance, and the third is that she is often the character most given to exploring the texture of the film's reality. If Secret Window proves so minor and silly a film, and a waste of Bello, it lies in what the film could have been if it had been turned inside out. Imagine if it wasn't a thriller with a twist where Depp is the writer lost in his own head, but a film from the position of the ex-wife who still has strong feelings for both men trying to start a new life with one, while worrying about the sanity of the other. That this alternative narrative can be extracted from the one we're given, though, says much about how Bello can give texture to a role that remains mainly off screen.
This capacity for the complexity of feeling is also what makes Bello so attractive. Certainly writers and critics mention Bello's beauty - in an interview by Paul Fischer in Film Monthly.com, he calls her a 'beautiful actress' - while there is an interesting anecdote she tells in the same interview that brings out a quality that seems more consistent with beauty than attractiveness as we're choosing to define it. When she was a struggling actor in New York a man come up to her while she was catering at a party and said he would like to paint her. She thought all he wanted was to get her to take her clothes off, but the painter said that wasn't what he was looking for: that he simply had never seen anyone so on the verge of insanity. She explains that she was a "very sad, sad person at that time, so I ended up going through this man's studio for three months, sitting in this one position for four hours a day and he would paint me." This is closer to La Belle noiseuse, the crazy courtesan of Jacques Rivette's film with Emmanuelle Beart, where beauty and madness co-exist, and this is a common narrative in French cinema, evident in Isabelle Adjani films like One Deadly Summer and Camille Claudel; and in Beart works like J'embrasse Pas and Nathalie. Here the actresses play less the emotional core than the hermeneutic centre: the tension in the film often resides in complex inner motivation that the filmmaker or another leading character within the film searches out. But even in a film like The Cooler,where initially Natalie is playing Bernie (even though we don't know at this stage that she has been hired to do so), Bello creates little inquiry around the apparent anomaly of so attractive a woman being with so apparently uncharismatic a man as Macy's character. She quickly convinces us that she sees qualities in Bernie nobody else can see. It goes back to that moment where she tilts her head in appreciation of Bernie's fairness.
This is the attractive quality of observation, over the beauty of egocentricity, and Bello may be a great example of a sort of concentric attractiveness - a sense of self that is larger, more observant and realistic than the egocentricity that may often drive the narrative but not give it very much emotional texture. This is present even in a film that actively seems deliberately to be a work of no redeeming features: the Mel Gibson starring Payback, which she made early in her film career, back in 1998. This is a remake of Point Blank with a steely, grey colour scheme to match the grim brutality of its leading character. Bello, though, gets to play the humanity around the hard-men and the hardware: she's the woman who acts without self-interest to help Gibson's character out. When she helps him kidnap the son of the head of the crime outfit he is seeking money from, Bello's high-class hooker still seems more concerned for Gibson's well-being rather than worrying about the mess that she is also in. There is a nice moment in the film where, as in the old days when they knew each other, and Gibson was her chauffeur, they are driving along with Bello in the back of the stretch limousine and Gibson driving, when she looks at him, her head slightly tilted, clearly intrigued and attracted. Once again she provides the emotional core, no matter the generally brutal stupidity of the proceedings.
Perhaps we can generalise here: a supporting character, at least in mainstream film, ought to possess qualities different from a star, if we assume that the star is the agent of the film, and the supporting player the reactor to the events. Thus central to good support is the capacity not so much to act but react, to absorb the narrative elements that more prominent characters get to interact with. In most of Bello's films she has to react to another's actions. In Secret Window, Amy is seeking a divorce from her unstable husband, and shows constant concern for his mental well-being; in A History of Violence Edie needs to decide whether to stand by her man when she finds out that he is a man with a violent past. In The Cooler, near the end of the film, Bernie is inside gambling, while Natalie waits outside in the car not even sure whether he will come out of the casino alive. In Paybackthe situation is similar: Bello's character stays with the kidnapped son, pacing the room, while Gibson's character tries to get his money back off the main movers in the firm. In each instance Bello's support, though often thankless, is far from irrelevant.
If we're correct in saying that she frequently plays the emotional core, then her reaction can give texture to the fore-grounded action. Would A History of Violence have the density it possesses without Bello's support? In one scene Edie is trying some shoes on and suddenly she realises her daughter is no longer in the shop. As she kicks off the new shoes that the shop assistant won't allow her understandably to walk out of the shop with, Bello goes and finds her daughter nearby. This is clearly an obvious scene (and Cronenberg's film has many similarly 'conventional' ones) and yet it is a though Cronenberg wanted to make a film full of convention yet with plausibly 'deep' emotion. Like Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven, there is a post post-modernist element here as the conventions become clear, but the emotions are still complex. Bello gets to play the dutiful wife but instead of playing with this dutifulness to generate greater brutalization - as we find in The Long Kiss Goodnight, for example, as it offers a post-modern would be feminism as Geena Davis becomes the leading character and gains credibility by acting like a man in a man's world - the dutifulness remains but an emotional complexity replaces the post-modern feminist tweaking. In yet another example of Bello waiting at home while a man has to do what he's gotta do, Tom goes off to take on his brother back in Philadelphia, while Edie waits at home. Yet she gives meaning and purpose to that waiting in the closing shots of the film. As Tom returns to the family fold, Edie serves up dinner but this is a series of cold cuts as the family must re-acquaint themselves after the violence that begat so much violence. As Edie spends most of the time with her head down as if in prayer, it isn't until the second last shot in the film that she looks up and her face beseechingly gazes at Tom with a mixture of deep love and disbelief. Tom looks back and it is the closing shot of the film, as Bello once again extracts the core emotions.
This is also true of Assault on Precinct 13 as Bello plays a psychologist caught in the precinct of the title. Two thirds of the way through the film Alex is alarmingly dispatched after making an escape with one of the others on the say so of the group in the precinct. This death is surprising as Bello's character has been set up in the romantic action tradition of one half of a sparring potential couple, la Out of Sight. But it is also resides in Bello's performance, which is textured to give her death meaning. It resembles in some ways Famke Potente's death at the beginning of the second Bourne film, The Bourne Supremacy, but Potente has been given an entire film first to lay out her character and make her death meaningful. She has also become Bourne's lover and thus her death has immense impact on his character. In Assault on Precinct 13, Bello's been given only around sixty five minutes to engage the viewer emotionally, and Ethan Hawke and Bello's characters have not become lovers. Yet her death is the most significant moment in the film. As she is shot in the head the film offers an overhead shot of Bello lying in the snow, the blood turning the snow red, as it cuts to an overhead shot of Hawke at his desk, clearing it in a fit of anguish.
Yet what we've noticed in so many of Bello's films is that she has played supporting roles, no matter if she has given them a complexity equal to a leading one. In certain instances one suspects the films would have been subtler and more interesting works if the supporting role had become central (as in Secret Window), but generally what makes Bello so intriguing an actress is how she gives significance to a supporting part. Could Tom's return to the house have had the impact it does were it not for Bello's ability to indicate the emotional rupture in A History of Violence, would the death of the token love interest at the end of the second act in Assault on Precinct 13 have been as effective with another actress in the role, and would Natalie have just been another tart with a heart in The Cooler if she were played by the numbers?
At the beginning of the article we mentioned The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and the three supporting actors who are attractive rather than beautiful, and central to this was the attractive gesture over the beautiful pose: the degree to which the three characters support the multiply disabled central figure. There is a potential conservatism to this; that the woman is the carer in an essentially man's world. This we've noticed time and again in Bello's films, from Auto-Focus to Secret Window, from A History of Violence to The Cooler, but for better or worse there are truths in these qualities, often much more so than a would be militant progressiveness that much cinema in recent years has practised. InThe Long Kiss Goodnight, GI Jane, Terminator 2, Out of Sight and others, the women have been as tough as the men, but have they gained in action but lost in reaction, lost that emotional centre that can allow a woman to live in a man's world but call that world into question as they wonder what the limitations of this man's world happens to be? Bello's look at the end of A History of Violence says a great deal. It is neither the look of the woman as beautiful icon who becomes the hermeneutic centre, nor at all the woman who replicates the man in violent intensity. She is instead the deeply attractive woman who can show what matters: the emotional life that can give a film its heart even if she does not quite provide it with the narrative focus.


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text:
Cordner inspired by Anasta, Fitzgibbon
Wed 18 Apr 2012, 02:33 PM
Inaugural GIO NSW Under-20s captain Boyd Cordner will draw inspiration from current and former Roosters captains and Origin reps Braith Anasta and Craig Fitzgibbon and study partner Sam Perrett when he leads the "Baby" Blues in the Toyota Under 20s State of Origin at Penrith this weekend.
The Roosters second rower, who has played 13 NRL games since his debut last year, was this week named to play in the historic battle with Queensland for the Darren Lockyer Shield at Centrebet Stadium on Saturday.
"I really like the concept; there is a lot of talent in the Toyota Cup and it has been very successful so an event like this is timely," said Cordner.
"I was over the moon when I found out I had made the team but to be named captain as well is a great honour; I feel very humbled and privileged.
"Playing under Braith Anasta who is one of the best leaders I have ever had, I will take something from his book and put my own stamp on it along with what I have learnt from (assistant coach) Craig Fitzgibbon.
"He has been really good to me at the Roosters with advice, having played in the same position and as a former captain of the club.
"Sam Perrett is also a good mentor. We have been doing the Certificate 4 in Building Construction together and I have learnt a lot from him on and off the field."
Cordner said the Toyota Cup policy of 'no study, no work, no play' is a "brilliant idea" and provides a good balance for players in preparing them for life after football.
In line with that policy, eight of the players selected for the Under 20s Origin are studying at university; five are doing apprenticeships; four are in traineeships; 12 are doing Certificate III/ Diplomas; and seven are in general employment.
From Bachelor of Science, Business and Education degrees to apprentice builders, plumbers and electricians, the players come from a wide and varied range of study and work backgrounds.
The teams, to be coached by former Origin greats and now Melbourne Storm coaching colleagues Dean Pay (NSW) and Kevin Walters (QLD), will go in to camp at Penrith later today and will have their first training sessions tomorrow.
All players selected have played in the Toyota Cup, while the GIO NSW team includes six players with NRL experience – Cheyse Blair (Eels), Jacob Miller (Wests Tigers), Harry Siejka (Panthers), Matt Groat (Wests Tigers), Boyd Cordner (Roosters) and Alex McKinnon (Knights).
The Queensland team has made one change since the teams were announced on Monday with Korbin Sims ruled out with a broken finger. He has been replaced by the Broncos' Travis Peeters.
Toyota will donate a $1000 education grant to the Man of the Match on Saturday night.
GAME DAY DETAILS:
Date: Saturday, April 21
Venue: Centrebet Stadium, Penrith
NSWRL Harold Matthews - Week 2 Finals: 3:35pm
NSWRL SG Ball Cup - Week 2 Finals: 5:20pm
Toyota U/20's State of Origin: 7:30pm
Tickets to the 2012 Toyota Under 20's State of Origin clash are available through ProTicket.
Online: www.proticket.com.au
Outlet: ProTicket Outlets
Ticketed Club Members will be able to gain access to this match for free.
Junior Pass Card Holders who have activated their cards will also be able to gain free entry to this game.