Rooms on Film: Saturday Night Fever

let's dance the last dance: john travolta and karen lynn gorney

It seems I'm still in an Empire State of Mind. Specifically, New York in the '70s. This movie has several locations: Tony's family home, the dance studio, stores, the disco hall... And it briefly breezes through the new Manhattan digs of Stephanie, a young woman who is very serious about her ambitions. 

Typically, it's one of those places that gives the impression that elevators had not yet been invented. Or at least, no one had thought to install them anywhere in the five boroughs...

Rooms on Film: Annie Hall

annie hall, 1977: janet margolin and woody allen

This one's short and sweet. I'm not familiar with the movie, although surely I saw it as a kid. Lately I've been viewing a lot of studio apartments via Pinterest and Apartment Therapy tours. As a studio dweller, the topic is pretty much ever present. Between that and abrupt arrival of full-on SUMMER IN NEW YORK, this image came to mind.

Rooms on Film: Cloud Atlas (Luisa Rey)

There are a ton of film sets I want to talk about lately and that's all I really want to talk about. It doesn't make for a balanced blog, but so what? Some months ago, I had the tremendous pleasure of seeing Cloud Atlas for the first time. It came out in 2012, starring Oscar Winners Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, and the promos were downright confusing. Never having heard of the (magnificent) novel, I just didn't know what to make of it. My loss! This movie is visually stunning and best viewed in the theater. The story - tighter and more romantic than the novel - is entrancing, resonant and powerful. From the 1850s to the very distant future, the cinematography, CGI and set design produce a dazzling array of scenes in the 1850s, 1930s, 1970s, 2000s and distant future. If you haven't seen it, or read the novel, run don't walk...

Now let's discuss the 1970s studio apartment of Luisa Rey...