LWLies 62: the Car­ol issue

To bor­row a lyric from The Char­la­tans, love is the key to the new issue of Lit­tle White Lies – inspired by and ded­i­cat­ed to the film Car­ol from direc­tor Todd Haynes. In this mas­ter­ful, heart-crush­ing work, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara play a pair of roman­ti­cal­ly idle women in ​’50s New York who meet cute in a depart­ment store and grad­u­al­ly, inex­orably con­verge as one. As a piece of craft, the film is untouch­able, with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ed Lach­man and com­pos­er Carter Bur­well both very much on their A‑game.

LWLies’ artis­tic direc­tor Tim­ba Smits cre­at­ed the cov­er, and this is how he approached it: ​“My inspi­ra­tion for the Car­ol cov­er was to look at mid­cen­tu­ry fash­ions and 1950s Vogue cov­ers and evoke the beau­ti­ful hand illus­trat­ed por­traits (almost pho­to­graph­ic) style of the time. I also looked to clas­sic photos/​portraits of Audrey Hep­burn, who Mara remind­ed me of through­out the film, and used these for pose and style ref­er­ence. It’s actu­al­ly a hybrid ​‘Rooney Hepburn’.”

In this issue…

The Amorous Imag­i­na­tion
We talk to the direc­tor of Car­ol about how, in the words of Leonard Cohen, there ain’t no cure for love.

The Great Beau­ty
David Ehrlich attempts to iso­late the mag­netis­ing qual­i­ties of laud­ed screen siren, Cate Blanchett.

Sur­face Ten­sions
Is it pos­si­ble to locate a homo­erot­ic sub­text in just about any movie? LWLies investigates.

The Look Of Silence
Rooney Mara com­plex screen per­sona finds its most per­fect out­let in Todd Haynes’ Car­ol. Adam Wood­ward talks to this silent star.

The Love Parade
When we say ​“I love you”, what does it actu­al­ly mean? Matt Thrift com­piles some of cinema’s most daz­zling and ambigu­ous uses of this impor­tant phrase.

The Oppo­site Of Every­thing
João Fer­reira, cre­ative direc­tor of Queer Lis­boa Film Fes­ti­val, offers a def­i­n­i­tion of mod­ern queer cinema.

Cheat Sheet #2: 100 Queer Clas­sics
One hun­dred clas­sic LGBT and queer-themed movies which you sim­ply must see.

In the back section…

Strip Club
Nick Pinker­ton offers a his­to­ry of news­pa­per com­ic strips on film ahead of the release of The Peanuts Movie.

Also, we see Kurt Russell’s Bone Tom­a­hawk; observe as John­ny Depp reach­es Black Mass; tra­verse Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies; accom­pa­ny Saoirse Ronan to Brook­lyn; pay a vis­it to Lily Tomlin’s Grand­ma; enter Guy Maddin’s The For­bid­den Room; taste Sean Baker’s Tan­ger­ine; expe­ri­ence Gas­par Noé’s Love 3D; plan a liai­son with Tom Hooper’s The Dan­ish Girl; and sing Ter­ence Davies’ Sun­set Song.

All that and inter­views with Ter­ence Davies, Saoirse Ronan, Pete Sohn and Gas­par Noé, spe­cial reports from the Venice and Toron­to film fes­ti­vals, Jacques Gites reports from the set of Return of the Jedi, and Ex-Rent Hell explores the eco­nom­ic imbal­ance of Tom Cruise in Cocktail.

LWLies 62 hits news­stands Sat­ur­day 7 Novem­ber and is avail­able to pre-order now from our online shop.