Stunning film sets come alive in January’s House & Garden. The issue offers a superb picture story naming 25 of the all-time best movie set interiors — and offers tips on how to re-create some of them in your own home with products that are available today. Deputy features director Ingrid Abramovitch and design editor Mayer Rus spent about two years putting together this compendium of Hollywood glory. And they show no partiality for a particular style of decor or genre of film, for that matter. Their 25 winners range — visually — from cozy and traditional sets/homes/films to those delving deeply into the hip and mod, with spooky and surreal in there too. Among the winners: “A Clockwork Orange” (1971); “After The Thin Man” (1936); “Rope” (1948); “The Merry Widow” (1934); “The Wings Of The Dove” (1997); and, of course, “Auntie Mame” (1958). The rest of the issue puts the spotlight on films, actors and set designers as well. Check out the “On the Set” feature toward the front of the issue. It takes readers to the beautiful sets of the current movie “The Holiday” with Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet and, perhaps most important, director Nancy Meyers. She’s the one who gave us Diane Keaton’s fabulous (and much copied) beach house in the 2003 movie “Something’s Gotta Give.”
Urban green: Kudos to Natural Home magazine and its broad-mindedness when naming the country’s “Top 10 Eco Communities” in the January/February issue. Although all 10 are “urban,” two of them are actually neighborhoods (or in the case of Brooklyn, a borough) within very large cities. The Andersonville neighborhood on Chicago’s Near North Side made the magazine’s green list — whose criteria includes “community involvement; shopping, libraries and schools within a walkable area; public transportation; and locally owned businesses” as well as mixed-income housing, social programs, green spaces, etc.
Color commentary: Red and yellow look fabulous together, in the same room. Same for black and white paired with a sky blue. Turquoise and brown, ditto. The January issue of Better Homes and Gardens offers a number of decorating stories (“Color Play,” “Black and White in Color” and “Into the Blue”) that are pure inspiration for anyone looking to shake up their rooms in the new year — and do it primarily with paint.
And finally: It’s hard to resist reading this story (in the January issue of O The Oprah Magazine) after eyeing a kicker line like this: “What would your house look like if you never got rid of anything? Michelle Herman found out the hard way. But with the help of 360 garbage bags, one gigantic Dumpster, and tons of emotional fortitude, she finally reclaimed her home.” From the mice. From her own emotional baggage. From utter disaster. The first-person piece is a strange blend of horror story, one-woman’s-epiphany story and organizational how-to that is, more simply put, one good read.
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