#spy . TO ME. is a beautiful lebanese woman | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gldenhrs · 1 year

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𝐋𝐔𝐂𝐈𝐀𝐍𝐀 " 𝐋𝐔𝐂𝐄 " 𝐒𝐀𝐀𝐃 .

full name: luciana emerson saad nicknames: goes prominately by everyone as luce , only her parents call her by her full name(: birthdate / zodiac sign : somewhere in august during leo season . sexual orientation: heterosexual place of birth: montreal , canada nationality: canadian / american ethnicity: mexican / lebanese pets : two year old malthese called goldie languages spoken: english , spanish , conversational lebanese love language : song writing aka words / actions . residences: los angeles , california ( main residence ) , montreal , canada ( brought a home for her parents where she frequently visits ) , saint lucia , caribbean ( vacation home ) + traits : magnetic , confident , hardworking , sensual & passionate . - traits: stubborn , abrasive , selfish , sarcastic & dramatic .

occupation: singer / songwriter / actress / businesswoman career claim: selena gomez ( career can be found HERE )

.* ◞ ╰ quick history .

born and raised by a middle class fam back in canada , she had a p much great childhood , surrounded by love , support and a healthy relationships which in truth , are a rarity in hollywood but she’s definitely an exception .

inspired by her mother , an amateur actress , luce tried out for a role on a children’s tv series barney & friends , & as a result , appeared regularly on the program from 2002 - 2004 .

after making her big - screen debut in the family movie spy kids 3 : game over ( 2003 ) , she auditioned for the disney channel , which eventually led her to have numerous guest appearances on tv ( suit of life , hannah montana ... ) until she was cast in wizards of waverly place . the show , for which she also sang the theme song , became an instant hit among the preteens & earned her global fame .

while continuing to star in her hit tv show , she also acted in various tv movies & later on blockbusters too .

she ventured into music as the front woman of luce & the scene , an electronic - influenced pop band that produced several dance hits . the group released albums kiss & tell ( 2009 ) , a year without rain ( 2010 ) & when the sun goes down ( 2011 ) .

she soon went solo , forging a solo career with her first studio album called stars dance ( 2013 ) . subsequent solo albums included revival ( 2015 ) & rare ( 2020 ) . the latter of which yielded the hit ballad “ lose you to love me “ .

luce’s also known for her philanthropic work , much of it accomplished through UNICEF , which in 2009 appointed her a goodwill ambassador .

in 2020 , she also launched her own makeup brand called rare beauty which arguably is one of the most successful celebrity makeup brands there is today .

also in 2022 , she launched her own cooking show called luce + chef , thinking it could be fun learn & improve her own skills along with her fans .

.* ◞ ╰ personality & dating life .

she’s v much still hardworking and humble , her parents still v much present at almost every show and music award ceremony . she knows where she comes from and isn’t afraid to show it (:

she’s also v much magnetic af that makes people incredibly drawn to her , not to mention the sensual vibes she’s throwing due to her mexican / lebanese roots .

incredibly loyal to her friends and family , has a small but decent group of friends in hollywood that she usually hangs with but her ultimate bff isn’t famous yet is a childhood friend from canada that now follows her around everywhere she goes as her “ assistant “ ( think lily from hannah montana hehe )

as far as her dating life goes , luce is a big romantic and wears her heart on her sleeve which explains why she dated a LOT of men in hollywood , most of whom eventually broke her heart , making her write killer banger songs about them and then moving onto the next romance ( v tswift of her tbh )

ok that’s it folks !!! i kept this short and sweet ((: also here’s a bit of inspo for the wcs i want bc u bet ur cute ass she wrote songs about her experiences hehehe .... :

NEW LOVE ;; someone who keeps toying with heart , and despite the fact she knows better she cannot help herself ?? she keeps on coming back , even though she knows better , knows she should drop them , but alas ... she cannot . this can be both a romantic connection or friendship !

BE THE ONE ;; someone she hurt ?? a friend or a lover , maybe she ran because feelings got too heavy too fast or maybe her busy scendule ultimately caused her to leave them behind ?? either way , this ode is for them , saying she’s wrong , and how she wishes to have them back and for them to give her another chance .

THINKING ABOUT YOU ;; a short lasting fling nobody she had . sneaking around , 3am calls , late night hotel rooms ....it’s something she can’t stop thinking about . he probably showed her the best time of her life and for whatever reason they decided to call it quits .

HOTTER THAN HELL ;; fwb . maybe it’s still going maybe it’s not either way she made a song about it hehehe .

BLOW YOUR MIND ;; someone she hates , someone that hates her , a friend a foe or a lover or maybe both ?? either way , they fight like cats and dogs bc they’re polar opposites and probably hate everything about each other ... especially the fact they’re insanely attracted to each other .

LOST IN YOUR LIGHT ;; a friend she likes . a lil will they won’t they that i love bc !!! ahhh . anyway this song is about how she feels about them :)) they probably don’t have a clue the song’s about them or maybe they assume u choose !

NEW RULES ;; the classic toxic ex trope . someone she still has a hard time shaking off bc she still cares about them so whenever they keep on knocking at her door in the middle of the night , despite her “ new rules “ to keep him away , she can’t help herself .

IDGAF ;; an ex lover who broke her heart , so she wrote a song about him hehehehe .

DON’T START NOW ;; yet another ex - lover song that turned out to be a massive bop hehehe .

PHYSICAL ;; something that started out as purely physical ... a fwb of a sort , but it’s ELECTRIC , unexplainable , and despite them not being exclusive , it’s almost an unwritten thing that they care and how they have each other’s backs .

LEVITATING ;; maybe someone she met on a vacation somewhere , they had one of the most amazing flings but it’s never been anything serious , but it still made an impression on her despite how short it was , so she wrote him a song too :)

#hillzhqsintro #keeping this short and sweet yall :))

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farsouthproject · 7 years

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A Personal Look at Mathías Énard’s novels, Zone and Compass

The opening of Mathías Énard’s Compass had me hooked:

“We are two opium smokers each in his own cloud, seeing nothing outside, alone, never understanding each other we smoke, faces agonizing in a mirror, we are a frozen image to which time gives the illusion of movement…”

The premise of an insomniac academic musicologist – with an encyclopaedic knowledge of European and Middle Eastern literature and music – absorbed by Pessoa’s understanding of the imaginal ‘East beyond the East’ – and pining for lost love of his academic colleague Sarah – strummed an orchestra’s worth of chords for me. The novel is a love story and a journey through the music and literature of Europe and the Orient whose gateway is Vienna.

First alerted to the novel by book bloggers via Twitter, enthusiastic in their praise, and knowing nothing more about the author or the novel, I was wary of hype. The last book that I approached from a similar introduction turned out to be very disappointing. I searched for a library copy of Compass but found none available among my usually reliable suppliers. A previous novel of Énard’s – Zone – was available. So I began reading Énard with Zone. The stylistic conceit of a book written in one long sentence didn’t really capture my imagination per se, although it is true that the structure leads a reader to flow on with the story. There are a number of interludes in the gargantuan sentence which are chapters from a fictional book by a Palestinian author that is set in the Lebanese Civil War.

The narrator of the main story is a neo-fascist who has fought for a Croatian militia unit in the Balkan civil wars. He has a cache of documents of war atrocities that he has stashed in a suitcase. He has handcuffed the suitcase to the luggage rack of the overnight train from Paris to Rome, where he hopes to ransom his information via a contact in the Vatican. The suitcase is a classic Hitchcock-style MacGuffin – even to the extent of it being on the luggage rack of a train. The novel – through the stream of consciousness of the narrator – is a sprawling journey through the Zone, the countries around the Mediterranean, where the narrator has been a soldier, and a spy for French intelligence services. The narrative is based on the chapters of The Iliad and Homer’s gods and heroes infuse the unfolding of the novel. The structure never obtrudes on the stream-of-consciousness reflections of the drunk, or half-drunk warrior, who is individually and archetypally every warrior, rapist and torturer from the time of Troy – or the birth of humankind – to the present day and into the future – albeit an extremely well-read one, who can quote Cervantes, Apollinaire or William Burroughs.

In the midst of the horror of the litany of atrocities there are also moments of genuinely hilarious black humour – especially so in the Burroughs-in-Tangier section. In general, the pace of the novel draws the reader along, and only occasionally does the narrator’s stream of consciousness become sluggish: an extraordinary achievement for a novel of five-hundred plus pages. As a reflection of the complexities of contemporary politics and the wars that still rage around the Mediterranean, responsible for the displacement of so millions of civilian non-combatants, Zone is a brightly polished mirror that reflects humankind’s innate darkness and violence.

And so, yes, I had to read Compass immediately afterward.

Franz Ritter, this narrator so dithery and neurotic, couldn’t be more different than the drunken macho neo-fascist soldier-spy of Zone, other than in his literary erudition. Perhaps Énard had to write through the atrocities of Zone to get to the point of writing Compass.

‘ “Before you can think about beauty, you have to plunge into the deepest horror and go completely through it according to Sarah’s theory,” says Franz.’

Compass has its moments of high comedy. Franz on speaking of lullabies: “Brahms, who rings out like a cheap music box… Brahms the Volkswagen of the lullaby…” Compass travels the same geographical areas as Zone but is concentrated on music and literature more than a direct approach to politics and war, although it doesn’t ignore them either. In a section set before the Syrian civil war, Sarah and Franz and Bilger, a mad academic colleague, sleep out under the stars at Palmyra, and the sense of sadness evoked by these beautiful images, knowing what has happened there so recently to the guardian of the site and the destruction of its buildings evinces a desperate sadness for what has been lost to barbarism; a barbarism that we have seen is shared equally among the forces of the West and the East, and continues to grow.

In a novel that is close to five hundred pages, there are moments when the digressions of the insomniac narrator drift into areas that can cause a loss of reader-focus, but with a novel so ambitious, that drift in no way detracts from the overall genius of the work. The book, with and without irony, takes on the mantle of orientalism without negating the analyses of Edward Saïd of orientalism as imperialism, but it is a transformed contemporary orientalism that shifts the conceptual focus onto shared human values of mutual fascination with each other’s cultures, rather than an insistence on maintaining a view of a West-East relationships as that of oppressor and oppressed. Our origins, fascinations and projections onto the other arise from our upbringing in the West or the East, both of which are imaginal constructions.

“She spoke at length on the postcolonial holy trinity – Saïd, Bhabha, Spivak: on the question of imperialism, of difference, of the twenty-first century when, facing violence, we needed more than ever to rid ourselves of this absurd idea of the absolute otherness of Islam and to admit not only to the terrifying violence of colonialism, but also all that Europe owed to the Orient – the impossibility of separating them from each other, the necessity of changing our perspective. We had to find she said, beyond the stupid repentance of some or the colonial nostalgia of others, a new vision that includes the other in the self. On both sides.”

“The Orient is an imaginal construction…”

The protagonist, Franz Ritter, can be infuriating, but we can also share in his cowardice, his mawkishness, his erudition, his love and his desperate hope.

In the same way that a book set in a familiar geographical location can evoke a particular recognition, identification or nostalgia in a reader, this book’s journey through music and literature does likewise: Rimbaud, Verlaine, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Nietzsche, Thomas Mann and on and on and on…

As someone whose life was immersed in Tibetan Buddhism for thirty years, the fictional extrapolation on projection and spiritual yearning on a mystic East arouses a familiar sense of recognition, both positive and negative. Compass continues to work on correspondences with long-held obsessions – without in any way comparing my own work to Énard’s – that have also driven me to write. The protagonist of my novel Cressida’s Bed (2004) is an Englishwoman who is a Theosophist, midwife and independence-supporting woman who travels from India to Bhutan in the 1930s and becomes involved with the Dharmaraja or Shabdrung. In writing for 3AM Magazine, William Burroughs and the Dreamscapes of the Dalai Lama has a section on the naïve orientalism of the Beats. Ghosts in the Dry Bush deals with a personal immersion in the Japanese performance art of Butoh. On the meeting of East and West, the farsouthproject.tumblr.com site has an essay on Yukio Mishima being influenced by De Sade and Genet and a critical look at the biographical feature film on Mishima made by Paul Schrader.

With these obsessions as personal background, Compass, had a profound resonance for me. I’m sure that each reader of Compass will find their own unique points of connection and recognition because we have all been influenced by our own orientalism whether through reading, painting, music or other exchange between West and East. And that is part of Énard’s point. As the quote above shows, whatever culture we belong to, we share our experiences with others – we appropriate from and we offer what we have to others. And we can all discover the other in the self. Compass sets off a yearning to explore the subject more, whether through music or literature or film. His work connects with extensive reading and listening in its appreciation of world music and literature. Zone woke up memories of Christopher Logue’s War Music: another version of The Iliad. Tangentially, Compass and Zone had me searching out Pasolini’s Medea to discover, somewhat synchronously, the film’s soundtrack of Iranian, Tibetan, Indian and Japanese music; not to speak of the locations the film shares with Compass, shot as it was in Anatolia, Turkey; and in Syria before this awful contemporary war.

Compass in particular has kept on resonating in my mind for days, but each novel, Zone and Compass, complements the other.

We are fortunate to have both novels translated by Charlotte Mandell.

Both Compass and Zone by Mathías Énard are major works of twenty-first century world literature.

(Photograph from the Irish Times.)

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trendingnewsb · 7 years

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Salma Hayek: Trump couldn’t build a wall without illegal Mexicans’

Her new film, Beatriz at Dinner, already has Oscar buzz. But on top of the acting, Salma Hayek is also saving animals, running charities and beating the hell out of a Trump piata. Johnny Davis meets Hollywoods busiest firebrand

It was after a neighbour shot her dog that Salma Hayek realised Donald Trump would become president.

I thought it was a crazy thing, that it would never happen but then something really tragic happened to me, she explains. I have a ranch in America and a neighbour of mine killed my dog. Hayek, who owns around 50 animals, including 20 chickens, five parrots, four alpacas, two fish, some cats and a hamster, says that Mozart, the tragic German Shepherd in question, had never attacked anyone. And the authorities in dealing with the neighbour, and what he did How is that legal? [Police have said the neighbour shot her dog after he found it fighting with his dogs in his garage.] Just to understand what was the normality of things. I realised in this moment, Oh my God: hes going to win.

Hayek, a Mexican immigrant to America who identifies as half-Spanish and half- Lebanese, lives in London and is married to a Frenchman who happens to be Franois-Henri Pinault, billionaire CEO of the company that owns Saint Laurent, Stella McCartney, Gucci is perhaps uniquely placed to have firm views on Trump, Brexit and immigration, and well get to them.

Hayek is primarily here this morning to talk about her new movie, The Hitmans Bodyguard. We are at a press junket for the film. Elsewhere on the first floor of this smart London hotel are Samuel L Jackson, Ryan Reynolds and Gary Oldman, answering questions. Junkets can be dispiriting, and rapport can be in short supply. That is, unless youre Salma Hayek, whose personality could light up a funeral. She arrives in a riot of black and red polka dots, tottering shoes and glossy hair, 5ft 2in and somehow 50 years old, although agelessly beautiful. She plonks herself into an armchair, hoists her legs up, and proceeds to tug the small table between us towards her. Do you mind? Theyre bringing me food. I like my food.

Hasnt she had breakfast?

I did but Im still hungry, she grins.

A round of avocado on toast is spirited into the room, accompanied by a mystery shake in a plastic container. (A second round soon follows.) Famous since she was a soap star in Mexico in her 20s and with 40-plus Hollywood films to her name, Hayek has done literally thousands of interviews. What does she make of the publicity circuit?

Im good! she says. I just pretend Im having a conversation with a new friend.

Other half: Hayek and her billionaire husband Franois-Henri Pinault. Photograph: Tony Barson Archive/WireImage

Indeed, Hayek proves impossible not to like. She may be the perfect chat-show guest: various presenters have hooted along as shes shown off pictures of her Donald Trump piata, discussed her experience as a late-developing teen immersing herself in holy water and praying to Jesus for breasts, or confessing she accused Monsieur Pinault of having an affair after discovering text messages from Elena, only to discover Elena was a language-teaching app.

In fact, we have Pinault to thank for Hayeks turn in The Hitmans Bodyguard. The comedy-action caper is basically a mismatched buddy movie for Jackson and Reynolds, hitman and bodyguard respectively. Hayek is only in a few scenes, but as Jacksons imprisoned criminal wife she matches him profanity for profanity.

I think Salma steals the whole movie, says director Patrick Hughes. I challenge anyone not to fall in love with her because (a) shes a polymath and (b) she kicks ass.

I have to tell you: action is not my favouritest [sic] genre of films, Hayek says. But I married a man who really likes them. So I became an expert. So I see them all!

The image of fashions most powerful CEO spending his downtime like this is intriguing. What is his favourite action movie?

Oh, its like Sophies choice for him, I think.

What about Die Hard, I suggest.

Oh, he loves Die Hard. But we love Bourne. She claps her hands. Sometimes he doesnt even like [a film], he says: Oh my God, that was so bad! But he still has to watch the whole thing.

Its a man thing, I say.

Yes! My brother likes that one, my father likes that one and because of that, when we were doing [The Hitmans Bodyguard] I was able to say it was going to work, because it had a lot of the stuff that the good ones have.

Mexican heroine: Hayek playing Frida Kahlo in Frida with Alfred Molina as Diego Rivera.

Similarly, do actors always know when theyre making a turkey?

Oh yeah! Hayek says, crunching through her toast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. And unfortunately Ive never been wrong!

Her CV is mixed. The first Mexican actress to break into Hollywood since Dolores del Ro in the pre-sound 20s, shes played a lesbian taco in the kids film Sausage Party and so-so roles in films such as Spy Kids 3D and Wild, Wild West. But she also earned an Oscar nomination for Frida, her 2002 portrait of Frida Kahlo, and The Hollywood Reporter has just tipped her for 2018s awards season for Beatriz At Dinner, in which she plays an immigrant who clashes with a self-made billionaire.

At first, she says, she hated being famous. This was terrifying because in Mexico when you do a soap, at this point she leaps out of her chair and heads for the door Dont worry, Im not escaping Hello? Her security guard appears with a pack of American Spirit cigarettes. My soap was seen by 60% of the country, so its every day, in their house. Do you mind? Do you want one? she says, offering the smokes. So you become very familiar, like youre their cousin or something. Ive never been so famous since. I kind of hated it.

Taking aim: Hayek in The Hitmans Bodyguard. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

If she hated the attention so much, I wonder why she headed for Hollywood. But Hayek is battling with the curtains while she attempts to heave open a sash window so that she can smoke, unlit fag in her mouth. Not relishing the idea of Hayek tumbling on to the streets below, it seems only polite to help. For a few seconds she holds back the curtains, while I struggle to wrench the window.

Oh my God, that was so easy, she says. I really did want to be an actress, not just be famous. Its a different thing. Because I was famous on a soap! That doesnt make you a great actress. So I went to America to start all over again.

This was the 90s. She played extras and enrolled in the Stella Adler Academy Of Acting in LA, alma mater to Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro. And this is how old I am, she [Adler] was still alive! She was 90 and she was still teaching and flirting with the young boys. She was a tough cookie but she was brilliant.

Hayek could barely speak the language – My English sucked worse, there werent any parts. Mexican women played maids or gangsters wives. And thats if you got lucky.

Hayek threatened legal action against one director.

I was screen-testing for the lead in a film and they said that it was not written Latin, but they wouldnt mind changing it. I learned the script but when they sent me the pages [for the audition] there was none of the things I had learned, it was another role. So my agent called them and they said, Are you crazy? Shes Mexican. We can change [the race of] the bimbo, but not the lead.

Fashionista: at Stella McCartney, spring/summer 2016, Paris fashion week. Photograph: Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images

She got her agent to call back. Would they please just give her five minutes to audition for the part shed learned?

And they said, Absolutely under no circumstances. So I said, OK, you tell them that they either see me, or Im going to sue them. And they said, Theres no point in her coming, even if she had been the best audition she would have never gotten the part but now we hate her. Does she want to come knowing that we detest her? They kept her waiting for five hours. They wondered why would she do this to herself.

Ive never said this to anyone, the name of the director, but it was Ivan Reitman. And I said, Well, I thought that the director that could see Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito as twins [1988s Twins], and Arnold Schwarzenegger giving birth to a child [1994s Junior] maybe could see a Mexican as a fashion editor. I thought I owed it to the new generation of Mexicans. That if I got this right, maybe something will shift.

Years later, she bumped into Reitman and he apologised. We had such a lovely conversation, he was so elegant, Hayek says. He said, I was wrong.

All of this pales next to the hill she climbed for Frida.

I was obsessed, Hayek says. I was endeavouring to do a film about an artist in a time when all the films about artists had failed. Already [the studios] were going, Oh no. Then Id say, Its a period piece about Mexicans! And theyre communists! Its a love story between an overweight man and a woman that limps and has a moustache!

Committed: Hayek campaigning for womens empowerment with Guccis Frida Giannini and Beyonc. Photograph: Ian Gavan/Getty

One studio did eventually take it on, Edward Norton (her partner at the time) rewrote the script for free and Hayek called in favours from co-stars including Ashley Judd, then one of Hollywoods most bankable faces. It opened in two cinemas. Its success, I suggest, must have been all the sweeter.

Yes, she says. Because [the studio] dismissed it. I didnt even have a poster!

It may not surprise you to learn that Hayek is a committed activist: her list of charitable endeavours is too long to go into here, but it includes her own foundation helping women and children in Mexico, and the feminist charity Chime For Change, founded with Beyonc. Its so massive I dont even know what to tell you. I dont just do awareness, I actually do strategy. Im on the board. It takes a lot, a lot, a lot of time.

Other projects receiving the full force of the Hayek commitment include her range of nutritional juices, and a beauty line which she created herself. She also has her own production company, which helped turn the TV show Ugly Betty based on a Colombian telenovela into a worldwide hit. I ask where this drive comes from.

Its been there since Ive been a child. A sense of justice and responsibility for the human race. How can we be better? Because a lot of people dont think that way. They think: How can I pay less tax? And so when I see things that make me think we are degrading and degenerating mentally it makes me want to do something.

She has been hugely successful. Shes married to one of the worlds richest men. (Their daughter, Valentina, attends school in London.) She could just put her feet up. Of course, its a cheap question we already know the answer.

Why would anybody want to sit around and do nothing?

Hayek says that she made it clear she would always remain financially independent from her husband, whose net worth is around $17.3bn. Which may explain money-job films like Sausage Party.

Mirror mirror: Hayek guest stars in Ugly Betty with America Ferrera. Photograph: Danny Feld/ABC

At the time I met him, I had already decided I didnt want one of those [ie a husband], she says. I had set myself up for a completely different life. I was ready to live on my ranch that is a sanctuary for abused animals. I would come to LA and work a little bit. I was not planning on spending. I had no interest in jewellery or clothes or cars. I had everything I wanted. Maybe I had a guy here or there. I also thought I couldnt have children. Then he [Pinault] came along, swept me off my feet, changed my entire universe and knocked me up.

Can she remember what they first liked about one another?

Yes. I asked him, if he had not been doing what he was doing, what would have been his dream? And he said an astronaut and that was my dream! Then we started talking about different theories of physics, which is my secret passion. And soccer! Im a huge soccer fan [she supports Arsenal]. Just random things that nobody knows I like. It was just magical.

As a global citizen at a time when the world seems to be closing in on itself, is Hayek optimistic for the future?

Very optimistic. I have to look for the positive about everything.

Hayek campaigned for Clinton. Hows it going to end for Trump?

I can promise you hes not going to build the wall. You cannot build it without the Mexicans that are illegally in the country. That is what makes the economy so strong because they are paid less than half, with no benefit. Its just not going to happen!

Hayek is banging her fist on the table.

His days are numbered! Even if he becomes a dictator and rewrites the constitution and now the presidents can stay 12 years! Still his days are numbered!

Salma Hayek: activist, actor, producer, juicer, businesswoman, friend to the animals and all-round proper laugh. You wouldnt mess.

The Hitmans Bodyguard is in cinemas on 17 August