When I got home last night, Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element was streaming from Netflix. (Sidebar: TV is amazingly complicated these days.)
First thing this morning, I was of course snapping photos of the Agave ‘Cornelius.’
Or “Corneeleyoos,” as Mila Jovovich croons the name throughout the movie, swaddled in ribbons of cloth designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier.
I once got into a heated discussion with a video rental clerk (another blip in the continuum of extinct employment categories) over the merits of the movie, now a fond memory every time I read heated “discussions,” really one-off opinions, in the online Netflix movie reviews. The clerk thought it the best thing since Citizen Kane, and I thought it was gorgeous fun, and so we parted ways with our original opinions intact.
This agave is, no debate, flat-out gorgeous. And that’s despite its other moniker of the Quasimoto Agave. Reputed to be a cultivar of Agave americana, now in tissue propagation and more generally available. Mine was bought by a friend at a sale from the Ruth Bancroft Garden. There’s some slight damage from my garden snails to lower leaves, as can be seen lower right, but it’s pushing out pristine new leaves.
The little poppy, P. setigerum, has sown itself in the crevices around the porch, just showing buds, nestling up against the agave’s pot.
The back porch has been one of the sunniest spots all winter, and little Corneeleyoos has done wonderfully here.
Extra credit points to you for managing to tie together The Fifth Element and an Agave in a meaningful post! We were stereo shopping a while back and happened to catch this movie playing on the huge hi-def screen at the electronics store. It was so wrong! You could see costume and make-up details you shouldn’t have been able to, it looked like a high school play. As for the ‘Cornelius’…what a looker!
Loree, I think it’s that goofy look about the movie that makes it timeless, the aliens in rubber suits instead of using CGI for the characters, though CGI was used for other effects, and production design by Moebius still cool after 15 years. But high school play is a good description!
So glad that Cornelius has gone to a good home. He deserves it !
I love The Fifth Element! Such a fun and funny movie — very entertaining. We’re watching classic Bruce Willis right now, in fact — streaming Die Hard on Netflix. It’s that kind of night.