Awwww. I've been going through rather a tough time lately, things have seemed pretty bleak. But I was blown away when this care package arrived from my sister, full of things to cheer me up!
Magazines, chocolate, bubble bath, comedy film Pitch Perfect, a lavender candle, some dinosaur socks, Rae Earl's My Mad Fat Teenage Diary (I love the TV version) and a Quentin Blake James & The Giant Peach bookmark. Thanks, chuck! Kxx
Design and photo (c) Kristen Bailey 2012
Cathy‘s favourite film is The Wizard of Oz, and she does seem a long way from her English home now she has a new one in Alberta, Canada – but there’s still no-one like her.
The Bible verses I included are Psalm 139:13 and Luke 12:6-7 (I like the The Message translation).
* SONG OF THE DAY: Elvis Costello – Red Shoes *
I had to make something special for Rachel's 40th birthday, and once I'd remembered that her favourite film is Cabaret, and put a mood board together on Pinterest, I had the idea for this diorama, which puts Rae on stage at the Kit Kat club, complete with bowler hat.
It's cut from thin card and stitched with sequins, and folds flat for storage.
Design and images (c) Kristen Bailey 2012
* SONG OF THE DAY: Liza Minelli – Mein Herr (from 'Cabaret') *
(c) Screen Search Fashion
Screen Search Fashion
is an online resource which provides a guide to aspects of 1920s and 1930s fashion and dress as depicted in non-fiction film from the collections of Screen Archive South East(in collaboration with the Royal College of Art.
You can see what people wore on holiday, or at the summer fete or carnival. There's also a section dedicated to work clothes, including unforms. It's great to see original garments wore by ordinary people in real life – something even the best-researched costume drama can not do.
The clips are accompanied by photos of relevant items of clothing from local museums. It would be fantastic if, in turn, the clips could be screened within these museums' displays. I love looking at fashion collections in museums but nothing can compare to seeing how garments were worn, what they looked like in motion, and for which occasions they were worn.
It's a fascinating site to explore – I hope that over the next few years they're given the resources needed to extend the site to include film from the 1940s to the present day (so long as that doesn't include any of my family's 1970s home movies!).
Still from Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince (c) Warner Bros 2009
Luna Lovegood was already my favorite Hogwarts student, but since I saw Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince my affection for her has blossomed into a full-blown style crush. She wears the best stuff!
Some of it is really stylish, like the pink linen coat above which she's wearing on the Hogwarts Express when she rescues Harry after his beating from Draco. It has gorgeous puffed shoulders, a big wide collar and cute buckled straps at the wrists. Luna accessorises with functional yet still stylish SpectreSpecs (buy yours here) and her favourite Dirigble Plum earrings (tutorial here).
Then there's the sweet short-sleeved lilac cardigan worn over a loose cotton smock with a Peter Pan collar, worn in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Crochet your own using this pattern.
Images (c) Warner Bros 2007
Luna's taste in jewellery is a little leftfield - her Butterbeer cork necklace, Dirigible Plum earrings and beetle ring – probably homemade as she's a resourceful gal. You can buy yourself a set of Luna Lovegood jewellery but it's much more in keeping with her spirit to try making your own!
Image (c) Warner Bros 2009
Even when her wardrobe choices raise a few eyebrows (her Lion Head hat, the silver dress she wears to go to Slughorn's party) you have to applaud the girl for her individuality. She wears even the most outlandish outfit with quiet confidence, and best of all she's never boring. Tell Luna I love her!
* SONG OF THE DAY: The Only Ones – Another Girl, Another Planet *
Also:
Ravenclaw scarf knitting pattern
Butterbeer cork necklaces on Etsy
It was a beautiful sunny day, so I decided to wander over to the Duke of York's Picturehouse and spend a couple of hours in the dark in the company of Audrey Tatou, watching Coco Before Chanel.
I enjoyed it – it was fascinating to learn about her early life (the film ends just as she's setting up as a fashion designer). What struck me most was how different the garments she started making for herself were from the fashion of the day.
The film shows her making herself simple, comfortable, practical clothes from garments she's pinched from her boyfriends, while all around her the upper class woman are corsetted and wearing enormous frilly dresses and hats which make them look like wedding cakes. The young Chanel's homemade clothes look thirty years ahead of their time.
She's portrayed as a prickly but sharply intelligent character, going from rags to riches but not without taking advantage of a couple of rich admirers on the way. My favourite quote was when Chanel is asked how old she is and replies, "When I'm bored, I feel ancient" – a fantastic anti-aging tip, I think!
Foyer carpet, Odeon Cinema, Brighton Marina
Went to the cinema this week – the Blonde had given me her free ticket to the new Sandra Bullock romcom. I love the sort of carpets you find in theatres, cinemas and amusement arcades – busily patterned so they don’t show up the dirt, but zany enough to say, ‘Hey, let us entertain YOU!’
There are beautiful specimens in Flickr’s Movie Theater Carpet group. Here are a few more I’ve found:
Very excited – three Torchwood plays this week on Radio 4 just to whet the appetite – and then… Torchwood: Children Of Earth over five nights on BBC 1 next week!
I understand that this might be hell on toast for the unconverted (I wouldn't fancy five hours of Star Trek, for example) but I do love this show, and I'm not normally a sci-fi fan. Doctor Who is pretty good but what I love most about Torchwood is that extraordinary things happen in very ordinary settings (no offence, Cardiff).
Owen and Tosh are no longer with us, and it'll be weird without them, but interesting to see what the new dynamic is. Gwen's husband Rhys is more part of the team, Jack and Ianto are now together, and we meet Jack's daughter!
Ooh and until I saw this bus stop poster, I'd forgotten the new Harry Potter film was nigh – hurrah!
Sarah (here giving you her 'button eyes'), Mister Sarah and I went to an advance screening of Coraline on Saturday, and it was fab – colourful and creepy and full of amazing handmade details, including Althea Crome's unbelievably tiny knitting (see below).
We hadn't realised it was in 3D – we got given the glasses on the way in – and it made the film even more of an adventure. There's a bit in the opening sequence where a needle passes through a piece of fabric and comes straight out of the screen at you – we actually ducked! It's quite scary in parts too – a couple of smaller kids were taken out by their parents when the Other Mother started turning nasty.
For all things Coraline, check out the official Coraline website, and fanblog Evil Buttons. Book-wise, there's a Coraline: A Visual Companion, all about the production of the movie, and of course the original novel and graphic novel.
* SONG OF THE DAY: Johnny Tillotson – Poetry In Motion *
Also:
Empire: Interviews Coraline author Neil Gaiman
Empire: Interviews Coraline director Henry Selick
Movies.Ie: Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French talk about their voice work on Coraline
Village Voice: Stephin Merritt and David Greenspan Conjure an Unusual Tuner for Coraline
…went to see an adaptation of Jane Eyre at the Theatre Royal, Brighton last week. I'm very glad I got to see it – Jane Eyre has been my favourite book since I was a kid and I've never seen it on the stage before – but I can't say I was impressed. Obviously the story had to be abridged, and of course I wasn't expected a whole variety of sets to cover the different places Jane lives in the book, but… it was a bit of a damp squib.
The whole thing took place in one room in Thornfield, important chunks of the story were explained away in a couple of lines of dialogue, it sped along far too fast (the plot should simmer slooooowly), and Peter Amory (Chris Tate from Emmerdale) as Rochester really wasn't very convincing. There were moments of greatness – mainly when one of Charlotte Brontë's original lines was delivered with spirit as part of the dialogue – but I kept being distracted by what was lacking.
Am currently trying to read (I say trying – I've started reading about six books at once, which means I'm making little progress with any of them) Lyndall Gordon's biography, Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life. So far it's a bit dry and wordy, am hoping it'll pick up a bit of speed. I first got into Jane Eyre when I was eight and took the audiobook (read by Dame Wendy Hiller) out of the library – Rochester was my first crush! I borrowed those tapes so many times my Mum threatened to ban them from the house. So I read the book, and I've read it every couple of years since then.
Am interested in getting hold of The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde – a fantasy novel based of the story of Jane Eyre, where characters have the power to go into classic books and interact with the characters. And I should re-read Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys' prequel to Jane Eyre, about the early life of Rochester's first wife, Bertha Mason, who becomes 'the mad woman in the attic'.
There are many other filmed versions of Jane Eyre I've yet to see. There's one starring Samantha Morton and Ciarán Hinds, an older BBC version with Zelah Clarke and Timothy Dalton (although this may be the series I remember watching on Sunday teatimes when I was a kid, it's just that he's not the Rochester I remember – he had black hair), a 1970 version with Susannah York and George C. Scott, the 1943 film starring Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles, and a low-budget 1934 film starring Virginia Bruce and Colin Clive. I got the DVD of Franco Zefirelli's Jane Eyre (with William Hurt and Charlotte Gainsbourg) for my birthday, and I watched it drinking green tea from my Jane Eyre mug. Both were spot-on.
The Scotsman: Jane Eyre, Theatre Royal, Glasgow
Ureader: Peter Amory in Jane Eyre – A Review
Wikipedia: Jane Eyre
TimothyDalton.com: In Search of Thornfield Hall
Thoughts At The Bus Stop 