Wednesday 25 August 2010

Fall Dresses

The weather has been pretty miserable and changeable for the past few weeks, switching from bright sunny to black clouds and pelting rain and back again. The weekend was spent with Violet and was glorious. Since then...not so much. Anyway, the blogs and photography make me dream of a crisp autumn with bright foliage and orange sunny days so here are my Modcloth dream dresses for fall:-










Tuesday 24 August 2010

Am I Becoming A Tourist?


I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy. -Anais Nin


All the things I love and get geeky seem to be about are the stories that people tell and the journey those stories take to be told. For example a few months ago I listened to the musical Spring Awakening for the first time and to say it affected me would be an understatement, it got put on immediate repeat.

This it turns out it just the beginning, I am now a huge fan of the people who created the show and acted in it and it feels like tumbling down a rabbit hole trying to keep up and find out all the other things that they have been involved with. It continues to be a fantastic way of finding new music and stories and lives being lived but as much as I have connected to it and to other people through the Internet and am so glad it exist it has caused me to question something. How much this enthusiasm for something such as this is actually a stunting force in my life if I find it has become something that is not shared by those directly in my life? And is the observance and admiration of people and their work only beneficial if I take that energy and enthusiasm and fuel it to do something myself in that field? Can you get so lost in the joy of something created by others that you lose the opportunity to do something yourself?


Do you find that enthusiasm for something brings you together or sets you apart? If you find your ecstasy in the deeds in others is it merely an opiate for what if clear headed you could achieve yourself? I chase the creeping shadows of my depression away with the stories of others but does it leave me with no story of my own?


1
Oddbill

Wednesday 18 August 2010

Skeletons

Last night I went to a movie with my friend M, it was called Skeletons and I knew next to nothing about it except that he really wanted to see it. It was interesting, a gentle, slow but involving film dealing with the secrets people keep. If you get a chance to see it, and as a result of there not being many prints available the odds may not be good, I think you should.



Photo from here





Friday 13 August 2010

My Humblest Apologies For Being A Bad Blogger

There was a horrible creeping moment when I logged in and saw my last entry was in May AND that the lovely Nicki has left a comment telling me she had done a wonderful, kind thing for me! (Thank you so much, I am so sorry I have been so remiss as to not be around to appreciate this in a timely manner!)

I don't know what happened, I was working on a review post having watched Taking Woodstock and it just never got finished. Time went past; I went to work, I did some sewing, I went to Glastonbury, I went to see my friend, I watched movies and went walking in the glorious sun (that lasted all of 2 weeks and now the sky is full of rain) and I stayed away from the computer. The reasons I started doing this are still here and the blog world is still a part of how I want to grow and change, I know I'm very new at this and I know I'm not doing the best job but I am back! Thanks for sticking with me x

Friday 7 May 2010

Movie Questions

1. My absolute favorite movie of all time is:- I'm not really big on the idea of favourite movies. I have so many that I love in different ways!

2. My favorite movie as a child was probably either Home Alone or Anne Of Green Gables!

3. The best movie quote ever is:

Norah: There's this part of Judaism that I really like. Tikun Olam. It says that the world is broken into pieces and everyone has to find them and put them back together.

Nick: Maybe we don't have to find the pieces. Maybe we are the pieces.

4. My favorite actress is hmm... so many:- Amber Tamblyn, Kat Dennings, Kristen Vangness, Bette Davis, Gene Tierney, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Kristen Wiig.....lots of favourites!

5. The movie I could watch over and over is Empire Records.

6. My favorite movie genre is I guess a mix of things, mainly drama, independently produced and coming of age movies.

7. A movie I'd like to watch this weekend is Taking Woodstock

From Belen's lovely blog - here



http://kingsheepblog.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/halloween-destination-woodstock/


Thursday 6 May 2010

I have been playing with polyvore again...

For a trip to see A Chorus Line tomorrow night starring the lovely Drew Mconie:-


For dressing up like Rachel Berry on a sunny day:-

For a day in Paris or New York:-
Pretty work clothes:-

Thursday 29 April 2010

Blue Wind

I haven't posted in so long and I'm sorry about that. I've mentioned before my issues in the past with depression and most of the time I feel that it IS in the past. Sometimes, however, it creeps back in; all the bad feelings and thoughts. It is all I can do to try and keep them from consuming the ground that I have won from it. It's been a .....dark couple of weeks but the slipping feeling is getting less and less.

Also in the mean time one the things that has happened was me turning into something of a Gleek! I never really watched the first part of the season but the back nine episodes have got me tuning in and it has nothing whatsoever to do with this guy...... honest!




(or the fact that these two are very cute on the show and off it)
All pictures from here
http://fuckyeahjonathangroff.tumblr.com/


Plus they got me addicted to listening to this:-




1. http://www.umass.edu/rso/guild/spring%20awakening.jpg
2. http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q286/punbandhu/SAwallpaper2.jpg

Friday 16 April 2010

Spotlight Saturday

In honour of the fact the Miss V, Puppy and I are going to see this fab band tonight I would like to sing the praises of........IDLEWILD.

Made up of Roddy Woomble, Rod Jones, Colin Newton, Allan Stewart and Gareth Russell, Idlewild are a Scottish band that formed in 1995, albeit with a slightly varied line-up. Named after the quiet meeting place of Anne and Diana in Anne Of Green Gables. They have released 7 albums over the past 12 years and it was The Remote Part that caught my attention. You see, every Friday night for two years Miss V and I would go dancing with our assorted friends to an indie night around the corner from where we lived (ah student days) and autumn of 2002 one song would be played every week (mainly because we requested it!) called American English...





from here

There is a lot to say about this band and how I feel about them but after due consideration I think it's best to post a lot of videos and listen to a lot of music!!!

This was released on the same album:-

from here


And a few early ones (Seriously this band has Gertrude Stein as a part of their bridge!)

from here







from here


from here

From the The Remote Part




from here

From Warnings/Promises




from here

And from Post Electric Blues




from here

Just pretty pictures for this one but an awesome song none the less:-

from here

Weekend Plans

Since the weather has been so nice and I have a weekend planned with Miss V I thought I would put together a polyvore wish list. In reality it's going to a lot more of a jeans based outfits but I can dream! What about you?


Shopping Round Town

Saturday Night Out


Hangning Out At The Park
My profile

Saturday 10 April 2010

Spotlight Saturday


Joe Anderson

Born 26th March, 1982, this English actor is probably best know for his portrayal of Max Carrigan in Across The Universe.
His first major role was in the odd but interesting film Silence Becomes You with Alicia Silverstone and Sienna Guillory, This is a very pretty, if overly attempting mystical story of two sisters brought up in almost isolatation, lost in the world their father created for them and the stranger they bring into the house with a clear purpose that gets muddled along the way. Then came playing Jane Austen's brother in Becoming Jane and Peter Hook in the wonderful film Control, which is about Ian Curtis and Joy Division. Anton Corbjin's film is wonderful, sad, intense and haunting with stand out performances by Sam Reily and Samantha Morton and the director's history as a still photographer results in some the most beautiful representations of Macclesfield. The black and white format adds the bleakness of the lives being lead and at the same time captures perfectly the grace and beauty which makes their music so enduring.
Across The Universe by contrast is a colour explosion and Joe portrays the enthusiam and chaos of Max who is part of the generation who embraced the freedom and insanity of the 60's while showing the price paid by those who were enlisted to the Vietnam War. It is Max and Jude's relationship that stands out in the film to me, the friendship that springs naturally and means so much to both of them. Since then Mr Anderson (yes, I had to say it) has done horror movies, The Ruins and The Crazies, the Hilary Swank bio-pic Amelia, a heist move High Life, an action-comedy Rogues Gallery with Ellen Barkin, Zach Galifianakis and Emilie de Ravin and a road movie called The 27 club about a rock star whose best friend and lead singer has just committed suicide and who goes on a road trip with a checkout boy and a fan in order to reach the funeral. He is currently filming Flutter with Billy Zane and Laura Fraser.

Also possibly working on being a director? :-

JA - I’m a big fan (of the horror genre), but I’ve also of late been getting really annoyed with the whole genre – why am I not being disturbed? I’m being disgusted a lot of the time, and I cringe a little bit, but I’m not really deeply being affected by what I’m seeing. So consequently I’ve set out to write my own psychologically disturbing thing for myself. It’s sort of a pet project that spawned out of doing research for things like The Crazies – just watching horror movie after horror movie, and asking “how I can change this and get back to where we were?” It’s such a great medium for a first time director as well because you can have a human aspect to it and use the cinematic medium to tell a story, but you have to get it right or there won’t be any jumps or anything. Also, it’s very easy to shoot something on a video camera and do a sort of Paranormal Activity type movie, but I think the genre deserves a little more respect than that to a certain degree. It’s an exciting challenge.

quote from here, an excellent recent interview with Joe by Michael Holder









1. http://www.last.fm/music/Joe+Anderson/+images/2339433
2. http://www.brandimills.com/blog/tag/the-big-lebowski/
5. http://www.screenrush.co.uk/film/galerievignette_gen_cfilm=136101&cmediafichier=19178791.html
The rest are of unknown source. If you know or can claim them then please let me know so I can credit you.

Friday 9 April 2010

A Musing

It is funny how living in the city makes you so aware of the coming of the spring.

Before I moved here I lived surrounded by green fields and never noticed the changing of the seasons as keenly as I do now. Maybe it is that the tiny buds of green are so stark a contrast to the concrete but the darkened courtyard at work is creeping towards the spring and on the bus ride to work shocks of white and pink are waving in the morning air of redbrick suburbia.





.


1. http://weheartit.com/entry/1880691
2. http://weheartit.com/entry/1894365
3. http://weheartit.com/entry/1890031

Tuesday 6 April 2010

Because Seven Is A Good Number

I found this on Amore and Chocolate's very lovely blog and gave it some thought.

  • Seven Things That Scare You:
  1. spiders
  2. lifts/elevators
  3. social interaction
  4. blood and gore (am very squemish)
  5. talking to people on the phone
  6. getting sick again
  7. bugs

  • Seven Things You Like The Most:
  1. being with my friends, especially Violet
  2. watching my favourite tv shows
  3. curling up and reading
  4. sunshine/the summer/the beach
  5. weekends with my family
  6. walks in the park
  7. seeing new movies

  • Seven Important Things In Your Room:
  1. computer
  2. sewing machine
  3. my books and notebooks
  4. dvd collection
  5. polaroids of friends and family
  6. scrapbook from summer abroad
  7. bed - it's creaky and old but I love my sleep!

  • Seven Random Facts About You:
  1. I like noticing actors in random roles and enjoy seeing their careers progress.
  2. I think this ^^^^ is a fun useless thing to do but useless unless I become a casting agent.
  3. I think I should have been born in America, I worked there for two summers and felt more at home than this country.
  4. I went on a really good night out at a rock club on thursday with two of my best mates .
  5. When I get nervous I speak (unconciously) with an American accent.
  6. I'm a big big doctor who fan, also criminal minds, supernatural, freaks and geeks, carnivale, and many more.
  7. I hate driving on motorways.

  • Seven Things You Plan To Do Before You Die:
  1. become more accomplished at dressmaking
  2. go on a road trip around America
  3. read all the books I can
  4. have a really pretty and productive garden
  5. have an outlet for my wish to dance
  6. go to Paris with Violet
  7. live up to Emerson's definition of sucess

  • Seven Things That Attract You To Someone:
(not sure if this means attract as a crush or attracts as a 'ooh that person seems nice I want to go and talk to him/her' so I'm going with the latter!)
  1. geekiness - if you are enthusiastic about something I'm curious
  2. reading or more broadly the whole shared interest thing
  3. kindness and consideration for others
  4. nice hips, not a requirement but some men just have great hips!
  5. a self-awareness and acceptance with a wish to challenge themselves
  6. an interesting laugh, it's the first thing I noticed about Miss V
  7. an open mind

  • Seven Attractive Celebrities:
  1. Matthew Gray Gubler
  2. Zooey Deschanel
  3. Tim Roth
  4. Kat Dennings
  5. Bryan Dick
  6. Joe Anderson
  7. Lee Pace

Saturday 3 April 2010

Spotlight Saturday

Wonderfalls


Do you like Pushing Daises? Did you fall in love with the Pie-maker, the dead girl named Chuck, Olive Snook and Private Detective Emerson Cod? Well let me suggest to you it's predecessor - Wonderfalls.


Bryan Fuller's earlier project went the way of cancellation long before Pushing Daises was put into candy coloured existence and yet PD came from the spark of a potential plot line involving a man who could wake the dead. Wonderfalls is set on the US side of Niagara Falls (but filmed on the Canadian side shhhhush!), it follows the life of Jaye Tyler and her loving, over-achieving, pushy family. Well meaning as they are Jaye has taken her Ivy league philosophy degree and general frustration with the world and run...as far as her tourist shop employment and trailer park home will let her. The show starts with the day a little mushed face lion talks to her, and follows the twisted paths that he and all the inanimate objects that talk lead her on. She never means well and yet things always end up being for the best, much to Jaye's annoyance. Caroline Dhavernas (pronounced Caro"lean"Da-ver-nas) is wonderful as Jaye, you feel her frustration, her fears for her sanity, fear her sharpness and yet still identify with her. She is not an easy character but she is a wonderful one.

The characters surrounding her are as well detailed as she is, reveling in an oddness that seems perfectly natural given the extremity of Jaye's perception. Her method of interaction is both charming and concerning and one of the people glad to be trailing in her wake is Eric Gotts (Tyron Leitso) , the man who has just pressed the ejector seat to his life after coming to Niagara on his honeymoon only to catch his wife being unfaithful. Mahandra (Tracey Thoms) is Jaye's wonderful, brutally honest best friend, Sharon (Katie Finneran) is her closeted, lawyer older sister, Aaron (Lee Pace - the Pie-maker himself) is her perceptive, concerned brother and her parents Karen and Darrin Tyler (Diana Scarwid and William Sadler) who are mainly confused by all their children's behaviour.

It was a great show, cancelled before it even had a chance. Thankfully now available on dvd!


Here are some quotes :-

  • Karen: Your sister's not a cold-blooded murderer. She's never been a planner.
  • Gretchen: Did you end up over-educated and unemployable like you said in the yearbook?
  • Jaye: Yep.
  • Mahandra: Disappointing your family is an extreme sport for you
  • Aaron: Meaninglessness in a universe that has no meaning — that I get. But meaninglessness in a universe that has meaning... what does it mean?!
  • Jaye: She's nice. We should take her clubbing.
  • Mahandra: ...baby seals?
  • Bianca: Your home is a trailer. Don't you see the beautiful poetry in that? It's a thing that's been designed to go someplace, and yet the hitch isn't hooked up to anything. So it just sits here, never living up to it's potential... but never in any danger of breaking down either.
  • Jaye: [resigned] I don't have a choice; I'm a puppet. The universe just sticks its hand up my butt, and if I don't dance, people get hurt!
1 http://kihm2.wordpress.com/2007/11/29/wonderfalls/
2 http://lettersfromlouis.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/as-melhores-series-canceladas/

3 http://www.wvah.com/programs/wonderfalls/leepace.shtml

Wednesday 31 March 2010