Lady Parts Episode 1: Mad Max Fury Road

One of the things I've been super excited about this year is starting and developing a podcast with the awesome Aimee Lindorff. We've spent a lot of time planning and getting delayed due to other commitments, but we're here now! 

The podcast is a discussion of women in genre cinema, both in front of and behind the camera. In the first episode, we talk about Mad Max: Fury Road, the new Supergirl TV-series, Simon Pegg, Ghostbusters and Mission Impossible 5. Check it out below and follow us @ladypartspodcas and at www.ladypartspodcast.com!
 

Crescioni FW15

This new lookbook by Crescioni is honestly giving me life right now. It's so final frontier, so cowgirl chic with an emphasis on the chic. Plus the colours look full glorious against the landscapes, popping against sand and skylines. It's basically my fave.

You can view the full Crescioni lookbook here.

  

     

Sunday Short: 'An Object at Rest' by Seth Boyden

It's been a while since I recommended a short film as a part of Sunday Short, but this one was too good to pass by. I've always been pretty partial to inanimate objects being imbued with human characteristics, and this short about the life of a rock is pretty darn magical.

Friday Finds

GEEKERY
Your week in trailers: The End of the Tour looks really interesting. So does Felt. Cosmos Laundromat looks beautifully made.The first teaser for The Good Dinosaur has me pretty stoked. Mistress America looks straight up delightful. Macbeth is probably becoming one of my most anticipated films of the year.

- The Game of Thrones musical is basically amazing.

- Pretty stoked to see Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue DeConnick adapting The Wicked and + the Divine for TV!

- Lumberjanes is being adapted too and all I can think is pleasebegoodpleasebegood.

- These destroyed homes overrun with flowers are giving me a lot of feelings.

#LONGREADS
I'm an enormous Mad Men fan, but even if I wasn't, this piece by the show's creator, Matthew Weiner, on creativity and not hiding the brushstrokes is wonderfully sound advice for any artist.

Kelly Link's introduction to Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber is an awesome exploration of what makes Carter such a formative voice in genre fiction.

I may snap and I move fast

This year is going lightning fast. It's pretty nuts to think we're already checking out at the halfway point. By all accounts, it feels like we're over the hump that, for whatever reason, sat fat and angry at the start of this year. Things seem to be lightening up.

But looking ahead, I'm spending a lot of June tidying things up ready to spend July in America. It's my first time in the country, so I'm tentatively excited for it. Well, maybe a little more than tentatively. Maybe very excited. But nervous too. I've talked before about the fact that I'm a root layer more than a nomad, and this isn't a great big move, but in some ways it feels like it. It's four weeks in another country, bouncing state to state, and that's not always a form I do well in.

I hope I get a taste for it. I'd love to be more inclined that way. To find some traveller blood in me. Shake off this home body.

We'll wait and see, I guess.

Writerly News

So it's been a big few weeks writing-wise for me. One of my YA manuscripts, Agatha Abel Meets Her Maker, was shortlisted for The Text Prize. I didn't win, but even being shortlisted was a pretty wonderful thing.

I've ALSO been shortlisted for the Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction. I don't know if I've won that one yet, but to be shortlisted by authors I have immense respect for, Melissa Lucashenko, Maxine Beneba Clarke and Lorelei Vashti has given me a pretty intense case of feelings.

Of course, awards are a beautiful thing. It's nice to be acknowledged, and even nicer to know that your work has touched someone in a profound enough way to even be shortlisted. That touch is really all we can hope for as writers.

On top of it all, I'm going to be speaking at National Writers' Month's Across State Lines online session at 6pm this Thursday. I'll be doing this alongside some pretty great humans, such as Alex Griffin, Emily Meller, Lucy Nelson, Katerina Bryant, Caitlin Richard and Kaitlyn Plyley. All in all, it should be an interesting panel exploring the different writerly ecosystems of Australian states. 

Hope to see you (well, digitally) there!

Oscars 09

Man, what a year. I don’t think it’s thrown about the same weight as previous years – particularly with the explosion of categories (although some quite overdue – especially supporting actor and actress nods, although dance direction is certainly a dated slot). From sequels to romantic comedies to backstage musicals, literary adaptations, lavish historical features and intimate relationship dramas, there was still a lot to like in the films on show from 1936.

First, the good stuff – a lot of great actors became greater. William Powell, Spencer Tracey, Myrna Loy, Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur all got strong roles that they could sink their teeth into. A lot of the old writers and directors were similarly getting chances on new forms, meeting head strong works and turning them into compelling pictures.

That said, there were a LOT of duds too. Films like the awful General Spanky, Pigskin Parade and x represented the era at its most confused, least coherent and generally most misogynistic and racist. The whole thing gets a bit skin crawly. Even some of the solid films narratively still had sketchy attitudes towards minorities and women, portraying both as generally deceptive, cold or stupid. It can be a bit unpleasant, even with the knowledge that these are old films.

Anyway, let’s have a quick look at the ones to watch :

Three Films to Watch from the Ninth Academy Awards

1.     Dodsworth really took me by surprise. This is an intimate and strangely modern story about a man who retires and takes a trip with his wife to celebrate only to find he and her no longer connect. This film could honestly be made today, nearly shot for shot, word to word, and it would work. The way the two actors portray a couple who were very much in love in their youth but slowly become aware their marriage is over is taut and beautiful and very emotive. Definitely one to check out.

2.       After theThin Man. So I LOVE these movies. William Powell and Myrna Loy slay as a couple of private detectives in love, and this sequel to The Thin Man is totally charming, doing what I always say a sequel should do – deepening the world instead of stretching it.

3.       Libeled Lady. How often do you get a cast like William Powell, Myrna Loy (I love them, okay? LOVE), Spencer Tracey and Jean Harlow with a great script and a funny, delightful plot? Socialite Myrna Loy is suing a newspaper run by Spencer Tracy for defamation of her character and so Tracy hires William Powell to seduce Loy in order to generate some blackmail-worthy material. It’s a total schlocky rom com but it really works as it never treads into some of the uglier behaviour and Powell, awesomely, falls for Loy hard and first. It’s a fun movie and so well-made it’s really worthy of the nods.

(Honourable mentions go to Romeo and Juliet, San Francisco and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, which are all pretty terrific.)

Three to Miss

1.       General Spanky. The American Civil War is experienced through an orphan boy shining shoes about town. My loathing of this film is a little irrational, but I seriously hate it. From the surly star of the picture to the general bigotry of it, the ugliness of the narrative and the silliness of it. I really, really don’t like it and couldn’t recommend not seeing it enough.

2.       Pigskin Parade isn’t an awful film, but it’s a very odd mix of musical, sport film, underdog movie and romantic comedy and it doesn’t work more often than it does.

3.       Banjo onMy Knee. A hillbilly is mistaken for murder. Again, not a terrible film, but it’s strangely paced, pretty sexist, and narratively doesn’t hold together well at all. Definitely not worth the effort it took to find.

I’m actually half way through the tenth year of Oscar nominees, so you can expect that before the end of the month which is pretty cool – if I do say so myself.