Friday Finds

- These aerial shots of Botswana are stunning.These are too.

- These 50 costume tests from famous films are awesome too.

- Upcoming genre movies that aren't sequels, remakes or reboots. Adding a lot of these to my to-watch list right now!

- The Mondo Captain America: The Winter Soldier posters are pretty cool! (Total aside, but I got to see a preview screening of this on Monday night, and it was really, really great. Like. Everyone should see it immediately, great).

- What's your Victorian pen name? I'm Simon Oliver!

- And to take you out for the weekend, a supercut of Selina Kyle awkwardly meeting normal people in Veep.

A Book a Week: 'The Outsiders' by S.E. Hinton (12/52)

Ponyboy Curtis is the baby of an Oklahoma greaser gang. Rough boys with rougher pasts, the greasers are the scourge of the city, at war with the richer Socs. Ponyboy quickly finds himself in over his head when his friend, Johnny, murders one of the Socs and the boys end up on the run, jeopardising not only their relationships and families, but maybe even their lives.

I got pretty swept up in this. S.E. Hinton has an excellent sense of compelling prose, especially given she was so young when she wrote this! The relationships are realistic and charming, and Ponyboy is a well drawn character who you empathise with almost from the get-go. He's a sweet, lost boy in a city full of them, and that comes across so beautifully in the tease out of this. That said, some of the plot points hit me out of left field and seemed, well, unrealistic, and I'm not sure yet if it's because I'm unfamiliar with the era or if they really did just come out of nowhere (burning down school, I'm looking at you).

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, and it makes me really interested to read her later work to see how she progressed as an author.

3.5 out of 5 beat up copies of Gone with the Wind.

Bridge & Burn FW 2014

I've never been much of a camper, being way too inclined towards cleanliness and warm water than that sort of thing usually allows. This collection by Bridge & Burn though almost has me changing my mind. With its sweet silhouettes and cozy coats, it's a pretty awesome range of clothing that makes me want to leave the city and head out into the wild. You can view (and buy) the collection over on their website.

I'm so Fancy

March has been such a weird month for me, scaffolded by family tragedies and traumas. It's not that it hasn't had its upsides. I've finished editing my manuscript, been shortlist for the Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction and had a piece published and another one teed up for publication. It's pretty exciting professionally, it's just a shame that the balance has been so off this month.

Anyway, have a mixtape! It's full of my fave jams from this month, so I hope you enjoy them too.

Sunday Short: The Weather Inside by Mireille Juchau

In the months after Pip’s funeral your mother started carrying the umbrella. Sometimes the sky was tremendously clear. Blue as a borage, threatening nothing. You didn’t like to see her in the town this way, her face so deeply shaded that it looked as if the umbrella was walking on its own. Sometimes she arrived home with her hair quite wet, and the weather dry, quietly folding the brolly into itself. Your father was often away, following the honeyflow. Ironwood at Caster’s Creek, Salvation Jane on Hussaini’s acres. In the chemist two women watched your mother through plate glass. Is it her skin she’s saving or something else? they asked. You had to run out so you wouldn’t shout, Meg’s Ventolin and Prednisone rattling in a paper bag. You know, it doesn’t make you invisible, says Meg of your silence, folded around you for four months now. It’s the opposite. You and your mother are drawing attention. Meg inhales and wheezes. She sketches her trees bent over with their top branches growing like roots into the ground.

Man, this is close to a perfect short story for me. Deeply emotive, sweet and biting all at once, The Weather Inside traces a small family through the seasons with one of the children very sick. Mirieille Juchau does a wonderful job of capturing the tenderness, the pain and those small, happy moments when you can almost forget. It's a lovely, lovely piece of writing.

You can read 'The Weather Inside' over on the Meanjin website. 

 

Friday Finds

Darwin Deez is kind of my jam at the moment, and this video clip is both hilarious and turning the creep factor up a notch.

- These photographs by Madame Peripetie may be the best things I've seen all week. Or maybe these ones are.

- These photos of exotic dancers from the 1890s are pretty amazing too.

- Avengers: Age of Ultron set pictures! Ahhh! Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are two of my favourite Marvel characters, so I'm a little delirious with excitement to see them appear in the MCU.

- 25 essential books about Americans in Paris.

- PING PONG CAT!!! (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Family Affairs FW 2014

Ah! I am close to obsessed with Family Affairs FW 2014 collection! It totally reminds me of Regency-era dresses and the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. The dresses are particularly fabulous, and I may or may not (totally may) be fantasising about the blue maxi below. It is divine. You can check out the full collection over at the Family Affairs website.