Iris – Film Review
Went to see a documentary about Iris Apfel, the flamboyant 93-year-old style icon and fashion collector from New York with an outrageously individual dress sense.
I’ve seen Apfel’s glorious over-the-top outfits in various publications, yet what comes through the most in this warmly made film is the personality of this singular woman: down-to-earth, blunt, sharp and quick-witted. The camera follows her around the various stores where she rummages for treasures, at fashion shows and museum exhibitions, and at home which she shares with her 100-year-old husband Carl – in a way the film is a very sweet love story.
It also looks back at her career as an interior decorator (her clients included the White House, among others), and captures some of the process by which she assembles her creations: it is, Iris explains, all gut and instinct, putting things together which look like they’ve been created as one thing, rather than something that looks put together. She loves colour; black, she says dismissively, is not a style, it’s a uniform. Take that, black-loving Melbourne! I love black myself, but sometimes it’s outright depressing to walk into a store and see nothing but black, grey and navy.
Iris’ love of fashion and beautiful things and the sheer joy she takes in them was really inspiring to watch. She doesn’t sugarcoat over the tough aspects of the old age, the physical frailty and the periods of exhaustion that follow an activity, yet she’s determined to be in the world and do as much as she’s able to. If I make it into my 90s I can only hope to have the same spirit and love of life.
The Fabulous Baker Boys – Film Review
Another DVD from Mum’s collection. I love films that revolve around music, and this one is about two brothers, Jack and Frank (real-life brothers Jeff and Beau Bridges), who make ends meet playing piano together, a double lounge act they’ve kept up for over ten years.
Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult – Book Review
Jodi Picoult’s novels are my comfort reading, probably in the same way Agatha Christie’s crime novels are. By all rights I should find them overly sentimental and cloying, but there’s just something fundamentally likable, cosy and wholesome about her style – even when she writes about murder, incest or prison rape – and her strong sense of family and friendship is always very appealing.
Phillip Island
Had a nice getaway at Phillip Island. Yesterday, it rained the entire two hours it took me to get there (managing to drown out Guns N’ Roses at one point), so I didn’t rate my chances for nice walks the next day, and consoled myself with the thought that at least I upgraded to a suite with an enormous spa bath (it was awesome). But miraculously, Melbourne weather for once didn’t behave like a bitch! Still cold and windy, but plenty of sunshine.
The Nobbies is one of my favourite walkways in Victoria. The coast in this area is ragged and dramatic and covered with weird succulent-type vegetation which creates an interesting texture of greens and reds.
I’ve never seen them on the island before, but it must be the time of year for geese. My Mum has horror stories about being terrorised by the village geese as a child, so they make me nervous too despite being like 1/10 my size
So much foam it looks like white paint spillage…
Smith Beach looks nothing like it does in the summer, except for a couple of crazy surfers who’d probably go for a swim at the North Pole too. The nice thing about visiting it in winter is that, when you’re not distracted by the beachy things, you can actually look around the place and notice things you don’t when you’re busy getting a tan.
I like to call the big red rock a Hippo Head
Not to sound pretentious or anything, but I really think that rocks are nature’s abstract art
This was a totally random surprise – I was driving back to Melbourne and made an impulsive turn for something else and found this cute little dock instead
Favourite Rocks
I’ve been lucky enough to see some amazing rock formations on my trips in Australia and overseas:
Delicate Arch in the Arches National Park, Utah, USA
Goosenecks State Park, Utah, USA
Monument Valley, Utah-Arizona border, USA
Wave Rock, Western Australia. Totally worth the 8-hour return trip from Perth.
Cappadocia, Turkey
If you do one hot air balloon ride in your life, this is the place to do it. It just looks like it’s been sculpted by Gaudi.
Purnululu National Park, Kimberley, Western Australia
Moeraki Boulders, New Zealand
Antelope Canyon, Arizona, USA
I can’t believe this place wasn’t even on our official tour itinerary! It turned out to be one of the highlights.
Bryce Canyon, Utah, USA
Or possibly an alien planet.
Remarkable Rocks, Kangaroo Island, South Australia
Remarkable Rocks, Kangaroo Island, South Australia
Twelve Apostles, Victoria, Australia
Well technically not twelve anymore…
The Three Sisters, Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia. It was one of those perfect moments when you arrive at the famous lookout and it looks 100% like it should.
Raft Point, Kimberley, Western Australia
Quote of the Day
Vanity Fair by William Thackeray is one of my favourite novels, and its last paragraph is one of my favourite conclusions to a book.
Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied? – Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
The very last sentence is memorable enough on its own, as it reminds the reader of the theatricality of the whole thing, but what sticks in my mind is how sad the ending actually is. That despite the fact that merely a few pages before we got our supposedly happy ending, complete with the dramatic last-minute dash and declaration of love from our heroine to the man who had hopelessly loved her for years. I love the BBC adaptation with Natasha Little as Becky Sharp (unlike the Reese Witherspoon version, it didn’t sugarcoat the fact that Becky is a horrible person), but I think it loses a lot by skipping over the sadness of the hero no longer caring for his most-cherished prize.
The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg – Book Review
I don’t know if it can be called a subgenre, but there’s certainly a kind of scenario that often appears in fiction: a bunch of people with disparate personalities and lives, who share some kind of common past, reunite for an occasion that ends up changing their lives, with revelations and much soul-searching along the way. This book was about a group of former classmates who attend their fortieth high school reunion.
Artwork in progress
It’s been almost five months, but I’ve finally finished the templates for the figures.
It took me a couple of false starts to figure out how to approach this. At first I simply tried tracing the figures in Illustrator, but the original image was too pixellated, so everything blurred together when I zoomed in and I ended up with a bunch of ugly blobs. Then I decided to print out the enlarged figures on A3 sheets, trace over them with a pen, scan the drawings and trace over the pen lines in Illustrator. That resulted in more detailed figures, but they still looked too blobby. So the final solution was to redraw the figures from scratch, so that the planes of colour would look crisp, clean and angular. Sometimes there’s just no taking shortcuts unfortunately.
I am happy with the outcome though, let’s see how long it takes me to actually execute this in fabric! I might have to simplify this if the detailing is too small and fiddly.
Girl, Interrupted – Film Review
yggdrasille.com 