Best & Bossiest: Friendship, Films, & Fashion

Ngadi Smart’s outfit by Qin Leng  @ Toronto Street Fashion

• Lian & Quin of Toronto Street Fashion have a great eye for clothes – AND the outfit posts are a mix of film photography & illustration. It’s nice to have a favourite local-ish fashion blog. 
• Cat Power’s “Sun” is streaming on NPR: First Listen. !!! Cat Power is my fav artist since forever & I am relieved that this album has lost most of the bluesy dad influences of the last couple & has some fantastic electronic moments & harder edges. I’d like to mix together the softer moments of Fucked Up’s David Comes to Life with some of the rougher parts of this record – tough & beautiful.

Photo & jewellery by Jillian at The Noisy Plume

• Jillian Lukiwski aka The Motherflippin’ Noisy Plume is a jeweller and a photographer but even if you don’t care about those things, you should read her blog anyway because her writing is formidable. This paragraph on friendship from a recent entry knocked me on my ass, because she is right. My friends astound & revolutionize my life, just like this:

I had such a wildly beautiful epiphany while working in the studio today.  I recently told a friend about a silly little fear I have and her response was, quite simply, “Do not be afraid.”  It was such a straightforward response it nearly shocked my boots off.  Let me tell you what I realized!  A good friend does not encourage, nourish or foster your insecurities and fears.  A good friend tears those nasty weeds up by the roots and with a most fractious spirit, she casts them into a burning barrel, pours kerosene all over them and drops a lit match on the mess.  Then she stands there beside you and makes you watch that awful crap burn away into ash, wind and nothingness.  That’s what a good friend does.  I just thought I’d tell you.  Consider yourself informed.

• I keep returning to The Movie Title Stills Collection – nerd out about type & film simultaneously. I wish it were possible to search by title or director, though.

I Wake Up Screaming @ Movie Title Stills Collection

• I have such affection for Sarah Polley – from her childhood Road to Avonlea days to Away from Her, which she directed. The cover she sings of “Courage” in The Sweet Hereafter, seeing her onscreen with Debbie Harry in My Life Without Me.This week she posted a blog on the NFB website about her newest film, Stories We Tell. I’m excited to see it.

My siblings began telling the story to their friends. Journalists who heard the story from various sources began calling me and asking me to be interviewed about this discovery. Everyone who heard the story seemed to want to own it. Up until then many people had mused aloud to me that the story would make a great film. I disagreed. While it had huge relevance and emotional impact for the people close to it, I felt that this story was in fact quite common. I felt I had seen this film before. However, the process of watching a story take on a life of its own, mutate, and change in so many other people’s words fascinated me.  And as the story was told, or perhaps because the story was told – it changed. So I decided to make a film about our need to tell stories, to own our stories, to understand them, and to have them heard.

• My wishes keep coming true – Claire’s “Embarrassing directionless rant about body requirements and fitness“ is just the kind of discussion I’d hoped to generate when I wrote about health & exercise. I like the part that talks about how we’re taught to think that being interested in sports means that you are not interested in book smarts & that you are brainlessly trying to conform to mainstreamed ideas of beauty. I remember internalising these kinds of messages as a young lady & it’s helpful to think about how they might be working against me now.

The End @ Movie Title Stills Collection