Craving Fall...

Craving pumpkin carving, warm sweaters, wool socks and hot chocolates? Same. Here are some delicious new Selkie styles to have you all set for sweater season, some gorgeous poetry and some Fall movies. (bottom of page)

Claudio Bertoni’s incredibly romantic, touching poem 

“Para Una Joven Amiga Que Intentó Quitarse La Vida”. 1946

I’d like to be a nest if you were a little bird.

I’d like to be a scarf if you were a neck and were cold.

If you were music, I’d be an ear.

If you were water, I’d be a glass.

If you were light, I’d be an eye.

If you were a foot, I’d be a sock.

If you were the sea, I’d be a beach.

And if you were still the sea, I’d be a fish, and I’d swim in you.

And if you were the sea, I’d be salt.

And if I were salt, you’d be lettuce, an avocado or at least a fried egg.

And if you were a fried egg, I’d be a piece of bread.

And if I were a piece of bread, you’d be butter or jam.

If you were jam, I’d be the peach in the jam.

If I were a peach, you’d be a tree.

And if you were a tree, I’d be your sap…

And I’d course through your arms like blood.

And if I were blood, I’d live in your heart.

The Craft

If you've been a 16-year-old in an all-female friendship group, you'll understand the intricacies of one. A gang can be the most impenetrable support system imaginable. It can also become a living nightmare; a tangle of emotions, under-handed cuts and struggles for recognition perceivable only to those operating on a higher-level of sensitivity or those in the friendships themselves. The Craftrecognises the unbridled power that comes with those friendships. Quite literally, the four can do anything. They make a racist bitch's hair fall out in clumps and scar tissue completely disintegrate. Sure, that power comes from witchcraft but it's about girl power too. It's about what happens when girls have a support group. 

This film understands the scope of that, and so too its flipside. Nothing is as savage as female friends turning on each other at school – worse still when it's three on one. When Nancy and co decide to terrorise Sarah, it's truly hideous. In Sarah's sleep, they come to her, hovering over her bed with vicious taunts. In real life, she's hunted too. "In the old days, if a witch betrayed her coven, they'd kill her," Nancy threatens after bashing down her bathroom door. If you leave a friendship group, god save you. There is nothing as all-consuming as the emotional stress of girls on your back – especially ones that used to have it covered. This four-way undoubtedly paved the way for Mean Girls, building on what Heathers had offered eight years previous with Veronica Sawyer and adding the occult element. Imagine what the Burn Book would've done in the hands of these four.

Brilliantly, the sorcery itself was all based in truth. Fleming hired Wicca consultant Pat Devin, High Priestess of Covenant of the Goddess, to help with the narrative and she made sure the spells were common enough to be found in basic Wicca books and even consulted her Covens on the chants included.

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/vdqmp3/revisiting-the-craft-the-film-that-realised-the-monstrous-power-of-teen-girls

Reality Bites

"Reality Bites was “meta” before the word went mainstream. The film’s heroine is a recent college grad who makes $400 a week while knocking back Diet Cokes and cigarettes, toiling on a documentary that is, in the character’s words, “about people who are trying to find their own identity without having any real role models or heroes or anything.” Childress, meanwhile, was a college student making roughly $500 a week while knocking back Diet Cokes and cigarettes, toiling on a film about the same subject.

When the executive producer Stacey Sher joined the production, she urged Childress to go even more autobiographical. “It’s embarrassing to watch now, to be honest with you, just because it feels like my diary’s being read out loud,” Childress said. Like Lelaina, the writer came from a family of divorce. Childress had also known a guy named Troy Dyer, whose character in the film, played by Ethan Hawke, moonlights as a musician while competing for Lelaina’s affections with an uptight exec played by Stiller. (The real Dyer, who aligned more with Stiller’s character, ended up suing over the use of his name in the film; the suit was later settled.) Childress also had a friend named Sammy—the name of the closeted gay character played by Steve Zahn—who once said, “Evian is naivespelled backwards.” In the finished film, the observation ends up in the mouth of Vickie Miner, the deadpan Gap manager played by Janeane Garofalo."

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/03/reality-bites-captured-gen-x-25-years-later-helen-childress/583870/

Pride and Prejudice, 2005

"Wright found casting of the film to be difficult because he was very particular about "the types of people [he] wanted to work with". While interviewing to direct, he insisted that the actors match the ages of the characters in the novel. Wright specifically cast actors that had rapport on and off screen, and insisted that they partake in three weeks of rehearsal in improvisation workshops. Wright also had to balance who he thought was best for each role with what the producers wanted – mainly a big name attraction. Though Wright had not initially pictured someone as attractive as English actress Keira Knightley for the lead role of Elizabeth Bennet,[19] he cast her after realising that the actress "is really a tomboy [and] has a lively mind and a great sense of humour".[9] Knightley at the time was known for Bend It Like Beckham and the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. She had been an Austen fan since age 7, but initially feared taking the role out of apprehension that she would be doing "an absolute copy of Jennifer Ehle's performance", which she deeply admired. Knightley believed Elizabeth is "what you aspire to be: she's funny, she's witty and intelligent. She's a fully rounded and very much loved character." For the period, the actress studied etiquette, history and dancing but ran into trouble when she acquired a short haircut while preparing for her role in the bounty hunter film Domino.

Bust of Mr. Darcy played by Matthew Macfadyen. Keira Knightley's name recognition allowed the casting of Macfadyen, who was little known internationally.

Webster found the casting of Darcy especially hard due to the character's iconic status and because "Colin Firth cast a very long shadow" as the 1995 Darcy. Wright later commented that his choice of Knightley allowed him to cast comparative unknown Matthew Macfadyen, something that would have been impossible had he chosen a less well-known actress for Elizabeth Bennet.Macfadyen at the time was known for his role in the British television spy series Spooks, but had no recognition internationally. A fan of the actor's television work, Wright called Macfadyen "a proper manly man ... I didn't want a pretty boy kind of actor. His properties were the ones I felt I needed [for Darcy]. Matthew's a great big hunk of a guy.