The Check-up

This new comic was inspired by a recent check-up for my congenital heart condition plus the preceding few weeks of attempted healthy living😉

30 Film Females: Little Women (1994)

One of the great tragedies of non-contemporary North American children’s literature is the [spoiler warning!] death of Beth March in Little Women (along with that of Matthew Cuthbert in Anne of Green Gables, which has been the subject of a previous blog).  The former has been adapted multiple times, with the big screen debut of a young Clare Danes in the 1994 version plus a spirited period performance by the renowned Generation X-er Winona Ryder as big sister and main protagonist Jo.

After more than two years and around forty blog posts, I’ve finally reached then end of this celebration of 30 Film Females (though am still to post a last summary).  I’ve focused on female characters and the actors playing (or voicing) them and now feel I should redress the balance, as illustrated by the doodle below.  To paraphrase Isaac Newton, acknowledging his debt to other scientists, “if we have made great films, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”.  Here are a few other women filmmakers you might like to explore: directors Kathryn Bigelow and Gurinder Chadha, screenwriters Nora Ephron and Abi Morgan, composers Debbie Wiseman and Rachel Portman, costume designers Jenny Beavan and Sandy Powell.  Feel free to let me know who you’d recommend…

30 Film Females: Clueless (1995)

I graduated from high school twenty-odd years ago – right around the time the film Clueless hit the cinemas – and am thankful I’m not there now.  Though I did make some lifelong friends, including one who later introduced me to my now husband.  Back in the mid-nineties we had grunge, New Labour and Princess Diana papped amidst land mines. The youth of today have to put up with grime, Brexit and selfies of Kim Kardashian’s buttocks.  Anyway, Alicia Silverstone and gal pals have super fun in this endlessly quotable contemporisation of Jane Austen’s Emma, from which I’ve paraphrased the illustrated quote.

30 Film Females: A League Of Their Own (1992)

It’s been great to see so many Team GB women excel at the Rio Olympics.  My three-year old’s favourites so far have been “horse dancing” (dressage) and “jumping” (trampoline).  I’m intrigued to hear that Olympic baseball will be making a comeback at the 2020 games in Tokyo.  One of my memorable movies from early nineties, possibly because I’d been on the school rounders team, is the comedy-drama A League Of Their Own.  An enthusiastic ensemble cast – including Geena Davis, Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell – tells the real-life story of the All-American Girls Professional Girls Baseball League that was established during World War Two.  Aside from the obvious comparisons between Madonna and Marilyn Monroe, my pun-inclined brain always flags up the song Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend (actually from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes).

Honourable mentions for 1992: a truly sinister Rebecca De Mornay in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.  Also, Demi Moore gives good legal defense in A Few Good (Wo)Men.

Sci-Fi Cambridge

I’ve just rediscovered some drawings I did for the 2009 UniCon science fiction convention organised by friends in Cambridge.  They were published in the progress reports and programme book and the originals were framed as gifts for the guests of honour.  I’ve posted a couple of these before separately, but though it’d be nice to gather them together.