by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

10 New Year wishes for my 5-year-old

Eight out of ten ain’t half bad. As wishes go, failing to watch Ratatouille I can give a pass to (especially since you’ve seen more films in the cinema in one year than ever before) and not letting me brush your hair, well… there are worse things.

So given that the other eight wishes – all of them endless, forever wishes apart from WDW and we had a ROLLICKING time – are going as strong as I could hope for, what else is there left to hope for?

When it comes to you there is always  more.

1. I wish for you to keep surprising me. I mean, it was no surprise to me that you had a spectacular time at Walt Disney World, but every day you managed to do something unexpected – liking a ride I didn’t think you would, bravely agreeing to do something that scared you, playing brilliantly with your cousins. And really it was the trip to Stockholm that was full of little joys; it was great to know that you could get as much pleasure out of a city trip as we could, that you enjoyed exploring and tea shops and the unusual (that, in fact, you’re more like me than I thought, at times).

2. I wish for you to continue fighting your fears. I know that you find the unexpected difficult sometimes; you’re already better at being brave at your age than I was. But there are some times when I know you’re keeping yourself from something you’d love because you’re nervous about what might scare you – even for a second. I was majorly impressed that you kept going on the Nemo ride despite Bruce (even more so that by the fourth ride, you kept your eyes open), but I look forward to a day when you will judge which film you want to watch, book you want to read, place you want to visit and ride you want to go on more by level of interest than by likelihood of not being scared. There’s a world of enjoyment out there for you, and I promise you that sometimes, to slightly redirect the words of the man himself, being scared out of your pants may be the best thing in the world for you.

3. I wish for you to continue being brilliant at making friends. I’m sorry it took so long to have a proper playdate with your bestie. She’s awesome, and there will be many more, I promise.

4. I wish for you to lose that sense of embarrassment! It shocked me when I realised you meant it that you were bashful and embarrassed whenever anyone talked about you. I’ve always considered my overly honed sense of personal humiliation my greatest weakness. I simply do not want you to inherit it. So please – be like your dad. Give not one flying… fart… what anyone says about you. Because you are the best.

5. I wish for you to unleash that creativity more than ever. You come up with the best, maddest, funniest most bonkers stories. I simply insist that you keep them coming. And I shall uphold our deal: when I come up with an idea, I’m free to write it, draw it and play with it any way I like. And when it’s your idea, it’s your intellectual property, no matter how frustrating I find it that you won’t let me develop it. Humph.

6. I wish for you to stop licking our hands and faces. Seriously, kid, it’s revolting. And while we’re at it, could the foot-tickling go on hold? Ta.

7. I wish for you to keep being delightfully affectionate. In line with number 4, I’m dreading the day that cuddles and kisses start to dry up and start being embarrassing. For now, I am taking full advantage of being carpeted with snuggles and I do not wish it to stop. Also, you can keep telling me you love me and you’ll stay with me forever; I mean, in the fullness of time I shall want you to be independent and want to leave me, for your own good, but in the meantime I am very happy to be clung to and generally adored. As you were.

8. I wish for you to keep growing like a weed in the sun. You shot up 10cm betweeen March and December! Your legs are just like your dad’s – long, lean and always tripping over themselves. You are so outrageously strong. I love it, I admire it, I’m a little jealous of it.

9.I wish for us to travel again this year – perhaps nearer and more cheaply, but for us to have some sort of adventure together and you to experience some more new things and discover fresh likes, dislikes and interests. I’m keeping fingers crossed for the trip we talked about in the summer – a new way of travelling for us as a family too, so let’s wait and see!

10. Finally, I wish for you to be ever more you, a simply wonderful person whom I consider myself privileged to know. You constantly make me want to do better for you, and I know you enjoy hearing how proud you make us. In keeping with my theme of finding the value in myself and others, I hope we three continue to constantly inspire each other to show the best of ourselves to each other and to the world. And that we continue to feel safe disclosing and battling the worst of ourselves, too – which might even be the more valuable bit.

Happy new year, Pickleface.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

My word of the year for 2016

Every year, I read a plethora of posts that say “I don’t do New Year’s resolutions” and then go on to list New Year’s resolutions. Hell, I’ve probably written one before.

I think the problem is that the format of the resolution sounds like putting pressure on oneself – “this year I will lose arbitrary amount of weight as if each lb taken away signifies 1lb of added happiness”. There’s a negativity about it, a beating of the self with the pointy stick of “why haven’t you done this already”. It’s a checklist, rather than a spur for growth.

The thing is,  the changing of the calendar is as good a time as any to get your thoughts in order. No, you don’t have to do a damn thing just because it’s January 1st. Neither does it make it any less of a resolution if you make it on June 17th. But emotionally, I think it is easier to allow yourself to be carried on the tide of hope that inevitably wells up at this time of year. The days begin to lengthen again, we spend weeks correcting ourselves every time we write down the date, and it just seems to be a serendipitous moment to do a bit more brain training.

This is why I like to set myself a theme, rather than specific goals. For one, some goals can be forced but some depend on the right opportunity presenting itself, and the resolution is more about the groundwork – being ready to seize that moment – than about the moment itself. For the last few years I’ve sought to develop mindsets, rather than attain specific rungs on my mental ladder. So for each year, I’ve assigned a word, and let that word be the theme that guides me, and that I can come back to when I feel stuck.

In 2013, I was feeling a little scared and set in my ways. So I chose Decisiveness, and I changed jobs and took a new career path which has helped me learn a lot. In 2014, Creativity ruled the roost; I started to share more of my writing and drawing online, and I found that each time you do it the walls do come down a little more and it becomes easier. In 2015, the year of Asking, I applied for and received funding for an art course, negotiated some things at work I would usually find difficult and, crucially, learned when I could ask, but also when I didn’t need to anymore.

And these things are cumulative. I shared more stories, and more art and came up with better creative ideas in the year after I made Creativity my guiding principle, because I’d exercised the muscle and it was working more smoothly. My decision-making has been better this year than the last two; it will continue to improve, I’m sure. I speak up more now than I did at the beginning of the year. So, the time has come to choose the word that I think will pick up these three strands and continue to pull them along, while giving me new challenges.

That word?

Value.

I frequently underestimate mine and, frankly, I’m not sure I always see it in other people as much as I could or should. It could be my own financial value, or it could be the emotional or practical value provided by another, but more than that I think it’s understanding that – even if you can’t itemise it – everyone has value, just by virtue of being here. It’s really seeing that, and living it, and getting it. I feel like the best thing I could teach my daughter is to be kind, and at the root of kindness is appreciation. I’ll find it a lot easier to teach her that if I truly have a grip on it myself. As things are in the world now, compassion is desperately needed and not always easy to come by. But it has to start with recognising the value of each person, and really, truly, knowing one’s own.

And hey, it sounds pretty Agent Carter, right?

Brilliant blog posts on HonestMum.com

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Canon Fodder

goblet of fiyah

Canon.

lumos maxima

Also canon.

Neither of these moments appears in the Harry Potter books but they are now, technically, film canon. (Alright, the first one does, but it’s specifically described as Dumbledore delivering the line “calmly“). How Harry can be almost expelled for flouting the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery while trying to prevent a disaster one summer and then, with nary a slap on the wrist, cause temporary retinal damage for no reason the next, who knows? But there it is, for anyone to Google.

The thing is, they make for good movie moments. As much as I have many conflicted feels about the way Michael Gambon interpreted a Dumbledore he never read, and the way David Yates directed him in that, the fact remains it was an interpretation. I was free to watch it or not watch it. Like it or not like it. There are three universes at play here: the books, the films and the one in my head. It is neither realistic nor desirable for those to all be identical (if nothing else, book and film are very different media; as sorry as I was to lose Hermione’s impassioned S.P.E.W. campaigning, I concede it would have made pretty dull viewing).

Now, enter a new galaxy. Along comes a play, based on an idea none of us have yet read, with the original author’s involvement, in which some characters make the leap (though only in a form vaguely similar to how we last saw them, briefly, in a train station, and not at all how we spent the most time with them). In this completely fresh creative effort, which – not actually being the next book or film in either existing series – has pretty much full freedom to stand alone, one character is a different race from her mainstream portrayals thus far (ie book covers and film casting). And in a virtuoso display of how quickly the commenters of the internet can race to the bottom, every single individual who cannot cope with their white-centric world view being nudged even a tiny bit turns to the text to prove that it’s not ‘canon’.

I am not going to argue the point over Hermione. How I feel is pretty much summed up in this one tweet; I also couldn’t face battling the hordes for tickets, so it’s going to be a long time before I get to see The Cursed Child (sob!) and whoever is in it by then I shall be very excited about it. But this canon malarkey has got to stop. This obsession with picking over the details – as if authors can’t be fallible! As if there are not inconsistencies within universes! As if art can’t just bloody change if we want it to! – is taking the very joy out of being an enormous nerd.

Look, I get the geekery, of course I do. Two nights ago, on the way home from town to see the Christmas lights, my husband got my full spiel – not for the first time, frankly – on the individual nature of each individual and group strand of the MCU so far, and why Captain America: The First Avenger gets away with being the world’s longest origin story while Iron Man dispenses with the practical bit in the first ten minutes. He got the Shakespearean Thor spiel, and my speculations about how the use of Spider-Man might be the bit that prevents Civil War coming across as an Avengers movie. The thing is this: it is enormously enjoyable to deconstruct and reconstruct, to Google original comic book references, to spot Easter eggs, to come up with elaborate theories and to be, frankly, a bit paranoid – the interlocking successes of the MCU surely rest in part on this irresistible urge to neatly link things together. But it is also nonsense. Because between the myriad comic book strands, the visions of Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios, the scriptwriters, the directors, the editors, the cinematographers and the interpretations by the talent (plus the audiences themselves) there can be no such real thing as canon. It’s simply impossible. There are too many people involved. Messy, messy people.

It is, of course, disappointing when something you see does not satisfactorily chime with the contents of your head – or when your favourite paper moment doesn’t make it to the screen. But it is not necessarily wrong. There are times, I think, when one can be critical – for example, I think Yates made a downright peculiar choice to have Bellatrix and Voldemort dissolve rather than be real dead bodies, as I thought the whole point of those battle scenes in the book was to show the brutal, damaged, evil but very real humanity of the man who was once Tom Riddle. But that was less to do with having it be exactly as I pictured it, and more to do with making that point as I had understood it; I didn’t want any hint that the pieces of Voldemort could be swept back into a pile and reanimated (as if Otto Chriek and his emergency blood had just teleported over from the Discworld). Or any re-affirmation of his belief in his own exceptionalism. And yet I understood that it made for a much more cinematic moment, and had to concede that even when we’re both staring the same source material right in the face, Yates and I might yet be reading it differently.

Let me get things straight: of course I’m not saying that everyone should like every interpretation, neither that it’s necessarily wrong to argue it (it can be fun). But I think you do have to ask yourself why it’s bothering you and if your objection doesn’t come from the text, but an unexamined prejudice. And even when it does come from the text – does it really matter? When people argued that Jack Reacher, continually described in the books as being a huge dude, could not be embodied in not-quite-so-massive Tom Cruise, I did have a moment’s pause. But actually, it made little or no impact on the final result (in fact, it actually heightened the tension in scenes where gangs of rent-a-muscle thugs sneer at Reacher’s cast-iron self-confidence).

When it comes down to it, canon, despite being apparently pegged to the page or screen, none the less still lives entirely in the eye of the beholder – and the beholders of Hermione live in a world where whiteness is regularly the default. Our lenses are scuffed and blurred, and it sometimes takes someone making an unexpected choice to unfog them a little. Canon is a security blanket; reassuring, familiar, warm and comfortable – but if you look at it a little closer, frayed, full of holes and overdue for a wash. Sometimes adding a little embroidery or a patch can change it into something newer and more beautiful. And even if you run in desperation to Mama, you might not get the answer you want to hear.

 

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Season’s Readings: win Pop Art – A Colourful History by Alastair Sooke

Admit it, your brain immediately re-titled that book as Hogwarts: A History didn’t it?

But look! Look at how gorgeous! The generous folks at Penguin Random House have given me a beautiful Christmas present of this delightful book – plus an extra one for me to give away. So here we are.

penguin present l.jpg

Pop Art – A Colourful History is a lovely little hardback, engagingly written (from the Viking imprint, if that kind of detail floats your boat), taking in – of course – Lichtenstein and Warhol but also delving into the lives and significant works of their less lastingly famous contemporaries, like Marisol Escobar and Rosalyn Drexler.

In a classic example of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, the introduction opens with the idea that by the early 60s, the art world had become unshockable; that there was nothing “despicable enough”, in Lichtenstein’s words, that no one would hang it (and to think, this was before the heyday of Jeff Koons’ highly explicit works or the Chapman brothers’ deliberate grotesquerie). Sooke then takes the reader through the emerging landscape, the collision of media and the artistic period which might have had the greatest influence on the way we create art and content today.

So, fancy a copy? Then please comment below telling me one of your favourite ever pieces of art – any medium, any era. Let’s just talk lovely things.

Note: Please make sure you use a valid email address when you do so; it’s the only way I will have to contact the winner and will not be visible to anyone else or shared publicly, ever.

A few conditions:

  1. Only UK entries can be accepted. No purchase necessary.
  2. Entrants should be aged 18+.
  3. There is only one prize, and no alternative can be offered.
  4. Postage is standard UK first class delivery.
  5. The prize is one hardback copy of Pop Art: A Colourful History by Alastair Sooke.
  6. The closing date is 23:59 on 27th December 2015. The winner will be drawn at random using an online random number generator, and notified by email by the 31st of December 2015. The winner should provide their details within 3 days of being notified; should they not do so the prize may be re-drawn.

 

Disclosure: My copy of the book and the prize copy were both gifts from the Penguin Random House team.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

My top films of 2015

When this year started, I made a list of films I wanted to see. Some have yet to be ticked off because I haven’t got round to them yet, a couple I changed my mind about, a few more I missed in the cinema and some others got added in my head but not on the list. At least one I wasn’t sure would actually come out this year and I was right to think so, so that’ll transfer to 2016 quite happily.

But now it’s mid-December, and in the spirit of the endless reviews of the year that are already a sprinkling and will soon become a deluge, I’ve been having a think about my favourite films of this year. Despite my quiet, semi-shameful addiction to award shows, I don’t actually like to rank films – in no universe does it make sense to pit some of my favourite films against each other: superhero flick, period drama and Issues Film cheek by jowl – but I do like to celebrate them. So here, with just one winner in each category, were my favourite films of 2015.

 

The Life I Lead: Mistress America

As is often the case with things I really, really, really love, I struggle to write about Mistress America. I feel like I’ll either end up writing 35 unnecessary, unwanted thinkpieces that get increasingly overwrought (“NUMBER 35: ONE FOR EACH YEAR OF MY WASTED POTENTIAL”) or I’ll just end up nagging people to “just see it so you’ll understaaaaaand”. This Guardian piece goes a long way towards unpicking some of the reasons why Mistress America was such a gem of a creation; all I know is, I could have sat in that cinema and watched it from beginning to end all over again without pausing for breath or to wipe away my tears. And it features one of my favourite OMD songs in the soundtrack. When it comes down to it, it’s practically perfect in every way.

 

Sister Suffragette: Suffragette (with an honorable mention to Carol)

At the heart of any debate about feminism lie issues surrounding the female body’s ability to bear children; it is no accident that each of these films features a child being ripped from their birth mother due to her unstoppable desire to be fully human. But, just as it is so often a mother that nurtures a sick child, these films delivered a much-needed dose of medicine to the UK and US film industries. Anyone who cares about battling sexism on screen rejoiced at seeing these films succeed, standing on the shoulders of all the female talent that has gone – frequently unsung – before to give an enthusiastic shove in the right direction. Yes, Suffragette could have better anticipated and avoided whitewashing claims, and Carol, I thought, needed to deliver more of a gut punch. But both were still unquestionably important films, and Suffragette had an undeniably profound impact on me.

 

Let’s Go Fly a Kite: Tomorrowland

Poor Tomorrowland. It received a drubbing from disgruntled Disney fans (mainly, actually, nothing to do with the content of the film itself, but its marketing). Reviews were so-so. The box office receipts didn’t set the world alight (although it actually did just about turn a profit). And yet I absolutely loved it. You can accuse me of Disney bias if you like, but I promised myself I would only include one of theirs and here it is. There is so much to love about Tomorrowland I wrote two separate – lengthy – posts on it and I could easily fill a few more sides of A4. The annoying thing is that whenever there’s a blatantly feminist film or TV programme people fall over themselves to say how they dream of a day when all of these things are just normal ways of making a film, without it having to be a Thinkpiece Issue. And then Tomorrowland comes along and there’s a girl in the lead role and she’s smart (but not a Strong Female Character) and she has no love interest and she wears jeans and a t-shirt throughout and there’s another girl and she’s a goddamn ass-kicking robot and the men are all drama queens. It turns everything on its head, and it’s gloriously, deliciously, overwhelmingly optimistic, and, and, AND it references two of Walt’s own flagship attractions. I mean for God’s sake, people, what more do you want?

 

Step in Time: Mr Holmes

Maybe it’s because I watched it in Baker Street, but Mr Holmes was simply delightful. It’s quite the precarious tightrope walk to balance dementia, suicide, missing parents, near-death experiences and strained familial relations without ending up dropping into a quagmire of cloying, saccharine predictability. Mr Holmes, however, steers well clear, deftly avoiding the soft-focus glow that suffuses so many period dramas in favour of a more timeless story of personal regret. It’s one of the most restrained and beautiful performances I’ve ever seen from McKellen, eschewing the kind of deliberate scenery chewing we’ve become so used to in his more recent fantasy roles. A chocolate box that’s full of  decadently rich and bitter pure cocoa – as good for you as it is occasionally hard to swallow.

 

A Man Has Dreams: High-Rise

If I had to choose a film to stay with me, one that opens with a battered but still beautiful man catching and eating a friendly dog probably wouldn’t be high on that list. But for all my misgivings and squeamishness, High-Rise left a lasting impression. I could probably come up with some distressingly insightful self-analysis around sometimes feeling rather blank and grey and battling to keep up with my own expectations. Or I could sagely examine the blistering satire on modern living that’s as relevant now – if not more so – than it was when the source material was written. But peeling back my own public face wouldn’t be done with half as much elegance, so I’ll just say that of all the films I saw this year I’m not sure any other one surprised and unsettled and (frankly almost grudgingly) impressed me as much as this one. Now, if only I had the balls to watch more Wheatley…

 

And with that, I’ll leave the cinematic pontificating for, oh, a few weeks, and eagerly look forward to more time spent sitting in the dark and avoiding reality next year.

 

 

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

A little friendly competition

At a recent parents’ evening, 5yo Ramona’s teacher told us how seating our daughter with her best friend tended to improve her work. “There’s a bit of healthy competition going on there, which I admit I sometimes use to get the best out of them.”

Although it shouldn’t, hearing of competition between girls in a positive light does sound strange to me.  I don’t think I’m alone in suspecting that women are raised to think that rivalry is negative – that it’s somehow incompatible with having each other’s backs, owning ‘squad goals’ and knowing where the bodies are hidden.

The thing about surrounding oneself with an army of intelligent, wonderful, interesting human beings is that at some point anyone with all but the most cast iron self-confidence will doubt themselves. I pride myself on having a particularly strong group of pals, each of whom fulfils a part of me that it’s more fun to share: working to make dreams and passions a reality, navigating a particularly sticky work situation, sitting in the cinema holding hands and crying. Each one of those women is astonishingly talented and beautiful – and if I’m totally honest I have a history of being the Fat Friend. Frankly, Peggy Carter might know her value but she had to prove it in a room full of men. Trying to blossom in my own right when I’m surrounded by an entire garden centre feels more challenging – and thinking of it in terms of competition makes me feel about as positive as a Japanese knotweed infestation.

As a result it’s easier to just shy away from it all. No one likes to look too keen; it’s even counterproductive, for how could I compete? Yet I can clearly see that in my daughter’s case, still blissfully free of hang ups and damaging mean girl narratives, a little friendly rivalry is proving good for everyone. When you strive to emulate each other’s strengths, you also pay tribute to them.  Comparison can be the thief of joy, yes, but what could be better than being most inspired by the people you choose to be friends with?

In one of my daughter’s favourite films – the subtle and profound My Little Pony Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks – the essential conflict is caused by introducing the idea of competitiveness. A school musical showcase becomes a “battle of the bands” as some slinky sirens literally feed off disharmony. “What’s so wrong with a little competition?” purrs the leader, and the slanging matches begin. But in the end it is a competition that brings down the bad guys – an epic sing-off, in fact – and in order to do it the girls have to include a friend they’ve been inadvertently keeping at arm’s length despite her best efforts to atone for past cruelties. It’s easy to read it as ‘all competition is bad’, but it seems to me that the message is actually that winning is fine  – provided you don’t get there by trampling on anyone, and you consider everyone’s strengths and not just your own (the good guys also have to acknowledge some self-centered and exclusionary behaviour among themselves).

At some point, my daughter will  learn that other people will overtake her, and that she will have to make a decision whether to try, try again or change direction. It’s not easy to know whether you’re giving up too soon or flogging a dead horse; too much comparison can make A look like B, but too little and you end up as one of those people cruelly made a laughing stock on a TV talent show. At some point she’ll have to get used to the idea that other people will look up to her and – this is the tricky bit – accept this as valid. Suffering from imposter syndrome is not at all unusual among women, and I am certainly a veteran. I love that Ramona is getting the opportunity to stretch herself, and see where she can lead and where she can learn. She’s acquiring graciousness and generosity as she helps others with what she finds easy, and since humility is particularly hard to come by in small children I hope she’s learning that too. To genuinely congratulate a friend who has done better than you at something you care about is not easy; envy comes quickly. But it feels so much better and is so much more inspiring and hopeful than the alternative.

When it comes down to it, I want to believe that good things come to good people. And I honestly believe that a little genuinely friendly competition brings the kind of self-awareness and self-confidence that’s needed to act like a good person in the world.

And all I’ve ever wanted to do is raise a good person.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Film review: Carol

Earlier this week I was delighted to be able to go along to The Pool‘s screening of Carol, followed by a Q&A with producer Elizabeth Karlsen and journalist Helen O’Hara. Carol was my LFF ‘one that got away’ – it was replaced by Trumbo, which I enjoyed a great deal, but I still felt the sting of the missed opportunity.

I remember seeing Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven in the cinema, and being blown away by its loveliness, by the graceful weaving of oppressive sadness between layers of beautifully arranged fabric. I didn’t have any doubts that Carol would be just as gorgeous, if not more so; Karlsen commented afterwards that she thought this was “Todd at the top of his game”, and I can see why. Haynes communicates in the language of sensation; he captures in just a few seconds the headiness and distraction of falling in love, the drifting in and out of focus. His storytelling has a consistently dreamlike quality, though the finely detailed and precise workmanship is always evident; Karlsen made a point of the incredibly prescriptive shotlisting which allowed the film to be shot in just 35 days. It’s not hard to believe that this was all meticulously, lovingly planned down to the last exquisitely styled stitch and button.

Both leads are excellent; Blanchett makes thorough and judicious use of that Galadriel-honed mysterious smile, and Mara’s other-worldliness is perfect for the angel who “fell from space”. And yet…. and yet.

As much as I wanted to love Carol, I couldn’t summon up more than an affectionate fondness. The tenderness between privileged Carol and awkward Therese is appealing and lovely, but while I understand the relationship from the latter’s perspective – Carol overwhelms her senses, and indeed ours – I don’t quite buy into the love story. It’s not clear that they even really like each other; of course, given the time, the place and the very real threat of their illegal relationship there was no way to have any public declarations andmost conversations would be heavily loaded. But the result is a little smothering – I longed to see them simply laugh together, just once. Conversely, “Aunt” Abby’s (a great Sarah Paulson) long-dead romantic relationship with Carol – now a deep and passionate friendship – was fascinating; I desperately wanted to see a film about their history.

If Carol were a food, it would be dessert. But, for all its Michelin-starred care, it wouldn’t be a complex, deconstructed trifle with a feather on top. It would be rice pudding, but the best rice pudding in the world: dreamy, thick; full of cream and vanilla fragrance, with the bittersweet edge of cinnamon. You’d scoop up bite after bite, revelling in its richness and rolling it around your mouth. You’d feel the warmth spreading from your core. You’d savour each tooth-clinging mouthful. But it would only be when you came to the end, scraping the last grains from the bowl, that you’d realise you’re dying for a different texture: a crystal sip of ice water or perhaps the alien crunch of a nut. Carol is sumptuous, and visually glorious and its success can only help drive change in an industry that badly needs to see beyond the tentpole releases and exceptional white male stories. But it also feels as slippery as silk, with a lack of anything really substantial to hold on to.

Many thanks to The Pool for the chance to see the film and enjoy the excellent Q&A afterwards.

Brilliant blog posts on HonestMum.com

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Disney / Pixar’s Sanjay’s Super Team and more animated shorts at the BFI London Film Festival for kids

Some of the most bargainous tickets you'll get at LFF

Some of the most bargainous tickets you’ll get at LFF

When I decided to go for it with the London Film Festival this year, I couldn’t possibly leave out my little future film fan. Ramona actually came quite late to cinema going (she’s spooked by sudden bangs and loud noises sometimes, so it can be a bit overwhelming) though she loves it now; tempting her in through the doors by explaining that it was ‘like watching a bunch of trailers’ meant that we got to experience something a little different from the usual family films – not that there’s anything wrong with those, but opening up horizons is never a bad thing.

One of the stunning screening rooms (NFT1, I believe) that Ramona adored.

One of the stunning screening rooms (NFT1, I believe) that Ramona adored.

While the BFI has really developed its family offering in recent years, Ramona’s age group often leaves her out of proceedings; animation workshops etc are really only going to become of interest in a few years’ time, as she’s only five. However, on the final day of the festival was the ‘Animated Shorts for Younger Audiences’ collection; at a total price of £29 for the three of us it seemed really reasonable for a central London cinema trip during an event for which I’d already dropped a phenomenal amount to attend gala screenings (still paying that off; still worth it).

The first of many step and repeat boards, I'm sure.

The first of many step and repeat boards, I’m sure.

What was actually going to be in the programme was a bit of a mystery; it turned out to be 14 international animated shorts including a UK advance screening of the new Disney / Pixar short, Sanjay’s Super Team which is due to appear before The Good Dinosaur when that’s released next month. The collection was brilliantly varied, in terms of content, technique and storytelling, from a brilliant one-minute one-man whiteboard animation from a second year student to an intricate Latvian stop motion morality tale about littering.

It's not as cute when the adults do it. And yes, my attempt at colourful 'cartoonish' dress was in line with my other 'dressing by theme' attempts...

It’s not as cute when the adults do it. And yes, my attempt at colourful ‘cartoonish’ dress was in line with my other ‘dressing by theme‘ looks…

My personal favourites included a superbly funny Swedish animation about a pair of dice and a couple of ladybirds on an adventure (hereafter, all ladybirds shall be known as ‘Bengt’ to me). I also loved a rather bleak but beautiful Canadian take on environmentalism positioned ironically around the lyrics of Que Sera Sera (pretty sure that whisked straight over Ramona’s head but she liked the cars). She particularly enjoyed a sweet film about a bird that takes a break from its migration pattern to dance with a tortoise on a beach; I thought it was beautiful yet overlong, but it was lovely to compare notes and find we really loved different things for different reasons. I found a charming French tale of a cuddly toy soothing a baby delightful; Ramona thought the battered toy (“that grey thing”) was really scary.

We were all a bit blown away by Sanjay’s Super Team,  which really made me want to see it as a full-length film, combining the visual punch of The Incredibles with  a wide-eyed, Nemo-esque sweetness. The only issue was its positioning in the programme which felt a bit odd; dropping a famous animation heavyweight in near the end but not at the end meant that quite a lot of the kids seemed to check out after that. In fact, my beloved ladybird Bengt was on last, which was another odd choice as it was one of the longest pieces and also the only on to require subtitles. Not generally  a problem for my little reader, but she wasn’t the youngest child there by a long shot and putting the one that requires the most concentration at the end seemed to be a bit of a scheduling no-no (and in fact she wriggled and jiggled and wiggled and finally expressed boredom, which earned her some steely glances and sharp words from her mother).

There were evidently some pains taken to make it feel more like a festival; the films were introduced, there was some Q&A at the beginning, and after each set of two or three we were actually introduced to some of the filmmakers for little interviews. Unfortunately this was mostly lost on the audience; the younger children figeted and checked out and their parents couldn’t listen while trying to keep a lid on things – and I did see some leave before the end.

So do I recommend it? Yes, definitely, though I wouldn’t take the ‘younger audiences’ label to mean – as many of us obviously did – youngest audiences. Ramona loved the setting, wanting to “send a message to those BFI people to tell them how BEAUTIFUL it is in here” and really enjoyed some of the films, and she’s insistent she wants to come back to watch movies at BFI Southbank. However, she’s wavering much more over the shorts programme, because the stop-start nature meant she couldn’t properly engage with what she was seeing.  My personal recommendation would either be to play straight through, allowing time for various Q&As at the end for those families with older kids, or to have more of a quiz type format to the breaks (as she really liked it when asked questions).

Roll on next year!

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Hairy Scary’s Bad Day: Squarehead returns!

EEK!

EEK!

One of my continually most popular posts – and this thrills me to bits – is my piece about I Am Squarehead, a simply delightful picture book about being oneself, written by Simon Frank and illustrated by Margit Mulder.

As I mentioned in that post, I came to Squarehead because I already knew Simon – and one of his business partners, Rochelle, is a good friend. Since then I’ve got to know Margit as well, and when I heard there was another Squarehead book on the horizon I was delighted. Better yet, Simon asked if there was any way I could lend a hand with some social media support around the launch; I agreed with practically unseemly haste.

LOOK AT THAT HUGGABLE FACE

LOOK AT THAT HUGGABLE FACE

Hairy Scary’s Bad Day picks up where I Am Squarehead left off, but this time focusses on the whuffling beastie Squarehead brought home with him. Hairy Scary is big, and gallumphing and looks pretty terrifying – but everyone knows he’s really an enormous sweetie who gives the best cuddles ever. So how on earth is he going to measure up against the scariest monsters in the world?

This week everyone’s been buzzing about Australian Instagram star Essena O’Neill, who suddenly obliterated her online presence – leaving behind a trail of genuine captions which give away the secrets behind each perfect ‘candid’ snap. I’m not sure that came as a surprise to anyone in her audience – especially not her young and very savvy followers – but the willingness to be honest about it was refreshing and more than a little painful. We are so very scared of not measuring up, all the time, and social media can be this constant reminder that everyone else is doing a little bit better than you – their lives a little cooler, more privileged, more beautiful. Of course it’s a carefully edited snapshot, and we know that really but we still, I think, don’t quite believe it somewhere in our fearful, competitive, paranoid lizard brains. It seems to me that the message of Hairy Scary’s Bad Day – that you can only be the best and happiest YOU you can be, regardless of the boxes others seem to tick – couldn’t come at a more appropriate time. Our kids are growing up at a time when it’s normal to have a very public record of everything you do; it needn’t be the complete story of who you are.

And yet of course it was Instagram I turned to when I discovered – completely by surprise – that I’d earned a mention in the acknowledgements for the book. My first ever, and I couldn’t be more proud and happy to sit in the faintest glow of reflected light from this very special series.

Apparently Chinwag might star in the next one – dog lovers watch this space!

I Am Squarehead and Hairy Scary’s Bad Day are available now from www.iamsquarehead.com and Daunt Books. Toys and more coming soon…

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Matchy matchy: vintage BFI London Film Festival looks

As I might have mentioned at the end of each of my BFI London Film Festival posts this past week: I’m an enormous nerd.

That means I have really nerdy ideas. Like, say, thematically matching what I was wearing to each of the three galas I was lucky enough to snag tickets to. But since I know I’m talking to a similarly nerdy audience – at the point at which my photos of frocks overtook my admittedly grainy photo of the actual Tom Hiddleston on Instagram I knew it wasn’t just me that thinks this shiz is important – I thought I’d share the looks together here, too.

Suffragette

Green, white and (almost) purple for Suffragette

Green, white and (almost) purple for Suffragette. I don’t know why I look worried and I hate that my hair was wet.

Well, I don’t have any turn of the last century dresses, and if I did I’d probably be too terrified to wear them (and frankly too tall and broad around the waist). But I know my women’s movement colours, and I really like green. This Collectif checked dress – a couple of seasons old, but a version is still available – offered a bit of a bluestocking twist. Together with a white scarf and a hint of purple eyeshadow, the only thing I regret was missing the opportunity to throw in some pin curls.

Trumbo

All

All “model’s” own, including the comedy pose.

This was a bit of a struggle. Until the last minute I had my Tomorrowland black 1940s sheer dress lined up, but it didn’t feel quite right. For one, the film is late enough into the 1940s that a 1950s look felt more appropriate; for another I just wanted an excuse to wear a different dress. The day before this gorgeous shirtwaister arrived from Cheshire Vintage, and I knew its moment had come. What’s not clear from the photo are the gorgeous gold threads running through the red (not actually intended as a reference to Communism at the time, but hey…).

High-Rise

Look of mild panic on the streets of London.

Look of mild panic on the streets of London.

I don’t really do 70s. But I will do glam. This 1960s lurex dress felt exactly right, particularly as the fabric actually has starbursts and swirls in it on close examination. Topped off with a blocky statement necklace but tamed with thick tights and a cardi, it turned out to be pretty well-judged as a summary of the film: a brash, violent message tempered by nuanced, sometimes muted performances.

I feel rather delighted to have gone three for three and seen films that were vastly different but all thoroughly enjoyable. I only have one festival experience left, right at the other end – a selection of short films for young viewers with which I’ll introduce our daughter to the festival. This year was actually my first ever attendance because I always thought of it as something I’d never get a chance to do – but with patience, a glacially slow website and a BFI membership as a Christmas present, diving in was one of the best decisions I ever made. I intend to take Ramona every year and make her every bit the nerd I am; I only look forward to the day when she might be persuaded to dress up with me.