Five Things I Love this Week

1.   My Madewell polka dot skimmers! I have been coveting these adorable shoes since March and I finally bit the bullet and bought them (on sale, no less!). They are proving to be a bit difficult to break in, but I love them anyway and do think they are going to be super comfortable (even though they run really small and I have had my husband's shoe tree's in them when I am not wearing them).  They are super versatile and look adorable with tons of looks.  I have already picked up out my next pair of skimmers (they are striped!).

2.   Lena Dunham's Remembers Nora Ephron. I promise, I am not a huge Lena Dunham fan (even though I already recommended Tiny Furniture on this blog), but I heard about her piece in the New Yorker about Nora Ephron on the Slate Culture Gabfest.  I read it and found it to be very moving and again confirmed my suspicions about Dunham's amazing writing talent.  I have never been a huge Ephron fan but was saddened and surprised to hear about her death.  Dunham wrote a beautiful piece about getting to know Ephron and the influence she had on her life, both artistically and personally.  It was a perfect tribute to Ms. Ephron and  shows the solidarity and mentorship of female artists in Hollywood: truly inspiring.

3.  Battleship Pretension podcast:  The truth is, this is something I love every week. When I worked in an office, I listened to about 10 podcasts weekly; now I listen to about two or three.  Battleship Pretension is one I never even considered anything but essential listening.  David Bax and Tyler Smith have the best chemistry in podcastland and I love the topics they cover each week.  They aren't a movie review show, instead they are a topic based movie podcast (some of the most recent episodes have covered Movie Presidents, Comedy as Coherence and the composer Carter Burwell).  I have learned about so many great movies from them, they are super funny and make me feel like I have two great friends to discuss movies with (ask my husband, I often say to him, "Baxy said this was good, you would love it!").


4.  Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present: Every Monday HBO shows a new documentary and I recently caught up with this one directed by Matthew Akers.  I didn't know very much about Ms. Abramovic, I had read a few articles about her in Vogue and the New York Times and remember her performance art piece being mentioned in Sex and the City.  I had heard about her show at MOMA in 2010 but mostly remember hearing about the naked people in a doorway one needed to squeeze through to see the exhibit.  Hearing her speak about her sometimes controversial work was fascinating and I found some of her pieces incredibly interesting (especially her work with her partner / lover Ulay).  I must admit, I am particularly susceptible to hero worship and I think this film fed into the idea of Abramovic as a sort of performance art goddess.  That being said, once they get to the footage from the MOMA show where Abramovic sat in a new piece where any museum visitor could sit in a seat across from her and look into her eyes, I found myself unexpectedly moved.  I loved watching the footage of museumgoers sitting across from the artist and looking into her eyes; I loved their varied reactions of laughter, tears and enigmatic faces (also the moment when Ulay comes and sits in the seat across from her, I totally cried).

I need a colorful checked sweater dress!

5. Anna Karina's sweater dresses in Made in USA:  I may have named my blog after a JLG film but I am certainly not about to pretend that I love all of his movies (some of them are freaking weird!).  Recently my husband and I (sort of) watched this Godard movie.  While he may have been swept away by the homage to 30's crime films, I was swooning over Karina's amazing sixties wardrobe, mostly consisting of curve hugging, colorful sweater dresses.  Come this fall I can only hope to find some as cute as the one Karina rocks in this film.