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© Linda McIntosh
ARCHIVAL FASHION ZINE PROFILING
CONTRARIAN HEROINES OF FASHION,
FILM AND ART.
RUN BY JESSICA ANN RICHARDSON
& GIRL GANG OF CONTRIBUTORS
marchioness > blog
The Power of the Dog (2021)
Urban Life
Jane Campion’s triumphant adaptation of Thomas Savage’s novel, ‘The Power Of The Dog’, transports us to the arid wilderness of 1920’s Montana (filmed in New Zealand) with cowboys, water-parched deserts and colossal mountain ranges looming in the distance. The beguiling and rugged Phil Burback (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) is as hostile as the landscape he roams. His malicious and brutish nature taunts his new sister-in-law, Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst) and her son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) but the plot deviates from the typical Western tropes and probes deeper into themes of depression, alcoholism, masculinity and dysfunctional relationships.
Annette (2021)
Urban Life
Last summer, when Annette came out, I’d read nothing about the film. I’d only heard through a friend of mine that it was nominated at the Cannes Film Festival, and that there was a lot of singing - and as it turns out, Annette is all about singing. A Capella has always made me feel like someone was rubbing a fork on a metal ramp, but I wanted to experience the world of Leos Carax.
Ash is the Purest White (2018)
Urban Life
China’s emblematic director Jia Zhangke and his wife, actress Zhao Tao take us on a journey through the decadence of traditional values, agonizing by the iron hand of capitalism in a warning tale on the brutality of time and the poisoned evolution of a nation that has forgotten itself.
Just Kids (2010)
Urban Life
Never has there been more of a comfort to the struggling artist than Patti Smith’s autobiographical novel Just Kids. After purchasing the audiobook, I would listen to her Brooklyn New York narration, a slow meandering drawl that somehow provides exactly the complementary acoustic aid required for the listener in their envisioning of what she describes.
The Center Will Not Hold (2017)
Urban Life
Beware, after watching this documentary you will feel the urge to go out and purchase a very large pair of sunglasses, sit with a notebook, and see the world as Didion did through her glamorous shades- whilst drinking copious amounts of Coca-Cola, on the rocks.
To Throw Away Unopened (2018)
Urban Life
When we think of narrative triumph in the face of adversity, we often turn to the myopic vision of the hero’s journey. Often overlooked are the sort of slow-burning battles that fill our days, containing our hopes and fears. Going off to war can be just as scary as confronting the death of one’s mother or forming a punk band alongside your best mates at a time when girls just didn’t do that. Viv Albertine proves that there is equal parts fear in the former as there is in the latter, and that the best approach is head on, as she illuminates in her 2018 memoir, To Throw Away Unopened.
Delta of Venus (1977)
Urban Life
‘Porn not poetry’ was the instruction given to Anais Nin by the anonymous collector who paid her $1 per page for erotica in the 1940s. Delta of Venus, the collection of said stories, was published posthumously in 1977, and Nin’s Pandora's box of perversion was unlatched for the world. The Penguin Modern Classic is now stacked among feminist literature in bookshops, despite its content: incest, bestiality, necrophilia, paedophilia and rape. In Nin’s carnal fantasy, only scat is frowned upon.
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