... I would like to present to you...
… eight adapted palettes…
… seven Schitt shoes…
… six movie dresses…
… five gold wings…
… four paper pests…
… three growing bathers…
... two storytellers...
... and a lazy day in space.
Last year, Day 8 was an excuse for me to indulge myself by playing around with Lethal Cosmetics Palette Designer and yet another post about Lore Olympus. What can I say, I was and still am obsessed. But it was was also just an excuse to shoehorn makeup into one of these days, in a way that I hadn’t worked out how to until that point. In the past I’d wanted to talk about makeup palettes I thought were beautiful, weird or unique, or even design my own, and using the palette designer was the closest I could get to that, and I had real fun. I love makeup. It makes me feel brave, while also making me safe.
The palettes I made last year, and the fun and enjoyment I got from them, even spurred my mum on to - with my little sisters assistance - make a palette for me for Christmas, which until this week, I’d been too chicken to use…
Event Horizon || Euphoria || Cascade
… it’s lovely, and pigmented and ever so sparkly! Plus, the fact that my mum and sister sat and made it for me based on the Lore Olympus palettes I created, makes it even more special.
Now, in case you’re new to this very sporadic blog and didn’t see last year’s post, Lethal Cosmetics is a indie cosmetic brand based in Berlin who create vegan cruelty free eyeshadows in matte, metallic, duo-chrome and multi-chrome formulas. They’ve been in production since 2016 and create not only really beautiful shadows, but also do it in an ethical manner. Through their website you can use their Palette Designer to create your own palettes unique to you.
And I want to do a repeat! Not of the gift, well maybe for my birthday, but what I want to do is play around on the Lethal Cosmetics Palette Designer again, especially now that I know that they’re formula is good and can actually attest to that fact, and I wanted to make some palettes based on some of the adaptations I’ve enjoyed in 2022.
Starting off in a similar vain to 2021’s Day 8, I’m going to go all the way back to my very first post for this year and the Netflix series, Bee and PuppyCat: Lazy in Space (2022), because technically it’s an adaptation/continuation of a YouTube animation by Natasha Allegri, and has also been adapted into a nine volume comic book series. But mostly it’s because I love it:
Throughout the show the recently unemployed Bee wear’s lots of colours, usually bright and often pastel. Her outfits and the colours used (even down to the line work) changes depending on which parallel world her and PuppyCat are sent to by Tempbot, but predominantly the colour scheme throughout the show sticks with bright colours and soft pastels, particularly favouring pink, purple, aqua and yellow…
To represent this show, but in particular this character I could have almost certainly made every single one of the nine pan palette a glittery, sparkling, metallic duochrome shade, or even just transparent colour shifting pigments which look white but when applied give a colourful sheen. I could have only used these colours and textures because when I look at this series, these characters that’s what I see. Joy and sparkle, and fun and brightness, it’s the bubblegum palette that to me feels like this show, or at least it’s the way the show makes me feel.
While trying to be strategic with the matte shades, since as much as I love an all shimmer palette I also get annoyed at having to bring out a second one to find mattes, I chose Sequence, Dahlia and Proxy, because each colour could work as stand alone shade, or used in pairs or as a trio. Though it was tempting to include a pale yellow or gold, two colours which Bee frequently wears, it would be harder to make cohesive, but also, yellow is not always the easiest colour to work with, it can lean towards patchiness and need a lot of building over a pale base to get any good payoff, so instead we have Allure, a golden peach duochrome metallic, which potentially brings in the colour with less difficulty.
I actually really love palettes like this, these duochrome somewhat sheer sparkly shades bringing a real air of fun to the eyes. Plus, the shimmers this brand makes are incredibly beautiful, highly sparkly and last really well throughout the day with little to no fallout. Which given some days end with me looking like I’m part of the cast of Twilight, is really impressive.
Link || Bee & PuppyCat (2013-16) - Cartoon Hangover || IMDb || Wikipedia || Rotten Tomatoes || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Behance
Link || Bee & PuppyCat: Lazy in Space (2022-) || Netflix || IMDb || Wikipedia || Rotten Tomatoes || Fandom Wiki
Link || Lethal Cosmetics Single Shadows || Allure || Sequence || Singularity || Firefly || Sigil || Twilight || Dahlia || Proxy || Parsec
From Day 1 to Day 2 and a webcomic turned Netflix series that I am truly and utterly besotted with, Heartstopper (2022-present) created by Alice Oseman.
After Lore Olympus went on a four month long hiatus, I was looking for another webcomic to fill the gap, and that’s when I started reading Heartstopper on WEBTOON, and in about a week I’d read it all. It was adorable, heartwarming and poignant, and I quickly fell for Oseman’s illustrations, her story and the characters of Nick and Charlie, and was both delighted and terrified that my new favourite was being adapted by Netflix and would soon be gracing our screens.
And it didn’t disappoint. The series was completely faithful to the comic, taking us from the meeting of Nick Nelson (played by Kit Connor) and Charlie Spring (Joe Locke), their budding friendship, mutual crushes, questioning of sexuality, lives, friendships and the joy of school. The casting was also perfect, particularly that of Kit Connor, who perfectly embodies everything that Oseman had created in her character of Nick, this sweet, cinnamon bun of a rugby player who you can’t help by like, or instantly ship with our other lead, Charlie.
Something the series also did was embrace the webcomic’s aesthetic, from the little cartoonish sparks that fly when the two characters fingers touch for the first time, and little leaves which flutter across the screen, to the colours that are used. The way the series uses colour mimicking not only the covers of the books which have been published of the comic, but the rare episodes of the series that Oseman does in colour, as opposed to the usually black and white line drawings. There is lots of warm yellow, aqua blues and teals, warm burnt reds and oranges, both characters wearing all these colours and many of the school hallways mirroring them too. It’s almost like sunset colours over the sea, but in the series it bring a lot of beautiful warmth to the scenes, which is what I’ve tried to mimic in this palette.
There’s also been a lot of makeup love for Alice Oseman’s adorable little leaves:
@alicekingmakeup heartstopper eyeliner🍂🏳️🌈 #heartstopper #makeup #makeuptutorial #tutorial #eyeliner #eyelinertutorial #makeuplook #makeupartist #makeuphacks ♬ Why Am I Like This? - Orla Gartland
@eyeoutfits I use a lot of Kpop in my videos for someone that doesn't listen to Kpop lolol anyway watch heartstopper #heartstopper #heartstoppernetflix #heartstoppercomic #hoodedeyesmakeup #makeuptutorial #mua #makeup ♬ Polaroid Love - ENHYPEN
It has been a truly beautiful made series and I’m really looking forwards to season two of this adaptation at some point this year (2023) and for the hopeful return of the webcomic, Oseman having been on hiatus for the last few months.
Link || Heartstopper (2022 - present) || Netflix || IMDb || Wikipedia || Rotten Tomatoes || Instagram
Link || Heartstopper by Alice Oseman (Webcomic) || Website || Wikipedia || Good Reads
The Bridgerton Series by Julia Quinn, is a series of eight books relating to the romantic lives of each of the eight Bridgerton children: Anthony, Benedict, Colin, Daphne, Eloise, Francesca, Gregory and Hyacinth. Of course Netflix - who else? - adapted the first two books in the series, the first being about the eldest daughter, Daphne and Simon, Duke of Hastings, they’re not all together truthful courtship and the struggles of their marriage. It became an instant quarantine hit during 2020 and I fell into the Bridgerton world alongside everyone else looking for a little lockdown escapism.
The second season is the subject of this particular post, and the eldest of the Bridgerton children, Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), who decides after his sister marriage that he must essentially grow up, settle down and as the 9th Viscount Bridgerton, and head of the family, act like it. This is when we are introduced to Kate and Edwina Sharma (Simone Ashley and Charithra Chandran), the latter of whom is his prime choice to become his wife. Except things are never that simple, and when you have resigned yourself to marrying for the sake of appearances and carrying on the family name with a woman of rank over love, in period dramas we all know where it will end. With true love of course, but inevitably not with the person the character’s engaged too.
Bridgerton was one of those shows that I had preconceived notions about, that it would be too fluffy, or overwrought, too silly or over Americanised, despite being set in regency London, since the author and producer (Shonda Rhimes) are both American, but since it came out during lockdown number two, I, like many others gave it a go, and of course I liked it. It’s dumb romantic fun with a Gossip Girl aspect, and I ate it up, in particular season two and the we want to, but we can’t romance between Anthony and Kate. (No big spoiler there, it’s blatantly obvious after their first meeting.)
As far as colour palette’s go, Bridgerton keeps primarily with a Regency/Georgian era tones, lots of pale hues of blue, green, purple, pink, yellow etc, but key characters have their own palettes, some are never seen out of yellow or orange, other almost always in blues and greens, injecting brighter tones to set them apart. When Kate Sharma is introduced, she brings with her - amongst the time period appropriate pale hues - in bright purples and jewel toned teals, which set her out from the others and ground her as this more mature and serious character that she’s trying to put forward, the one who is only interested in getting her sister married off well. This is mirrored in Anthony’s deep blue, black and teal velvet coats and his new found determination to marry himself off. Thus our palette has clearly got to be full of these beautiful purples that Lethal Cosmetics has formulated and some blues and teal.
Purples are among some of my favourite eyeshadow colours, having green eyes it always feel like this colour ground make them stand out more, whereas normally blue is one when I see it in a palette I get annoyed. The reason I get annoyed is because I’m incredibly tired of seeing palettes full of warm neutrals, browns and oranges, with one rogue blue thrown in amongst them. It seems to have become the lazy option for a pop of something fun in a basic colour palette. Don’t get me wrong, blue eyeshadow can look amazing, in the right palette it can be perfect, but there are so many amazing colours in the world, why is blue always the instant choice to show you’re fun side?
Pet peeve right there. However, in this case a rouge blue (Nightlong - which is included in that final eye look by Josie of Yoshismakeup) in amongst the various purples and darker teal blues, fits, it has a context and a reason to be there, and fits with the adaptation’s colour scheme and happily in this palette.
Link || Bridgerton (2020 - present) || Netflix || IMDb || Wikipedia || Rotten Tomatoes || Instagram
Link || Julia Quinn || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Facebook || Pinterest || Audible || Amazon || Good Reads
Link || Lethal Cosmetics Single Shadows || Scarab || Inertia || Nightless || Retreat || Nox || Nightlong || Nightcall || Undone || Wisteria
The 1994 adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women, starring Winona Ryder as Jo March, holds an incredibly special place in my heart. I never read the novels as a child and I still haven’t read them as an adult, but I have watched that movie a hundred times. It’s an always watch, as in, if I see it on the TV, I will always watch it, even if I only watched it days before and it makes me cry every time I watch it.
So, when it was announced that it was going to be adapted into a movie once again, and they started announcing some of the cast, my heart sank. In my mind there was no bettering this earlier incarnation and it made me kind of sad. But, when it was finally released onto streaming services, I decided I wanted to watch it, so many people enjoyed it, my little sister, who has as much reverence for the 1994 version as I do, loved it, and I kept an open mind about it and was pleasantly surprised, and there were actually parts that I preferred, primarily, Laurie…
Christian Bale’s performance of Laurie I had always enjoyed, but not the entire way through the movie. In the later years of the film as he meets Amy (Kristen Dunst/Samantha Mathis), where he’s louche and arrogant, I really disliked him, he was unpleasant and I could never understand, even with their history, why Amy would like him. But Timothée Chalamet actually ended up being a superior Laurie to me, as the younger version he was playful and sweet and got that brotherly characterisation that you needed to understand why he always wanted to be part of the March family, but in Paris, when he meets Amy (Florence Pugh) again, he’s louche and arrogant, but you can still see Laurie underneath, you can see his sweetness and the love that he has for her and her family, which really impressed me.
Greta Gerwig did a wonderful job adapting the book, though it’s still not my favourite adaptation, but it’s one I would happily watch and rewatch. But we’re making a palette, and in many adaptations of Little Women, as well as other period dramas with multiple sibling, they often each have their own colour palette. In this instance Meg (Emma Watson) wears primarily green and lavender, Jo (Saoirse Ronan) red and indigo blue, Beth (Eliza Scanlen) mostly wears neutrals, browns and pink, while Amy (Florence Pugh) the youngest of the March sisters is scene in light blues, though these colours were not set in stone, each sister wearing the others colours at times. Sibling after all would inevitably wear each others clothes and hand-me-downs, and in the 2019 adaptation Jo is also seen wearing some of Laurie’s old clothes adding to her more tomboyish person, which is a lovely and fitting touch.
But together, the colours are incredibly harmonious and I hope that that’s what I’ve achieved in this palette, though I have admittedly excluded pale blue because I thought that Volant, a trichromatic shadow that shifts between brown, red and green actually sat better. A sparkly shade such as this would, to me, sit cohesively with most combinations of the colours you would use in the palette, whether that was the teals and greens (Nightless, Wilderness and Habitat), paler greens (Habitat and Runaway), redder shades (Willow and Fahrenheit), purple and pink (Release & Crossroads) or a combination (Nightless with Willow or Fahrenheit), through experience with similar shades as this, they’re really easy to include in an eye look, and give incredibly good pay off. I’m really a sucker for those kind of shifting shadows, they look like beetles wings, and I’m all for that, and the one I use most frequently is a loose pigment called “Trippin” from Sleek Cosmetics. I’ve had it for years, have used it a lot, and have barely made a dent in what is less than a gram of product, I’ve also worn it with all sorts of complimentary matte shadows, and I actually see so much potential in this palette with that shade included.
As a side not, the 2019 movie wasn’t the only Little Women adaptation I watched last year, I also watched the BBC’s 2017 adaptation starring Maya Hawke and Emily Watson, a three part mini-series which I enjoyed, but not as much as the movies. Apparently last year excluding reading the novels, I seem to have been trying to watch any and all iteration of the story I could find.
Link || Little Women (1994) || IMDb || Wikipedia || Rotten Tomatoes
Link || Little Women (2017) || IMDb || Wikipedia || Rotten Tomatoes || BBC || Amazon Prime
Link || Little Women by Louisa May Alcott || Wikipedia || Audible || Good Reads
Link || How Color and Cut Transformed the Characters of Little Women by Darin James via Motion Pictures Association
Link || Jo and Laurie Shared Clothes on Purpose in Little Women by Erica Gonzales via Harpers Bazaar
Link || Lethal Cosmetics Single Shadows || Nightless || Willow || Release || Wilderness || Fahrenheit || Crossroads || Habitat || Runaway || Volant
Marvel Fatigue for me is a real thing. I’ve become really bored of all of the franchise, there are too many branches, with too many films, most of which are filler movies to get to some larger crescendo, with little to no story, action or fun and CGI, which in some of the original movies was really good, seriously suffering at the hands of time limits and over production. Honestly, I’m kind done with it all, but I would take fewer movies of better quality over dozens of dull one that just lose you two to three hours of your life. Of all the recent releases however, the ones that I have found most enjoyment for have been the limited series that they’ve created such as WandaVision (2021), Loki (2021 - present) and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022 - present).
Despite its iffy CGI, which when they released the promotional images and trailer made me recoil, my decision to watch She-Hulk was based on the casting of two people. One was Jameela Jamil, who plays Titania, and is someone who I’ve liked for a long time, and loved in The Good Place (2016-2020). But as she began her I Weigh account on Instagram and actively trying to help people embrace themselves whatever they look like, she was encouraging positivity whilst also calling out the people who were helping to hurt it. This was inspired by the damage “celebrities” like the Kardashians have done to many peoples body image, as they are constantly polluting social media with what the ideal body type is whilst making it completely unattainable. Kim K’s “enviable” physic being made up of expensive implants, fillers and surgery after surgery, which in a ironic turn of events, she has recently removed and went on a crash diet to push us back into the heroin chic nineties silhouette, just so she could destroy an iconic piece of fashion history, Marilyn Monroe’s ‘Happy Birthday’ gown designed by Bob Mackie for Jean-Louis in 1962 in one of her final public appearances prior to her death. Something which caused a great amount of anger and controversy, and was considered a massive mistake, not only by fans but Mackie, who told Entertainment Weekly:
"I thought it was a big mistake. [Marilyn] was a goddess. A crazy
goddess, but a goddess. She was just fabulous. Nobody photographs
like that. And it was done for her. It was designed for her. Nobody
else should be seen in that dress." (Bob Mackie, 2022, Entertainment Weekly)
If I wasn’t already running massively late posting these I would have a whole rant on that subject. I may even She-Hulk out a little.
More importantly the other person I watched the show for was the lead characters actress, Tatiana Maslany, who I have incredibly love for because of the television thriller, Orphan Black (2013-2017) where she played multiple genetically identical clones, who are trying to discover and bring down their creators, whilst they’re also being hunted. Knowing how well she characterised each of the sisters in the show I was both exited and scared at her casting, but she was absolutely the right person to play Jennifer Walkers a.k.a. She-Hulk.
Needless to say, I ended up loving this show and all its tongue in cheek, fourth wall breaking and kinda dodgy graphics. I especially liked that they poked fun at the Marvel Universe, pointing out the failings in other franchises and the cop-outs in storytelling. But most of my love for it is to do with Maslany’s performance as the titular character, she makes this show for me.
And since it is adapted from the Marvel Comics character created by Stan Lee, it means I get to create the greenest of green palettes…
… if you’re looking for deep and meaningful reasons behind each shade of green because one looks like the slight blush across her fingers or nose, or another the fleck of emerald in her eyes, you’re going to be disappointed. This is just a mean green palette for the one Hulk that doesn’t need to learn how to control their anger… she does it every month after all.
If you’ve looked at this series and rolled your eyes, give it a shot, it’s ridiculous but in an incredibly enjoying way, and if you don’t come away shipping Jen Walters and Matt Murdock (Daredevil played by Charlie Cox) then I will be very, very surprised. They are too damn cute together.
Link || I Weigh || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Good Reads || Podcast || Spotify || Earwolf || Stitcher
Link || Bob Mackie Says Kim Kardashian Wearing Marilyn Monroe's Gown to Met Gala Was a 'Big Mistake' by Maureen Lee Lenker via Entertainment Weekly
Link || Met Gala 2022: Designer Bob Mackie Says Letting Kim Kardashian Wear Marilyn Monroe's Dress was "a Big Mistake" by Emily Kirkpatrick via Vanity Fair
Link || Lethal Cosmetics Single Shadows || Hexapod || Black Forest || Coven || Eden || Fauna || Replica || Wilderness || Nebula || Herbivore
In 2014 Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi released a mockumentary about a group of vampires who live together in a flat in Wellington, NewZealand called, What We Do In The Shadows, and I wanted to love it, but while I really like Waititi’s character of the uptight Viago, and some of the cameos, I didn’t enjoy the dynamic between the characters, and found the comedy grumpy. But, I watched it after Clement and Waititi recreated the show as a piece of television comedy horror, moving the setting from NewZealand to Staten Island, New York City, where four vampires and their familiar share a house.
Watching the show before the film was probably a mistake because I very quickly fell for the characters of Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak), Leslie “Laszlo” Cravensworth (Matt Berry), Nadia of Antipaxos (Natasha Demetriou), Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) an energy vampire, and Guillermo de la Cruz (Harvey Guillén), who is Nandor’s long suffering familiar who’s one ambition is to one day become a vampire. An ambition which he has and will be waiting a long time to achieve. They were the perfect casting for this unorthodox family unit, within this mockumentary formatted show and the past four seasons have been filled with idiocy and high jinx caused by these vampires, who range in age from 100 year to 760, interacting with the modern world, other vampires, supernatural beings and each other.
The house in the show, which is their main set for most scenes is where I’m taking most of my inspiration from for the palette I’ve made. A candlelit collection of archaic fashions, it’s dark, warm and full of the clutter of hundreds of years of life, and honestly a vampiric palette would probably be a collection of warm reds, browns, a little ochre for the candlelight and of course a black and blood red… because oh the blood.
This again is a bit of an easy palette, and I very nearly made one of blue’s, teals, greens and purples based on the promotional imagery for Season 4, which positively vibrated with almost neon lighting but, it was similar to other palettes I curated and while this felt safe, it also felt truer to shows aesthetic. Plus, I have three of these shadows: Catatonic, Event Horizon and Esteem, and certainly with Event Horizon you need the darker tones such as Swarm, Corrosion and Transmutation along side it, as it’s a black based duochrome and needs the extra depth, but I do like the red/gold shift of this particular shadow.
What We Do In The Shadows is stupidly funny, and if I can give you my favourite reason for someone to watch this show, it is to experience my favourite character by far, Doll Nadja, the vessel in which Nadja’s accidentally abandoned soul has taken possession of rather than crossing over into the afterlife.
She is a work of puppetry genius, especially when she’s having a temper tantrum for an entire episode. Love her!
Link || What We Do in the Shadows (2019 - present) || IMDb || Wikipedia || Rotten Tomatoes || Disney+ || BBC iPlayer || Instagram
Link || Lethal Cosmetics Single Shadows || Esteem || Event Horizon || Swarm || Defiance || Transmutation || Frantic || Predation || Catatonic || Corrosion
Now it’s the time for one of my favourite adaptations from my viewing list this year, and it’s a television adaptation of one of my favourite films, which is an adaptation of one of my favourite books, High Fidelity (1995) by Nick Hornby.
The book is about Rob, a man in his mid-thirties who owns a record store, Championship Records, in London and has been recently dumped by his girlfriend, sending him into a mid-life crisis and this makes Rob do one of his favourite things, he makes a list. Normally it would be to make the best mix take, carefully curating each track so it perfectly expresses each and every emotion he needs it too, or simply a top five desert-island list of anything that allows he and his employees, Dick and Barry, to flex their musical knowledge over. But instead this time it’s a list of the top five most memorable break ups, and it prompts Rob to contact and re-examine his entire life through failed relationships.
I read this book at the end of high school, but actually I watched the film adaptation from starring John Cusack (Rob) first, and it swiftly became one that I watched and rewatched over and over again.
It’s still a movie that I regularly watch and while I can now see Rob in all his man child glory, it still gives me the same enjoyment that it did twenty years ago. So, when it was announced that it was being adapted for TV with Zoë Kravitz as the gender bent role of Rob (Robyn), I was once again scared at the idea of a new adaptation ruining something that I had loved for a very long time. It wasn’t the idea of changing genders, that I wasn’t something that worried me, it was the idea that they would modernise it to the point where it wasn’t recognisable and the obsessive, list making music loving character wouldn’t hold the same poignance.
But as soon as I saw the trailer, I was so excited that it really sucked that it wasn’t available to stream on any service I had access too, that was until 2022…
It was perfect, it paid incredible reverence to the novel, but almost more importantly to me, they paid reverence to the movie. Even down to using exact lines the characters said, similar framing for various scenes and using some of the music used in that earlier incarnation such as Dry The Rain by The Beta Band and I Believe (When I Fall in Love) by Stevie Wonder, two of the pieces of music I associated so strongly with the original. The story has found a way to translate the same voice into three very different decades and with Kravitz - whose mother, Lisa Bonet played Marie DeSalle, the musician Rob has a brief relationship in the 2000 film - taking on that role of the struggling owner of Championship Vinyl, who doesn’t have any true direction in life or her relationships, and she is absolutely that character.
It’s such an easy watch because it’s so similar to those other versions, but it didn’t need to rewrite the story, it just had to tell it and bring it only very slightly more into the modern world.
Creating a palette for this film was completely based on this photo of Rob in her kitchen. I had another in the works based on a scene from the record store, with more muted green tones, and a little blue alongside similar colours to those I’ve chose, but I liked these almost dingy muted browns, mauves and reds. Both the film and TV series keep this muted colour scheme, lots of browns and greens with almost 1970’s inspired colours, which goes along with the time period that LP’s were at their height of popularity, but these dingy tones kind of also reflect Robs lackadaisical approach to her life.
I also think that for this character, since the only makeup we ever see her apply is Ruby Woo by MAC, an iconic blue toned red matte lipstick, I don’t feel like a palette of bright colours would suit. If anything something nude, muted borderline grungy, something which would be a wash of colour or shimmer, applied as quickly and lazily as possible seems more appropriate, it seems more in keeping with how cool and unbothered she puts herself across as, while inside she’s over analysing everything.
This is a palette that I wouldn’t need to think about how to use, and though that ochre yellow (Esteem) might feel incongruous, like all of those rogue blues I get annoyed at in seemingly every day palettes, it’s actually a really nice camel/caramel toned golden brown, and blends out to a really simple wash of colour which can look kind of effortless. That’s the makeupI think Rob would wear, which is why a lipstick like Ruby Woo would be a mainstay for when she wants to try, but doesn’t really. That or she would be all about chunky graphic liner because she is that cool.
Unfortunately High Fidelity (2020) wasn’t renewed for a second season, but actually, I’m not upset about it. The show gave enough in its first season to satisfy me, more would have just opened it up to disaster and since they managed to cover every relationship on Rob’s top five list of exes, and the plot of both the novel and the film, it didn’t need to go further. They left it exactly where they needed too to satisfy me.
Link || High Fidelity (2020) || Disney+ || IMDb || Wikipedia || Rotten Tomatoes || Instagram
Link || High Fidelity (2000) || IMDb || Wikipedia || Rotten Tomatoes
Link || High Fidelity by Nick Hornby || Penguin Books || Wikipedia || Good Reads
Link || Lethal Cosmetics Sing Shadows || Swarm || Symmetry || Nocturnal || Willow || Orchard || Lithium || Esteem || Biome || Arboreal
Finally we’re going back to an adaptation of a Webtoon comic by Joo Dong-geun, which was originally known as Now at Our School but ultimately was renamed, All of Us Are Dead.
As someone who’s not a huge fan of horror movies, I do really enjoy movies and television shows featuring zombies. No good reason why this particular part of the horror genre would appeal more than anything else, but it does and having snored my way through the later seasons of The Walking Dead (2010 - 2022) I was really quite looking forward to any zombie show that actually seemed to include zombies!
Enter Netflix adaptation of All of Us Are Dead, set in a Korean high school which, after the science teachers failed experiment results in it being overrun by zombies, leave the remaining students to fight for their lives as they’re trapped inside the school with no food, no water, no means of communication and the infected surrounding them. And these aren’t your lumbering, slow paced, garden variety zombies, these are fast and the infection takes hold quickly.
So often zombie shows are dark and muted in colour, they’re trying to be scary, showing dirt and gore and the natural decay that a zombie apocalypse would bring, and they’re also more often than not zombie shows which are set months or more likely years after the initial outbreak, but generally everything is muted and meant to look depressing. For a show set in a high school, depressing places that they are, this is downright colourful in comparison, with it’s warm egg yolk yellow class rooms, with warm wooden cabinets, contrasting with paler aqua greens and blues, and then all the students are in their deep green uniforms with little pops of cool toned pink, peach and cream, it’s a really interesting colour palette, only made more interesting as everything lit in this warm, almost golden green light, which gives this lingering feeling of uneasiness in the same way cooler lighting is used in traditional zombie dramas.
It’s this strange and interesting colour scheme that I wanted to try and encapsulate in the palette. Plus a little bit of red for the blood and gore of it all.
Setting the show in a school, full of hundred of students, packed corridors and locked doors gives an instant tension. I remember high school, that feeling of being carried along in a tightly pack sea of my peers from one class to the next, packed hallways, even more tightly packed stairwells, and the crush at doors and the anxiety that brought with it. Add in fast, bloody thirsty and unstoppable zombies, whose bodies literal and audible crunch, spasm and twitch as they come at you, then top it off with high school hierarchies, teenagers love lives and disintegrating friendships… and that makes an already unpleasant experience one of terror. The frenetic way the series is shot during particularly riotous attack scene only adding to this feeling.
Now, I can’t comment on how well it’s been adapted from the original webcomic, it’s still in my reading list, because despite how much I’ve enjoyed the aesthetic and unique colour scheme of the Netflix series, I don’t particularly enjoy the art style of the comic, and it’s put me off from reading it. But the series is really well done, it’s fast paced, gory without being over the top, moving at times, and kind of fun, which is something the genre often lacks but could benefit from.
The series - which has been renewed for a second season - was one of the best zombie centric shows I’ve seen in a long time. Especially after the disappointment of The Walking Dead (2010-2022) which, after twelve years, finally came to an end in 2022 and had being deathly boring for at nearly half of that time, a sad fact after how good the first few seasons had been.
If you like zombie horror and want something good, you should try All of Us Are Dead, if you have access to it, and whether you watch it in the original Korean with subtitles or dubbed, it’s a really good watch.
Link || All of Us Are Dead (2022 - present) || Netflix || IMDb || Wikipedia || Rotten Tomatoes || Instagram
Link || All of Us Are Dead (2009 - 2011) by Joo Dong-geum || WebToon
Colour in TV and film is important, it creates mood and ambiance, it can bring tension and highlight emotion, and can be symbolic of different characters or attitudes, even simply of who the director or producer was given many have their iconic colour palettes. Colour is used to enhance the story. I wish I was knowledgeable enough to explain what it is about the colour in these films and TV shows that makes them so attractive, so effective, and my choosing them wasn’t really anything to do with that, but trying to disseminate each down into nine colours and have a mood of either certain characters or an environment was a fun challenge.
I stupidly enjoy making these palettes, it would be easy enough to just pick nine eyeshadows that I like in a palette, or make a one based on a photo of a flower or some random piece of scenery, but to try and curate them from something else, for a show I enjoy or a character I love, and actually have a degree of that ambience, is really fun.
Hope you’re having a good month, at this rate I’ll be done posting just in time to start again. So, hopefully and with all my best intentions, part nine will be up before the month is out…
Link || Lethal Cosmetics || Website || Palette Designer || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || Pinterest || YouTube || Beauty Bay
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Listening: I Believe (When I Fall in Love) - Stevie Wonder
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