There's your swagger.

Living Fast and Dying Young.

Last night marked the return of two shows I have a passing interest in - Skins, and The Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Whilst there may, on the surface of it, seem to be very little in common between a show about the hedonistic lives led by some Bristol teenagers and a London prostitute, the shows are not without their similarities; both featuring bar-hopping, bed-hopping, and characters I feel compelled to watch, even if, like the Amy Winehouse song, I know that they're no good.



There was practically nothing good about the first episode of season 4 of Skins. It centred on Thomas, who, following an incident in a nightclub where a drug-addled trip gets a girl to commit suicide, is left feeling guilty and in an existential crisis. After a terribly awkward sex scene with his one-time wholesome, now completely randy girlfriend Pandora, he turns his attentions to the daughter of his vicar, whom has a penchant for singing and an even bigger fancy for shagging in hospitals. The characters in this episode were that their whininest, moodiest, most loathable peak and aside from JJ's cameo and the bombastic appearance of Effy at the end (I hate her but she has certainly got a swagger about her), it was a pointless episode. Things had better pick up next week.

Secret Diary of a Call Girl took itself much less seriously, and was more fun with it. Billie Piper's Belle/Hannah finds her memoirs published, and, in an amusing episode where she attends the launch of her book (published anonymously), she is horrified to find that the publishers have employed a brainless, big-boobed half-brain to read her book. In the second episode, she has to make do with her sister living with her, and it's repression vs. liberals as the two sisters bicker away continuously, building up to a timebomb (or a bitchslap) just waiting to happen. The customers of Belle are, as ever, pretty munting, but the show does manage the same stream of misleading "prostitution is fun guys, join in!" that the book gave.

The Princess and the Frog (Ron Clements, John Musker, 2009)

From a young age, Tiana has learnt from her tireless father the meaning of working hard for your dreams. His dream was always to own a restaurant, but sadly, he died before his dream true. Spurred on by this, Tiana holds down two jobs to raise funds so she can build this restaurant in her dad's memory. Just as she has the exact amount she needs, on the eve of catering for a welcoming party held by her best friend Charlotte to welcome Prince Neevan, Prince Neevan goes and gets himself transformed into a frog by local voodoo man, and she, on the promise of riches if she does so, kisses him. However, this backfires and only goes to turn her into a frog. And being an amphibian is the least of her worries.



As you'd expect from a Disney movie, no matter how modern, there are catchy ditties aplenty in The Princess and the Frog. Fine vocal performances feature all round to make the songs truly unforgettable, my favourite songs being the poignant "I'm Almost There" and a very sweet "My Belle Evangeline", as sung by a hillbilly firefly. It shouldn't work, but it really does. As with Clements and Musker's previous collaboration Hercules (one of my top 100 films, in case you forgot), the songs truly embody the fun, fresh and feel-good flavour of the film, and it's terrific to watch all the characters take part so well.



Though Pixar animations has set the bar extremely high for all animated movies, The Princess and the Frog doesn't try to compete; instead, it stays true to the old-school style of Disney movies, and does so brilliantly. Whilst the pictures may lack the 3D style of Pixar, the rich colours and detail are a wild and wacky throwback to old fashioned Disney. Along with the drawing style, there's also the magic, the whimsy, the clearly painted villains and clearly painted heros too.



Core to the film is the play on the age old tale of The Frog Prince. The writers are far too clever to simply recreate the fairy tale as a cartoon, yet they retain the romantic core of the story in this film. As with all Disney films, there are messages aplenty not subtly slotted in the songs, but would you have it any other way? Tiana, Naveen, a crocodile and a firefly go on one of the most exhilirating rides in 2009, and you should be there with them.

Serious. WHY am I straight?!??!?!?

Um, yeah, so, remind me why I'm straight again?

♥

I saw the trailer to "The Wolfman" yesterday and Emily looks STUNNING in it. For that, chiefly, I NEED to see that film. ;)

Ex-ter-min-ate.

Saw this in White City, outside the BBC studios and it made me chuckle:

There's a He-Wolf in his Trousers.

Was having a peruse of The Guardian, and saw this interesting little article source

Warren Beatty slept with 12,775 women, claims biographer
It may not be one of the great remaining mysteries, on a par with the nature of dark matter or the origins of the universe, but the question of how many women Warren Beatty, 72, has slept with certainly seems to have got New York's media-land in a froth.

Peter Biskind, Beatty's new biographer, estimates that the famously seductive star of Bonnie and Clyde and Reds has notched up 12,775 sexual conquests, including Isabelle Adjani, Diane Keaton and Madonna. If true, that is impressive. Don Giovanni could only claim a lacklustre 2,065, according to Mozart's librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte.

Biskind writes in his book, Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America, that he arrived at the figure by "simple arithmetic". He appears to have worked out the number of days between Beatty losing his virginity at 19 and the date in 1991 when he met Annette Bening on the set of Bugsy and fell into monogamy, and applied the questionable logic that during that entire period Beatty slept with an average of one woman a day. Biskind, an accomplished writer on Hollywood and author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, adds that for these purposes he ruled out "daytime quickies, drive-bys, casual gropings, stolen kisses and so on".

The exercise may not gain Biskind honorary membership of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, but it has generated considerable publicity.

An account in the New York Post, headlined "Sexy tell-all jumps into Beatty's bed", bills the book as an authorised biography. However, even its publisher, Simon & Schuster, makes no reference to Beatty having co-operated with the author.

Beatty's lawyer, Bertram Fields, told the Huffington Post that Biskind's "tedious book was not authorised by Mr Beatty". He accused Biskind of writing "many false assertions" and of quoting Beatty "saying things he never said".

According to the Post's account, such quotations include Beatty telling Biskind of Jane Fonda – who apparently initially thought he was gay: "Oh, my God. We kissed until we had practically eaten each other's heads off."

Joan Collins allegedly stumbled exhausted out of bed after a session with Beatty exclaiming: "I don't think I can last much longer. He never stops – it must be all those vitamins he takes."

So there's yer male hoodrat.