All About My Movies.

SAG predictions.

2012-01-29T19:39:00.000Z

I have been awful in neglecting following the Oscar race this year, but, alas, it's never too late. Predictions for who will win tonight!

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
GEORGE CLOONEY / Matt King – THE DESCENDANTS
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
MERYL STREEP / Margaret Thatcher – THE IRON LADY (The Weinstein Company)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role
CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER / Hal – BEGINNERS (Focus Features)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role

JESSICA CHASTAIN / Celia Foote – THE HELP (DreamWorks Pictures / Touchstone Pictures)
(there's your wishful thinking!)

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
BRIDESMAIDS (Universal Pictures)

Yeah, not gonna lie, I just guessed all of these. Teehee.

Sherlock Holmes 2: A Game of Shadows (Guy Ritchie, 2011)

2012-01-29T16:07:00.000Z

Sherlock Holmes has noticed a selection of seemingly unrelated events – bombings, murders of intellectuals, and he, as only he can, pinpoints Professor James Moriarty as the culprit behind all of these. He is right of course, and soon his sleuthing brings him face-to-face with the villainous genius. Holmes asks Moriarty to keep Doctor Watson out of their intellectual game of chess (Irene Adler has sadly, already been made collateral damage as a result of the two’s mental warfare) , but of course, in saying so only gets his wingman embroiled into things further. It is up to Sherlock then, along with his long-suffering best friend to stop Moriarty before he stops them and reeks war on the rest of Europe.

Much as with the original, the film belongs to the two co-leads, and the fact that they clearly had fun making the film rubs off on us in an infectious Hollywood romp with moments of ingenuity. Unlike with the first, Sherlock’s older brother rears his head, and here, he is played by flamboyant actor Stephen Fry. He is a hoot and a half, and one scene in particular where he is taking to Dr Watson’s wife (played by Kelly Reilly, gorgeous as always) wearing absolutely no clothes, is particularly amusing. There are also laughs to be had in Sherlock’s latest past time – camouflaging himself into his surroundings. As with another Hollywood crowdpleaser of 2011, Kung Fu Panda 2, this film wouldn’t be half as fun without the charms of its leading man.

Elsewhere in casting, Jared Harris makes for an excellent James Moriarty. Whilst he is not as outright creepy as Andrew Scott in the BBC’s modern day TV show, he has the more professorly element of Moriarty down to a T. His scenes with Downey Jr make for great a great cinematic showdown. Noomi Rapace, from the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is also present in this film, with long hair this time, and whilst she isn’t given a whole lot to do in terms of acting, just her presence (she is someone who naturally exudes badass) contributes to the film’s awesome and contributes to its continental flavour as Sherlock, Watson and she and her gang go across enemy lines in order to catch Moriarty.

The big-screen outing of Sherlock Holmes 2 will invariable suffer in comparison to the second series of Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s fantastic TV show, which, funnily enough, ends on a similar note as the film, albeit a much more sombre tone. Of course it’s not as good are as clever as the TV show; very few things are. But in its own right, it’s rollicking good fun. Guy Ritchie always does best when he’s playing it straight, as well as given a few decent fight scenes to direct, and he plays to his strengths here (he could, however, have toned it down with the over-stylisation in slow mos and too much sound editing). Downey Jr and Law have plenty of fun, the action sequences are entertaining, rendering this a worthwhile two hours.
Grade: B+

Chinatown around Chinese New Year...

2012-01-28T17:50:00.000Z

Absolutely beautiful.

You've got a smile that could light up this whole town.

2012-01-27T20:45:00.001Z

I've been revisiting the Taylor Swift tracks on my iPod recently, and I don't care what anyone else says, I still find her songs a delight. One lyric in her "You Belong with Me" song, particularly rings out to me, I find it charming in its corniness, you've got a smile that could light up this whole town. And it got me thinking, several of my favourite celebrities genuinely do have smiles so fabulous they could metaphorically light up a town. Here be a few of my favourites!

06. Adam Johnson

There are plenty of footballers whom I fancy more than AJ, but his smile, but the unadulterated joy radiating from the half moon on his face is just a joy to behold. Adorable!

05. Selena Gomez

Her cheeks are absolutely gorgeous and I love how easily her lovely smiles come. Her hair, a cascade of curls also frame her face perfectly and the endless supply of lipgloss she has only makes her smiles lovelier.

04. Mila Kunis

The cheekiness that comes with her grins adds to their awesome, and she has the largest, most unforgettable eyes ever.

03. Harry Styles

This boy most certainly does know he's beautiful, but I don't even care. He's a jack the lad, but so, so, hot with it. And that cheeky grin, goddamn.

02. Hailee Steinfeld

This gif of Hailee giggling is one of my all-time favourites. Her effortless charm and unpretentious, natural happiness is completely infectious. I adore her!

01. Dianna Agron
Oh, she is divine. The combination of Lolita lips, exquisitely unusual eye colour and long eyelashes, as well as her flawless skin and bone structure, make for the most beautiful smile I have ever seen, bar none.

How lovely! *___*

Delicious.

2012-01-21T09:29:00.000Z

When I find myself in times of trouble,my favourite comfort food is ice cream. Which is just as well, because the flagship Haagen Dazs store in London has a wide range of delicious ice cream, and just one bite of their sensational creations, makes me feel I've died and gone to heaven.

The strawberries and cream & pancake combination. The light frothy cream is a perfect complement to the ice cream and pancakes, and the chocolate sauce is a wonderful extra.

If you're in a hurry, there's a takeaway section of the store, where you can order up to four scoops (in a box or in a cone), top it off with some delightful chocolate sauce and eat at your own pace as you wander around London. :)

4 shot glasses with chocolate ice cream, each with a surprise extra as well (nuts, other ingredients) to keep things interesting!

And last but by no means least, Haagen Dazs this month released a fantastic new brand - secret sensations. Inside each pot is a delicious taste (creme brulee or chocolate) that just melts in your mouth and goes fantastically with the ice cream. TASTE IT.

New year, new skirt.

2012-01-20T22:39:00.000Z

I picked up a coupla things in the January sales, but the most prominent was this ADORABLE denim miniskirt from Miss Selfridge, down from £25 (if I remember correctly) for a cool £6.30 with student discount! I love it. Here it is in two very different looks:

I think I can safely say that this skirt is going to feature quite prominently over the next 12 months!

Sherlock.

2012-01-02T07:08:00.001Z

In time for the New Year comes a second series of Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s wildly inventive Sherlock, which takes the classic stories from Arthur Conan Doyle and sets them in the hustle and bustle of London. Smartphones, blogs, laptops and fancy gadgetry all become part of the story-telling as Doyle’s clever creations are given a modern day spin, and heading all of this unlikely but massively successful creation are the odd couple of Benedict Cumberbatch as the genius but extremely irritating epoynomous character and Martin Freeman as his long-suffering army doctor friend and housemate, Doctor Watson.

The season starts where series one had left off, and thus in, quite literally, an explosive manner as Holmes and Watson are in a swimming pool room, face-to-face with Sherlock’s nemesis, the brilliantly dastardly Jim Moriarty. He is seconds, nay, nano-seconds from doing away with the pair of them when Moriarty receives a phonecall which pulls his attention away from the two and gives them a lifeline. We see that this phonecall came from none other than a vampily-clad woman, and not only that, but she seems fond of playing sex games with other women. The woman – as she will be called by Sherlock – will play a huge part in the episode, as it is really centred around her. It is of course, the only person who has ever proved a match for Sherlock Holmes, Irene Adler.

Irene Adler is played by young riser Lara Pulver, and from the moment we lock eyes with her on screen, we know we are witnessing someone special. Looks-wise, God spared no expense with her- beautiful eyes, the skin of an angel and the body of a Greek goddess, as well as a voice that exudes femme fatale all over. It was an important call in casting one of the fiercest female literary creations and the show’s producers could have easily opted for the easy option and gone for a more mainstream actress, but they put faith in Lara Pulver and she has repaid them handsomely with a fabulous performance that exudes sex and more than holds her own against the show’s talented and experienced males.

The episode, “A Scandal in Belgravia”, is loosely based around the Conan Doyle short story “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Except now, Irene Adler is a high class call girl who specializes in whip-play rather than an opera singer, and she has a collection of photos on her camera-phone rather than one bulky photo. These photos are of Adler with a female member of the Royal Family (or thereabouts), and Mycroft Holmes has enlisted his little brother (who’s relationship with is the very definition of love/hate) and Dr Watson to go get those pictures back.

Along the way, there are twists and turns aplenty. I was blown away by the ingenuity of the first series with how it subverted the Sherlock blueprint and managed to use modern day technology as part of the story-telling and detective process, and wasn’t sure if it would feel quite as fresh this time. Reality? It felt better. Doctor Watson’s keeping a blog is an amusing sub-plot and there is one terrifically crafted scene in which Sherlock Holmes, due to becoming somewhat of a C-list celeb due to said blog, is photographed by the paparazzi, a stream of photos which find their way to broadsheet papers, including The Guardian. Wonderfully filmed and a witty nod at the media obsession that we as a nation are getting.

As far as awkward, rude detectives go, this is also the first time Sherlock has shown interest in another woman. Irene Adler is stunning to look at, no question about it, but what really draws Holmes to her is her intellect. She is always three steps ahead of the chess game – each of her phones, combinations etc have two PINS – one which will open the safe and one which will alert the police, and even when you think she’s reached the end of the road and run out of lives, she manages to surprise you. There is one scene in which she half-seduces Sherlock by leaning into him, which plays out as one of the most erotic things I have seen in TV – yet no kissing or sex was directly involved. Incredible.

The first episode of Sherlock had everything I could possibly have wanted from a TV show and more. A showdown in Buckingham palace? Check. Some kick-ass fighting? Check. Retribution for some of the goons who hustled poor Mrs Hudson? Check. Some knowledge into the games Britain and Germany played with each other in the war? Check? A password that had me baffled for the whole episode and then finally, when it was revealed “Ahhhhh!”? Checkmate. The acting was faultless, with the camaraderie and banter between Holmes and Dr Watson timed to perfection. Something that has always bothered me about Holmes – although I wouldn’t expect him to be any different – is that he never gives Dr Watson the credit he deserves for everything he does for him, and this is exhibited here, when poor Dr Watson loses yet another girlfriend due to his need to protect Sherlock. The script was a work of genius, and I cannot but tip my hat to Gatiss and Moffat. All in all, the show was an overarching triumph. Next Sunday now seems an age away.
Grade: A+

Genie of the Lamp.

2011-12-14T10:22:00.001Z

When Frank Lampard scored the penalty for Chelsea against Manchester City by smashing the ball down the middle, he made a statement for the title race; it was not going to be a Manchester duopoly if Chelsea had anything to do with it. It was also a statement of another kind: that despite what the Media said, despite even what his gaffer might do, Frank Lampard was far from over.

Benched for Chelsea’s vital Champions League match against Valencia and then benched for this game, it marked a murky period. The previous ten years, Frank Lampard had been invincible for Chelsea. Under Andre Villas-Boas’ vision for the team, though, Frank Lampard’s role within the club has been far more peripheral. Discontent with his performance against Newcastle, which included a penalty miss, the manager had subbed Lampard off at the hour, and the Englishman’s fury was so transparent it could be felt through the TV screen. Ignoring the manager as he skulked off, he sat in the dugout, glowering menacingly with arms crossed.

As the only member of the Chelsea squad to have attended a private school and with a handful of GCSEs, some at decent grades, Frank Lampard is a lot smarter than the majority of his teammates. He knows better than to shit stir or say anything overtly pejorative of the manager, because he knows his words will simply come back to bite him in the team selection. On Monday night though, Lampard could not resist a few incisive but very carefully selected words. “I want to play, simple as that,” he said. “I’m as fit as I’ve ever been. I’ve been in a good run of form and now I’ve not been playing. I haven’t spoken him so I don’t know why, simple as that.” With his goal celebration on Monday which was cathartic, bordering on deranged with a touch of Balotelli, his emotions threatened to bubble over.

Lampard is right to feel aggrieved. He has given Chelsea football club the best part of his life and his seven goals this season and several assists – a record that is even more impressive given that some of his appearances have been in the limited time as a substitute – is excellent for a midfielder, indeed, it eclipses that of Luis Suarez’s at Liverpool, say. He never shirks his duties, and when Chelsea are chasing a result, he is precisely the type of player you need. Raul Meireles, essentially the one that has displaced him in the Chelsea starting XI, is settling in well (indeed, he also scored on Monday night) and five years Lampard’s junior, it is not unfair to say he is more mobile and probably more dynamic. But Lampard has one of the best footballing minds in the premier league, and so for AVB to not even consider a trade-off between playing time for these two players and to essentially pick one over the other, little wonder that Lampard feels so aggrieved.

Obviously, it would be blind to say that he is identical, nay, better than the player he was three or four years ago. With each year that he ages, he slows a little, and in that sense he is the most unfortunate of Chelsea’s “old guard”; Terry and Drogba are also getting on now, but Terry, as a centreback, can usually rely on his fullbacks to cover for his lack of pace. And Drogba is rare type of player who genuinely seems to get better with age, not least because he knows he needs to keep Torres out of the starting XI, and that galvanizes him more than anything. And, as mentioned, Lampard does seem to have lost that infallible penalty-taking touch he once so possessed. So when we consider these points, AVB’s occasional decisions to bench him don’t seem totally radical. Chelsea fans can accept that their prodigal son and by far the fan’s favourite will not be starting every single game these days, especially as the manager has a vision for the future that rests on the youth of Oriol Romeu, Juan Mata and Daniel Sturridge. But at the same time, Lampard is far from being over and thus undeserving of the total freeze out he seems to have experienced of late.

Writing Frank Lampard off is a dodgy business. All the papers did it earlier this season when he didn’t start an England game. The result? Frank Lampard came back, not only as England captain for their friendly against Spain, but he just so happened to have scored the winner and only goal in that game. Similarly, “pundits” who were so gleefully relishing the end of his career for Chelsea were laughing on the other side of their faces when he returned with a Man of the Match performance against Bolton that just so happened to feature a hat-trick. He shines against all opposition, man or mouse, and his goals don’t just come when the game is sealed – Lampard has gotten four of Chelsea’s matchwinning goals this season – against Man City, Blackburn, Bolton, Norwich, so illustrating that this is a player who does not lose his head when the team’s backs are against the wall. There is nothing we enjoy more than proving our detractors wrong, and Lampard is no exception; football writers’ words of discouragement merely spur him on the train harder (not that he needs to train), to play better, and show the world and his son that they are wrong.

In order to take penalty on Monday Frank Lampard had wrestled the ball away from Juan Mata, whom AVB had assigned penalty taking duties to following Lampard’s previous two misses. It was a ferocious penalty, slammed right down the middle and reminiscent of the one he scored against Manchester United in the league last season – a game won in identical circumstances. Except this penalty had even more bite to it, and it is probably not inaccurate to suggest was a physical embodiment of some of the rage Frank has been internalizing of late. His penalty opponent and England teammate Joe Hart smiled a rueful smile as Lampard wheeled away to the fans in celebration; he knew there was no stopping that penalty. And there is no stopping Frank Lampard either, a man with plenty of life left in him and a lot more still to give.

The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)

2011-11-01T18:08:00.000Z

Pretension. It’s a funny thing. I prescribe to the Monica Bing school of thought, that a little bit of pretension never hurt anyone. It is definitely a thing of which, however, can kill. Cannes winners have, in the past, gone into one set column or the other for me. Pretty much half of them, I appreciated their artistry, but, even more than that, connected with them on an emotional level, and thus really adored them. The others, I have found frustrating and to be perfectly honest, far too clever for their own good. The Tree of Life is one which firmly falls in the latter camp.

Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain head a good ol’ Christian style family in Texas. Pitt is the epitome of graft as he trains his songs to fight, build things and generally toughen them up against the big bad world, which he believes will take advantage of you if give it the chance. Jessica Chastain, on the other hand, believes in living life through the way of grace, rather than nature. She tries to put a dampener on her husband’s volatile and bullish behaviour, which often has a detrimental impact on their three songs, not altogether successfully. At a young age, one the sons commits suicides, posing questions of faith, morality and existence to all involved.

The Tree of Life is essentially, Terrence Malick’s soliloquy with God. “Why should I be good if you aren’t?” a character asks, later characterized in Sean Penn, a Houston architect who feels stifled by the heady skyscrapers he surrounds himself with everyday. Malick’s brother also committed suicide, leading understandably doubt his belief. And, fair play to him, for getting arts grants from whomever he managed to con into allowing him to film this, because it is, without hyperbolizing, one of the dullest things I have ever had to sit through. I wasn’t a huge fan of Lars von Triers’ Melancholia, which touched upon similar themes to The Tree of Life, and some film critics have offered as a complement to this film. But at least that film, for all its flaws, had moments of humour and colour interspersed with the dryness. The Tree of Life has colour all right, in terms of vividly CGI-d creation scenes, but very little in terms of emotional core or interest. Brad Pitt annoys and it is easy to see why his sons despised him so, despite his best efforts. Sean Penn features very little (probably the best thing I can say about this snorefest), but when he does, he just channels Penn in 21 Grams with a constantly perplexed/angry/bemused look on his face. Oscar winning this most certainly ain’t. The young kids in the film, played by relative newcomers to the acting circuit, do their jobs admirably enough, but the fact that they are speaking Terrence Malick words makes it hard to warm to them. The film’s only saving grace is Jessica Chastain, who gives a beautiful film, full to the brim of warmth and love. She never over or under acts, despite Malick having written her as a kind of “doting wife and mother” archtype. It’s a thankless role, but Chastain truly impresses in it.

And I am trying, really I am, but that is about the only good thing I can say about The Tree of Life. My housemate said “I have absolute no interest in seeing THAT” and I have no idea why I didn’t listen to him, because it is two and a half of my life I shall never get back. Even Alexandre Desplat’s score, which I would normally appreciate (man is a genius), is tainted by the fact that it appears in this Bible Bash of a film, as does his good eye for cinematography (used to such good effect in films that he has made well, namely Days of Heaven and The New World). Want a little taster of Tree of Life? Go to the book of Job, pick a verse, any verse, blast some classical music from your iPod dock and flick through a photoalbum of images of nature. It will be much, much, much more fulfilling than watching this piece of trash film was. If Terrence Malick really loves his God so much, one would have thought God would have blessed him with a slightly better movie.
Grade: F

My world has been rocked.

2011-10-30T16:36:00.000Z

This is all that matas as far as I'm concerned!

Some sale shopping I've done in October.

2011-10-29T20:21:00.000+01:00

You know me, I love a bargain, and thee month of October, with all its Autumn sales, bought plenty of those. Unfortunately, I couldn't buy absolutely everything that I liked, but here are a few of the ones that I did.

Gap dress. Original price: £45, Sale price: £9.99

It was only after buying this that I realised that I already own a grey dress, but that one's a sundress, whereas this one's slightly more formal with the collar. Nice with a belt!

Shoes. Miss Selfridge. Original price: £45, Sale price: £10

I'm insanely in love with the heels, they're called "Monet" and the purple-splat design on it is very Monetesque. The heels are highest of any shoes I've ever walked in, a good five or six inches, and I've fallen over them plenty of times. But it's worth it.

Jumpsuit. Miss Selfridge. Original price: £38, sale price: £7.

This is my favourite from the october sale-shopping lot, and an absolute steal at seven quid!!! Now that winter's looming, obviously a jumpsuit on its own is just asking for trouble, but I plan on pairing it with woolly tights and a thick cardigan and working that look! Ha.

Dress top. H&M. Original price: £7.99. Sale price: £3, H&M; Cardigan. Miss Selfridge. Original price: £35. Sale price: £15.

The cardigan is probably too thin to wear on its own during the winter, but for boozy nights out, it'll certainly suffice as a wear-it-in-the-cold-then-stuff-in-handbag kind of apparel. The dress top is pretty multifunctional, sadly, I don't have the legs to wear it in isolation, but with a pair of skinnies, the boldness of the colour works a trest.

Toga dress. Miss Selfridge. Original price: £37. Sale price: £12.

I absolutely adore togas; I have a dress in very similar style in navy blue, but I was just in love with this salmon colour. The collar is lovely and wearing it with a belt really gives the dress some shape.

Pyjama top. Topshop. Original price: £18. Sale price: £8.

This top should actually correctly been worn as PJs, but I love Mickey Mouse and am not afraid to show it, so I'll wear it out in daylight, thanks. ;)

Dress. Topshop. Original price: £35. Sale price: £17.

I had a similar yellow dress from Primark two and a half years ago, but that was when I was a thin size 10. I do not even fit into that dress any more, and hence I had to get a size up, in a slightly different cut and a different shade from that sunshine yellow; here be a mustard yellow dress! I used a safety pin on the chest because otherwise my bra would have shown and I just don't think it's a good look!

Two central London restaurant reviews.

2011-10-24T17:06:00.000+01:00

My Old Place (E1 7EZ)

Smack bang in London’s financial centre where lots of the people who work there are too busy to sort out their own packed lunches, My Old Place is a favourite among busy commuters to sit down in and eat their lunch. The fact that it’s frequented by Chinese people is a testament to the quality of the food; we tend to be more critical of the food of our homelands. The food is made on order and thus fresh and delicious, unlike in several other diners in Chinatown, where items such as egg fried rice taste horribly stale. The quantities of salt, pepper, sauces and various other condiments are added just the right side of tasty without being over the top in the usage, and there are some exciting dishes to be experienced. However, what lets this place down is the quality of the waiters, which is haughty bordering on rude. I went with a group of English friends and they regarded all of us with a disdainful “what are you all doing here? This is a Chinese only place” glare and one of our orders were mixed up, for which they didn’t even apologise for, merely act as if it was our fault we couldn’t read the menu. So it’s a shame, really, because the food is great, the prices are very reasonable considering the location, but the staff could really do with a class or ten in bedside manner.
Grade: B-

L’Arco (SW1W 0QJ)

A highly likeable restaurant in Victoria with a genuinely homely vibe, Ristorante L’Arco boasts some genuinely Italian waiters who really take the time to get you whatever you want. The food was served promptly on ordering, and cooked to perfection, as well as fairly well priced considering the to-die-for-location. I had tomato omelette and chips, which came to around ten pounds, which I considered fair, particularly as the tomato sauce tasted divine. My only criticisms with this place were that, whilst the food was good value, the drinks were far too expensive, and also that the menu, whilst would most certainly suffice, didn’t offer anything massively imaginative. But, if you want to play it safe on a date, you can’t go wrong with L’Arco.
Grade: B+/A-

Katy B (O2 Academy, Bristol)

2011-10-23T09:19:00.000+01:00

22-year-old South London girl Katy B took to the 02 Academy in front of a very young, very trendy crowd for her On a Mission tour. And, from the moment she took to the stage in a pretty sparkly top, her firey red hair cascading down her back in electrifying style, we all knew we were in for a treat. Starting with a fan favourite “Broken Record”, Katy B was firmly in command of the audience throughout. The two female back-up vocalists and band accompanying her were all highly competent, without being so loud so that they stole the thunder from the main attraction.

Katy B was chatty and lively throughout, often engaging with the crowd to check that we were getting into it (rest assured, we were), and her accompanying MC was equally spirited. Her performance of “Louder” had everyone in the arena jumping up and down. Vocally, Katy B has a very powerful recording voice, as demonstrated on her effortlessly reaching the high notes on “Power On Me”. Her unusual style of half-rapping, half-singing some of her songs were exhibited at their best in “Disappear”, when the line “but how can I change direction / when you smile at me I’m infected”, which I’m sure is a line that plenty of young women with connect with.

Her renditions of her crowd-pleasers “Easy Please Me” and “Lights On”, the latter which was done as the encore, also didn’t disappoint, and the headline song, “Katy On a Mission”, was fantastic. Katy B has a great talent for writing about the mundane and the amusing and making poetry of it, as exhibited from the opening line of Easy Please Me – “standing at the bar with my mate Olivia, we were trying our best to catch up”. Choosing to tell us the rationale for writing some of her songs as an introduction into them also helped to keep the audience entertained. For me, however, the best Katy B’s performance of the night was of “Witches Brew”, wherein her back-up singers sang the sultry “oohs” perfectly to complement her on lead vocals, and the lighting crew also did a great job to help re-create the eerie Twighlightish vibe that was emulated in her music video.

All in all, it was a great 80 minutes spent with a young woman who quite clearly loved music, and loved performing. The audience loved it, she loved it – everyone had an ace time. Mission accomplished, Katy!

Kung Fu Panda 2 (Jennifer Yuh, 2011)

2011-10-20T14:01:00.000+01:00

Having established himself in the first Kung Fu Panda film as more than just a cuddly bear, Po and the Furious Five find themselves up against something which threatens the Valley of Peace – an evil peacock, Lord Shen, and his canons which destroy everything that stands in their way – even kung fu. At the same time, Po comes to realise that his dad, a goose, is not his biological father, asking questions about where he originated from. It probably won’t surprise you to know that the former and the latter are very closely cause-and-effect interlinked as Po struggles with inner demons as well as physical ones, but the journey, in which Po and his ensemble of wisecracking fighters – headed by the badass Tigress – makes for one of the most entertaining Summer films of this year, as well as a film so emotionally layered that I was moved to tears at more than one point.

For the most part, the voice actors do their voiceovers without entering the relms of excellence such as Eddie Murphy in Shrek, or Ellen DeGeneres in Finding Nemo, which is a massive shame to say the least, considering there are talented auteurs like Dustin Huffman, Dennis Haysbert and Seth Rogen on the books here, the latter who’s comic timing could have been put to much better use. There are, however, four exceptions to this rule in Kung Fu Panda, only one of them bad. The bad is Angelina Jolie. As the hardcore Tigress with a taciturn demeanour and fists of steel (quite literally), she is drawn to exude an air of unapproachability, but deep down with a heart of gold. It’s quite a difficult kind of character to portray in animated film, but Jolie never veers out of the monotonous in her voicework, and it is safe to say she makes a tiger’s dinner out of her “performance.” The other three exceptions, however, are all good ones. Gary Oldman is absolutely fantastic as the evil peacock, springing menace in every line he delivers, and Chinese actor James Hong, so often typecast as a Chinese takeaway guy or waiter, voices Po’s adoptive father Mr Ping, who is, surprise surprise, a restaurant owner. But that unmistakable Asian voice of his, so hilarious in it’s over the topness, is also called on to deliver some things other than jokes in Kung Fu Panda 2, and one scene in particular, in which he tells Po about how he found him (in a vegetable crate, Po had eaten all the radishes) is an emotive tour-de-force in heartfelt voice acting.

But, as with the prequel, the film belongs to Jack Black, and whilst the film could have done just as well with any other actors voicing the Furious Five, it most certainly would not have been anywhere near as special without Black. Whilst I could name a smattering of his previous film roles which perhaps haven’t truly tested him as a serious actor- and indeed, there are those who would add Kung Fu Panda 2 to this growing list – he is a revelation here, funny in the comedic scenes, loveably goofy throughout but just as good at the melodrama.

Indeed, the theme of adoption might unsettle a few parents watching Kung Fu Panda with their kids, as they were expecting something a little lighter from a Summer blockbuster. And, to its credit, Kung Fu Panda is one of the few films I’d have paid to watch in the cinema – the fight scenes are breatakingly detailed and so well-choreographed that you forget that you’re watching cartoon animals fight. The score, with its Chinese instruments and motifs, sounds beautiful. But the over-arching quality that elevates Kung Fu Panda 2 above that of run-of-the-mill well-made but forgettable animated films is the story, and that of Po’s personal voyage of self-discovery. I particularly liked how Po’s flashback scenes were drawn with a different king of animated detail used in the rest of the film; something about that really struck emotional chords with me. And Po as a baby panda is absolutely adorable, sweeter than toffee. KFP2 is very very funny, but more importantly, it has a huge amount of heart. There is a lot of thematic material in Kung Fu Panda 2 and those who choose to judge it by its cover and give it a miss are really missing out; as Dolly Parton might say, “I’m a real good book”.

Grade: A-

Friends with Benefits (Will Gluck, 2011)

2011-10-18T12:36:00.001+01:00

Mila Kunis plays Jamie, a New York head-hunter who brings Justin Timberlake’s chilled California boy Dylan, an extremely talented art director to GQ. Both have just been dumped and both are extremely photogenic people, so it’s not long before they’re offering each other’s bodies to each other for pleasure. What they perceived to be a no strings, win-win relationship, however, is soon complicated when emotion and personal baggage gets involved. Jamie, a romantic at heart, wants the fairy-tale happy ending, and Dylan, the realist, knows that no such thing exists. As such, both seem to have a revulsion for romantic comedies, and indeed, half of Friends with Benefits is spent dissing other romantic comedies. So it goes without saying, then, that Friends with Benefits fits quite comfortably in the rom-com genre.

The film is a surprisingly slick affair given the genre, with pretty cinematography and a script that is shamelessly one-track. Kunis and Timberlake are more than just pretty faces, and Mila Kunis brings that cute neuroticness that has served her well as Family Guy’s long-suffering Meg (not to mention as my fifth fave girlcrush) to her character, whereas, without damning Timberlake with faint praise, his acting here comfortably eclipses that of his in The Social Network. There is an amusing cameo by Emma Stone at the start as the girlfriend dumping Dylan’s sorry ass and Patricia Clarkson emulates more of that bohemian, laid-back parent she played as (funnily enough) Emma Stone’s mother in Easy A as Jamie’s hippy mom here. Richard Jenkins’ mature turn as Dylan’s father suffering from Alzheimer’s gives the film some emotional grounding and Woody Harrelson clearly has the time of his life as Dylan’s gay co-worker who occasionally offers the odd gem of advice.

So the cast do their job capably, and the scenes in which the eponymous “benefits” are given don’t skimp on skin either, which is refreshingly open of the director (literally ;) ) given that the mass-audience of sexy romantic comedies are PG-13s and thus incredibly limited in the amount they can show. So far, so sexy, so smooth, so slick. But the main area where the film fails is that it spends so long ripping apart the whole concept of romantic comedy, just to end up as one itself, we as the audience can’t help feeling, as the two protagonists themselves might argue, “used and cheap”. I have absolutely nothing with romantic comedies, in fact, my #3 favourite film of 2011 so far, Bridesmaids, and arguably my second favourite film of 2011, The Inbetweeners Movie is another one. But where Bridesmaids gave us a fully-rounded, interesting lead female who genuinely does stand at risk of throwing away the cute guy, I felt all the obstacles in Friends with Benefits were incredibly superficial, and thus, there was never any risk that the ending would be anything other than Kunis and Timberlake sharing a smooch. The first half the film has so much promise with its witty banter and repartee that when the film decides to take the easy way out, we feel seriously let down, regardless of the film openly admitting that it is what its doing.

Grade: C

Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

2011-10-09T17:48:00.001+01:00

Film stars rarely let us into their own private worlds. So it was a great surprise, then, when Kirsten Dunst recently admitted to suffering from depression. In her Cannes-winning performances in Melancholia, she plays Justine, a woman who also suffers from depression. The film, set a few nights before the apocalypse, centres around Justine’s wedding night and her trepidation regarding it, as well as her sister Claire, who is struggling to hold everything together.

The film is divided into two acts, one centring around each sister, but not before we are “treated” to a montage of the world ending, set, rather portentously, to Wagner’s Tristan And Isolde. Those who are bigger von Trier loyalists than myself would say the choice of music is appropriate for the weightiness of such scenes. I, on the other hand, found myself struggling not to laugh as the audience are forced to sit through a truly tedious 10-minute overture, which featured some footage of Charlotte Gainsbourg running in slow-motion on a golf course, and Kirsten Dunst floating in her wedding dress in a pond full of green lily pads, ala the portrait of Ophelia. The whole vignette just reeks Kubrick at his self-serving worst, it’s just so awfully self-important that only those who have pretentiousness for breakfast (and, truth be told, I am fairly pretentious as it is) could take it seriously, however gorgeously it is shot.

When the actual film begins, however, things pick up. In Part I: Justine, we are thrown into a sort of wedding-from-hell scenario; Dunst and her tycoon husband-to-be (Alexander Skarsgaard, cute as a button) arrive late to their own wedding reception. Her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is already fretting as it is, Claire’s husband, John, is resentful at having to pay for the whole thing. As that dog/fox in von Trier’s equally pretentious clit-film last year, AntiChrist might say, “chaos reigns.” Justine and Claire’s estranged mother (played by Charlotte Rampling, epitomizing bitch in a way that only she can) carelessly drops waspish comments throughout, whereas their fun-loving father, played by John Hurt, brings two mistresses and has the time of his life swiping spoons. There is a claustrophobic sense of foreboding throughout, not helped by Justine’s predilection for sneaking off to be alone with her own thoughts. As the night unravels, she becomes increasingly fraught and depressed, despite the best efforts of her husband to cheer her up. Only Claire comes close to understanding her sister’s plight, but even then, she can’t prevent it. It is a self-fulfilling, self-destructive cycle to which no happy ending can be found.

In the second half of the film, Part II: Claire news has spread about Melancholia, a planet several times the size of earth, on a collision course, which may or may not take it straight where the earth is. Now it is Claire who is slowly losing her mind, as Justine finds a strange sense of consolation in knowing that life will soon end. The dynamic between the sisters change, and both Dunst and Gainsbourg give terrifically nuanced performances throughout to demonstrate thus. It was Dunst who picked up the gong at Cannes but personally, I was more taken by Gainsbourg in the film. Unlike in mysogyndrama AntiChrist, where she cut her own clit off, she doesn’t subject herself to such humiliations in this film, and her balancing act between being the caring sister trying to stop everything from falling apart and the worried mother fearing for that it all might fall apart anyway, lends to a terrifically layered performance.

Indeed, I would say it was the only thing about Melancholia which had any true layers, for I found other parts of the film horrifically caricaturist, bordering on farcical. The absurd opening, the over-usage of Wagner bordered on nauseating (note to the director: Terrence Malick’s used Wagner in the past, and done it much, much better than you could ever hope to, just truthin’). Long passages of the film are empty and downright uninteresting, the 130 minutes running time is nothing if not generous, and von Trier’s treatment of mental illness is done with a careless flick of the hand when it deserves much more.

On balance, Melancholia is a beautifully shot and excellently acted drama, but, for me, impossible to view as anything other than a comedy. Either Lars von Trier is having a gigantic laugh at our expense, or arthouse fans try far too hard to read deeply into things; but this film was not anywhere near as deep as it liked to think it was. Played out half as a fairly amusing satire on social airs and graces, half disaster movie, I could have accepted Melancholia. But if it thinks it has anything to say about depression, or the bigger picture in life, than the film, and Lars von Trier, can make like Keifer Sutherland at the end of the film, and get stuffed.
Grade: C

Cinderella Eyes (Nicola Roberts)

2011-10-07T20:33:00.000+01:00

It’s always going to be hard establishing yourself in a band that features four other band members who are all considered to be much more glamorous than you, what with Nadine Coyle and her bold, fearless voice, and Cheryl Cole’s undeserved status as the ~Nation’s Sweetheart~. And, indeed, after Girls Aloud went on a break – much to the heartbreak of their fans, yours truly included, the solo efforts from Madams Coyle and Cole haven’t exactly blown the world away, proving to be nothing more than catchy, if forgettable, pop ditties. So it was fair to say then, that Nicola Roberts, always maligned as “the ginger, unsmiling one”, didn’t exactly have a hard act to follow, and could almost be forgiven for allowing her album to venture into the same depths of mediocrities that the other two did. If anything, many probably expected as much from Nicola, for, as mentioned, she was often outshone by other members of Girls Aloud, for whatever reason. In fact, her solo album, Cinderella Eyes is comfortably, comfortably better than anything released by Nadine or Cheryl – put together.

With the sound much more reliant on electronic synths rather than the everyday poppy sound that Nadine and Cheryl chose, Nicola also pens her own lyrics, and it is the combination of the fresh sound and her unflinchingly honest words that make for a winning combination. Whilst the first single from the album, Beat of My Drum, was a catchy dance track with just the hint of bite, there are tracks on the album that are loaded with even more spice and emotional layers. Gladiator is a cheeky, hyper dance track with an intro to rival even that of Girls Aloud’s Biology - check out her swagger as she hollers “We love you faking cos you make the effort to pretend,” a line that blows anything from Close to Love out of the park in terms of innuendo. Unlike Cheryl Cole, who seems to be able to sing the range of about one octave, Roberts is much more vocally diverse, and even then, is not afraid to push her vocal boundaries- on this album, she raps, sings, hollers, sometimes all in the space of one song. This is epitomized in Cinderella Eyes, which features her speaking lyrics, as well as a nifty falsetto on the “Cinderella, are you happy?” part.

The standout track on the album for me, though, is Sticks and Stones, which could not be more autobiographical. The gentle piano chords are a perfect complement to Roberts’ inner soliloquy “couldn't you tell lies to me? Couldn't you say I'm pretty?”. In a four-minute track, years of inner turmoil come out. The issues of feeling ugly, self-loathing, wanting to fit in will sit well with all of Roberts’ target audience, but the fact that she has genuinely experienced everything that she has written about gives the song a raw, authentic edge. It moved me to tears.

One of the things I loved most about Girls Aloud was that I could always connect to their song lyrics, particularly the ones about the tribulations of being in love, and Nicola Roberts stays true to this with her song Yo-Yo, “don’t want to be the last to know, will it be a yes or no?”, about women and the men who lead us on for their own wants. In every sense, this is an album from a woman who has a lot to sing about, whether it be about feeling insecure, being wrapped around the finger of someone who’s just using us, or simply growing up. What’s more, Nicola Roberts isn’t afraid to drop the odd expletitive. I loved it when Girls Aloud swore, rare as it was – “shut your mouth because your shit might show” on No Good Advice was one of my all-time guilty pleasure song lyrics, and hearing the sweet, angel-faced Liverpudlian lass open her potty mouth is as much of a joy, as exhibited on Take a Bite and I. The combination of her life experiences, surprising amount of spunk and the ingenious electro-beats behind all her sings makes for a totally winning combination.

Those of us who thoroughly know our Girls Aloud inside and out out, have always known what a joy Nicola voice is – check out her embodying sexy sassiness on Sexy! No No No… in her “from top to bottom I’m a woman, sunshine” part, and the sweet melancholia in her voice during The Loving Kind’s gorgeous “I’ll do anything, sing songs that lovers sing” refrain. So it isn’t the quality of her voice that is so much the big surprise of Cinderella’s Eyes. But, rather, that she has stepped out and produced a genuinely fantastic solo album, which, in isolation, could well grace my top 20 albums of all times list. It has an entire rollercoaster of emotions, from joy, heartbreak, despair and lyrics that exhibit a real wisdom beyond her years. Not a word of lie, I could, quite comfortably, compile a list of top 20 favourite lyrics from this album and they would all be poetry to rival that of Keats. These are no tentative, baby steps into the world of solo-dom. This is a bold, in-your-face, I’m-here-deal-with-it album from Miss Roberts, and all the better for it. It is the best thing I have heard all year, and could well be one of the best albums of the new millennium. (I rate it even more than Kanye's album last year, and coming from Emzbung, I don't think I need to tell you that that ain't faint praise!)

Grade: A+

The Inbetweeners Movie (Ben Palmer, 2011)

2011-08-19T21:18:00.001+01:00

Anyone who watches the show knows the set up of the inbetweener boys: Will McKenzie, bespectacled, well-mannered but altogether massively irritating, his best friend Simon, the most attractive of the clan but let down by his gelled-up hair and his relentless pursuit of pricktease Carli D’Amato, who clearly doesn’t feel a fraction of the intensity he does to her, dim and slow-witted Neil, and Jay, chronically bullshitting about women he’s shagged, things he’s done, and er, women he’s shagged. The four boys’ ridiculously embarrassing travails through life made for three hugely entertaining series on channel 4, albeit with the third series being discernibly less funny than the previous two, series three feeling a lot like a re-hash of the jokes they used before, but turned up to an eleven. Well, in the boys’ big-screen outing, they hit Greece on summer holiday, and now they have a brand new country to bring their individual brand of gross-out comedy to.

Perverse as it is, throughout the film, I was actually reminded a bit of the Sex and the City movies, except for four boys rather than women. Now, hear me out. Lots of people felt disappointed with Sex and the City the Movie, feeling it was just one drawn out episode, but that’s pretty much the same with the Inbetweeners Movie, and in both movies, I had a terrific time. Further more, as with Sex and the City, despite all the women being well into their forties (and Samantha considerably older), they all have their journeys to make, lessons to learn throughout the course of the film, whether that be about courage, sacrifice, fidelity, or love. The lessons in The Inbetweeners Movie, suffice to say, are a little less meaty, but there is a surprisingly uplifting feel to the way the four boys find redemption in their sweet/sick ways.

Leggy blonde Laura Haddock, who is no stranger to lads’ mags across the UK, leads the quartet of attractive girls who catch the four boys’ eyes. Each girl is pretty in her own way, particularly Laura Haddock (Will’s love interest Alison) with her astoundingly definded cheekbones and babydoll eyes and Tamla Kari, the pretty brunette who clearly likes Simon, despite the fact that he is still blindly going on about Carli, who, incidentally, is also at Malia. The way the four boys eff it up with their respective female counterparts is exactly like in an episode of the show, except, this being the big-screen, the writers Damon Beesley and Iain Morris were a little more generous to their four long-suffering leads. Nonetheless, all four boys make more than their share of horrendously cringe-inducing gaffes along the way.

This being The Inbetweeners, you can pretty much make a mental ticklist of things you’re going to hear jokes about: masturbation, anal sex, other weird sex practices, poo, the list is endless. The characters also get involved in embarrassing situations not involving bodily functions or fluids; witness Jay as he tries to drown a well-meaning-but-slightly-annoying-boy on holiday, or Will, King of putting his foot in it, when he argues with a handicapped girl’s dad over rights to a lounge chair. But the funniest scene in the entire film was, for me, the cringefest that was Neil, Will and Simon trying to get the girls’ attentions by dancing up to them. If you can call it dancing. I call it “sides splitting with laughter.”

Critics have hailed The Inbetweeners Movie prurient, juvenile, and relentlessly crude. They are right. Some of the jokes do fall flat, but the ones that are good are great, and coupled with a cheesy-cool soundtrack, some genuine drama (Simon and Jay fall out, like, omgz!!!!) and an arsenal of one-liners that will have you hiding behind your hands with embarrassment, The Inbetweeners Movie pretty much does what it says it would on the tin, with an added bonus of the unexpected but genuine satisfaction the viewer gets from seeing our four boys become men – sort of.

Four restaurant reviews.

2011-08-13T09:05:00.001+01:00

I’ve been to a couple of eateries recently, so a few more reviews.

Häagen-Dazs, WC2H

Häagen-Dazs’ flagship restaurant sits in Leicester Square, where tourists passing by will surely see it, their kids will get excited and ask to go in, and money will be spent, leaving lots of space for profit margins. And, if ice cream’s your thing, then you are in for a treat here; the dishes are lovingly prepared and beautifully ornamented, so much so that it almost balances out the overpricedness (but then again, this being Central London, overcharging is somewhat of a requisite). For the adults, Häagen-Dazs also do a delightful range of cocktails, in which healthy portions of alcohol are balanced out by slushed-up ice cream. The doses are lethal; I got tipsy after one cocktail! Service is okay-ish, pretty much as can be expected for a busy dessert restaurant, without ever venturing into the regions of excellent, making Häagen-Dazs overall, a worthwhile experience, elevated, somewhat surprisingly, by the excellent quality of their drinks rather than their ice creams.
Grade: B+

New China, W1.
As you may or may not know, just of Leicester Square is Chinatown, where there are literally tens, maybe even a hundred Chinese restaurants. This hyper-competition is good for the consumer, because it drives prices down, and as such, the prices in New China restaurant were all very reasonable, en-par to prices that you would find at my local high street, but in Central London. And, on the whole, I would say that the quality of the food is hit-and-miss as a result. I ordered beef in chilli and thought it a very well-cooked dish, but the vegetation spring rolls I had for starter tasted like an utter microwave job. The squid was bland and the egg-fried rice was acceptable, but far from being the best egg-fried rice I’d ever tasted. Alcohol prices were acceptable. The dessert of a fruit tray, however, was absolutely disgusting, all the fruit was dry and tasted past its sell by date. All this would be forgivable if the service in New China were anything to write home about. But it really wasn’t. When I’m in a Chinese restaurant, I like to play up to my Chinese roots and try to order dishes in Chinese. Which I don’t think is asking for much? But the waiters refused to even humour me and rolled their eyes in my face as I mispronounced some of the dish names. De-lightful. Won’t be going back there again!

Grade: D

McDonald's, SE13

Absolutely ace. Everything in this photo came to just over a tenner, and both me and my brother were stuffed - and delighted by the end of it. I cannot get enough of McDonald's! The only downside was this uppity bitch in the queue who started on me for - what I can only surmise - not being a teenage mother like her. But you kind of have to be prepared for events like that when you go to McDonald's. The A+ quality of the food makes up for it.

Grade: A

Chowki, W1D

A passable curry eatery with some delicious meat dishes, but negated by waiters who stared at us the whole time creepily, and pocketed both a tip and a service charge. Because that's not sneaky at all. On the bright side, I ordered the chicken tikka masala, which I thought was thoroughly satisfying, if a little bit too small for the £10.50 price tag - I wolfed it down in a minute. Decent food, just awful, awful service from some of the most seedy-looking men I've seen in my life.

Obligatory list is bloody obligatory.

2011-08-13T08:30:00.001+01:00

It’s a yearly thing that I do – list my top 100 songs, and then see how much the list has changed. So, here we go for the 2011 edition!

(side note – unlike my taste in films and rather more like my taste in footballers, my taste in music is atrocious. Shitty R&B and girlband choons lamenting love are pretty much my life’s calling. But I like what I like, and I ain’t gonna front about it! So learn to deal.jpg :p)

01. Homecoming (Kanye West ft. Chris Martin)
02. Son of a Preacher Man (Dusty Springfield)
03. Angie Baby (Helen Reddy)
04. Rocky Raccoon (The Beatles)
05. Hallelujah (Rufus Wainwright)
06. Alison (Elvis Costello)
07. Sinnerman (Nina Simone)
08. Sexy! No No No… (Girls Aloud)
09. Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie (Joanna Newsom)
10. Paper Planes (M.I.A.)
11. November Has Come (Gorillaz)
12. Samson (Regina Spektor)
13. Adia (Sarah McLachlan)
14. Run this Town (Rihanna, Jay-Z and Kanye West)
15. Power (Kanye West)
16. Untouchable (Girls Aloud)
17. Talk Show Host (Radiohead)
18. Lullaby (Dixie Chicks)
19. All These Things that I've Done (The Killers)
20. Love the Way You Lie Part II (Rihanna ft. Eminem)
21. Romeo and Juliet (Dire Straits)
22. Head over Heels (Tears for Fears)
23. Boys Don't Cry (The Cure)
24. Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy (Queen)
25. Defying Gravity (Idina Menzel)

26. Glory Box (Portishead)
27. Hey Stephen (Taylor Swift)
28. Empire State of Mind: Broken Down (Alicia Keys)
29. 2am (The Saturdays)
30. Fix Up Look Sharp (Dizzee Rascal)
31. Tiny Dancer (Elton John)
32. Baba O'Riley (The Who)
33. Wildwood Flower (June Carter Cash)
34. My Love (Sia)
35. The Loving Kind (Girls Aloud)
36. California Dreamin' (The Mamas and the Papas)
37. Chelsea Dagger (The Fratellis)
38. My Father's Gun (Elton John)
39. Seasons of Love (Idina Menzel)
40. What’s My Name? (Rihanna)
41. Hey Jude (The Beatles)
42. Brandy Alexander (Feist)
43. Don't Stop Believin' (Journey)
44. Love Affair (Regina Spektor)
45. I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea (Elvis Costello)
46. Dragon Queen (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
47. Under Pressure (Queen ft David Bowie)
48. Brown Eyes (Lady Gaga)
49. It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference (Todd Rundgren)
50. Clothes Off! (Gym Class Heroes)

51. Everybody Wants to Rule the World (Tears for Fears)
52. Underneath Your Clothes (Shakira)
53. Breathe (Taylor Swift)
54. Travelin' Soldier (Dixie Chicks)
55. Jesus Walks (Kanye West)
56. Numb Encore (Jay Z ft. Linkin Park)
57. Lovely Head (Goldfrapp)
58. I Wish I Knew How it Feels to Be Free (Nina Simone)
59. Shout (Tears for Fears)
60. She (Elvis Costello)
61. Clint Eastwood (Gorillaz)
62. Vincent (Don McLean)
63. Love will Tear us Apart (Joy Division)
64. Lullaby (The Cure)
65. While My Guitar Gently Weeps (The Beatles)
66. Sunshowers (M.I.A.)
67. Pennies in my Pocket (Emilio Estefan)
68. Jackson (Johnny and June Carter Cash)
69. Dream on (Aerosmith)
70. Wonderwall (Oasis)
71. Make You Feel My Love (Adele)
72. Airplanes part 2 (B.o.B, Hayley Williams & Eminem)
73. The Killing Moon (Echo and the Bunnymen)
74. Teenage Dream (Katy Perry)
75. Momentum (Aimee Mann)

76. The River (Joni Mitchell)
77. Golden Slumbers (K.D. Lang)
78. Hey Mama (Kanye West)
79. Braille (Regina Spektor)
80. Back to Black (Amy Winehouse)
81. O Saya (A.R. Rahman ft. M.I.A)
82. Bossy (Kelis)

83. Chillin' (WALE ft Lady Gaga)
84. Take a Bow (Rihanna)
85. Lean on Me (Bill Withers)
86. Ignition (Remix) (R. Kelly)
87. The Call (Regina Spektor)
88. Machine Gun (Portishead)
89. Twentyfourseven (Artful Dodger)
90. Strict Machine (Goldfrapp)
91. Motivation (Kelly Rowland ft. Lil’ Wayne)
92. Too Young (Phoenix)
93. The Next Messiah (Jenny Lewis)
94. You've got the Dirtee Love (Florence and the Machine ft Dizzee Rascal)
95. No More (3LW)
96. Feel Good inc (Gorillaz)
97. We Will Rock You (Queen)
98. Like I Love You (Justin Timberlake)
99. Call the Shots (Girls Aloud)
100. Forget You (Cee Lo Green)

By artist:
Kanye: 6
Girls Aloud: 4
Rihanna: 4
The Beatles: 3
Queen: 3
Gorillaz: 3
Elvis Costello: 3

Teenage Dream.

2011-08-11T20:37:00.001+01:00

After a wait of what feels like an eternity, the premier league is back this weekend. This year, the general consensus is that the premier league title is most likely to be a three-horse race between the old wealth of Manchester United, the nouvelle riche of Chelsea, and the even newer nouvelle riche of United’s “noisy neighbours” Manchester City. Hot on their tails will be the two North London teams Arsenal and Tottenham, and Liverpool, all of which have had their share of head-turning transfer activity in the summer, whether it be getting players into the club, or certain players voicing their desires to leave. With the influx of big-name, big-price acquisitions, it is often easy to overlook the younger players who make just as much of an impact. Here are ten British players all 21 or younger, who will be sure to make and impact for their respective teams in the upcoming season.

11. Martin Kelly, Liverpool (born: Whiston, Merseyside, age: 21)
10. Tom Cleverly, Manchester United (born: Basingstoke, age: 21)
09. Marc Albrighton, Aston Villa (born: Tamworth, Staffordshire, age: 21)
08. Dan Gosling, Newcastle (born: Brixham, Devon, age: 21)
07. Jack Rodwell, Everton (born: Southport, Merseyside, age: 20)

06. Jordan Henderson, Liverpool (born: Sunderland, age: 21)

This time last year, Jordan Henderson was a fairly low-key local lad at Sunderland, not doing anything wrong, and quietly going about his business. This Saturday, however, he faces his old – and lifelong team – as a Liverpool player, with the weight of the £16million price tag hanging over his young head. Having impressed for Sunderland, he tirelessly went on to play for England in their U21 tournaments, in which, like their senior counterparts, they failed miserably. But it’s this kind of boundless energy that won him their Young Player of the Year accolade for two years running, and has the red half of Liverpool smacking their lips at their bright young thing. The majority of football critics believe that fourth place this year is Liverpool's for the taking, and it will be interesting to see the part Henderson plays in their quest for it.

05. Aaron Ramsey, Arsenal (born: Caerphilly, Wales, age: 20)
When Ryan Shawcross made that horror tackle that put Ramsey’s promising career on halt 18 months ago, Arsenal fans were, quite rightly, furious. Because, up until then, Ramsey’s game epitomized all that is good about Arsene Wenger’s football mentality, and he slotted into their midfield perfectly. After a long – and what must have seemed like an eternity – of a recovery process for the lad, he made baby steps back into the football world, including a match-winning goal and Man-of-the-Match performance against Manchester United last season, as well as being named Wales captain. Fresh faced and clean shaven, Aaron Ramsey has a squeaky clean image that is only too rare in the footballing world these days, and has the skill to bring out the best in all of Arsenal’s attackers.

04. Danny Rose, Tottenham (born: Doncaster, age: 21)
The Woody Allen references came in thick and fast in the North London derby of April 2010, when Danny Rose, who’s appearance on the Spurs teamsheet for such a sizzling fixture caused everyone some puzzlement – until he hit a thunderbolt of a volley from 30metres out way past the reach of Manuel Almunia and into the goal. Since then, his appearances in the premier league have been limited, and he is unfortunate in that the position he occupies the same position as Gareth Bale, who, himself, is the latest wunderkind to emerge out of White Hart Lane. But, as his performances in the Euro U21s demonstrated, kid’s got tonnes of potential and has vowed to fight for his place at Spurs to demonstrate as such. Although, to be honest, no matter what ace things he does over the next twenty years, nothing will ever come close to *that* goal.

03. Josh McEachran, Chelsea (born: Oxford, age: 18)

News of Michael Essien’s long-term injury was met with groans and grimaces around West London. For, whilst the Ghanaian had a pretty need-to-train worthy season last year, just his general presence as an anchor in Chelsea’s midfield gives all the rest of the team a welcome sense of security. But, with every cloud comes a silver lining, and it is time for young Joshua to fill Essien’s boots. As with Wilshere, McEachran came up through Chelsea’s ranks, so he automatically gets points for that, but furthermore, he is a classy, measured footballer, who, unlike the senior players at the team, eschews the garish lights of nightclubs like Tiger Tiger. This little tiger burns bright on his own accord.

02. Danny Sturridge, Chelsea (born: Birmingham, age: 21)
When Chelsea shelled out £50 million of Roman Abramovich’s oil money for Fernando Torres in the transfer window this January, very little consideration was really given for Sturridge. He was loaned out to Bolton, but the English Meeja were far too busy rubbing their hands together at how miserably the Torres/Drogba strikeforce was misfiring to notice that Chelsea’s youngest forward was happily banging them in for Bolton, whilst Torres could not hit a cow’s arse with the proverbial banjo. Whilst Torres struggled to adapt to Chelsea’s style and formation, Daniel Sturridge adapted brilliantly to Bolton’s game. The boy continued to impress for England in the Euro U21s tournament, as well as for Chelsea in pre-season, wherein he bagged a brace against Rangers in their latest friendly. Much has been made of Chelsea’s acquisition of 18-year-old wonderkid Romelu Lukaku, but I was much more measured in processing the news, as we already have more than enough forwards, and I worry that the signing of Lukaku will mean that, once again, Sturridge is unfairly bumped down the Chelsea pecking order, when his form suggests that he deserves quite the opposite.

and, even as a Chelsea fan, first place has to be reserved for, the one, the only...

01. Jack Wilshere, Arsenal (born: Hitchin, Herts, age: 19)

With his garish Christian tattoo plastered across his forearm, penchant for drunkenly hollering in a “don’t you know who I am?” manner at cab drivers and tendency for putting his nose in where it’s not needed on twitter (witness all the Spurs fans jump on his back when he gave his two cents over the whole Luka Modric-to-Chelsea saga affair earlier this Summer) as well as status as a baby daddy at the ripe young age of 19, Jack Wilshere has all the DNA of an England has-been. But, for all his off-pitch travails, one thing cannot be denied: boy has talent. He was one of the few bright spots for Arsenal fans last season and impressed on the big Champions League platform as well in the domestic league. A firm fan favourite due to his emergence through the Arsenal ranks as well as the fact that he’s a Stevenage boy (which is the closest Gooners are gonna get to local, let’s be honest), and that he wears his heart on his sleeve, and most of all, that he’s a bloody good footballer. Fast, skilful, and with a passing range that would impress even Xavi, Jack Wilshere is exactly the kind of no-guts-no-glory midfielder that Arsenal, and England, need.

Restaurant review: Cacciari's, SW7.

2011-08-07T14:24:00.000+01:00

In a cosy cafe-alike in Old Brompton road sits Cacciari's, a cosy and utterly likeable Italian restaurant. The waitress serving us was lovely; and such was their hospitality that we were gifted a free Bellini by the end of the night; always a welcome treat. I sampled almost half the cocktail menu, having the mojito, the Bloody Mary, the margherita and the Bellini, and each cocktail was loving prepared and tasted great, in particular the margherita, which was a lot more peppery than how I'm used to, but it was all the better for it.

Food-wise, I was almost knocked out of my seat with how reasonable the prices were, not least as we were in Kensington, one of the most wealthiest parts of London (and trust me, plenty of other restaurants in Chelsea & Ken are more than happy to ride on that SW-postcode and use it as an excuse to churn out crap food). For starters, much like at Theo Randall, I had mozerella and tomato, but unlike at Theo Randall (£12 for a tiny plate meant that it was essentially charging its customers £6 a bite), the £9 price tag at Cacciari's was justified, a generous-helping was given of the cheese and tomato, with cute little pans holding it all together. So far, so excellent.

For the main course, I had Lasagna alla Bolognese. Lasagne's always a tricky one in restaurants because it can turn out either too starchy, or not full enough. In Cacciari's, it was the perfect balance between the two, and the parmesan cheese given to us in a little pot was a more-than-perfect supplement to it. The fusion of meat, cheese and all the other flavours in my lasagne rendered it absolutely delicious, and, with a cold Peroni beer to drink with it, it was a near-on flawless meal. Having been on holiday in Italy last year, the meal I had in Cacciari's last Friday was genuinely the closest thing I've tasted to proper Italian cooking since then.

There was a little beer garden behind the restaurant as well as chairs in front of it, meaning that customers get their choice of places to sit to suit their mood. Whilst lacking the grandeur that many of the other South Kensington restaurants parade about, Cacciari's humble surroundings worked to its advantage; it was a thoroughly unpretentious, value-for-money place to eat in.

The greatest thing about Cacciari's is that it fully goes by the merit of its food & drink, rather than any frilly ornaments. If you remember Theo Randall, which went out of its way to show off how great it was even though the food was less-than-brilliant, Cacciari's is a delightful counterpart; the chairs and glasses in the restaurant are all from Ikea. The setting is cheap and cheerful, and as such, allows the restaurant to focus its attention on the thing that actually matters in a restaurant - the quality of the food. Cacciari's is the closest thing you're going to get to finding a bargain in Kensington; SW7 heaven.

Grade: A.

Theo Randall, W1.

2011-08-04T21:31:00.001+01:00

In London’s glittering Mayfair sits Theo Randall, a much-lauded Italian restaurant with big-name dishes and even bigger price tags. I had the (dubious) honour of getting to eat there for my friend’s birthday, and, as it was her birthday, it meant someone else was picking up the tab for our meal. So, whilst the prices were extortionate, the best thing that can be said for that place is that at least not a single penny of their bank-breaking bill fell on my back. Ha.

The whole time I was at Theo Randall, I just thought of the Friends episode in which Monica and Phoebe fall out over Phoebe singing her (admittedly bad) songs outside Monica's pretentious, overpriced restaurant. Phoebe makes one jibe about the portions being so tiny that one would need a monocle just to be able to see them, and this fully applies to the food at Theo Randall. For the starter, I ordered mozerella and tomatos, expecting a healthy-sized dish to match the meaty £12 price tag. This was what the reality was:

I mean, I know it's the recession and that, but surely we can do a little bit better than that?! My friend had it worse; she ordered a £15 starter, for which she got a lemon, a smidgeon of mustard and some weird green stuff:

Not impressed at all.

As for the food itself, it tasted fine, some dishes had far too much flavour added to it, others were too dry and bitter. For my main, I had spaghetti with lobster. The lobster was cooked to perfection but the spaghetti was woeful: bland, tasteless and even more stale than a week old Pot Noodle. All that for £34 ladies and gentleman! What a bargain!

The best part of the meal was far and away the dessert, for which I had white peach sorbet ice cream. It was delicious, the perfect line between rich and sweet. Once again, however, the £9 price tag was ridiculous; you can get a much more delicious plate of icecream for cheaper in the actual Haagen Dasz restaurant in Leicester Square.

Thus, for the sake of you and the mortgage that you'll have to take out just to fund a meal here, I say to you: of all the over-priced, overrated restaurants in London's west end, NEVER walk into this one. It may be the last thing you do, financially.

Food: C/C-
Value for money: U
Overall: F

This makes my life.

2011-08-02T20:54:00.002+01:00

Horrible Bosses (Seth Gordon, 2011)

2011-08-02T20:42:00.000+01:00

Childhood friends Nick, Dale and Kurt, once known as the “three musketeers” are still friends into their adulthood, and meet up on a daily basis for a drink and meal at their local bar. Trouble is, whilst their friendship thrives, their work lives leave a lot to be desired. Nick (Arrested Development’s Jason Bateman) works in a corporate environment, with a psychotic boss Dave Harken (played by Kevin Spacey) whom gets arsey if he is so much at 2 minutes late – after 6am. In one scene, Harken entraps him into necking scotch – at 8 in the morning. Nick despises his boss, but puts up with his bullying, knowing – or thinking – that if he takes the shit for a while longer, he will receive the promotion to VP that he has so hardly worked for. That hope, we later find out, turns out to be completely misguided.

Elsewhere, Jason Sudeikis’s Kurt is an account manager at an environmental firm. He enjoys his job, the easy banter he has with cute delivery girls and his rapport with his kind-hearted boss, Jack Pellit (Donald Sutherland, in a role much like his in The Italian Job in more ways than one). The only downside to his job is his boss’ cokehead dipshit son (played by an almost unrecognizable Colin Farrell). Luck not being on his side, his boss has a heart attack near the start, leaving the firm in the less-than-capable drug-taking hands of Bobby Pellitt. And finally, and most hilariously, we have Charlie Day as Dale, a dental assistant who’s loving relationship with his sweet fiancée bordering on schmaltz, having to deal with his nympho dentist boss Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston), who spends far more time trying to fill her own cavity than those of her patients.

The premise sounds funny but flaky, but the three beleaguered leads make it work. Jason Bateman is no stranger to awkward comedy, having led Arrested Development for many years, but he of the three is probably the one who “plays it straight” the most. Charlie Day has all the energy and hyperness of a hamster on acid and is by turns lamentable, annoying, and likeable. Jason Sudeikis is given some brilliant one-liners, which he delivers with glee. But just as important – if not more so, are the eponymous bosses. Kevin Spacey’s evil boss is an amalgam of his Keyser Soze as well his sadism in Se7en, but with a terrifically subtle darkly comic side. Colin Farrell’s transformation into his role – hair slicked back, constantly sniffing due to his drug addiction is what characterizes his performance more than any acting he really does. But Jennifer Aniston is superb. I quite liked her in Friends, although considered the other five of the cast all better than her, and have been less-than-impressed with her film CV so far, but in Horrible Bosses, her dedication to her role as the crazy bitch sex addict is second-to-none. In one scene, she traps poor Dale in her office, where she is wearing nothing more than panties, suspenders, and her dentist’s uniform. Dale tells her that her lack of clothing/nudity is crossing some kind of line. Julia argues otherwise. “Can you see my pussy?!” In another scene, she brags who she masturbated so furiously to gossip girl’s Penn Badgley that “[she] broke a nail.” It’s a fair cry from the clean-cut Rachel Green that we’re still used to thinking of Aniston as, but without a shadow of a doubt, it’s the best film performance she’s given to date.

There are laughs to be had elsewhere. As the three men get increasingly riled with their ridiculously horrible bosses, the idea is banded about of killing them off. At first, it’s in the name of banter, but as their working lives becoming escalatingly awful, they realize they are left with little option. So they go to a dodgy part of California, wherein they are introduced to Jamie Foxx’s “hitman”. Foxx himself is a revelation; we’ve seen him excel in the serious supporting role (Any Given Sunday, Collateral), and take the lead exceptionally too (Ray), but here, as surly criminal Motherfucker Jones, he is a joy.

Horrible Bosses has overtones of Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, played for laughs, and with lots of dirty sex jokes along the way. Unlike the majority of films which attempt to amalgamate the comedy and crime genres, only to fail miserably, Horrible Bosses is a roaring success. Much of this owes to the glittering A-list cast and their not being embarrassed to look stupid on stage, but the writing is also excellent, and I received more than one surprise at the plot development of the film (one scene, so out of place, so sudden, and so shocking, surprised me so much in a way that I hadn’t been so taken aback since *that* scene in 2005’s Cache.) Clever nods to pop culture and a brilliant reverse-product placement gag at Toyota are littered around the film, leading me to feel it really is smarter than the majority of critics have written it of as The film takes dark issues such as murder, rape and blackmail and makes a gigantic joke out of it all. Some have not been impressed by this approach, but I found the film an unparallel treat; and was chuckling from start to finish. My favourite film of 2011 so far.

Restaurant review – Benihana, W1.

2011-07-24T14:43:00.001+01:00

Just off Picadilly Circus Tube station is Benihana, a trendy Japanese restaurant. Currently undergoing renovations in certain parts of the venue, the drinks/waiting area was mainly cordoned off and in the interim, the waiting area consisted of two little round tables (of which I shared with another lady who was waiting). But the actual restaurant itself was a unusual delight. The way it was arranged was that everyone was sat with strangers around a metal grill, and the meal was cooked directly in front of you, but it wasn’t just basic turning the food over; there was a real visual firework to go with the preparation of the food – the chef sprayed some pepper over the vegetables and with a flourish, casually tossed the pepper shaker upwards and caught it in his big chef’s hat. Elsewhere, other chefs threw their vinegar or salt shakers into the air, span on the spot and caught it. For veterans of Japanese restaurants, food was thrown into their mouths for them eat. Fun was very much on the menu here.

I had the set menu, which was £23 and had 8 courses – all quite small, so that you got a taste of everything. Some of the courses were misses (a pot of rice with what seemed like half a bottle of soya sauce tipped on was far too salty to fully consume), but the meat (a choice of two from chicken, salmon, seabass, steak) was cooked to your preference, the sushi was fantastic, and the dessert, a tiny square of chocolate, was exactly what was needed to sweeten up the overall quite a savoury meal. Drinks were overpriced, even by London’s standards - £8.50 for a strawberry daiquiri that tasted suspiciously devoid of any alcohol whatsoever, but artfully designed in a way that the presentations of the cocktail was so lovely that you almost didn’t realise you were being conned. However, kudos has to go to the chefs for making mojitos, a drink I’m not usually too fond of – quite delicious with the aid of some lychees.

Overall, as far as overpriced restaurants in the city centre go, Benihana definitely sits up there, with more than enough charm to carry off its inflated menu prices. The amusing “show” put on by the waiters make it a good venue to pick when out with friends, or children, who will surely love it.

Grade: B+/A-

The Good Die Young.

2011-07-23T19:35:00.001+01:00

From Janis Joplin to James Morrison to Kurt Cobain and James Morrison, 27 seems to not be a good age for musicians. Today, Amy Winehouse, found dead in her Camden, joins the list of musicians who left us far, far too early. Unlike with some of the previously mentioned though, Winehouse’s death, however tragic, will not surprise many. Addicted to alcohol and drugs, Amy Winehouse was never the most conventional of artists. Expelled from Drama School at 14 for not working hard enough and getting her nose pierced, her career as a singer was constantly spent as a myriad of being in and out of rehab, overdosing on pills and booze, tumultuous love affairs with men who weren’t good for her, and occasionally singing at a concert now and then. With her signature bigger-than-life hair, powerful voice and song lyrics that hit emotional peaks, when she was good, she was magnificent. Unfortunately for her, the quantity of her lows exceeded her highs and on 4pm July 23rd July, the world lost a truly talented performer.

These are the five Amy Winehouse songs that I like the most:

05. Valerie

Originally by The Zutons, Mark Ronson (who’s job title I’m still a little baffled about) and Amy Winehouse collaborated on their version of it, elevating an already enjoyable song into a wonderfully lively, feel-good number, with a cute music video to match. It’s Amy Winehouse out of her comfort zone, in cheerful mode (although she did as such on Tears Dry on their own, another success of her’s), but sound-wise, it has an unmistakable 50s and 60s vibe to it, an era that Winehouse is no stranger to musically – since a child, she loved to belt out Sinatra classics. And, indeed, her spin on Valerie is something that even Sinatra himself would have bopped along to.

04. Love is a Losing Game
At just three verses, this is one of Amy’s most lyrically sparse songs, but what it lacks in verbal content, it more than makes up for in impact. Her melancholy voices drifts between quiet and loud and she opines over the cold, hollow, heartbreak of love. “One I wished I never played, oh what a mess we made” , this song hits the sensitive peaks that the majority of pop songs these days couldn’t even dream of reaching.

03. Fuck Me Pumps

Amy Winehouse puts her satirical hat out in a biting look at the lives of girls who hit the club in the hope of bagging a rich/famous husband, only to find themselves being used and abused, “You’re more than a fan just looking for man, but you end up with one night stands.” Her contempt for this kind of lifestyle could not be clearer, and there’s real fun to be had in her scathing wit, “You can’t sit down right/Cuz you jeans are too tight/ And you’re lucky its ladies night.” The title itself – an allusion to the slutty heels that some girls wear in a desperate attempt to get noticed – is a work of art itself. A caustic treat, from top to bottom.

02. You Know I’m No Good

Possibly better known to some as “the song they play over the credits of Secret Life of a Call Girl”, this is my pick for the sexiest Amy Winehouse song. Although it’s about infidelity, two-timing and all the guilt that comes with it, her voice is so sultry an silky that it gives her seedy lyrics an inexplicably alluring quality, epitomized in the line “Thinking of you in my final throws – this is when my buzzer goes”. The jazz trumpet and bass guitar complement her singing perfectly, and it is impossible not to view this song (as with many of her songs) as a microcosm of the Winehouse; she has a loving boyfriend, but chooses to cheat on him, thus depriving herself of all that is good and pure. Quite.

01. Back to Black

What with her on/off relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil, Amy Winehouse is no stranger to destructive relationships, and she uses these experiences to pen a beautiful and chilling depiction of such. “I died a hundred times” and “I love you so much/it’s not enough” are among many of the lines which she delivers perfectly. The emotion in her voice is unmistakable, and with the simple-but-effective piano chords and sparsely employed strings in the background, this is such a classy number that it has often been employed in TV and film sequences of funerals or other dark events. A song as unforgettable as it is disturbing and heartbreaking. Breathtaking.

Memories, my, my, my. For all her faults, Amy Winehouse was a majestic performer and singer/songwriter.The death of this North London girl gone bad will be sorely felt by the music industry. RIP, fallen star.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2 (David Yates, 2011)

2011-07-16T18:57:00.001+01:00

A wise English proverb once dictated that all good things must come to an end. Ten years on from the release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the eighth and final Harry Potter film is released. The producers at Warner Brothers made the money-savvy choice of splitting Deathly Hallows into two films, which led to a sort of Kill Bill effect – one film was all highs, the other all lows. However, they did it the right way round, with the first instalment of Deathly Hallows boring people to near-death. What that meant, of course, was that all the rollercoaster of visual pyrotechnics, character relationships and the final countdown between Harry and Voldemort was saved for the second film. And what a finale it is.

It would be optimistic to say that the three leads have particularly bettered over the ten years. Daniel Radcliffe still strikes me as awful impassive, spending much of the film looking baffled or bemused. When he is required to give a performance of emotional gravitas, he borders on overacting. However, if he is on the cusp of ham, Emma Watson is a fully-fledged bacon, once again letting her eyebrows do the acting, acting. Of the three, Rupert Grint has always been the one who charmed me the most, and as with previous films, he has some real zingers, which he delivers with relish. I met him, in case you forgot.

But looking past the lead three, the performances are an unequivocal joy. Michael Gambon is perhaps a little more taciturn than I had pictured Dumbledore to be, but what he lacks in words he exudes mystery and wisdom. Helena Bonham Carter, though underused, goes to town with her performance, making the demented psycho bitch Bellatrix Lestrange totally her role. Tom Felton, although not given as much of a chance to shine as he was in Half-Blood Prince, pulls off the unenviable task of humanizing Draco – a character we are expected to despise. Bonnie Wright is so impassive that she must have been taking acting lessons from the tree from which her on-screen wand was made from, but Evanna Lynch is delightfully kooky and Matt Lewis – who, it must be said – has aged quite nicely, really comes into his own as Neville Longbottom gets his moment of glory. Maggie Smith is wonderful, shedding all her airs and graces of Downturn Abbey to exhibit the true grit of Minerva McGonagall, and Julie Walters’ delivery of “NOT MY DAUGHTER YOU BITCH” has pipped Bridesmaids’ “you’re a little cunt” as my favourite line-containing-a-misogynistic-expletitive-of-2011.

But the finest performance of the film, and possibly the best performance in the entire Harry Potter franchise, belongs to Alan Rickman. Professor Snape has always been a hard character to sympathise with and many felt Dumbledore’s trust in him was idiotically misplaced, not least at the end of Half-Blood Prince. But as JK Rowling’s novel exhibited, years of hidden love, disappointment and jealousy boil together to give one of the emotionally cathartic performances I’ve seen. Behind that impassive face hid so many emotions, and Rickman lets these all come to the fore in an acting tour-de-force that exhibits more layers than an onion. The scene where Snape discovers Lily Potter’s dead body, such was the force of Rickman’s performance, that I was literally bawling. Beautiful work, and if there was any justice in the world, he ought to be a shoo-in for Best Supporting Actor come Academy Awards 2011.

The showdown in the form of the Battle of Hogwarts is a long affair, but sandwich in between it are pithy one-liners, some excellent CGI, and wonderfully rewarding kisses. Although I’m anything but a fan of Emma Watson, the Hermione/Ron kiss completely melted my heart, as well as the Neville Longbottom & Luna Lovegood romance, how adorable! Alexandre Desplat’s silky score is some of the most grand work he’s done and aptly captures the magnitude of the moment; “Lily’s Theme” is one of his most stunning tracks. Eduardo Serra captures the contrasts between bleakness and redemption gorgeously, and there are some beautiful symbols that have emerged from the film - Hagrid carrying Harry whilst crying for him was one that particularly lingered in my mind.

The epilogue in the film, as expected giving how much I groaned when I read it first time round, is a cringe-worthy affair, but giving Ron a pot belly was comedy gold. There are parts in the film that feel somewhat forced and heavy-handed, but other parts turned out just as I had expected, if not better, having read them in the film – Harry reading through Snape’s memories was a terrific montage of love, loss and regret.

It feels like a huge slice of my childhood has ebbed away with the Harry Potter franchise ending. Along the way, we have had comedy, drama, awful acting, wonderful acting, Hedwig’s Theme – one of the most recognisable tunes in film music, and magic aplenty. It has been a rollercoaster ride, but on the whole, I would say Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2 is a worthy bow out to a truly innovative and exciting series of books. Mischief managed!

Favourite Ron & Hermione moments.

2011-07-13T22:12:00.002+01:00

By the way, this is my hand touching Grint's from the premiere last Thursday in Leicester Square:

10. Can You Keep a Secret?

Hermione’s super-human knowledge and diligence is well-documented throughout the seven books and indeed, her intelligence has come to Harry’s aid on countless occasions. But she possesses so much more than simply book smarts; she is sensitive and a very good reader of people – Ginny’s schoolgirl crush on Harry is apparent to all in Chamber of Secrets, but she being the 11-year-old, impressionable lil’ sis of his best friend, he sensibly pretends not to notice, leaving the crush to evaporate. In Half-Blood Prince, however, it is he who develops feelings for her, and the fact that she has them, quite literally, lined up, and isn’t afraid to face her brother Ron about it when he scolds her – only exacerbates his feelings for her. At the end of the book, after he has gotten her, he has to let go, and it is revealed that it was Hermione to advise Ginny to go with some other boys, not particularly with the aim of forgetting about Harry entirely or to make him jealous, but because she deserved to experience teenage love in her own right. Deep down though, Hermione knew that Ginny only had eyes for Harry and the her flings – however troubling to Harry (and Ron) – would do her no harm. Whilst this is not explicitly a Hermione/Ron moment, simply the fact that Hermione knew how much her crush & best friend’s younger sister fancied her other famous best friend but diplomatically chose not to tell either shows that whilst she is smart like the best of them, Hermione’s best quality is not her brain, but her heart.

09. Well Jell
In Half-Blood Prince, Harry and Hermione both turn the head of Potions Master Professor Slughorn, who invites them to come to his exclusive Slug Club, of which the other members are either well-connected students with distinguished bloodlines (Blaise Zabini’s mum was a heartbreaker of a witch who frequently married and divorced), or students who Professor Slughorn sees a light in, like Ginny and Hermione. Ron, who reacts with a red-hot temper that would do his hair proud at seeing his sister and two best friends invited but not him, and much of his anger is directed at Hermione, who by now he is growing increasingly confused by his feelings towards. Hermione rarely dabbles in underhand tactics, but Ron becomes so snarky towards her simply for being noticed for her excellence that she allows the horny-but-hot Cormac McLuggen to bring her as his date for the Christmas Slug Club party, knowing full well how much it will make Ron jealous. The little on-running feud between Ron and Hermione is as amusing as it is entertaining and acts as an accurate portrayal of teenagers and the petty things we do to get the attention of the ones we like.

08. For you, there’ll be no more crying.
In Philosopher’s Stone, the first few times we are introduced to Hermione Granger, it is difficult to warm to her. Bossy, a know-it-all and almost unbearably stuffy, Harry is a little bemused by her. Ron, however, never one to mince his words, voices his displeasure towards Hermione. Naturally, Hermione would overhear, and despite the brave face she has sustained so far, her butter-wouldn’t-melt demeanour comes crumbling down and her hurt locker shows. She runs into a toilet to cry, unaware that a gigantic troll is also there. Harry and Ron come to her rescue and in a brilliant display of teamwork, the three defeat it. With that, the quintessential OT3 of friendship is borne. If I really wanted to overanalyse, we could say that Hermione’s obnoxious behaviour to Harry and Ron had just been her defensive mechanism for speaking to “famous Harry Potter” and his cute ginger friend who she quite liked the look of. But that would probably be overanalysing it; they were only in year seven.

07. “I love you, Hermione”.
Harry and Ron have – as they have a knack of doing – got themselves in trouble, and now have homework assignments on top of that to worry about. Hermione senses their plight and offers to help with their work. Ron, so grateful, utters weakly “I love you, Hermione,” and it is said that Hermione “turns pink”. Ron’s comment was a throwaway one, but Hermione’s embarrassed reaction tells me that it was she who fell for Ron first, but he was too bull-headed and dull to realise.

06. Lust and delirious

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is, in a way, a tennis match of sexual politics between Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. He should be so lucky as to get her – beautiful, smart, loyal girl that she is, but his own insecurity is so crippling that it leads him to mistreat her. His path in getting with sentimental and fairly annoying but well-intentioned Lavender Brown arose from a fight with his younger sister. Unhappy at being berated by Ron for making out with his friends, Ginny cries, in defence, that Ron is simply being a prude because Harry has had experience of snogging (Cho), and “even Hermione kissed Viktor.” This proves to be the catalyst for Ron and Lavender getting together, Lavender herself unaware to the fact that she’s being used as a pawn in the two’s warfare. After Ron suffers a near-death accident, however, and he is recovering, he’s so doped up that he’s unable to get his agenda right and says the name of the girl who he’s really thinking about: Hermione.

05. Oh, Krums.
Harry and Ron leave it a bit late in finding dates for the Yule Ball, meaning that the girls they go with – attractive twins Parvati and Padma Patel are perfectly fine, but not the ones they wished to have gone with. Harry’s choice had been asked sooner – Cho Chang, and Ron’s preferred date is more obscure. When it became hard to find someone he thought Hermione would be available as a last-ditch resort, but on seeing her – by far the most beautiful she’s been – at the Yule Ball, in the arms of Viktor Krum, a famous Quidditch player who up until this point he’d been in awe of, brings up all kinds of envy in him. As a result, he pays Padma no attention, loses all the idolatry he’d had thus far for his Quidditch hero, and seeks Hermione out to have a go. She isn’t having any of it, crying, “Next time there's a ball, ask me before someone else does, and not as a last resort!". Ron splutters his indignations, but judging from Hermione’s tears and Harry’s tactical reticence, he’s only kidding himself.

04. Knight with cruddy armour
Draco Malfoy comes from an affluent family. This is unceremoniously shoved in the Gryffindors’ faces when his father kits the entire Slytherin Quidditch team out with Nimbus 2001. Taking the opportunity to sneer at Harry and Ron, Hermione replies sharply – but accurately that at least Harry earnt his place on the team, rather than buying it like Draco. Malfoy doesn’t like being told by a Muggle, and calls her a terrible word – Mudblood. This infuriates many of the passers by, but only Ron does something about it, pulling out his wand to defend his friend. Unfortunately for him, his wand is crooked and his own hex backfires, but that he would defend his mate’s honour with such fierce loyalty shows the beautiful, unadulterated spirit behind Ron and Hermione relationship.

03. Paying the penalty
Always in the shadow of ~Famous Harry Potter~ and his astounding Quidditch skills, Ron has a chance to shine in the sixth book when Harry, as captain of the Quidditch team, is holding tryouts. Cormac McLuggen probably has more natural talent, and in a Quidditch penalty shoot out, he is flying, saving four of four penalties. As the fifth is taken however, he does a bizarre dance-in-the-sky that results in him letting one in, and Ron getting the role of goalkeeper. As it transpires, it was Hermione who performed the jinx on Cormac to make him under-perform, as retribution for some throwaway comments he’d made about Ron and Ginny. A little action of a good friend, perhaps, but for by-the-book Hermione to play so dirty shows that she truly cared about the person she was doing it for. If only Ron knew.

02. Come together, over me
Albus Dumbledore’s death in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was one of the most arresting, surprising and depressing deaths in literature for me, not least because it seemed to signal an uprising of Voldemort’s clan. At the end of the book, the entire school (bar a few evil-minded Slytherins) is in mourning. Ron and Hermione have set aside all the drama they have incurred in the book (in a fit of rage, Hermione had sent a bunch of canaries after Ron after seeing the two all over each other), and it is fair to say that Ron has entered that tentative transition between lad and full-fledged young man. Many of the inhabitants of Hogwarts cry, including Hermione, who, we are told, weeps into her ginger friend’s shoulder. It is a rare moment of beauty amidst a sea of heartbreak.

01. Kiss Me

There was a clatter as the basilisk fangs cascaded out of Hermione’s arms. Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and broomstick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm that he lifted Hermione off her feet.
Corny, yes. Out of place (it’s in the Battle of Hogwarts), yes. But oh my lord, it was so bloody overdue. Seven years of adventure, of being there of each other, laughter and tears, mindgames and game playing, all culminating in these few, such rewarding lines. As you may have noticed, I'm quite into my films where there's all this strife and tribulation, and it ends with a grandstanding act of redemption, and Ron and Hermione's kiss is redemption for a lot of the casualties incurred in the series. I don’t care for Emma Watson a jot but I love Rupert Grint and Harry Potter, and thinking over all these precious Ron/Hermione moments has thoroughly piqued my thirst for the final film coming out this Friday!

Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011)

2011-07-03T18:54:00.001+01:00

If you were to ask thirty-something Annie (Kristen Wiig) if she’s happy with how things are with her life, she probably wouldn’t be totally honest if she said “yes”. Working in a job she clearly despises as a retail assistant in a jewellery store – a job, we are told, she only got as a favour from the manager to her mum, less-than-satisfied with her relationship – or lack thereof with the hunky but arrogant Ted (Mad Men’s John Hamm) and living with a very weird and annoying brother-sister duo, it’s fair to say she’s not exactly firing from all cylinders in her life. The only aspect she has always been able to count on, however, is her best friend Lillian. The two meet up in the mornings to cheekily scab off free training from a local fitness instructor by hiding behind a tree and exercising to his words. They listen to each others’ relationship woes and offer opinion and advice, but never judgement. And, unlike with so many faux friendships that are rife with ulterior motive, when the two tell each other that they love each other, you know they mean it.

So when Annie learns of Lillian’s upcoming engagement to long-term boyfriend Kevin, her initial feelings of happiness for her friend very rapidly turn to fear, isolation and upset when the prospect of losing her childhood friend to a world of upmarket dos, nappies and, even more terrifyingly the annoyingly perfect Helen, Lillain’s fiancée’s bosses wife, who seems intent to usurp Annie’s title as Lillian’s best friend. In one hilarious scene at the engagement party, Annie gives a brief but heartfelt speech congratulating Lillian on her engagement. Helen then takes the mike and subtly-but-not-ignorably slips in a few words and inside jokes in her speech. Annie, refusing to be outdone, takes the mike back and shares a few friendship histories of her own. Thus triggering off a vicious circle, culminating in both women singing a terrible song together – but the audience with tears in their eyes.

And that’s the essential genius of Bridesmaids, in my opinion – it manages to hit so true to life. Who hasn’t felt the jealous pang of seeing a friend that you value so dearly slowly, but inextricably falling away from you and closer into the net of the one you perceive as your nemesis? Kristen Wiig, who is no stranger to comedy, being a regular on Saturday Night Live, gives one of the performances of the year. It doesn’t hurt that she co-wrote the script, naturally, but her deliveries and deadpan facial expressions make for one of the best comedic performances I’ve seen for a while. Underneath all the laughter, though, are the tears of a clown; Annie isn’t happy, and, whether she likes it or not, there are plenty of problems of her’s that can’t purely be pinned down to the fact that her best mate is getting married. Her taste in men speaks for itself; it is clear from the off that good cop Officer Rhodes (our very own Chris O’Down off The IT Crowd) has eyes for her, yet she chooses to go back into the welcoming-for-all-of-ten-minutes arms of the chauvinistic Ted. It’s frustrating to watch her make such mistakes, but any and every woman watching Bridesmaids over the age of 15 (as right they should be, it’s a 15 certificate over here after all) knows exactly what it’s like to shun the attentions of a lovely man in favour of one who treats her like shit.

The cast all more than pull their weight in Bridesmaids. Melissa McCarthy is the token chubby-but-good-humoured sister of the groom, who provides much of the visual humour of the film, and Wendi McLendon-Covey, as Lillian’s cousin Becca, gets some of the best lines – involving being married to a horny husband – “I just want to watch the Daily Show once without being entered.” The friendship love triangle, of Annie-Lillian-Helen is written perfectly, full of social airs and graces between the former and latter. Rose Byrne as Helen, who I have plenty of fond memories of watching in Damages, is supposed to be the ~bad guy~ here, and some of her actions are deplorable (not least the little prank she pulls on Annie on the airplane), but we don’t end the film completely despising her, as, she is, after all, just another lonely woman. Chris O’Dowd is completely adorable as Officer Nathan Rhodes, and when he and Annie finally do spend the night together, he not only welcomes her to spend the night (most unlike Ted’s lothario “I want you to leave but I don’t know how to say it without sounding like a dick”), but he even goes out and buys her some cooking ingredients (Annie used to own a bakery before the recession hit in and ate all her profits – forcing our into redundancy). Annie is so taken aback by this show of kindness that she leaves straight away. It’s a very well directed, surprisingly heartbreaking scene, once again highlighting sometimes often in life, it’s almost as if people want to be unhappy. The majority of the cast of Bridesmaids are female, but such is their excellence that both men and women alike should be charmed by this film.

The balancing act between comedy and drama is a difficult one, and although Bridesmaids is very firmly one of the former (certain scenes – the bridal dress fitting, Annie’s altercation with an uppity young customer, and her drunken daze on the airplane are just some of the many that had me in stitches, and the sex jokes are a bawdy treat), it’s the sensitive, intelligent way that the latter is intertwined into the comedy that makes Bridesmaids such a winner. After all, if I wanted to lol my face off, there’s plenty of dumb YouTube videos I could watch, or, say Borat or something. But Bridesmaids wasn’t just funny, it was downright rewarding. We come to care for Annie and her plight; this film isn’t just about her failings as a bridesmaid-in-chief, they are purely a microcosm of her problems in life as a whole. But, as the film progresses and she lives and learns a little more, she realises that it genuinely is never too late to stop feeling sorry for oneself and turn things around. Beautifully written, not least the romantic subplot between Annie & Office Rhodes, you will leave this film with a feeling inside sweeter than any slice of wedding cake.

Emma's Girlcrushes, 2.0

2011-06-25T15:27:00.001+01:00

Sixteen months on, a redux of this list, in which only two women who were on that list have made the cut this time round. This says a lot really; chiefly, that first and foremost, I'm quite the fickle when when finding female celebrities to lust after/wish I looked like. Secondly, that there are just so many gorgeous women in the media today, and to truly celebrate the beauty (both outer and inner) of them all, would take much much more than a simple, artlessly made blog post. Also, I am being rather shallow in the constructing of this list, so it comprises of ten stunners who's looks - purely physical - do it for me. Of course, there are countless other definitions of sexiness, but for this list, I'm going by just looks.

10. Kaya Scodelario

Maaaan, girl is just completely and utterly gorgeous. She has stunning blue eyes - which is often coked in vampish make up on Skins to turn her sex factor up to an eleven, an enviable size six bikini body and amazing personal style.

09. Selena Gomez

She's Public Enemy No. 1 for all the Beliebers, but I couldn't care less about that little scrote and if you ask me, that boy's damn lucky to have Selena, for, in addition to being a very talented young performer, she possesses the most beautiful smile I've ever seen.

08. Kimberley Walsh

If you stripped all of Girls Aloud off their magical make-up, this Yorkshire lass would probably come across as the most naturally beautiful; she can survive with just her fake lashes and lip gloss. Flawless skin, tiny waist, womanly hips and a brilliantly warm energy to go with all that, it's impossible not to like Kimbo.

07. Ana Vidic

I'm less than fond of the man standing next to her, but for me, Ana Vidic is the Queen of wags. Despite mothering two sons, she has a body to rival Victoria Beckham's, and boasts the most spectacular range of Jimmy Choos and Louboutins. Furthermore, as with Fernando Torres' wife Olalla, who just missed this list; she combines beauty and brains - both woman have Economics degree. As Beyonce said, "smart enough to make the millions, strong enough to bear the children."

06. Una Healy

I sort of hate myself for bunging two members of The Saturdays on; they're frequently dubbed "the New Girls Aloud" but that's like saying Jordan Henderson and Luka Modric are en-par trololololo, but I can't resist a bit of Una. She's the only one in the band who doesn't assail my ears when she opens her mouth to sing, her fiery red hair and electric blue eyes make a killer combination and, as the oldest of The Saturdays, I'm digging her devil-may-care-swagger.

05. Mila Kunis

I could say a lot about Mila, not least commending her awesome voice work on Family Guy as the long-suffering Meg and the wide range of outfits she's rocked on the red carpet, but I just wanna talk about one thing to be honest: her licking Natalie Portman out in Black Swan. I consider myself fairly straight (although judging from this list and the comments that's reaching Wenger-levels of delusion [and the fact that Kaya & Selena - two girls younger than myself are on here indicates that's probably not the only thing I have in common with Arsene trololololo], really) but that scene? Something happened downstairs at vaga del Bung~~ Get it, gurl.

04. Nadine Coyle

Her solo album was widely regarded as a flop (although I firmly maintain that it had some real treats including Natural, Unbroken and the single Insatiable itself), but Nadine is and always will be the most talented singer from Girls Aloud. Her voice lifts practically all of their songs to pop treats to transcendence and the sass she exudes when GA go on tour is priceless. Plus: LEGS.

03. Rihanna

When my brother was getting a poster of his guycrush - Gareth Bale for Christmas 2010, I got a poster of one of my ultimate girlcrushes - Barbados babe Rihanna. Along with Kaya Scodelario, she's one of the only two who was on this list 16 months ago, and unlike Kaya, she's climbed up even in the face of countless other beauties. The reason? Well, a mixture of things. I loved her effortless cool on the music video of What's My Name, as well as the minimal clothing she wears, showing off her to-die-for body. But the main reason she's made such a surge is how she wore her heart on her sleeve in her performances of Love the Way you Lie Parts I & II. Both songs must have hit super-close to home, and it shows, in the strength and power of her vocals.

02. Dianna Agron

Glee has a lot of beautiful girls - Heather Morris and Naya Rivera were just hovering outside the top ten, but its cheerleader Quinn Fabray ala Miss Agron who truly feels my heart with, er, glee. #needtotrainmyjokes Those big hazel eyes, that stunning bone structure, her natural regal of carrying herself, her gorgeous blonde locks... I'm a little bit in love.

01. Frankie Sandford

I actually really hate myself a little bit for this. Were I to redux my love/hate list, Essex-born Frankie Sanford would be right at the top. I don't think she can sing, and the fact that she's dating Wayne Bridge (a player I used to cherish but now I'm very "eh" about, basic #ChelseascumDNA get over it) are automatic gamebreakers. But... girl is stunning. She was always pretty little Francesca in S Club Juniors and with long hair, but the short hair just really brings out her cheekbones, eyes, and general gorgeousness. She's had a pixie cut done recently which looks amazing, although I do prefer this older cut. Girl has some of the most photogenic features I've ever seen, and were I an artist, I would be devoting time trying to draw her, she's that stunning.

Agree with my choices? Disagree? Think I need to train?

Meltdown (Ben Elton)

2011-06-16T18:10:00.002+01:00

Pride, as we all know, comes before a fall, and nothing epitomizes this better than the recent financial crisis, wherein ill-advised gambles made by bankers and a hubbub of lending loans for people who weren’t ready to buy a house came together in the mother of all hubrises. Ben Elton uses the credit crisis as the backdrop to his book, wherein a group of University friends who have all lucked out – to varying degrees – in their following life choices find that none of them are untouchable from the financial woes of the world.

At the centre of the story is London investment banker Jimmy Corby, an affable, happy-go-lucky man who fell into his trading job with the touch of good fortune that had accompanied him in almost every other step of his life, including meeting his ditzy, well-meaning wife Monica, without whom, it is generally agreed that Corby would have spiralled into the descending spiral of a heart-attack or crack addiction. His old Uni mates, which include fellow banker Rupert, who carries his craft out with much more of a sneering veneer than Jim, Dave, an established architect, Henry, a self-conscious political activist and Lizzie and Robbo, a married couple, amongst whom she is the frontline of a popular food company that caters for upmarket events and he, mooching off her success. The friends – and all their wives – have all been in frequent contact since their immature days in University, though it is noted that their friendship has barely been tested, such is the cushiness of their jobs (all of them are comfortably on £50,000, minimum, their kids are in private education and they all have big-ass mortgages to match.)

But then along comes the financial crisis, and everything the main characters are used to, comes crashing down. Jimmy and Monica, with their three kids in their gigantic £7million house in Notting Hill, first have to let their nanny go, before facing the awkward conversation with the Headteacher wherein they’re told that as they can no longer afford their son Toby’s fees, they won’t be welcome there. Social satire is rife; the conversation between Jim and the teacher when state education is suggested as a viable option wouldn’t be out of place in a Catherine Tate sketch. Before the crunch, Jimmy had invested in a road in Hackney with a view of having his friend Dave’s company re-designing it, making it more glamorous and bringing in some big bucks, but when the possibility of this goes out of the window, the street becomes nothing more than a popular squatting site for a local hobo called Bob. In one hilarious moment, Jimmy contemplates re-using a nappy on his youngest daughter Lillie in order to save 18p.

The fall-from-grace overtones could not be clearer, and Jimmy realising the error of his city culture ways is the ultimate in bolting the barn door after the horse has bolted, but there is joy and bathos to be had in his adventure. Ben Elton throws in a few of his signature twists in the story, and with the unfurling of various friends’ economic situations, also reveals that the oh-so-perfect lives that each of the friends thought they led were really anything but – and how important their finances played in sustaining the illusion that all was well. It’s very hard to be at the bottom, especially having been at the top for so long, but Jimmy and Monica are fairly likeable protagonists who we as the audience can warm to, even if some of their dialogues (such as the one when first deciding about what state school to put their son in) hint at the blissful ignorance that those who perceive themselves to be the upper strata of society have on certain life matters.

For the most part, Ben Elton tries to abstain from coming across as overly preachy and playing the blame game in his cautionary tale, and rather than pointing fingers or going for the banker bashing route, cannily points out that he without sin can cast the first stone; Henry, at the time of the crunch an esteemed politician, reprimands Jimmy and Rupert for their heady banker ways, yet he doesn’t hesitate to claim benefits on his second house in Berkshire – a wily nod at the actions of various MPs in the news currently. The majority of the novel is written in his pithy, witty tone, but there is the odd line of writing that exhibits genuine emotion and does the impossible – has us sympathising for characters living in a mansion. There’s an uncharacteristically sweet denouement from Elton at the end, which, whilst pat, doesn’t ring any less true; it takes losing all the superficial stuff to work out what really matters in life. Money, after all, doesn’t buy one love.

Swinging with the Finkels (Jonathan Newman, 2010)

2011-06-10T16:19:00.001+01:00

Martin Freeman and Mandy Moore play an urbane married couple in London who find their marriage at a nine-year-itch. The frequency of their love-making is, we’re told – “once or twice a month”, and, witnessing the disintegration of the marriage of their close friends after the husband has an affair, leads the two to question the strength of their own marriage. They try various methods to cure their marriage – from her attempting to masturbate with a cucumber to him dressing up as a fireman in an attempt to instil some spice into it – but all fail miserably. Finally, the idea of swinging is suggested.

Mandy Moore, who was surprisingly funny as the sanctimonious, evangelical Christian teenager in in Saved!, gives another strong performance here, a capable blend of comedy and drama. Her acting in the cucumber scene was hilarious and she never veers into the “nagging wife” caricature at any point. At the same time, Martin Freeman re-visits the lovable shtick that suited him so well as The Office’s Tim. The supporting performances are all equally good, not least Melissa George as the mother who’s devotions, having swung to her kids, has lost her husband’s. The two leads have an easygoing, likeable chemistry that produces some charming moments at times, and the backdrop of London - I spotted Primrose Hill in one scene - gave the film - as it frequently gives films shot in London - a scene of whimsy and magic.

So the acting is not really the problem here. The main problem is the shoddy script and superficial depiction of a marriage in the danger zone and the precautions taken to try to fix it. In real life, marriages are rarely solved via some Love Actually-esque montages of cheesiness that can be summarised with a weak banana analogy and an over-arching "the grass isn't always greener on the other side" message, less so by some swinging, then the couple getting mad at each other before finally realising just how much they love each other and all being well in the end. Admittedly, the hectic-looking film poster for this film was a fair enough advertisement for what we could expect from the film, and in-depth insights into marriage was not one of them. But all the same, for the glittering cast, upbeat editing and potential for comedy gold that was available, Swinging with the Finkels was a very poor effort. The new millennium has not exactly been a fantastic advertisement for romantic comedies, and Swinging with the Finkels is another one to toss into the trash pile.

Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002).

2011-06-09T20:28:00.001+01:00

Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is a bit of a loser. He buys pudding just for the frequent flier miles even though he doesn’t have any where particular to go, and breaks things in random bouts of self-loathing. And in his loneliness, he calls up a sex line run by some crooks in a nearby Califoronia town. And that sex line calls him back, blackmailing him for money. At the same time, he finds himself tentatively courting Lena, a woman almost as damaged as he. Together, they form an unlikely, and very sweet romance.

Punch-Drunk Love is dark and mature, most unlike the stereotype of Adam Sandler’s other work. But in a more dramatic role, the man thrives. Kitted out in a jarring bright blue suit and sporting a whole arsenal of odd little mannerisms, Sandler is very convincing his depiction of a weird but oddly lovable man who deep down has a heart of gold and only acts out due to desperation. Emily Watson is just as well cast as the kooky, jaded, but adorable Lena. Philip Seymour Hoffman steals the show as the mastermind behind the sexline con, with his self-important strut and devil may care demeanour. The supporting cast are all excellent, and we ourselves really feel the sense of stifling that Barry Egan suffers due to having so many pushy sisters.

Punch-Drunk Love is an impressive, offbeat, bizarre film that offers a whole whirlwind of emotions in the viewing experience. The music and script are sometimes almost distractingly random, but that suits the disjointed style of the film. Furthermore, the fusion of comedy, romance, drama, violence all plays out to be an enthralling little number. Plus, I’m willing to bet money that you were totally rooting for Barry when he defends his woman’s honour with a crowbar; I know I was! Delicately, sensitively written and maturely directed, Punch-Drunk Love is a punch-drunk masterpiece.

Gnomeo & Juliet (Kelly Asbury, 2011)

2011-05-26T17:39:00.002+01:00

William Shakespeare’s timeless tale of star-crossed lovers gets an animated makeover, with our characters now gnomes of two next door neighbours who hate each other – reds and blues. Gnomeo is a handy lawnmower racer and Juliet is desperate to prove she’s not “delicate” like her dad believes. Cast as the eponymous couple are two bright young British stars who also happen to be two of my favourites – James McAvoy and Emily Blunt.

From top to bottom, Gnomeo & Juliet is an unqualified failure. The in-references to other Shakespeare plays are forced and will be lost on their target audience anyway. None of the characters draw you one; one of the main things that appealed to me about the play was how Romeo was such a hopeless romantic, as well as Juliet’s sense of isolation and malaise. Needless to say, by making their characters gnomes, we lose all sense of characterisation and they just become, well, cartoon characters.

This flaw would be easy to overlook were they at least drawn well, but the way every gnome resembles one another with very little distinguishing features just smacks of laziness. Each character is crudely rendered and has nothing interesting to say; at one point, Gnomeo makes a “let’s go kick some grass” joke, which was funnier than first sixty times I heard it in other cartoons. The overall quality of the writing is extremely poor.

Furthermore, taking the Ocean’s 13 approach – cramming as many famous actors in to do the voice work just makes the endeavour even more embarrassing. Ashley Jensen epitomizes this as Nannette, Juliet’s nurse figure. In this film, she’s a frog, and she loses all of the lovability she had as Extra’s Maggie. Emily Blunt and James McAvoy are left to do very little other than read their lines and pick up their pay checks without cringing too hard.

If I try really hard, I can find a few things I didn’t despise about this “film”. Jason Statham has good fun voicing the Tybalt character, and Michael Caine is less annoying here than he is in Inception. Also, I greatly enjoyed Stephen Merchant belting out his version of Your Song, which was corny, but vaguely entertaining. But to be honest, I couldn’t warn you off this film hard enough. It physically pained me to see Shakespeare being bastardized so much – Juliet’s spin on the “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” was clearly scribbled on the back of a napkin. Translating the spine of Shakespeare’s stories into children’s films can be done, as illustrated by the heavy Hamlet overtones in the masterpiece The Lion King. But for it to carry off, love and time must be invested into the project. Here, the amount of time making the film seems to be proportional to the time I would spend attempting to glue back a broken gnome; that is to say, very little time at all.

One final note -- if you amalgate James McAvoy & Emily Blunt's names, you get James Blunt. I adore these two stars separately and I so hope so hard that one day they can collaborate on something that isn't such a piece of turd, but if you were to ask me to pick between listening to James Blunt sing or watch this piece of trash again, I'd probably opt for the former. And that ain't a compliment.

The Apprentice, episode 2.

2011-05-11T22:56:00.000+01:00

Second episode in, 15 contestants left. The participants are awoken at the figurative crack of dawn via a recorded message on a laptop. Alan Sugar tells the group of their new challenge – to market and sell a new mobile phone app. I liked this challenge a lot, in this day and age, a huge majority of people are fiddling with apps on their phone when on the tube, and there seems to be an app for almost everything, however weird or wacky, so it would be an interesting thing for the teams to do. Once again, they’re grouped boys vs girls, the ladies have a man advantage.

When picking Project Managers, Leon puts himself forward, although he has an agenda; in the last episode, Alan Sugar had commented that he wasn’t involved enough, so he wants to prove Sir Alan wrong. Several other men volunteer to be PM as well, but eventually it goes to a vote and Leon gets the role. The boys are moving along at a good pace and before long have decided on their app – Slang-a-tang, an app that gives soundbites of people from all over the UK, as well as over the world.

Things are going considerably less smoothly over at the girls’ team, where Susan gets herself into a bit of a mess when trying to pitch her idea. She says something along the lines of “Imagine I’m here, and you’re there. And I’m me and you’re you-” Needless to say, the team are massively underwhelmed with her idea and Project Manager Edna tells her to pipe down, which Susan refuses to do. When she’s finally silenced, Susan sulks in a fashion dissimilar to a spoilt child. It’s impossible to warm to the woman.

Time’s running out for Edna’s team, and finally they settle for the rather mediocre sounding app which gives out a range of sounds, whether it be annoying, congratulatory, or animal sounds. They call it Ampi-App, which is apparently a play on words, but I’m struggling to think what pun it is. Whilst the women drive off to get their ideas developed, Susan tried a bit of shit-stirring by bad-mouthing Edna, but Melody, who is sat next to her and practically draped in cheap make-up, isn’t having any of it and practically ignores her.

Could she look any more like a five dollar hooker?

In the boy’s group, four of them, Glen, Jim, Vincent and Alex cast themselves for the app, taking on a range of personas from cockney sparra, Scouser, Welshman, etc. The Wales soundbite is “has anyone seen my sheep?”, and the Liverpudlian one is “How’s your wife and my children?” which I found hilarious, but can see why people would find it offensive. Nick observes the boys indulging in laddish banter, not overly impressed, remarking he finds their product a little on the asinine side, “Unless I’m too old”

Back to the girls, their app is going into development and it really isn’t setting the world alight. Admittedly, the boys’ app isn’t the most inventive thing in the world either, but the girls’ one is dumb for a 13-year-old, let alone busy adults in a rush. “I think we could be heading for a bit of a disaster,” Susan remarks, and she is struggling to keep the glee out of her voice; one senses that she would take her team failing just to see Edna fail and get fired.

Overnight, the teams sleep whilst the computer boffins do their magic to put the ideas and components into the finished product. In the morning, the two teams work on their pitches. The boys team’s pitch is pithy and witty, albeit with a play on the word “app” too many. Leon, Vince, and Jim, suited and booted, get to the pitches, although there’s a bit of tension because Gavin clearly wanted to help pitch too. In terms of the pitches, they start fairly well, Vince initially taking centre stage, but at one point he fudges it up and Jim, cool as a cucumber, swoops in and rescues the pitch.

Jim is calm and collected in his pitch, and, furthermore, completely unafraid to address the difficult questions, which is that of taste; amusing as the boys team’s product is, it can’t be denied that it isn’t in the best of taste. There’s an awkward turtle moment when one of the men at the Online Magazine considering taking the app queries about the racial stereotypes, Jim denies as such. But what of the Australian man in the funny hat? “That’s just to show he’s Australian!” Jim protests. Er.

Over at the girls, Melody’s pitch is absolutely awful. She tries to butter up the company by giving them some stats about themselves; saying they have a following of 70-something-thousand. It’s actually several million, which the man isn’t at a lack to tell her. Fail. “The pitch is as good as the product,” Melody comments after she’s embarrassed herself, which just smacks of someone who’s getting their excuses in early.

The two teams then go online to see if their product has made it on the websites of the companies they have pitched to, of which there are three in total. The boys make it onto two of them, the girls, the remaining one, however, the website that they made it onto has a substantially bigger following than the other two.
The two teams then head to a technology expo , in which there are 500 bloggers, twitterers and technology experts, eagerly awaiting to hear about the two apps that the teams have on offer. Edna delivers the talk as if she’s selling some groundbreaking product, but from the reaction of the audience as well as the boys, who can scarcely believe their good luck, it isn’t that great. More pertinently, Edna fails to explain to the audience how and where to download the app from, which is, needless to say, quite a big deal.

The boys don’t make such a mistake, and their talk, in which two of the men have dressed up and take to their roles jovially, engages the audience a lot more. One dresses up as a Scouser, the other, a Cockney, and judging from the reaction of the audience, they’re loving it. The boys crank up the charm offensive by offering the audience doughnuts in return for downloading their app, which they show the crowd how to do.

So, all signs would seem to point to a resounding boys team success. However, it’s the figures that do the talking, and, in the boardroom, Karen and Nick are the ones with the figures. And, bombshell of bombshells, because the women come out triumphant winners, with 10,667 downloads, in the face of just 3,951 downloads for the boys. So that horrid, horrid women’s group, headed by the massively unlikable Edna and the two even more infuriating Melody and Susan, are treated to a delicious meal cooked especially for them. “Is that… victory I taste?” Melody asks, smugly. Urgh.

Back in the boardroom, the boys are as shocked as we the audience are to their failing. They had far more team rapport than the women from the start, I personally preferred their product (though an app that rates how smelly your faeces is would be more useful than the piece of crap the women came up with), and their pitches were more intelligent. But, humanity is an odd, odd thing, and the masses went with the women’s monstrosity. In the boardroom, the boys are in a hurry to lay blame with each other. Jim explains that he thinks the failing occurred when they didn’t get the deal with the bigger magazine, but Alan Sugar questions that even if they had gotten it, would their product have been downloaded anyway, as, whilst popular in the UK, it lacked global appeal. The boy’s Achilles heel in this challenge, I think, was their naivety.

Anyway, Leon, as project manager, has two pick two more people to bring into the boardroom with him. He contemplates picking Jim, which I think is an awful idea, and Jim also knows it, and isn’t afraid to defend himself, and that he does, vociferously. So Leon changes his mind, and goes with Alex and Glen. It was Glen’s idea for the project, and he picks Alex because he felt that Alex shirked his responsibilities. In the boardroom, Alex gets bold and bigger than life in fighting his own corner, but the wool isn’t pulled over Sir Alan’s eyes. He figures Alex, rightfully, I feel, meaning that Leon and Glen get to go back to the house, to live another day. App-solutely fabulous!

Hanna (Joe Wright, 2011)

2011-05-08T15:23:00.003+01:00

She's on the right track baby, she was born this way

Flashback 4 years ago. I’d blagged myself tickets to a preview screening of Joe Wright’s Atonement, meaning that, I’d, rather smugly, gotten to see it before most of the British population, and I could not wait to gush about it on my blog. James McAvoy, according to me, was flawless, the score, musical genius, the cinematography and costumes, divine. However, I’d gone into the film expecting an acting masterclass from Romola Garai, and, whilst she was indeed very good, it was the younger incarnation of her character in the film – played by blue-eyed Irish lass Saoirse Ronan that really, really impressed. Briony Tallis is one of my least favourite literary gals of all time, yet Ronan’s depiction of her, whilst capturing how annoying and meddling her character was, managed to do something that I felt Ian McEwan was unable to do in his book – humanise her. It was, I felt, the most impressive performance by a child actress of the new millennium, and I went on to wax lyrical about her acting in The Lovely Bones, which, like Atonement, was a book that I didn’t particularly care for and wasn’t even originally intending on watching, but when I heard that Ronan was cast as the lead, I just knew that I had to. I had a whole list of problems with Peter Jackson’s film, writing, somewhat bitchily, “But the problem with that is that the source material, weak as it was, was so memorable because it was so dark, and in showing us montages of pretty yellow trees and giant penguins, we’re transported to this whimsical, child-like universe. Then Jackson tries to modulate the tone to child murders. It doesn’t really sit, to be honest, and if you were to ask me and my friends if we’d rather watch this film again or get murdered, we couldn’t truthfully say we wouldn’t pick the latter”, but Ronan was a shining star. When I first walked past the poster for Hanna in the London undergrounds, I checked my walk just to give it a second look (which, if you know Londoners, you’ll understand is saying something) when I realised that it was Miss Ronan on the front. Truth be told, there’s been a few too many female assassin films in recent years for my liking, but the fact that Saoirse Ronan was starring in Hanna meant that I knew I was gonna watch it.

Quality-wise, of the film, I’d say it sits comfortably in between The Lovely Bones – extremely poor, and Atonement – excellent. One can’t help feeling that Joe Hart wished he could have made a more violent film, but was limited by the need for commercial success – and hence the lucrative PG-13/12A rating. Indeed, some of the fight scenes are definitely the most violent scenes I’ve seen in a 12A rated film, but they are staged excellently, with a kind of gusto that reminded me of the jolly fight scenes in Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one, before they turned bad.) Eric Bana and Saoirse Ronan sport these bizarre sounding European accents that made it somewhat difficult to take the things that they said seriously, but in terms of bad accents, Cate Blanchett takes the biscuit. In fact, she should take the whole cookie jar in terms of poor acting, because the woman was not good. A lot of the casting in this film confused me, to be honest, and I’m torn between the joy of seeing some of my favourite stars and the confusion of seeing them in such poorly written roles. Nobody exemplified this better than Tom Hollander, who, if you remember, I loved so much that I went through an entire month of watching films with just him in. In Hanna, he plays a crooked sort of-Mafia character, and spends the film in the weirdest range of tracksuits that look like they've come from Primark (and at one point, these skimpy white shorts that leave nothing to the imagination, lol) and his German accent is so camp that I refuse to believe he didn’t do it with a lol inside his mind. I love Hollander and I love how he isn’t afraid to take a role and make it his own with silliness – his Mr Collins in Pride & Prejudice is one of my most endearing memories of his acting – but in Hanna, the fact that he’s meant to be a character to fear, yet he’s wearing all this Primark-style tracksuits and looking dangerously like he’s wearing mascara; it doesn’t all come together, really.

As with Atonement and Pride & Prejudice, the musical score is amazing. Dario Marianelli scored the former two, but his celli strings and piano surges may have been somewhat out of place in a child-hitman film, so the Chemical Brothers were employed instead, and, as with Daft Punk’s score to Tron, the aurals were so strong that it often made me forget about the pictures. One scene in particular, when Hanna is being pursued by Tom Hollander and his two not-altogether-very-effective goons near a building campsite and there’s a whole lot of running away on her part; the music is just incredible.

And of course, Hanna herself. The film begins with Hanna, out in the wild, shooting a dear for food. Her arrow wounds the deer and kills it, but, as she pulls the arrow out, she notes “I just missed your heart.” The screen fills with HANNA in white-and-red writing, to eerie effect, and without giving too much away, the symmetry around this gives the film a nice sense of closure. But to be honest, that’s the only sense of closure we get. Hanna sports more holes in a plot than a piece of Swiss cheese, and it gets to the point where I can’t just brush them under the carpet. But the main character is never not beguiling. Saoirse Ronan really does have the most electric, arresting blue eyes, and the camera picks up on that, and, indeed, much of Ronan’s subtle acting is in her eyes. Emma Watson should take note of this. The eyes, not the eyebrows, lady. :p And, although her character is a killer, it is, as the film points out, out of survival. There’s an engaging subplot in which Hanna latches on to a marauding bohemian family and their somewhat spoilt teenage daughter, Sophie. The blossoming friendship between the two is sweet and moving, although I felt the scene in the tent – in which the two share a Sapphic moment – was indulgence on Joe Wright’s part rather than any kind of strong storytelling. It’s a shame, because some of the more understated scenes between Hanna and Sophie were a joy to behold, and captured the dynamic of culture clashes and budding friendships well, and then that somewhat out-of-place lesbian undertone killed that off and made it somewhat ~laddish~ and seedy. The fight scenes were well-staged but on the storytelling side, I felt Hanna lacked depth. But even in the face of poor directing and poor writing, Saoirse Ronan is never not a queen. She is the film’s anchor, its emotional core, and without her, Hanna would be a fine, fine mess. As it was, it was managed to be a fairly interesting action thriller that was too flawed to take seriously, but definitely had some good things going for it.

Key of Light (Nora Roberts)

2011-05-04T19:11:00.000+01:00

Mythology and modern day come together gloriously in Nora Roberts' delightful creation. Malory Price, on the cusp of getting sacked from a gallery she has given many years of loyal service to and in an economic situation that could best be described as "precarious", she sees nothing to lose in attending an unusual cocktail party at the ominously named Warrior’s Peak held by the even more unusual odd couple of Pitte and Rowena, who don't look dissimilar to characters from a Celtic myth themselves.

In the meeting, she meets Dana and Zoe, two women just as in the dark about the invite as she is, and who, like her, are in dire financial straits as she. Pitte and Rowena tell the three a tale of trapped demi-goddesses and an evil spirit who keeps their souls locked, and offers them a very generous cash prize if each of the three women can successfully embark on a quest to find the three "keys" to unlock them. Malory, Dana and Zoe are given an initial deposity of $25,000 alone just for trying, and for the women, it seems too good to be true.

Malory, selected as the first up, on further research, discovers the story is darker and more tragic than she could have imagined, with the story of the three trapped goddesses being told in various paintings. Luck would just so transpire that the owner of one of the paintings turns out to be a huge dish, local reporter Flynn Hennesey, who also turns out to be Dana's step-brother. The convenient plot turns just keep coming when another painting is owned by Brad Vane, Flynn's mate (who is quite taken with Zoe) and another owned by Jordan Hawke, sexy and successful fiction writer whom Dana once dated but parted terms with acrimoniously. No prizes for guessing where these little match-ups are headed, but they are depicted with enough conviction and male/female repartee to be a delight to read. Key of Light, which focuses on Mal's journey, deals more with her budding romance with Flynn, who despite having the semblance of being an everyday cheery guy, has the odd proverbial demon in his closet, and it is up to Malory to unlock those, in the same way she is to unlock the first lock. I have only other read one other Nora Roberts novel, small-town murder mystery Carnal Innocence, and the main thing I remember about that (aside from its oh-so-obvious plot twist; Agatha Christie this woman ain’t), was it's t’rifficly steamy sex scenes. It was mainly what urged me to buy this book, to be quite honest, and Roberts does not disappoint; the romance scenes between Flynn and Malory are appropriately hot and juicily detailed.

The rest of the book is also perfectly good; there are some engaging subplots and supporting characters (Flynn's dog Moe always seems to pop up at the most inconvenient of moments, and there's the token gay best friend who comes out with some zingers), and the focus on the three women's budding friendship and their plans to build a hybrid gallery/bookshop/hair salon makes for some sweet sorority. The banter between Dana and Jordan hints at a delicious love/hate relationship that should make for some wonderful hate sex in the sequel, and the relationship between Brad and Zoe (he, an uptown boy, she a struggling but kind-hearted single mother who only has room in her life for one man – her son) is written adorably; Brad, for all his millions, just can’t get it right with Zoe and there’s an odd sort of pleasure in that. Of the two mystical characters Rowena definitely interests more than her male counterpart, and she is painted as the very figure of loneliness behind a veneer of calm. Lastly, the dastardly villain of the trilogy, Kane, is a great conviction, almost a Voldemort for adults, if you will. Nora Roberts is best when she's intermingling the minutiae with the macrocosm, and Key of Light is a huge success; i will hungrily search out Key of Knowledge and Dana's story.

Teenage Dirtbag.

2011-04-14T11:06:00.001+01:00

It's my little brother Tom's 13th birthday today! I cannot believe that that adorable little bb is now a teenager! Lad! So, to celebrate, I thought I'd share some of my favourite photos of him, to cherish his adorable memories before he turns into a gobshite, haha. ;)

Fernandon't Scorres.

2011-04-13T11:19:00.003+01:00

Chelsea signed Fernando Torres for a club record of £50 million from Liverpool on 31st January with the weight of the world on his skinny shoulders. By the time Chelsea signed him, the title race was realistically only between Manchester United and Arsenal, but for the price that Abramovich shelled out for him as well as his preceding reputation, it was only natural that Chelsea fans – and all football fans, for that matter – expected at least some goals from him, if not immediately, then at least imminently. However, if (500) Days of Summer taught Miss Bung anything, then it’s that the expectation and the reality are very rarely the same. And what happened in that film -- Joseph G-L expecting to find a loving Zooey Deschanel in his arms when he really found her kissing another man, is not a bad analogy for Fernando Torres' failed love affair with Chelseabung. Carlo Ancelotti, for his part, tried everything he could to get Torres to score. He played Torres with Kalou. He played Torres with Drogba. He played Torres with Anelka. He played Torres with Drogba and Anelka. But, for all the want in the world, Fernando Torres still hasn't hit the net. Chelsea fans are impatient, Carlo Ancelotti is worried, Roman Abramovich just smiles that silent steely smile that is impossible to read but can so easy signal difficulty. And still, Fernando Torres has scored the same amount of goals for Chelsea as David Cameron, Olalla Torres (his wife), even the frogs in my garden. On the back of a soul-shattering defeat to Manchester United last night that knocks Chelsea out of the CL and effectively ends our awful season, I thought I’d take a look at Torres’ contributions in the games since he's joined Chelsea. After all, didn’t Miley Cyrus say, it’s all about the climb? Giggity.

Chelsea vs Liverpool, 6th February (Chelsea lose 1-0)
The football gods would just so have it that the first game Torres was available to play for Chelsea was that against his old club, of whom he’d gone from beloved son to reviled Judas. Football fans all over the world were rubbing their hands together at the anticipation of Torres scoring against the club that nurtured him into one of the world’s superstars, if only to see how he would celebrate after he scored. They needn’t have worried; Torres was off-form, as were most of the Chelsea team and a Liverpool side with a point to prove could easily have scored more than the one they did; a shot from Meireles. Following their spirited 4-2 win in the mid-week against Sunderland (which Torres was ineligible to play in) in which Nicolas Anelka had been deployed more as a midfielder than his natural forward role and absolutely thrived, giving one of his finest performances in a Chelsea shirt, Carlo Ancelotti attempted a three-man attack with Anelka, Torres and Didier Drogba upfront, but it was an experiment that failed miserably. The sad truth is that, had Ancelotti played just Anelka and Drogba in a straightforward 4-4-2, Chelsea had the quality to defeat Liverpool that day. But, with Roman Abramovich in the audience watching his new buy, that simply wasn’t an option for the Italian. Poor tactics, a miserable Chelsea performance and a good Liverpool team meant that Chelsea suffered their second home loss this season. Hardly the meeting against his old club that Torres would have dreamed of.

Fulham vs Chelsea, 14th February (scoreless draw)
There was little romance for Torres in this Valentine’s Day West London derby, in which a solid Fulham defence and some errant finishing from the Spaniard meant Torres was yet to be in a winning game for Chelsea. Ancelotti benched Drogba, so it was Torres and Anelka upfront for Chelsea, but the two exhibited little cohesion playing alongside each other, Anelka spending the majority of the game in his standard sulk-face. In fact, the player that truly shone for Chelsea in this game was the other expensive January acquisition, David Luiz, who, despite it being his debut premier league start, played like a veteran of the premier league. He was here, he was there, he was defending, attacking, creating chances; in other words, all the things Torres wasn’t do. Chelsea were unlucky, and should probably have had a penalty when Hangeland felled Malouda, but in the last minute, Man of the Match David Luiz’s lapse led to Chelsea conceding a penalty. The American Clint Dempsey’s penalty was poor and Petr Cech’s save was brilliant, meaning that whilst Chelsea should have won, they were lucky not to lose. "Are you Torres in disguise?" the Fulham fans jeered at Drogba in the second half when he misplaced a hit. Quite.

Copenhagen vs Chelsea, 22nd February (Chelsea win 2-0)

In between this Champions League knockout stages game, Chelsea’s luck went from bad to worse when they got knocked out of the FA Cup to Everton on penalties (a game Torres was ineligible to play in due to being Cup-tied) thanks to two very questionable penalties from Nicolas Anelka and Ashley Cole. The Frenchman, again employed alongside Torres upfront with Drogba yet again sat on the bench chewing bubble gum and looking glum, atoned himself somewhat in this game, in which two classy finishes from him secured two priceless away goals for Chelsea, temporarily easing the pressure on under-fire gaffer Ancelotti. Before the game, Chelsea captain John Terry issued a rallying cry to his team, urging them to “Man Up”, and his words seemed to have worked; Chelsea looked more assured and together, albeit playing against “lesser” opposition. Torres had the occasional moment of brilliance but was once again frustrated by the Copenhagen defence and his own inability to finish in a Chelsea shirt.

Chelsea vs Manchester United, 1st March (Chelsea win 2-1)

The team against my most despised oppositions in the whole wide world; needless to say, I was wasted. Yet again, it was Nicolas Anelka and Fernando Torres starting for Chelsea, but there were so many other back stories surrounding this fixture that the Spaniard’s goal drought actually took the sideshow for the first time in a month. For one, Ashley Cole had recently wounded a Chelsea work experience student with a rifle, whilst Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney should have suspended for the game following his elbow on Wigan’s James McCarthy. However, he was allowed to play, and it was he who opened the scoring (grr) in the first half, meaning that, at half-time, not only were Chelsea’s title ambitions out the window, but their chances of securing a CL slot for next season was looking precarious. But in the second half, they showed Manchester United what they were made of. Chelsea new boy David Luiz, who as in the game against Fulham, played a belter, equalised shortly after half-time with a finish that any striker would be proud of, before Smalling tripped up Zhirkov in the penalty area in the 78th minute to allow Frank Lampard to make like Jamie Redknapp tells his son to do in the latest Wii advert - and smash a penalty down the middle, leading to a precious, precious Chelsea win that had me so delirious that on just two pints, I was ALL OVER THE PLACE.

If truth be told, luck was on Chelsea’s side that Tuesday; David Luiz was lucky not to be sent off and Zhirkov’s fall, whilst a legitimate penalty, could just have easily been shrugged off (and in another game, possibly would have been.) However, Carlo Ancelotti, and Chelsea fans weren’t complaining. Torres played well and looked more comfortable with Anelka than he had done in previous games, and funnily enough, it was the fourth time that a game in which he’d played against Nemanja Vidic had resulted in a red card for the Serbian; Vidic being sent off for two bookable offences. Drogba came on for Anelka with half an hour left and the Ivorian saw out the rest of the game in majestic style; the way he took one for the team, when he himself is every bit the superstar that Torres is, was brilliant to see. Chelseabung got lucky in that game, but I wouldn't get too happy, the two upcoming fixtures against Man Utd meant that the luck debt was fully repaid.

Blackpool vs Chelsea, 7th March (Chelsea win 3-1)

Following that morale-boosting win over Utd, Ancelotti pushed the boat out and paired Torres with Drogba (there’s your FIFA dream team) against Blackpool, who, despite fighting the relegation battle, were far from pushovers at home, having scored in every home game this season. However, it was a defender who opened the scoring for Chelsea, John Terry heading powerfully from a Frank Lampard corner in the first half to separate the two sides. In the second half, Drogba picked up a minor knock, but Anelka, his planned replacement, didn’t look at all happy to be coming on, so Ancelotti bunged Kalou on instead, and serendipity would have it that that substitution really swung the game in Chelsea’s favour. Having spent a few minutes on the pitch, Torres sculpted a pass to Kalou to which the Ivorian was felled, giving Chelsea a penalty, to which Lampard dispatched with signature coolness. Kalou and Lampard then combined coolly to score Chelsea’s third, before Blackpool themselves collected a consolation goal. Salomon Kalou, the somewhat “forgotten” player of Chelsea’s four attackers in the wake of Torres’ arrival, gave an excellent account of himself in his performance, and Torres looked more content playing alongside him in a 4-4-1-1 formation that asked lots of questions of Blackpool’s defence.

Chelsea vs Copenhagen, 16th March (scoreless draw)

It was time for Torres to experience starting on the bench, though Ancelotti reasoned that he was resting him for game against Man City that weekend. This meant that the tried-and-tested strikeforce of Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka was employed, and although the game saw no goals, it did allow the former to show what a world class player he was. Some of his interplay was absolutely delicious, and had it not been for some lacklustre finishing from Yuri Zhirkov, this Drogba->Cole->Zhirkov could have resulted in one of the best team goals in recent history. Torres came on for a brief while in the second half and the two goal cushion from the first leg allowed for some indulgence on Chelsea’s part; Lampard could have scored towards the end but chose to tee it off to Torres in the hope that the Spaniard would get his first Chelsea goal. It didn’t work, but the thought was there; despite what naysayers may like to think, Torres’ teammates are just as eager/desperate for him to hit the net as he is.

Chelsea vs Manchester City, 20th March (Chelsea win 2-0)

Alas, the CL-slot six-pointer, as well as the clash of the nouvelle-riche vs the newer-nouvelle-riche. Manchester City came with one game plan: 0-0, and thanks to some staunch defending from Vincent Kompany (one of the underrated performers this season) and the City defence, that they almost got. However, the curly-haired, twinkle-toed, goal-scoring defender David Luiz had other ideas, and when he won a free-kick in the 78th minute which Drogba dispatched, he was there to pounce and bung it in the net. In stoppage time, his compatriot Ramires shimmied past two City defenders to slot in Chelsea’s second against Joe Hart, meaning the West London side gleefully leapfrogged City in the league table. Eyebrows were raised when it was noted that both Anelka and Drogba were benched and it was actually Kalou who started alongside Torres, but the Ivorian more than justified his start, and following the strength of their performances together against Blackpool, I’d say the move was bold, but, considering Chelsea won, it paid off. As usual, Torres' contribution to the match was limited, but he did at least wear a cute blue headband that was the exact same shade as his Chelsea strip. Blair Waldorf, eat your heart out!

Stoke vs Chelsea, 2nd April (1-1 draw)

Following an international break, in which Torres disappointed for Spain against the Czech Republic (but at least partook is a display of some sweet Chelsea fraternity at the end when he and Cech had a moment), Ancelotti started with Anelka and Drogba, perhaps with the view of resting Torres for the midweek showdown against Manchester United, and sat next to the perpetually-sweet face of Salomon Kalou on the Chelsea bench, Torres didn't look too chuffed about it. And Chelsea could only salvage a 1-all draw from what was actually a surprisingly even game, Drogba scoring the equaliser for the visiters; both sides had chances aplenty. Torres and Kalou came on for Drogba and Anelka in the second half, but, surprise surprise, the Spaniard didn't score. Again.

Chelsea vs Manchester United, 6th April (Chelsea lose 1-0)
In what was the most important game of Chelsea's season, luck was most certainly not on their side and they slumped to a morale-crushing 1-0 home loss thanks to Wayne Rooney's goal in the first half. Carlo Ancelotti tried to play 4-4-2 with both the ~FIFA superstars~ Drogba and Torres upfront, but it failed as it did against Blackpool, and unlike against Blackpool, the rest of Chelsea were unable to pick up the slack. Much as it pained me to say it, Rio Ferdinand, coming back from huge spell of injury, had Torres' number, and Drogba, though his feet did all they could, his face told the story of a deeply discontent man. Ramires should have won a penalty and Evra should have been sent off, but this is Chelsea in the CL, when has "should" ever had a damn thing to do with anything?! To be fair, Torres did have one shot that did look to be going in if it weren't for Edwin van der Saar's brilliance, but, that he was booked for diving towards the end of the night summed up a deeply frustrating game for Chelsea on the platform of the CL, the thing they want more than anything else.

Chelsea vs Wigan, 9th April (Chelsea win 1-0)
A very unconvincing win for the home side, against a team who, in their previous two fixtures, they'd aggregated a mass scoreline of 14-0. In the end, Malouda scored the winner in a goalline kefuffle, in which Torres, ironically, did actually play a part - by impeding the Wigan goalkeeper. On the same day, Chelsea's loanee forwards Borini smacked one in for Swansea City, and Danny Sturridge scored two majestic goals for Bolton, bringing his tally since transfering to Bolton up to six. What Torres would give to just one of those six goals. Chelsea loan out one of their strikers who is scoring for fun and spend millions on a player who couldn't hit the proverbial cow's arse with the proverbial banjo? Now that, Alanis...

Manchester United vs Chelsea, 12th April (Chelsea lose 2-1)

But I speak on behalf of all Chelsea fans when I say that we would have gladly put our what-ifs on hold if Torres repaid the faith that Ancelotti showed in him, repaid the millions that Roman spent on him and repaid the hours of us fighting his corner when his former blatantly didn't deserve it, with a brace against Manchester United. But it wasn't to be. And to be honest, I think that as soon as Chelsea fans knew that it wasn't to be, although that didn't stop us from hoping, praying, wanting. But what you can want something as much as you want, it doesn't actually get you it. Torres was so poor in the first half (The Guardian rated his performance a 4/10, only 2 points more than what they gave Crouchie for his performance against Real Madrid -- and he got sent off) that Ancelotti had no choice but to withdraw him for Drogba, who, in the second half, played his heart out. Even when Chelsea were down to 10 men, and chasing a 2-0 deficit, he ran and ran, sought loss causes, and neveve up. Drogba was aptly repaid by a brilliant goal, though in the end, it counted for nothing more than pride as Park Ji Sung scored another practically seconds later. It does raise a pertinent point, though. Carlo Ancelotti, last night, could have seeked to do one of two things, get to the final four of the CL, or appease Roman Abramovich by playing the footballer he spent so much on. In the end, Ancelotti got neither. The woe that befell Chelsea fans after this match is too great to even begin writing about, but I have to admit that this year, with the teams that we put out, we just didn't look good enough. I feel bad for players like Michael Essien, Frank Lampard and Petr Cech, who are amazing. But mostly, I feel for Didier Drogba. He, arguably, out of the entire Chelsea squad, has had his nose put out of joint most by Fernando Torres' arrival. Yet even on his form, which isn't the greatest, he is playing Torres off the pitch. Didier Drogba is a superstar, one of the best forwards in the world, but with 27-year-old Torres being paraded in front of his 33-year-old self, he can't help but wonder where he fits in at Chelsea. But I do so hope he stays, because he is an amazing footballer and an even more amazing man. We may have lost but I'm delighted Didi scored. He, more than anyone, deserved his moment last night.

So all this leaves Chelsea in somewhat of a quagmire (can you tell I've been on a Family Guy binge recently? Can ya?!). They have a £50million, perpetually injured striker who couldn't score in a brothel. They have zero chance of any silverwear this season, and the only thing left to fight for his for third and fourth slot, which is between them, Spurs and Manchester City. The malaise that I, and I imagine all Chelsea fans are currently in is immeasurable, and Carlo Ancelotti best sleep with one eye open if Roman's wrath is anything to be believed. It would be churlish -- and downright unfair -- to lay blame all of Chelsea's problems with Torres (we screwed up our title challenge long before he came along and he was ineligble to play in the FA Cup matches which we screwed up), but at the same time it would be blind to suggest he played no part in the massively dissappointing two games against Manchester United, which were, to be honest, the ones that mattered the most by far. Nicolas Anelka is a gem and has come out and said he "doesn't mind" not starting that much, knowing that as he's over 30 and at a club with four forwards, he needs to be realistic. However, Drogba and Salomon Kalou are clearly thinking over their options. Kalou is 25, an adorable sweetheart and a terrific little utility player for Chelsea, but when he was at Feyenoord with Dirk Kuyt, the two were tearing defences up, and Kalou must secretly pine for the days when he started almost every game, as opposed to for Chelsea, where if he's lucky, he'll get 10 minutes, and if he's very very lucky, he'll get a start, despite the fact that his goals-to-shots ratio has been far better than Torres'. The Fernando Torres jokes come in thick and fast ("Did you hear about my Torres night out?! I spent loads of money, had loads of shots but in the end didn't even score!" is a popular one, as is the website, http://hastorresscoredforchelsea.com/, which I don't believe will need updating until 2014) and I meet them sometimes with a bittersweet chuckle, sometimes with an ingrained need to defend by team -- and thus Torres. I know Roman Abramovich is a billionaire and can do whatever the hell he wants, but next time, I'd really appreciate it if he approached such a big-sum spending with a little more prudence. Torres and Drogba may score feckloads on FIFA, but, sry2say, Roman, life isn't a game of FIFA. Oh how I wish it was, but nah. At the end of the day, I'll support any player in a Chelsea shirt, even massive flops like Mateja Kezman, but this Torres escapade is all getting a little disappointing. If I had to do the same again, well, er, I most certainly wouldn't do the same, my friend, Fernando.

All the things that make us laugh and cry.

2011-04-10T14:53:00.001+01:00

Recently I’ve really gotten into Seth McFarlene’s Family Guy and American Dad!. I gave his The Cleveland Show a watch too, but it really did nothing for me. However, the other two shows, I feel, are modern masterpieces, and never fail to cheer me up when I’ve had a bad day with their mixture of bad taste, visual humour and good ol’ family values. So it got me thinking, how would I rank the characters? And this is what I came up with.

01. Stewie Griffin
02. Brian Griffin
03. Roger
04. Stan Smith
05. Meg Griffin
06. Steve Smith
07. Francine Smith
08. Chris Griffin
09. Peter Griffin
10. Hayley Smith
11. Lois Griffin
12. Klaus Heissler

The night Peter Crouch-ed and Bern-ed.

2011-04-06T12:49:00.007+01:00

In series 1, episode 17 of Glee, Mr Schue tells Quinn Fabray, of the trials and tribulations of high School: “A couple of bad decisions and you go from the top to the bottom”. He could just as easily have been talking about football. For Spurs in the Champions League, Peter Crouch was one of their star men; where he has disappointed in the league this season, he has more than made up for in the big European platform with goals against the likes of Inter and AC Milan, some of them pivotal ones (he scored the winning goal against AC Milan that was the difference between the two sides). In fact, it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that, yesterday, going into the first leg of their quarter final clash with Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid, he was just as integral to Tottenham’s plans as their wing wizard Gareth Bale, whom the Spurs manager Harry Redknapp had valued at £80million.

Unfortunately, the big occasion got to the big man. In eight minutes, Peter Crouch made two rash tackles. The first, on Sergio Ramos, was misplaced and mis-timed. The second on Marcelo, when he was already on a yellow, was downright stupid. Even as – what I consider to be – the biggest Crouchie fan in the world, there is no justifying his two idiotic tackles. He rightful sending was essentially the catalyst for Tottenham’s implosion at the Bernabéu. At that point they were 1-0 down, but with almost three hours ahead of them, had everything to play for. The match ended 4-0 with the return leg at White Hart Lane next Wednesday (of which my younger brother will be attending as his 13th birthday "present"), looking like nothing more than a formality. In the space of eight minutes, Peter Crouch went from hero to zero.

Even with the best will in the world, I cannot find any ways to justify Peter Crouch’s two awful tackles. All I can do is examine them and attempt to delve into the black hole that is a footballer’s mind – and try to explain them. The first element, I think, is the psychological. Before the game, Peter Crouch had been talked up, down and all around by various members of the English and Spanish media, not to mention Real Madrid players themselves. Former Arsenal player Emmanuel Adebayor said of his fellow lanky striker, “When I was playing in England I always loved a lot of Tottenham players, especially Peter Crouch”. The much-maligned Togo striker completed an acrimonious move north of London to Manchester to play for Man City, and was in the side that lost to Spurs on the 5th May 2010 in what was dubbed as the “Fourth Place Showdown”, in which Crouch gave his counterpart Adebayor a masterclass in how to maintain possession, pass to teammates, and above all, score. Yet, yesterday, Adebayor hit the net twice, and played majestically, whereas Crouch walked after 15 minutes, so there is no question who came out the winner this time round.

Elsewhere, where Adebayor talked Crouch up, former Chelsea defender and Mourinho faithful Ricardo Carvalho took particular glee in talking the 6’7” striker down. He claimed that Peter Crouch “was easy to play against.” Whether he genuinely thought that, or he was just trying to psyche the England man out, we’ll never know, but he certainly succeeded in unsettling Crouch, because those words clearly had their impact; Crouch is by nature a mild-mannered footballer who doesn’t make a habit of making rash tackles. Yet he dished out two tackles yesterday that would probably have made Nigel De Jong shudder. There’s a sort of grim humour in thinking that Mourinho still hasn’t ended his constant mind-games, but the chants of “Tonto!” directed at Crouch by the Real Madrid fans obviously aren’t totally inaccurate; Carvalho played Crouch like a five dollar banjo.

It’s a massive shame because as I have mentioned, it’s hardly as if Peter Crouch as been setting the premier league alight with his scoring this season. He has played very well with Rafael van der Vaart, no doubt about it, and he has provided the majority of the Dutchman’s assists in the league, but Crouch invariably would have wished to scored more himself; many Spurs fan often question why Crouch plays so much and Pavlyuchenko so little. The Champions League is (was?) the one platform where he truly shone this season, scaring the majority of defenders senseless with his unusual frame and playing style. That he has done so much for Spurs in the CL this season will instantly be forgotten. It is irrelevant that he was such a huge factor in putting them in the Quarter Finals, because it is also he who has almost single-handedly prevented them from progressing further. The Guardian gave his performance against AC Milan in the first leg at the San Siro a 9/10, a score they very rarely dish out unless in the face of true excellence. What did they give him for his performance last night? A two. And the sad thing is, that was being generous.

With Tottenham staring at the bleak pit of Champions League exit and facing an uphill battle with Chelsea and Manchester City for the two remaining Champions League places in the premier league, the only way Peter Crouch can go from here is up. That’s the thing about football, it goes hand in hand with failure, with wrath, with moments of madness. But it is also ten-a-penny with redemption. As Stuart Pearce demonstrated with his penalty for England in Euro 96, the road to personal atonement lies in football. I began with a quote from one of my favourite shows, Glee, so I’ll end with another quote from another one of my favourite shows, Sex and the City. Our protagonist, Carrie, has just embarrassed herself hugely in tripping up on a catwalk, in front of hundreds of people. She has a choice, run away and hide, or get up, and proudly get on with it. She does the latter. Why? Because, as she reasons, “When real people fall down in life, they get right back up and keep walking.” In 1990, Stuart Pearce fell down. In 1996, he pulled himself back up. Now it is up to Peter Crouch, and Peter Crouch alone, to do the same.

The Girl Who Played with Fire (Daniel Alfredson, 2009)

2011-04-03T16:14:00.000+01:00

A year on Lisbeth Salander’s minor victory from the end of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the eponymous character back in Stockholm. Mikael Blomkvist, who’s magazine Millenium, she had helped gain back a legitimacy in the first film, is now investigating sex trafficking. At the same time, a bunch of murders (including that o the lawyer who raped Salander in the first film) occur, framing Salander for the murders. Lisbeth Salander knows it’s time to go on the run. She also knows that someone is after her.

As with the first film, what makes The Girl Who Played with Fire is Noomi Rapace in the lead role. With her short spikey blame hair, multiple facial piercings and tattoos and skinny frame, she is the physical embodiment of Lisbeth Salander, but her performance is just as noticeable, if not more so, than her physical attributes. In one scene, where she has a man tied up by the neck and is trying to extract the truth from him, face painted white (for some reason), Rapace’s reactions to learning each new fact totally mirror our own. It will be interesting to see how Rooney Mara, who turned heads as Jesse Eisenberg’s love interest in The Social Network, will fill her shoes in David Fincher’s big-budget Hollywood adaptation of the series. From the photos, she looks every bit the part, but Mara has her work cut out filling Rapace’s shoes.

What distinguishes this instalment of the film from the first is that here, we delve deeper into Lisbeth’s murky past, with the reasoning behind her cold exterior illustrated somewhat, especially when we find out why she was labelled “incompetent” in the first place, and what she did to get herself thrown into scare. At the same time, as events become progressively more sinister, Lisbeth comes to accept that sometimes, she can’t handle the world entirely by herself, and becomes more receptive to the held from her friends. At the top of these people is Mikael Blomkvist, who’s belief in Lisbeth’s innocence never falters for a second. As anyone who has read the books will know, the Mikael/Lisbeth will they/won’t they romantic subplot is ongoing throughout the trilogy, and the natural chemistry between the two actors is likeable and believable. Unfortunately they spend much of this film apart, but even so, the way they communicate via short, staccato messages through computers (which Lisbeth hacks expertly) all builds to what I feel is one of the on-screen duos of the 2000s.

That the film is not quite as thrilling as the first is more down to two things. Firstly, the whole “missing person” plotline of the first was a little more interesting. Secondly, it is due to the very high precedent set by the first film. From some scenes, it is easy to see how these two films, and the finale, were adapted into a six-part TV mini-series in its homeland Sweden, as production value is generally not the highest. But, nonetheless, The Girl Who Played With Fire is an intense, well-sculpted bit of filmmaking, worth watching, and one that doesn’t shy away from the dark underbelly of the Swedish underworld. I eagerly await seeing the third.

Joan Capdevila scores a racist own goal.

2011-03-29T11:33:00.002+01:00

say no to racism? Not according to Capdevila's twitter.

The Spanish left-back and Euro 2008 and World Cup winner Joan Capdevila of Villareal recently joined twitter. This in itself is nothing special; many, many footballers have taken to the 140-charactered-social network, from Jack Wilshere tweeting about his penchant for gossip girl, to Kaka wishing good vibes from god to his supporters and fans. Furthermore, footballers and free speech is an obvious accident waiting to happen, and already there have been controversies aplenty surrounding footballers and their tweets, whether it be Ryan Babel’s Howard Webb twitter picture suggesting the referee to be a Manchester United fan, or Arsenal’s talented-but-not-altogether-PR-savvy goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny tweeting his delight at Chelsea’s Ashley Cole’s penalty miss, a few days later incurring the ultimate hubris himself when he himself was involved in a mix-up with Koscielny that led to Arsenal losing the Carling Cup final. In the big bad world of the world wide web, a little diplomacy goes a long, long way. This point has been forgotten frequently by footballers in the past, but none more so than by Capdevila on Saturday. He tweeted this:

Which translates to “I love the jokes you send me! By the way, today I asked myself: If a Chinese woman has a 'clio', what does she have? A car or a child?"

(the joke is essentially a play on the age-old stereotype that Chinese people cannot differentiate between their “l”s and “r”s.)

I am horrified at this, not only as a Chinaman, but even more greatly, as a football fan. Footballers are role models. Capdevila should have known a lot, lot better than this. The tweet was discussed on a football community I frequent, ontd_football, and amongst the discussions, shit went down. For every excellent, intelligent point made was an equally stupid, bigoted comment trying to justify the joke, saying that it was “in the nature” of Spaniards to jest at ethnic minorities, it’s not “proper racism” and by reprimanding them for it, we were stifling their voices.

To which I say, mierda. Capdevila’s tweet, whilst not overtly calling Chinese people any racist names, was nonetheless, fundamentally racist. There’s several types of racism, explicit racism, which is easier to detect and call out the perpetrator for being a bigoted idiot, and there’s this sort – the more ~jokey type, which, if criticized for, many would just try to defend as being “banter~~~”. But it isn’t, not one bit. If anything, it's more harmful that explicit racism, because the former is obviously wrong, whereas casual racism like Capdevila's, with all its sinister undertones, can be tried to brush under the carpet with the guise of "oh, you too sensitive, he was just kidding! Sit down!"

I’m not trying to pin all of the world’s racism on Joan Capdevila’s tweet, far from it. In fact, I feel that that tweet – and the fact that he felt he could so casually publish it (it was then re-tweeted by over 100 people, more’s the pity) shows a sad fact; that for all the talking of a unified, globalized, more diverse community, racism is still hugely present in the world today. A few years ago, on Celebrity Big Brother, when Danielle Lloyd said of Shilpa Shetty “I think she should just fuck off home”, that was racist. As is the ~lad’s humour~ of Top Gear, with their persistent racial comments about Mexico like it's no big. These sort of things, some people might perceive as harmless and inoffensive, but they’re anything but, let me tell you.

Now, it is my opinion that Capdevila really needs to be called out for this tweet, and punished for it. It would set a precedent, and show that this kind of offensive humour is not ok, not one bit. Thankfully the majority of other footballers, for all their inanities, haven’t tweeted anything else like this, but even the fact that there’s still one football tweeting racist jokes and getting away with it, when such a big fuss is made out of obliterating racism out of football, well, FIFA, talk about mixed signals.

Racism, kick it out? If footballers continue to mindlessly tweet “jokes” like this, kicking and screaming its way back in, more like.

What are the musical references in Ernest Tomlinson's Fantasia on Auld Lang Syne?!

2011-03-13T21:31:00.003Z

This is a beautiful, whimsical and very busy piece of music which apparently references 152 works. All I can spot are a few!

- Beethoven’s Ode to Joy
- Chopin's Marche funèbre
- Schubert's Trout quintet
- Bach's Wohl mir, dass ich Jesum habe
- Adagio from Spartacus
- Haydn’s Surprise Symphony
- Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake
- "This Old Man" - nursery rhyme
- O Come All Ye Faithful
- The Can Can

Care to have a listen and see if you recognise any of the references?

My Favourite Performances of 2010.

2011-03-07T21:03:00.000Z

Standard, a yearly tradition of mine! I must re-iterate that these are my *fave* performances of last year, by no means am I trying to claim they're the *best* ones. For example, I recognise that Colin Firth was pretty good in The King's Speech, but it didn't do anything for me. Hence, performances that I bladdy loved.

I recognised Sheen's face throughout the film, but couldn't quite put a name to it, before realising that it was "her off Fanny Hill", wherein she played a prim hotel owner. In Another Year, she and Jim Broadbent make for the stable, comfortable married couple who are the centrepiece for some more dysfunctional characters through the course of the year. Sheen plays a likeable woman with a touch of smugness to perfection and it is the painfully accurate performances in Another Year that made it the touching film it is.

Maaaan, when I was trawling the net for images of Bonham-Carter as Bellatrix in the seventh Harry Potter film, the image I wanted the most was of her - in my opinion - best scene in this film - when she was torturing Emma Watson. Her acting in that scene was perfection, it capture Bellatrix's sadistic evilness to a T. I've developed quite a penchant for rating performances in the HP movies (Tom Felton made the list last year), and it's no coincidence that so far the two performances I've rated have been portrayals of Slytherin characters. Nasty pieces of work they may be, but playing the bitch is so much more fun than playing the angel. HBC in Harry Potter >>>>>>>>> HBC in The King's Speech.

Mila Kunis is a flawless queen, and I am one of the few who actually believed her to be stronger than Natalie Portman in this film, who, despite being very good, I feel didn't quite merit her Oscar win over performances like Jennifer Lawrence's and Michelle Williams'. Anyway, Mila was the epitome of smouldering sexuality in Black Swan, a performance so sexy that I felt the need to devote an entire blog entry to it. Get it, goddess. (note, Mila's second time in being on this list in three years).

From a woman to performed cunnilingus to a man who performed cunnilingus, it's somewhat of a disgrace that Gosling was completely overlooked at the Oscars. His performance was so gut-wrenching, so moving, so raw, that I wanted it to work with Cindy. But, in films as sometimes in life, we can't always get our happy endings, but such is the emotional gravita of Gosling's turn that, when it didn't, I genuinely felt gutted for his character. :(

Right, quiet you! :p Chloe Moretz was hollering c-bombs in 2010, Justin Bieber had girls in a frenzy and Smith's lil sis Willow Smith was whipping her hair back and forth, but it's Jaden Smith's straightforward, gutsy performance as the boy who learns karate to fight off bullies was as engaging a child performance as you'll see all year. Much of his performance owed to the rapport he had with Jackie Chan, who actually gave a very moving performance indeed; his scene in the car during the anniversary of his wife & daughter's death moved me to tears. Much more than just karate, trust me.

As swaggerous, strong, and gritful a girl with plaits as I've ever seen in cinema.

Oh, Andy.

I am so, so, so glad Christian Bale won the Oscar this year for his amaze performance as Dicky Eklund, a fighter who has flaws from top to bottom, but remains a magnetic watch. His gentle chemistry with on-screen brothers Mark Wahlberg and mother Melissa Leo are completely riveting and convincing, his drug-related mistakes are as hilarious to watch as they are painful, and the scene wherein he sees his son on the TV screen from prison is absolutely heartbreaking. The Fighter was a somewhat predictable - but still winning - film, but Christian Bale's energy as Eklund meant that I was captivated throughout.

Interesting tidbit that only interests me: he was born in Haverfordwest, where one of my best mates at Uni is from! \o/

Leonardo DiCaprio never fails to be fine, but after he starred in my second least favourite film of 2010, Inception, I found his shaggability slightly on the wane. Nonetheless, if I remember that he was in a much superior movie that was released earlier in 2010, Shutter island, I can just about still love him. A big motif of Shutter Island is what is reality and what is imagination, and it is a testament to DiCaprio's performance that even at the end, we were never really sure.

I watched Another Year yetserday, and it's a shame I didn't do so before I'd compiled my favourite films of 2010 list, because it would have easily gotten fourth place (a phrase that I hope I can say of my team Chelsea football club, heh heh heh), thus knocking off Streetdance 3D and hence shielding the list from some of the snarking I got from my bezzo Luke. :p But yeah, delightful, honest, sweet movie, and Lesley Manville, to me, was even more of a centrepiece than Ruth Sheen & Jim Broadbent's married couple. I thought that Imelda Staunton's devastatingly real cameo at the start of the film would hold the title for best performance in the film, but from the moment I came to watch Lesley Manville as a jittery, insecure, aging woman ala Blanche DuBois who just wants to love and be loved, I knew I was wrong. A bit of Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky, a bit of Vivien Leigh, this is an acting tour-de-force. I pitied her, I found her irksome, I cringed with her, but, above all, I felt for her. There's your amazing performance.

CHECK OUT THESE QT CUPCAKES!

2011-02-28T00:12:00.002Z

And here are the full list of presenters, 'cited!
•Tom Hanks
•Hugh Jackman
•Robert Downey, Jr.
•Annette Bening
•Jude Law
•Nicole Kidman
•Reese Witherspoon
•Cate Blanchett
•Josh Brolin
•Russell Brand
•Scarlett Johansson
•Hilary Swank
•Javier Bardem
•Helen Mirren
•Matthew McConaughey
•Amy Adams
•Mila Kunis
•Justin Timberlake
•Kevin Spacey
•Marisa Tomei
•Jake Gyllenhaal
•Oprah Winfrey
•Jennifer Hudson
•Kathryn Bigelow
•Halle Berry
•Sandra Bullock
•Steven Spielberg

(Hurried) 2011 Oscar Predictions.

2011-02-27T23:27:00.000Z

Best Picture - The Social Network
Best Director - David Fincher, The Social Network
Best Actor in a Leading Role - Colin Firth, The King's Speech
Best Actress in a Leading Role - Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Christian Bale, The Fighter
Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Best Original Screenplay - The King's Speech
Best Adapted Screenplay - The Social Network
Best Animated Feature - Toy Story 3
Best Foreign Language Film - Incendies
Best Cinematography - True Grit
Best Film Editing - The Social Network
Best Art Direction - Alice in Wonderland
Best Costume Design - The King's Speech
Best Makeup - The Wolfman
Best Original Score - The Social Network
Best Original Song - "If I Rise", 127 Hours [ugh to both the last two]
Best Sound Mixing - Inception
Best Sound Editing - Toy Story 3
Best Visual Effects - Inception
Best Documentary Feature - Waste Land
Best Short, Documentary - Warriors of Qiugang
Best Short, Animated - Madagascar, A Journey Diary
Best Short, Live-Action - God of Love

I'm predicting with my heart rather than my brain here, but please please PLEASE can TSN win over King's Speech? Good lawd.

My 10 Favourite Films of 2010.

2011-02-19T00:44:00.000Z

I can’t tell a lie, I wasn’t exactly blown away by the majority of 2010 releases. Much of this was my own fault – I didn’t frequent my little arthouse digs quite as much last year (hence the highly commercial nature of the majority of my top 10) and whilst there are usually two or three obscure little treats in my top list, due to the fact that I barely watched any art films this year, the top 10 is the most blockbuster it’s been for a while. And what I did see, on the whole, I wasn’t impressed with. Should I have time I may do a least favourite 10, but until then, the goodies.

10. StreetDance 3D [full review here]

I have big, unapologetic love for my dance movies (Step Up 2 made the same position on my top list of 2008 two years ago). StreetDance 3D is very similar to the Step Up movies; it centres around dance and disaffected youth and looks at how dance gives them a raison d'etre, and like with the original Step Up with Channing Tatum, it fuses hip hop and street dancing with the more refined skills involved in ballet. As so much of the film revolves around the dancing spectacles, the acting, plot and dialogue aren’t the greatest, but they more than suffice, plus there’s the novelty of seeing Charlotte Rampling cast as a ballet teacher; even in autopilot, she’s nothing less than a queen. Set in inner-city London, the city is shot in a way that Woody Allen captured London in Match Point- practically on a pedestal, and the cameos from Britain’s Got Talent acts such as Diversity and Flawless, the acting debut from the wonderful cheeky chappy George Sampson, the trendy soundtrack and the modern day Romeo and Juliet parallel all somehow fit together slickly. So whilst it’s a simple enough film in terms of character and plot, the dancing is anything but, and StreetDance 3D is one of the few films wherein watching it in 3D genuinely does heighten the viewing pleasure. Definitely worth singing and dancing about.

09. Somewhere [full review here]

As I may ram down the readers’ of this blog’s throats (yep, all three of you), I was not a fan of Lost in Translation. Quite why I hate it so much is a topic for another day, but, the point is, on viewing the trailer of Sofia Coppola’s film about boredom, isolation and family, I got a distinctly Lost in Translation vibe from it and expected to dislike it as well. Which just goes to show that you shouldn’t judge a film by its trailer, because, whilst there were still discernible echoes of Lost in Translation in Somewhere, Somewhere washed with me a lot better. There’s a very likeable sort of gentle chemistry between on-screen father daughter pairing Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning and various scenes which Coppola may have put in out of pure indulgence (such as the ice-skating sequence) actually add to its charm, and Coppola’s credentials as a music video director work to her advantage here, especially in the memorable and beautiful scene where Dorff and Fanning sunbathe to the pool to the melancholy lyrics of “I’ll try anything once.” Paint-by-numbers Coppola filmmaking, perhaps, but as a study of the things in life that matter, I connected with it, and it also serves as a delightful modern-day counterpart to Paper Moon.

08. Date Night

Scoff all you like, but I thought this film was bloody genius. At the centre you have a comedy King and Queen, Steve Carrell and Tina Fey, as a suburban husband-wife combo who get through life perfectly fine, albeit noticing that their marriage is slipping up on what Thierry Henry would dub the “va-va-voom.” On one of their date nights, they decide to venture into New York City, and in order to get seats at a pretentious restaurant, take on the identities of “the Tripplehorns”, which sets off a hilarious comedy of errors. With cameos from Leighton Meester, Mila Kunis, Mark Walhberg, Taraji P. Henson, Ray Liotta as well as two of this year’s Oscar nominees (for other films, obviously) Mark Ruffalo and James Franco, this is very much a Hollywood star back-pat sesh, but the smugness isn’t totally smeared in our faces as much as other films, such as Ocean’s 11. Steve Carrell gets to use his comic timing to perfection (“he turned the gun sideways!” had me chuckling loudly) and Tina Fey delivers more of the deadpan, observation-comedy, but together, they make a wonderful comedy duo, and Date Night a very enjoyable film.

07. Made in Dagenham [drunken review here]

A delightfully charming true-life tale of how a group of women in the Ford plant in Dagenham campaigned for pay equality for women, Sally Hawkins steals the show and it’s a disgrace that such a sweet film was completely forgotten about come awards season. Like Starter for 10, Made in Dagenham is probably more likely to be fully appreciated by Brits, but there’s definitely a universal appeal in the theme of not giving up against the odds, even when practically everyone is telling you to sit down and shut up. Rosamund Pike gets to subvert her ditzy image and play against type as a stay-at-home mother who’s actually a lot smarter than her husband but has to pretend she isn’t, Jamie Winstone is the epitome of Essex in her brash bolshiness and up-and-comer Andrea Riseborough provides merriment too. Forget The King’s Speech, this was by far my favourite British film about overcoming adversity of the year.

06. Easy A

When we look back at the somewhat blah cinematic year that was 2010, one thing that I will definitely remember about it is it being the year that Emma Stone truly established herself on the scene. She’s always been nothing short of delightful in the past, even in truly dire films such as The House Bunny, but getting a film to herself and being expected to carry it is a big ask, yet Emma fulfils her job – and then some. As Olive Predergast, the maligned protagonist of the film who is wrongly dubbed a whore, slut and floozy by all of her fellow schoolmates, Emma Stone keeps the tale always on the right side of jovial, even when events take a turn for the problematic. She’s obviously helped by some terrific zingers and one-liners, as well as a supporting cast that features Amanda Bynes hamming it up as a Christian fundamental, Thomas Haden Church as the chilled English teacher, Lisa Kudrow as the school councillor (and his wife) who cheats on him and gossip girl’s Penn Badgley as the love interest, but the fact of the matter is that there are just too few actresses in Hollywood that are as naturally likeable as Emma Stone, and her sexy, swaggerous red-hair, basque and ray-ban combination will long be copied, never bettered. It doesn’t need to be said but I’ll say it; that girl will go far.

05. The Fighter

The Fighter opens to the tune of The Heavy’s “How do You Like Me Now” as Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale, cast half-brothers from the same mother Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund, strut down their neighbourhood, mini-heroes for their status as boxers (Eklund had a good run before he descended into crack addiction, and Micky has a few fights lined up). Coming from a family with seven sisters ruled under the iron fist of their loving but sometimes ill-advised materfamilia Alice Ward (Melissa Leo), Micky has always taken the advice of his family members, even when it’s ended up backfiring. When he starts dating local barmaid Charlene (Amy Adams), however, she opens his eyes to the fact that he needs to train to start sticking up for himself and his own best interests. Micky wants to win fights but he also wants to appease his family, thus the key premise of The Fighter. The acting is uniformly excellent but Christian Bale really stands out in his twitchy performance as the drug-addict who still rides on his former glory, oblivious (or simply refusing to accept) that he’s become a joke; the scene in jail wherein he watches the documentary about himself is heartbreaking. Despite the fairly grim plot-line, the film still managed to be funny and lively throughout; I in particularly enjoyed the shy sweetness of Micky and Charlene's tentative romance. There’s something about the whole against all odds type film that just appeals to me massively, and the flawed characters and themes such as loyality and fraternity elevate The Fighter from standard fight-movie fare and give it an extra one-two punch. Like Micky at the uplifting finale, this film is a winner.

04. Shutter Island

Completely forgotten about in awards season due to its release date in the first half of 2010, Shutter Island stands as my choice for the most underrated film of 2010. Adapted from Dennis Lehane’s book, Shutter Island is rife with mystery and feelings of foreboding throughout, and even having read the book beforehand, I was still thinking about it long after the credits had rolled. Atmospheric, tense and scary as hell, there’s more than a small dose of The Cabinet of Dr Caligeri in it, Martin Scorsese does some of his best directing in this perfectly sculpted and ingeniously shot (the bright lighting only goes to add doubt about what’s real and imagined) about Leonardo DiCaprio pretty much losing his mind. Inception who? There’s only room for one film about what’s real and what’s not with Leo DiCaprio wherein he has a crazy wife, bitches, and for me, that film’s Shutter Island!

03. True Grit

Whether it be Kill Bill, The Lion King, Hamlet or Inglourious Basterds, I do like a bit of the ol' revenge film genre. That said, the Western genre is probably my least favourite. If anyone could make me like the latter genre, though, it would be the Coens, by fusing it with the former. True Grit centres around 14-year-old Mattie Ross, who wants to avenge the death of her father by tracking down Tom Cheney, the man who killed him. She enlists the help of the unreliable but tough Rooster Cogburn, and soon the Texas Ranger LaBeouf wriggles his way into the mission, for he too has unfinished business with Cheney. On their journey they encounter various travails which truly test the level of grit they hold. True Grit is very much a film that embodies the whole The Climb mentality; the journey is almost more important than the destination, and no one captures this better than the heroine Mattie, played by Hailee Steinfeld. It’s hard to believe that this is Hailee’s first film role, because she is a revelation, her character is smart, resourceful and caring, and annoyingly stubborn. There is also a loveable normality to her heroine status; her attempts to fire a gun throughout the film always end in fail, and there’s also the novelty of seeing someone in such neat plaits talking about their plans for murder. Her performance, Shawshank Redemption-er Roger Deakin’s stunning cinematography and the film closing on Iris Dement’s gorgeous rendition of the hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” give True Grit a huge sense of beauty.

02. The Social Network

I had my doubts about whether a film about Facebook would justify its two-hour running time, but the story behind did actually make for compelling viewing. As soon as Mark Zuckerberg (his annoyingness captured perfectly by Jesse Eisenberg) goes home after a bust-date and logs onto livejournal to whine about it, I knew this was my mind of film (I do exactly the same, haha). The sequences of Zuckerberg coming to piece Facebook together with his uncannily good HTML skills were exhilarating to watch, but there were also small joys in watching the social misfires of him and his best friend Eduardo Saverin (I still maintain that the way Garfield shimmies up to Zuckerberg in the Harvard Jewish Mixer alone should have been enough to bag Garfield a Supporting Actor nomination, but whatever). Saverin, played by the delectable Andrew Garfield, functions as his right-hand man and put up the funding for his Facebook idea, yet, later on, got shot out from Facebook, both financially and as a founder. It is this kind of lack of scruples and mercantilism that make Mark Zuckerberg a difficult character to warm to, but thanks to Eisenberg’s performance and the sharp script from Aaron Sorkin (it makes sense that he is so adept at writing political dramas because there is a huge deal of politiquing in The Social Network), there is at least a context to his narcissism, if not a justification. Going from intensely funny (“I'm 6'5", 220, and there's two of me”) to very serious in the matter of moments, what The Social Network ultimately illustrates is that no-one rises to the top without a cost, and, by the closing shot of the film – Zuckerberg pathetically refreshing Facebook repeatedly in the hope that the girl he created Facebook to spite/impress will accept his friend request – whether or not all that money truly made our nerdy protagonist happy is still open to debate.

01. Toy Story 3

As a study of letting the things we once loved so much we couldn't imagine them not in our lives, nothing works better than Toy Story 3. Toy Story 3 marks the end to a franchise that I grew up to; Toy Story I was the first film I saw in cinemas in England, true story. It also completes a highly impressive personal hat-trick for me of their’s: WALL-E was my #1 film of 2008, Up was my #1 film of 2009 and now Toy Story 3 is my favourite film of 2010. And rightly so, because I highly doubt anyone other than Pixar could have me shed as many tears over toys as I did in the closing scenes of Toy Story 3. Featuring flawless visuals (the details to which the children’s playroom was rendered with showed weeks and weeks of work and attention to detail - that Totoro doll! Priceless) a voice cast featuring Tim Allen, Tom Hanks, John Cusack, Wallace Shawn and the inspired casting of Michael Keaton as Ken (haha!) as well as the introduction of a vaguely sinister purple teddy bear and a creepy looking giant baby, Toy Story 3 was not at a lack of intrigue, danger and suspense as well as the standard comedy bought by Buzz, Mr Potato Hed and T-Rex. Andy might have gone off to college and grown up, but Toy Story 3 illustrates that there is always a part of us, deep down, who holds onto the things that are most precious from our childhood. By the end of the film, my eyes were practically red from the crying, but those were happy tears. A bittersweet goodbye to a wonderful trilogy of films.

Sour Dreams and Ugly Nightmares.

2011-02-14T11:24:00.000Z

Right now, the Film Noir Blog-a-thon is occuring, hosted by the very brilliant The Self-Styled Siren and Marilyn Ferdinand. The blogathon is occuring as part of a fundraiser to raise money for The Film Noir Foundation, a very worthy cause which helps to restore classic films. Click here to donate.

When looking for a film to review for the blogathon, I couldn't decide between reviewing or re-reviewing some of my all-time favourite noirs (Sunset Blvd., Mildred Pierce, Laura, Double Indemnity to name but a few), or to watch something new. In the end I opted for the latter -- because why not watch a new film in the hope of discovering a new gem? -- and I picked the somewhat obscure 1947 Maxwell Shane picture, Fear in the Night.

Vince Grayson (DeForest Kelley) dreams that he kills a man and when he wakes up he finds he has bruise marks around his neck from the guy trying to strangle him in self-defence. Seriously spooked out, he tries to hand himself into the police by telling his brother-in-law, Cliff, a cop, only to be told (quite fairly) that he cannot be arrested for a crime that he committed in his sleep, "you're dreaming. You've had those things before". Unfortunately for him, that’s not the end of things, as he notices what he thinks is blood on his suit sleeve. It turns out to be only nail varnish, but even so, Grayson is so perturbed by the matter that he comes to obsessively chase leads on the murder he supposedly committed, as well as feeling déjà vu in various moments in life.

Fear in the Night is one of those good old fashioned films noirs, complete with ominous narration and a highly sinister string score. At just 70 minutes, there’s precious little running time, but the story is told neatly and completely during it. As the main character visits the room of mirrors that he saw in his dreams, the music score comes to a shuddering crescendo, putting a brilliantly creepy spin on the hall of mirrors motif. DeForest Kelley is very very good in the lead (this was actual his cinematic debut, he would later – at much older – star in a series of Star Trek movies), for the most part taciturn and surly, just how we like our protagonists in film noirs, but at the same time sympathetic enough and clearly a good guy so that we’re curious into his plight and wanting him to be innocent. Kelley’s best acting occurs in the scene where he re-visits at the scene of the crime that he’d seen in his dream, and his confusion is excellently performed. He arrives there with his friend and brother-in-law Cliff, wherein the latter demands answers, not believing the excuse of having dreamt it. As it transpires, it turns out that he indeed hadn’t dreamnt it – it had happened, but whilst our poor lead was under hypnosis by the film’s true antagonist - master-hypnotist Lewis Belknap, and Grayson sets to prove his innocence by setting up another encounter by the hypnotist.

Due to it’s low-budget and relatively B-list credentials, Fear in the Night is not able to delve as deeply into the character’s minds as much as we would like. Instead, it is short and to the point; the only real action of the film occurs in a chase scene at the end. The film focuses more on the mental warfare involved and revolving around themes such as guilt and imagination. Unlike other film noirs which have been told in flashback with discernible gaps in storytelling for us to piece together, Fear in the Night comes straight from the horse’s mouth, so we gather all the information as our main character does. Not the most challenging of films, but as pulp noirs go, it remains highly entertaining and accomplished, especially considering its practically negligible budget.

BAFTA Predictions, 2011.

2011-02-13T10:26:00.001Z

I'm excited for the BAFTAs tonight! Lovely costumes, loads of film banter and the majority of Hollywood showing up and looking fine, fresh fierce. What more could a movie buff and fangirl ask for? So, here are my predictions for who'll win what!

BEST PICTURE The King's Speech.
Alternative: The Social Network.

Personally I greatly prefer The Social Network to The King's Speech, but I'm not sure, I think the Britishness of the latter may sway it for BAFTA voters.
BEST DIRECTOR David Fincher.
Alternative: Christopher Nolan.

BAFTA don't tend to make a habit of giving both Best Film and Director to the same film (though they have done this quite a lot in recent years, Brokeback Mountain and Slumdog Millionaire bagging both, as did, weirdly, The Crap Locker), so I'm going for different predictions here. It wouldn't surprise me at all of Chris Nolan won Best Director this evening actually, BAFTA could give it to him as a "sorry you weren't nominated at the Oscars" thing.

BEST ACTOR Colin Firth - The King's Speech.
Alternative: Javier Bardem - Biutiful.

As if it's going to go to anyone other than Colin Firth! The biggest lock of the night, to be honest.

BEST ACTRESS Natalie Portman - Black Swan.
Alternative: Hailee Steinfeld - True Grit.

I think Natalie's got this one locked, although I would love, love love for Hailee to win it; she characterised what is and will be the fiercest young character to ever wear braids. Her character really did have true grit.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Christian Bale - The Fighter.
Alternative: Geoffrey Rush - The King's Speech.

I would love for Andy Garfield to be walking up to the podium collecting this prize, but I highly doubt it. Oh, Andy. At least you win something. I know, it's cold comfort. :p Nonetheless, I can't begrudge Bale of his win. He is a terrific actor and was uncannily good in The Fighter. What is it with men with the surname Bale who were born in Wales? They're all exceedingly talented.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Lesley Manville - Another Year.
Alternative: Miranda Richardson - Made in Dagenham.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY The King's Speech
Alternative: Inception

If Inception takes this, I will figuratively choke up a kidney from the lolage.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY The Social Network
Alternative: True Grit
BEST BRITISH MOVIE Another Year
Alternative: 127 Hours

BEST FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Alternative: The Secrets in their Eyes

CINEMATOGRAPHY Inception
Alternative: True Grit

COSTUME DESIGN Black Swan
Alternative: Alice in Wonderland

SOUND Inception

Alternative: True Grit

EDITING Inception

Alternative: The Social Network

It'll make me chuckle if Inception actually does win this, as I found the film tediously boring, and surely a sign of good editing is that the film doesn't feel overlong? Anyway.

FILM MUSIC Inception

Alternative: 127 Hours (oh good god I hope not)

So all in all, I don't hope for much. I'd much rather The Social Network or True Grit won Best Film over Inception and The King's Speech, and I would lovelovelove for Hailee Steinfeld to win Best Actress. Or anyone other than Natalie Portman, to be quite honest. And Inception to not get anything important. I would like BAFTA to pleasantly surprise me by giving How to Train Your Dragon a Music Win and Toy Story III a screenplay win, but, I doubt it!

04. Les quatre cent coups (François Truffaut, 1959)

2011-02-09T15:35:00.001Z

lol, yeah, I really need to train with this countdown of my top 100. My last review for #5 was almost seven months ago. Blimey. So here we are! Number 4.

12-year-old Antoine Doinel just can’t seem to get it right. At home, his mother and father neglect him. At school, all he ever seems to does is get himself into trouble (the French translation of faire les quatre cent coups means to raise hell), and he’s happiest when he’s bunking school, just roaming the streets. He’s not a bad egg by any means, just one who seems to be the unfortunate one who gets caught doing something even though everyone else is (case in point—his classmates pass around a picture of a nude lady, but when the teacher walks in it is he holding it). The film follows his misdemeanours during a few days, which involve his hilariously poor attempts to come up with an alibi for why he doesn’t come into school, as well as well-intentioned plans that result in bigger mistakes—such as starting a small fire, as well as downright plagiarism for a homework task.

The 400 Blows is a touching, witty, but very heartbreaking portrayal of a young lad who is by no means bad or evil-spirited, simply, misunderstood. I found it very easy to sympathize with him, his parents show him very little real affection or love in the film, and any kindness they show him usually have ulterior motives (his mother buys him an extravagant ice cream, but only because she knows he has seen her cavorting with another man and wants to buy her son’s silence). It’s hardly surprising that, with the upbringing (or lack thereof) that he has been given, that he’s prone to doing the odd silly thing.

Jean-Pierre Léaud is insanely good as Antoine, and he would go on to collaborate with Truffaut in four other films about the trouble-attracting protagonist as well as the delightful Day for Night setting off one of the greatest director-actor combos in history. He’s very natural, often it doesn’t even feel like he’s acting, but in the blank, empty look in his eyes is a whole load of unsaid sadness and disillusion of a person wise beyond their years. Similarly, the odd cheeky looks he has in his moments of mischief make for some brilliant comic relief. Here is what is easily one of the child performances in cinema. The transcendent finale features my fourth favourite film scene of all-time wherein he’s been sent to a reform school but he finds the opportunity to escape during a football game, he runs and runs and runs, and comes to the sea. The final scene is Antoine turning and looking into the camera. For that moment, he is free, yet he can go no further.

Often hailed as one of the most prominent pieces to come out of of the French New Wave, The 400 Blows is realism at its gritty, grainy best. Whereas previous films were all about their happy endings and conventional story-telling, Truffaut ventures into new ground with his pseudo-documentary-style here. It was revolutionary at the time, but even now, more than 50 years on, The 400 Blows makes for compelling view, and anyone who’s ever felt disjointed or misunderstood would surely connect with it. There are sequences of utmost hilarity juxtaposed with sadness that hints at the disturbing malaise of truth. I think I first saw The 400 Blows when I was about 15 and I saw myself in the lead character straight away. Almost 6 years on, I still recognize myself in them. There’s really not a lot of films I could say that about, now. A true masterpiece.

My Jogging Playlist.

2011-02-09T14:53:00.000Z

One of my 2011 New Year’s Resolutions was to lose weight by eating less and exercising more. Whilst the former has fallen flat on its face, I have at least sort of stuck to the latter, in that I go jogging on a every-other-daily basis. Obviously, doing any kind of strenuous activity is just not in my disposition, and I find I need some good jogging music to get me motivated. Thus, verily I present you, my jogging playlist.

01. Mombasa – Hans Zimmer
02. Eye of the Tiger – Survivor
03. Time to Pretend - MGMT
04. Something kinda Ooh - Girls Aloud
05. American Gangster – Jay-Z
06. Lose Yourself - Eminem
07. Ooh La La - Goldfrapp
08. Empire – Kasabian
09. What You Waiting For – Gwen Stefani
10. The Battle - Hans Zimmer & Lisa Gerrard
11. All I Want is You - Barry Louis Polisar

All t'riffic songs to run to, but especially Mombasa, which is single-handedly to thank for keeping me from veering into the 10 stone mark.

A Look Ahead to Best Original Score, 2010.

2011-02-03T12:29:00.001Z

The nominees: 127 Hours: A.R. Rahman
How to Train Your Dragon: John Powell
Inception: Hans Zimmer
The King's Speech: Alexandre Desplat
The Social Network: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross

My rankings and grades:

01. How to Train Your Dragon (John Powell)
Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon is a fresh, cute film about a lad and his dragon. From the very first couple of notes of the score (which begin as the film does), I thought “oh here we go ago, another standard boring Disneyesque film”, with an unequally uninspired score to match. But I was wrong, for, as soon as the narrator subverted my thoughts in his narration, the score also did, and went from cheesy to cheeky. There’s barely a scene in How to Train Your Dragon where music isn’t employed, but it never feels intrusive and its playfulness is an absolutely joy; listen to how the music modulates into schmaltz pastiche when the protagonist’s crush walks onto the screen. Exuberant, lively, and adventurous, John Powell has sculpted a score which embodies the film perfectly, and, in honestly, is a huge factor for why I enjoyed it so. He clearly had a huge amount of fun writing the score, and we as the audience share the enjoyment in listening to it. A.

(but don’t just take my word for it, check out the amaze tracks yourself! The Drowned Dragon / See You Tomorrow / The Vikings Have Their Tea)

02. Inception (Hans Zimmer)

Hmm, Inception. It’s very difficult for me to be even in the same room as this film without wanting to throw something at it. But, credit where credit is due, Hans Zimmer knows how to – and clearly enjoys – penning the scores to action/adventure/thriller films. And often, as with Inception and The Da Vinci Code, his music proves to be the best thing about the lame excuse for a film. The track “Mombassa”, played when the action for the film was just kicking in, is terrifically fresh and frenetic, and at that point still gave me enough false hope to believe the film might be worth bothering with; the fusion of hyper-drumming and electro-rock give the film a huge sense of urgency and excitement, and the finale track “Time” is full of hope, sadness and despair in its elegiac string chords and powerful surges of crescendo as well as the blend of semiquavers and minims played in the beautiful “528491”, a track which I will forever now associate with Pete Postlethwaite. Unlike Christopher Nolan with the plot, Hans Zimmer keeps the musical ingredients relatively simple for Inception. And, by doing so, he shows that less is more. Take note next time you try to write/direct something about dreams ever again please, Chris Nolan. A-

03. The King’s Speech (Alexandre Desplat)
Alexandre Desplat, who also scored 2010’s Ghost Writer and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I, finds himself getting his fourth nomination in five years for his score to what is now, after recent DGA and SAG ensemble wins, the front-runner for Best Film come February 27th. His other three nominations have come for his music to films about a wily fox, a man who ages backwards, and, curiously enough, the Queen of England. But Desplat avoids doing what many composers must be tempted to do; go through their rolodex of old musical notes used for The Queen and bung it in to The King’s Speech, justifying that, they are, after all, “both about monarchy in England.” No, Mr Desplat is nothing if not original, and the music to The King’s Speech dances with wit and whimsy. On personal listening, the tinkling piano, the sparse use of woodwork and the orchestral melodies don’t delight quite as much as they do with the pictures, and it far from sits in my personal top 5 Desplat scores (that, for your information, would be Birth, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Syriana, Lust, Caution and The Upside of Anger) but in fitting in with telling of King George’s journey from zero to hero, they certainly fit the bill. B+.

04. The Social Network (Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross)

Whenever I try to remember the score to The Social Network, literally all I can ever remember is just a bunch of piano chords at all the most dramatic moments. Literally. Seriously, the score was a total non-entity and it absolutely confounds me how two people were required (one of which, Mr Reznor, is actually Nine Inch Nails' frontman), to put together such a musicalling mediocrity. I have no beef with the film whatsoever, in fact, I’d quite like it to win Best Film ahead of The King’s Speech, which left me somewhat cold, but please, not the score. That was crap, and the academy should definitely have deprived The Social Network of a nomination in this category and given it to the film where it deserved it - Best Supporting Actor. Oh yes, I'm still stanning Andrew Garfield. E.

05. 127 Hours (A.R. Rahman)
Speaking of crap, Jesus. I don’t get any joy out of ragging on A.R. Rahman, he did, after all, produce what I consider to be one of the most ingenious scores of recent years in Slumdog Millionaire’s terrific soundtrack. But if The Social Network was just a mishmash of sad-sounding piano chords, 127 Hours was just a mish-mash of weird sounds, with a bit of acoustic guitar thrown in to try and evoke the eerie, ethereal effect. I was not won over; the music left me feeling as viscerally sick as much as the arm amputating. F.

Who will win: The Social Network (urgh)
Who deserves to win: John Powell for How to Train Your Dragon
Who deserved to be nominated: Alexandre Desplat for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows?? idk. On the whole, it wasn't the most memorable year for film scores. Pity. But John Powell's score to How to Train Your Dragon is absolutely adorable, and I'm actually quite pleased I forsaw this one getting nominated.

A Look Ahead to Best Original Song, 2010.

2011-02-01T18:19:00.001Z

Hiya, I thought it’s high time I got my finger out and actually did some proper film blogging, haha. And what better way than to analyse each of the Oscar nominated categories? So, whilst I brush up on watching the remaining 2010 Oscar nominated movies that I need to watch, I thought I’d analyse the one category wherein I don’t need to watch the movies to analyse the category: best song. Of course, the whole aim of a song is that it’s supposed to epitomize the film, and in that case, having seen the film might improve my appreciation of the song, so in that case, 127 Hours and Toy Story 3 might be at a (dis)advantage. But I’mma try to analyse these songs from a purely aural point of view, ignoring context.

Oh yeah, and if you're wondering what the frick this is, it's basically me pretentiously rambling on about the things I love, the things I hate and everything in between in all the Oscar nominated categories (or just the ones I can be arsed with). Past examples: costume 2007 / score 2006 / supporting actress 2007 etc etc

The nominees are:
127 Hours: A.R. Rahman, Rollo Armstrong, Dido- "If I Rise"
Country Strong: Tom Douglas, Hillary Lindsey, Troy Verges - "Coming Home"
Tangled: Alan Menken, Glenn Slater- "I See the Light"
Toy Story 3: Randy Newman - "We Belong Together"

My rankings and grades:
01. Coming Home/Country Strong

A country music ballad as good as they used to make ‘em, Gwyneth Paltrow’s surprisingly mellifluous voice (check her out in her performance in Glee, covering “Forget You”, he sass and swagger gave me a newfound appreciation of the song and cemented its place as my favourite song of 2010) sings about finding love and one’s place in the world. Standard topics, then, but her belting out “H-oooome” in the chorus is so powerful that it almost evokes the nostalgia-type emotions that I get in listening to my personal favourite song about homecomings, Kanye West’s Homecoming. A.

02. We Belong Together / Toy Story 3
“When we're together/Gray skies are clearer./And I'll share them, till where I'm less depressed./And it's sincerely, from the bottom of my heart/I just can't take it when we're apart” go the sweet but very Disneyfied lyrics of Randy Newman’s Oscar nominated Toy Story 3 entry. Whilst not quite touching the heart quite as much as “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” did, it’s still an adorable song which can bung a smile or two on my face with its unapologetically uplifting lyrics. B+

03. I See the Light/Tangled

A very pretty song, but emotionally, it doesn’t really do anything for me. It starts with the female lead singing a verse, then the male lead singing a verse, then, surprise surprise, the two of them fusing into a harmony. Musically, it’s hardly revolutionary, and, as with Randy Newman’s Toy Story 3 song, the lyrics are so massively Disney that it borders on tedious. The guitars, strings and piano chords are all very nice though. C.

04. If I Rise/127 Hours
Urgh. I’ll be analyzing Best Original Score tomorrow, wherein I’m not gonna bother hiding my disdain for 127 Hours bagging a nomination for its joke of a score. But yet another travesty is that it stained the Best Song category, when there really were many other more deserving songs that should have been nominated. Dido, on seeing how successful M.I.A. got with her super-swaggerous “O Saya” in Slumdog Millionaire, teams up with A.R. Rahman to wail away on this crappy song. I quite like Rollo’s vocals in the chorus, but Dido’s caterwauling and the bland lyrics are just disgraceful. E.

Who should win: Coming Home
Who will win: I legit have no idea! Um, If I Rise from 127 Hours?

Who should have been nominated: “Sticks and Stones” from How to Train Your Dragon, and that ain’t even a fucking question!!!!! Such a good song that it’s already been employed in a bunch of “2010: a retrospect” type montages, it sums up the film perfectly; highs, lows, and loving life. Terrifically fast-paced and with more life than an energiser bunny, this really is an adorably sweet song. I was also a fan of “Never Say Never” from The Karate Kid, though that is hugely due to Jaden Smith’s “no pun intended, raised by the power of Will” line. Lawlzswagger.

But yeah, “Sticks and Stones” from How to Train your Dragon is literally sublime. And that's an Emmabung kind of literally, not a Redknapp kind of literally. ;) Me and my bro spent all Christmas dancing around our house to it like the nerds we are. You’ll hear it on lots more awards shows and montages, mark my words, so you best download it here now so when your mates say “I wonder what song that is, it’s nice”, you can wow them with your trivia. ;)

Two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.

2011-01-31T22:29:00.001Z

“Pretty Little Liars” is the latest American teenage drama to captivate me and give me something to look forward to on a Tuesday morning. Based on Sara Shepard's unflinching teen novels of the same title, It revolves around four girls: former fatty-turned-it-girl Hannah Marin (Ashley Benson), a swimmer who’s harbouring her feelings for her friend Maya due to her strict conservative parents Emily Mitchell (Shay Mitchell), competitive Spencer Hastings who feels the need to compete with her catty elder sister for everything (Troian Bellisario), and Aria Montgomery (Lucy Hale), who has spent a year abroad in Iceland and on getting back, is carrying on with the dishy Ezra Fitz, who is soon revealed to be her English teacher. From the intro alone, there’s more than enough spice and suspense to eclipse a whole season of The O.C., but to complicate matters, the thing that binds the girls together is their having used to be friends with the school’s ultimate Queen Bee, Alison diLaurentis, a charismatic, beautiful, but very, very cruel-minded girl who enjoys putting others down, playing games and treating people like puppets. Said Alison went missing a year ago, and her body has only just now been found. But Alison’s legacy still lives on when each of the four girls start receiving texts and e-mails taunting each of them with their secrets.

Essentially, “Pretty Little Liars” can be described as a sort of Heathers-meets-gossip girl-meets-Desperate Housewives. And, considering how I like all thereof those things, it’s no surprise that “Pretty Little Liars” proved a highly engaging and entertaining watch. The performances are accomplished, Bellisario is the only one who truly stands out for me but all the girls do their jobs capably, the plotline has enough twists to constantly keep you guessing, and the opening credits, god lord. It took me a good give minutes to fully realise how creepy the opening credits truly were, but they’re creepy in a genius way. In between trying to track down Alison’s killer and who the identity of the mystery “A” is, the girls have plenty of love problems, family woes and other troubles, so there’s tonnes to keep you entertaining. Oh, and the outfits are to die for, unsurprisingly. Yet despite each of the four leads looking gorgeous throughout, I still found

myself rooting for and caring about their characters, despite the mistakes they made, a mark of good/interesting characters. What I love about “Pretty Little Liars” is that as each episode goes on, more secrets are revealed, and we find that Alison is far from the pretty sweet little girl she would have everyone believe she is, and how the secret about her is darker and a lot more disturbing. So I highly recommend “Pretty Little Liars”, get on it!

And, as it's Monday, I want to show you two pieces of real mmmm. Ladies and gents, check out your Spider Man leading man and lady, Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield. I lovelovelove Emma's white dress isome girl. Aaaargh.ul, swaggerous, talented, awesome girl. Aaaargh.

Three movies about teenagers and one about stammering.

2011-01-30T19:21:00.001Z

Screening Log (24/01/2011 – 30/01/2011) My exams ended on Friday, so I’ve basically just had a big-ass movie binge since then (along with catching up with Pretty Little Liars, which is fan-bloody-tastic!)

Lost and Delirious (Léa Pool, 2001)
Mischa Barton plays shy, unsure Mary “Mouse” Bedford, who feels alienated from her dad and stepmother, who at the start of the film drop her off in a girl’s boarding school. She’s placed in a room with Piper Perabo’s charismatic wildchild and her popular best friend Tory (Jessica Toree). She soon realises that Tory and Paulie are more than just friends, and whilst Mary gets used to the idea and Paulie loves it, Tory has trouble admitting to herself that she could be in love with another girl. Lost and Delirious is beautifully shot and scored, and although there are moments which descend into laughable histrionics, it still remains a hugely affecting and poignant look at young love and loss. Mischa Barton in particular impressed me me; whereas I’d always found her annoying in The OC, here, her subtle performance is more on the level of her great work in Lawn Dogs, the epitome of youthful charm and sweet innocence.

Mean Girls 2 (Melanie Mayron, 2011)
Er. Jo (Meaghan Martin) joins a new school, where, through a sequence of events, she is offered money to be friends with the school loser, Abby. Jo’s college fund is non-existent, so, whilst being morally opposed to the offer, accepts it as she’s financially compromised. Her befriending Abby does not sit well with the school’s mean girls, also known as The Plastics, who rule the school with an iron fist, inadvertently starting a war with them. What ensues is a range of bitchy schemes which seriously cross the line and are just downright unfunny. The whole film is just a cringe from start to finish, Martin has no charisma to carry the film and Desperate Housewives’ Maiara Walsh lacks the Machiavellian-yet-engaging quality that Rachel McAdams’ Regina George . What made the original so funny were all the pithy one liners and great banter from Tina Fey’s A-grade script. This film failed to raise a single chuckle from me, and the one good performance came from Jennifer Stone as the loveable loser Abby. The rest was just a total fail.

The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper, 2010)
Colin Firth stars as Albert, the Duke of York. Being royalty, he is expected to give the odd public speech or two. Unfortunately, he has a big case of the stammer. Through meetings with Geoffrey Rush’s maverick speech therapist Lionel Logue, he slowly begins to gain confidence and gains ascension to the thrown, and goes on to be recreated as King George, who delivered many of England’s speeches during the war.

I was a little underwhelmed by The King’s Speech, truth be told. I’d heard so much about it, and the trailer looked excellent, but the film left me somewhat cold. Whilst I thought Firth and Rush were uniformly excellent and loved their rapport with each other, and the score by Alexandre Desplat was a masterwork in film music, the rest didn’t really do anything for me. Helena Bonham Carter was completely blah and the it all looked and felt like a bit of a TV-movie, albeit a strong one.

Mean Creek (Jacob Aaron Estes, 2004)
Wonderful taut, gripping drama wherein Rory Culkin (following Mischa Barton pleasantly surprisingly me in Lost and Delirious, the formly dubbed “annoying Culkin kid” does so too) stars as Sam, a boy who is getting bullied by George, an overweight and troubled boy with learning difficulties at his school. His brother Rocky and his loose cannon friend Marti decide to invite George on a boat trip and teach him a little lesson. Unsurprisingly, the whole claustrophobic set-up is just set for a fall. The acting from the young cast are very good in Mean Creek, and I’m extremely impressed with how the film doesn’t point any fingers, instead just telling the story. In the end, it’s all fairly sad and bleak, but the journey is well worth it; Ryan Kelley is the stand-out as the sensitive Clyde.

The Oscar Nominations 2011: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

2011-01-25T16:04:00.002Z

Full list here

Good
- Hailee Steinfeld's nomination! It's her first film role and a child performance as good as Saoirse Ronan in Atonement and Ivana Baquero in Pan's Labyrinth, two other performances I adore. The whole "pushing her into support" was a severe case of category frauds, but it's not the first and won't be the last time a kid has been pushed into supporting to boost their chances (see also: Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon) and let's be honest, everyone does it (see also: Jake G in BBM, Jamie Foxx in Collateral), and she's not hurting anyone (apart from maybe Mila Kunis. Whom I also love, but in a more lesbian way), and if I get over my massive girlcrush on Mila I'll happily admit that Steinfeld's performance eclipsed Kunis', so in that sense, good is good!

- Christopher Nolan not getting a Best Director nomination for Inception. Oh, how I laughed. :DDDDD Cannot stand that film. Second least favourite of 2010. If I had my way, it would be leading the charge at the Razzies

- Screenplay & Song love for my favourite film of 2010, Toy Story III.

- Melissa Leo, Amy Adams and Christian Bale getting duly nominated for their excellent performances in The Fighter (though they were sure-locks). The latter two will be favourites to go on and win, and deservedly so.

Bad
- 127 Hour's score getting nominated. I mean, really? It was just bloody sounds.

- The Social Network for Sound Mixing. Are you joking me?!

- Jeremy Renner getting nominated for The Town. I'd heard so much hype for his performance, but really, he just came off as surly. I cannot believe he got in ahead of Garfield. Speaking of which...

Ugly
- The Academy treating Andrew Garfield not dissimilar to how Mark Zuckerberg treated Eduardo Saverin. This was my reaction to his snub:

I am NOT a happy bunny!

2011 Oscar Nomination Predictions.

2011-01-24T15:53:00.001Z

I’m in the middle of exams, so I’m just predicting the main categories. And score, 'cos I love me my film music :-)

Best Film

127 Hours

Black Swan

The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech
The Social Network
The Town
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Alt: Winter’s Bone

I'm still not used to this 10-instead-of-5 nominations malarky. It really, really devalues the Oscars, if you ask me. And Inception? PAH.

Best Director

Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
David Fincher, The Social Network
Tom Hooper, The King's Speech
Chris Nolan, Inception
David O. Russell, The Fighter
Alt: Danny Boyle, 127 Hours

Pretty standard, I’d say. I’ve seen all but The King’s Speech, and of them, Fincher is my favourite and the likely eventual winner. I’ll keep my (less than impressed) opinions about Inception to myself, no?

Best Actor
Jeff Bridges, True Grit

Robert DuVall, Get Low

Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network

Colin Firth, The King's Speech

James Franco, 127 Hours

Alt: Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine

I’ve only seen Bridges’ and Eisenberg’s performances, both of which are solid turns. I really enjoyed Marky Mark in The Fighter, but he doesn’t seem to have gathered as much pre-cursor buzz, so I’m not predicting him, despite him being one of my favourites.

Best Actress

Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone
Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine
Alt: Julianne Moore, The Kids are All Right

I don’t know what’s going with Hailee Steinfeld in terms of category placement; she’s quite clearly lead, but I think the FYCs have pushed her as supporting. Now sometimes, the Academy make up their own minds (like Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider), but if they accept her as lead, I don’t think she’ll get nominated, which is a shame so I’ll take her getting nominated in supporting because even though it’s category fraud, a nomination’s better than none at all, non? And I love Julie Moore, so despite the fact that I haven't seen The Kids are All Right yet, I want her to get another nomination <3

Best Supporting Actor

Christian Bale, The Fighter
Andrew Garfield , The Social Network
Jeremy Renner, The Town
Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech
Alt: John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone

I’m not gonna lie, I really don’t see the big deal with Jeremy Renner’s performance; he was just all psycho-y. Rebecca Hall was the best performance in that film. I don’t see the Oscars “doing a BAFTA” and nominating Pete Postlewaite for the same film, so this is the safe five. I will CUT A BITCH if Andrew Garfield doesn’t get nominated, he was wonderful. Oh, Andy.

Best Supporting Actress
Amy Adams, The Fighter

Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech
Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom
Alt: Mila Kunis, Black Swan

Awww, I really, really, really wish Mila Kunis were getting nominated, but the pre-cursors just don’t seem enough for her, plus I don’t know if her free-spirited ballerina is “baity” enough for the Oscars. Anyway, I’d love for her to get nominated. However, were Kunis to get nominated, it seems that Hailee Steinfeld would be the opportunity cost, and I loved Steinfeidl in True Grit, her getting nominated would be a score one for the young action heroines that Ivana Baquero in Pan's Labyrinth missed out on. Plus Steinfeld was so natural and wonderful. So I'm so conflicted! Having seen The Fighter last night, I am fully in support of Adams’ and Leo’s nominations; I can’t decide whom I like more, but if Melissa Leo does win the Oscar, good for her!

Original Screenplay
Blue Valentine

The Fighter

Inception

The Kids are All Right
The King’s Speech
Alt: Black Swan

Right, so, why am I going for a Black Swan snub in favour of Blue Valentine? I dunno, I just think they might do it to “compensate” for Ryan Gosling not getting nominated. Plus I’ve heard reviews about how ~~true to life~~ the script is, so perhaps it will resonate with the Academy voters who are stuck in loveless marriages. Again, I’m shaking my head at Inception’s joke of a script getting nominated, but whatever.

Adapted Screenplay

127 Hours
The Social Network
Toy Story III
True Grit
Winter’s Bone

Oh dear god, I sincerely hope 127 Hours’ script doesn’t get nominated (hai. I’m on a rock. Hai, I’m chopping off my arm. Hai, film’s ended.), but I can see Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy (the twosome responsible for Slumdog Millionaire’s script – now that was a nice screenplay) getting nominated. The others, I’m cool with. I’d love if Toy Story III (my favourite film of 2010 at this moment in time) won over The Social Network, but that ain’t happening, and The Social Network is my second fave film of 2010 and I loved the banter, so I can deal. The lines coming out of this guy's mouth were hilar:

Score
Alexandre Desplat, The King’s Speech
Randy Newman, Toy Story III
John Powell, How to Train Your Dragon
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, The Social Network
Hans Zimmer, Inception

Whilst I deeply enjoyed The Social Network, one thing I cannot for the life of me fathom is all the hoo-ha over its score. That’s the only Oscar that I have a problem with it getting. I really liked Desplat’s score to the seventh Harry Potter film, but obviously The King’s Speech is the score he’ll be getting nominated for. And despite holding Inception in the absolute lowest regard, the music in it was pretty decent.

Other?
My main Oscar wish is that “Never Say Never” from The Karate Kid gets nominated for Best Song. It’s actually written by Justin Bieber, and I don’t know if I can be dealing with him as an Oscar nominee, but the song sums up the film so well, plus there’s a swaggerous breakdown rap in the middle. I rate it.

Oh, and should Andrew Garfield not get nominated? This is gonna be my reaction: