RESTAURANT REVIEW: Gaucho (Picadilly Circus)

Seeking to right the wrong I outlined here of having not been to enough steakhouses in the capital, I popped just down the road from the last place I visited, to Gaucho, a famous Argentinian steakhouse. 

Restaurant review: CRYSTAL CHINA (Tower Bridge Road)

If you fancy Chinese dining a little different from the noodles/rice & meat dish combination, or dim sum options, Crystal China specialises in dry hotpots. This is when the customer chooses several individual items from the menu, and they are all fried together, so the flavours blend together into a delicious melange. 

OOTD: A University Friend's Wedding in Bristol.

Dress: Warehouse

Bracelet: bought on holiday in Amsterdam

Necklace: Swarovski

Earrings: Accessorize

As you can see, I went for a pink theme, as I believe it to be the warmest colour!

Bonus picture: oblig vain selfie:

Review: RICH AND SWEET TOMATO CHUTNEY (Asda)

Statistical Analysis of Usage of My Odeon Limitless Card

I went on a 4-hour R course last year, and since then, I’ve just been fixated with adapting the code they gave us to draw pretty graphs with, in order to nerd out over my personal interests (chiefly, films and football).

This post will be much like the one I did six months ago when I analysed my film-watching habit of 2016 across all mediums, only here, I’m just analysing the 69 titles I saw on my Odeon Limitless card with some attempts at ~science behind the graphs I present.

My five favourite songs from FROZEN (2013).

A good musical has to have more than just one big marquee song. Frozen has several great ones, so I thought I’d do a top 5 of the ones that I liked the most. After all, it's a musical who's soundtrack I'm fairly well acquainted with, shall we say!

10 things I learnt from the 2016 BBFC Annual Report

So, after waiting, and waiting, and waiting, the BBFC Annual Report for 2016 dropped! Here it is, and having pored over it, here are my major takeaways from reading it!

01. I guessed those complaints pretty much spot-on

I’m glad my many hours of wasting time watching films purely for BBFC research purposes (such as Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry), poring over BBFC minutes and lurking who complains to their Twitter account has paid off, because my prognostications for the films that would cause them the most complaints were even better than my Oscar predictions (and the Oscar goes to…. La La Land! No, Moonlight! #stillgloating).

Review: ODEON LIMITLESS CARD

After being underwhelmed by the limited range of films offered by the (ironically named) Cineworld Unlimited card, I voted with my wallet and defected to the Odeon Limitless card as a means of watching as many films as I wanted to in the year instead.

In terms of cinemas, the venues ranged from plush, comfortable and state-of-the-art (the newly renovated Orpington Odeon is as luxurious as any cinema I’ve been to, and one of the finest things about my otherwise fairly humdrum hometown) to scummy and very badly maintained (Birmingham, where I saw Lights Out, had muck all over the floor, as well as brats watching the film who were clearly under-15).

Bungsy's Girlcrush List, 2k17.

I haven't done one of these lists for over three years, and I think it's fair to say my taste in women has generally evolved, whilst some of the lady crush staples still remain. 

Some choices from previous years which now make me cringe when I look back include Cara Delevingne (in my defence, this was before she assailed my eyes as an actress and played to her strengths as a model), Kaya Scodelario (still fit tbf, but just kinda annoying) and Emma Stone (still cute, still talented, but I will now forever sideye her for the yellowface in Aloha debacle). 

I imagine when I look back at this list in a few years, I will be equally cringed out.

So, without further ado, Emmabung's Girlcrush List, 2017!

10. Ariana Grande

'Problem' is a piece of song-writing genius, an ace and catchy song has guided me through all manner of turbulent times. I have so much time for Ari's 4-octave vocal range, and I also dig how despite being baby-faced and having Bambi eyes, she has a hyper-sexualised image. The seductive way she peers up from the heart-shaped sunglasses in the 'Bang Bang' music video: swoon.

A fabulous three course meal at the Scarman Conference Centre, University of Warwick.

I attended a conference at the University of Warwick this April, and on one of the evenings, we were all treated to a delicious three course meal. Here are the courses:

Salmon starter. Such a generous (and appetising) portion of seafood! (I love seafood btw; whenever I'm at McDonald's I always get the filet o'fish).

When the BBFC TMIs.

Last week, my brother and I caught up with White Gold, a show about three wheeler-dealer window salesmen in Essex in the 80’s, on iPlayer. Written by one-half of the team behind The Inbetweeners and featuring two of the four lead actors from the show, it’s also about half as good as The Inbetweeners.

The main issues with the show were that it tried too hard to be funny, and Ed Westwick (Chuck Bass from gossip girl)’s character was a deeply smarmy, dislikeable bloke. I think the cover of the DVD pretty much tells you all you need to know about this show:

I miss Simon Bird. So much.

For there's no club in town quite as manly...

Four months on from seeing Beauty and the Beast at the cinema, I'm still absolutely obsessed with the 'Gaston' song. Even the most tenuous thing, such as the club photographed above, gets me breaking out in song. It might just be my second-ever favourite Disney song (second only to 'Let it Go', obviously).

Oh, and say hello to what will almost certainly be one of the worst films of 2017:

The IFCO Annual Report for '16 Illustrates the Utility of Having the '16' Rating.

The IFCO released their Annual Report for the last calendar year and it's very brief compared to the BBFC ones.

Four Adjectives for Four Classification Issues

That Harry Styles movie, Dunkirk got its BBFC rating today, and as with Christopher Nolan's last six feature-length films, it's a 12A:

What stood out for me is that the short insight, for the four things in the film that render it 12A-worthy, each feature a different adjective:

- sustained threat (as was used in the short insight for Nolan's The Dark Knight, still by far the most complained about movie in recent years to the BBFC)

Restaurant review: ZELMAN MEATS (Soho)

If you like steak, but don't want to commit to 400g of just one type, and in doing so, restricting your choice to a rump which may or may not be cooked to your ideal condition, Zelman meats could well be the solution to your quagmire.

At Zelman Meats, there are four core beef steaks you can order (Smoked Short Rib, Chateaubriand, Sliced Picanha, “Dirty” Sirloin Steak). The former two are priced by weight, and the latter is priced in conventional restaurant manner, at £32 for 400g. The minimum order per table per given type of meat is 200g, but if you go with a friend, you can order a joint amount of 200g of several types of steaks, and share everything, so there's variety in your meal!

Also pictured above are Black Truffle and Parmesan Chips, which were a bit pricey at £8, but the conflation of truffle, chips and cheese is hard to argue with.

My 10 favourite performances of 2016.

I've done the trash performances list, now for the good eggs!

10. Emily Blunt, The Girl on the Train

Clown music film is clown music, but Emily Blunt really deserves a shout-out on this list, for working her ass off in The Girl on the Train. Her unvain performance as a pathetic alcoholic was spot-on. 

My top 10 films of 2016 [5-1].

Part 1 of this rundown was here, which also featured five films you ought to avoid like the plague.

05. Elle