Restaurant review: EAT TOKYO (Covent Garden)

Over the past few months, I’ve been to Eat Tokyo twice, and if I’m ever in Covent Garden and struggling to decide on somewhere to eat, this restaurant will be at the forefront of my mind.

Just with Dishoom and On the Bab, it doesn’t take reservations and you have to queue. This suggests the restaurant cares more about profits than comfort of its customers. However, the fact that there are always droves of people queuing outside the Covent Garden branch of Eat Tokyo means that these people deem the food is worth queuing for.

The first time I dined there, I had a salmon teriyaki bento box. There are a variety of bento boxes at Eat Tokyo, ranging from sashimi, chicken katsu and vegetarian. They range in price, but the most expensive bento box is £18. These two are both less than that (~£16 and £8.50, if I remember correctly):

Authentic Japanese food at its best!

OOTD: Office Christmas Party

On Friday December 15th, I went to one of two Christmas parties our Institute is invited to (the second will be after the New Year - keep your eyes peeled for an OOTD then!). Naturally, this was an opportunity for me to get my gladrags on!

Dress: Jane Norman

Ring: Accessorize

Necklace: New Look (I was going for a Carrie in Sex and the City-style aesthetic!)

Earrings: Topshop

Bit of an oversight...

Dunkirk has released its third For Your Consideration advert, and, just like last time, I noticed an omission in who they were campaigning for. Except unlike in Harry Styles' case, this snub is for one of the best, if not the best element of the film, and thus, totally unacceptable:

They've asked for consideration in all categories and outlined the ones that are most relevant to Dunkirk. Yet there's no mention of Hans Zimmer's incredible score!! Given that the music in the film was so tension-amplifying, that the BBFC even mentioned it in their extended information, that really is quite the oversight.

The only possible explanation is that Warner Brothers thought the score was so good, it didn't need highlighting; the quality spoke for itself. Which it does. After all, Zimmer's collaborations with two other single-word-titled Christopher Nolan movies, Inception and Interstellar, were both nominated in the Best Original Score category at the Oscars, and both those films had less Best Picture momentum than Dunkirk has.

But, still, it would have been nice to pinpoint it anyway, just to be on the safe side.

Being beady-eyed when it comes to nerdy film things, I also noticed that whoever made the ad has rejigged the order of two of the actors:

To jog your memory, this was the order of actors in the previous FYC:

The poster creator obviously didn't like this film that much, then!

Restaurant review: CARLUCCIO'S (Smithfield)

Carluccio's is a spacious, welcoming Italian restaurant, with very reasonable prices. I dined there for a team dinner a few months ago, when we all had the set menu (3 courses for £17.99, a £3.50 surcharge for the steak).

Product review: KIND TO SKIN REFRESHING FACIAL WASH GEL (Simple)

Holiday in New York, 2017.

Earlier this month, I spent five days in New York City with my best friend Anna (the gorgeous lady who this blog is named after).

Here be a picspam of our time there (including a day in New Jersey) and some random non-sequiturs as and when I can be bothered to type!

Nobody's gonna drag Harry down.

I was perusing Awards Daily's FYC gallery when I noticed this ad Warner Brothers put out for Dunkirk:

In case that shade was a little too nuanced, here's a list of actors who WB are campaigning for:

It's of trifling importance as bar Mark Rylance, none of the cast really have a shot at an Oscar nomination (and even for Rylance, with no show at the Golden Globes, SAGs or even the London Film Critics' Circle, that's an uphill battle), but I couldn't help thinking that Warner Brothers are shading Harry Styles somewhat by not listing him here.

I wasn't bowled over or anything by Harry Styles in Dunkirk (he did what he had to do, no more, no less, but was definitely more successful transitioning into acting than his former beardgirlfriend Cara Delevingne), but given he got to act 'angry' and Christopher Nolan used both of his PG-13-mandated allowances of the f-word on Styles, it seems somewhat amiss not to at list him here. It certainly couldn't hurt, IMO, and bar Rylance, who was the standout performer, the gulf in acting quality between Styles and the rest of his co-stars certainly wasn't that palpable.

So it's a bit harsh for Warner Brothers to be tacitly saying 'young Fionn Whitehead is worth the adspace... but you? Nah.'

As a side note, back when Dunkirk first hit UK cinemas in July, I was tickled by this e-mail we got from the Odeon:

Interesting that here, they've focused on the two Peaky Blinders and Inception/Dark Knight Rises actors, Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy (who British audiences would more likely to be familiar with), thesp Kenneth Branagh and of course, the pretty boy Styles himself, yet omitted Oscar-winner Mark Rylance as a result.

It reminded me of what Nolan said about casting Styles in his movie, 'I saw thousands of young men, but Harry just had something that the rest didn't.'

I believe that 'something' in question is the ability to draw in randy teenage girls by their droves. ;)

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I saw this pun in The Sun, and I kind of loved it:

Free STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI posters up for grabs.

My brother and I saw Star Wars: The Last Jedi on Wednesday at midnight when it came out, and as a reward for being 'dedicated Star Wars fans' (I'm anything but), the Odeon clerk gave us two copies of each of the posters above.

They're A1 in size, and if you would like them and are willing to travel to central London to pick them up, they're your's! I'm happy to give them to a good home. E-mail me at lemon_and_lime7@hotmail.com if interested.

Here was us at midnight:

The world can be a nasty place.

I recently watched Thirteen Reasons Why, the Selena Gomez-prouced Netflix TV show essaying a High School student, Hannah Baker, who commits suicide, and leaves behind 13 tapes outlining why.

Whatever one's thoughts on the show and how dangerously close it sails to romanticising suicide, I have to admit that, drama-wise, it is certainly compelling to watch. Episode 9, 'Tape 5, side A' contained a rather unsavoury sexual assault of one of Hannah's friends, and was rated 18.

I e-mailed the BBFC querying why this episode was an 18, as, horrible as it was to watch, an episode of Orange is the New Black featured Pennsatucky getting raped not once but twice, by two different men, and was only a 15:

Depictions of sexual violence in two Netflix shows 

I am writing to ask about the depiction of rape in two Netflix shows, Orange is the New Black season 3 episode 10 (A Tittin' and a Hairin'), rated 15, and Thirteen Reasons Why season 1 episode 9 (Tape 5 Side A), rated 18. 

Both these episodes contain rape scenes which are aversive and disturbing, as likely intended by the directors. The level of detail in both episodes are comparable. 

Yet in the 15-rated OITNB episode, the same character gets raped by two different men in the same episode, whereas in the 18-rated Thirteen Reasons Why episode, the character is raped once (albeit with the scenes shown repeatedly). 

I was wondering why this was, and if it perhaps due to the ages of the characters? 

Because speaking as a viewer, I found the OITNB episode more distressing to watch, not least because in the second attack, the blank expression on the character's face suggested she was 'resigned' to being raped. Furthermore, the cumulative effect of watching the same character getting raped twice and its impact on her (already precarious) mental state was more distressing. 

Thank you for taking the time to read my email and looking forward to your response.

This was their response:

This is by far the most complete response they've given to me (for reference, see these two emails I sent them last year: un et deux). 

I would just quibble with their saying depictions of rape at 15 'must be discreet', mind, because Wind River, a 15, showed the naked buttocks of the victim when she was being assaulted, which I would say was even worse than showing the attacker's bum. But I CBA to e-mail them; e-mailing back and forth about sexual violence is not my favourite thing to do with my spare time!

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Remember how perturbed I was to see a full stop where there ought to have been a comma in Get Out's BBFC short insight? Well, checking the back of the DVD, I was happy to see they removed that error for DVD distribution:

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For more film rating nerdiness click here!

Thoughts on the 2017 Screen Actor Guild Nominations.

The SAG nominations were announced yesterday and they concretised some actors’ positions in the Oscar race, whilst throwing doubt on others. Here be my thoughts on the film categories (I don’t watch enough TV to be able to comment on those).

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading RoleJUDI DENCH / Queen Victoria – “VICTORIA & ABDUL” (Focus Features)
SALLY HAWKINS / Elisa Esposito – “THE SHAPE OF WATER” (Fox Searchlight)
FRANCES McDORMAND / Mildred – “THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI” (Fox Searchlight)
MARGOT ROBBIE / Tonya Harding – “I, TONYA” (Neon)
SAOIRSE RONAN / Lady Bird McPherson – “LADY BIRD” (A24)

Dame Judi Dench is the surprise nominee here, who takes what many had predicted would be Meryl Streep’s slot (although the complete omission of The Post altogether has led some to speculate that it probably screened too late for SAG voters, who post their ballots in early), means that there are more English actresses here (Dench and Hawkins) than American ones (McDormand). 

Margot Robbie’s shameless Oscar-begging appears to have paid off (whenever a beautiful woman de-glams, awards bodies shower them with awards) and she’s likely to be nominated for the Oscar in this category along with Hawkins, Ronan and McDormand, leaving fifth place up for grabs.

Reflections on Monday’s Golden Globe nominations

The awards season is officially underway! I was on holiday in NYC when the Golden Globe nominations dropped on Monday and didn’t have time to do a reaction post, so here be my rather delayed Good, Bads and Uglies on the nominations. 

Good

- Dunkirk and Christopher Nolan being nominated. Dunkirk is currently my choice for best of 2017 (having not seen the vast majority of the Oscar heavyweights as they’re released later), and the only 9/10 I’ve awarded a 2017 film.

10 Fittest Women in Film, 2012.

I'm off to New York for five nights later, but before I left, thought I'd give a list of the prettiest women in a 2012 film (that I've seen), as 2012 was a very decent year for female eye candy!

10. Kristen Stewart, Snow White and the Huntsman (new entrant)

A ranking exercise (part 1)

I gave an R class on Thursday, where I showed how you can sort a dataset by more than one criteria. Here, it's sorted by BBFC rating, then IFCO rating, then alphabetically to give a rough outline of all the films I watched on my Odeon Limitless card (over two subscription years) from childish to most adult

My challenge to you: within the blocks of where the BBFC and IFCO ratings are the same (so for example, the first three films in the table), re-rank them so that the list of most childish to most adult is more accurate. Obviously this is a totally subjective exercise, but, give it a go!