Book review: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES (Suzanne Collins)

Set 64 years before The Hunger Games, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is Suzanne Collins' prequel to her dystopian YA trilogy, a book series whose film adaptations launched the Hollywood career of that awful over-actor and recipient of the most undeserved Oscar win ever, Jennifer Lawrence.

For that reason, then, you'd think that I would dislike The Hunger Games books. But I actually really enjoyed them (I even enjoyed some facets of the films). The world-building exhibited in the books was extremely inventive, and, whilst it may have been a tad derivative of Battle Royale and various Roman and Greek myths, I maintain that most good art contains inflections of other artists that preceded it.

Central to the books was the first-person narrative of Katniss Everdeen, the tribute from District 12. Throughout the trilogy she displayed courage, resilience and resourcefulness beyond her 16 years, and her actions were underscored with familial loyalty to her more fragile younger sister, Prim. Collins shrewdly avoided painting her heroine as a Mary Sue, however, as Katniss was also stubborn, unforgiving, whiny and often downright unlikeable.

Dishiest chaps in a 2012 film.

Happy Valentines Day readers! What better way to celebrate than with ten dishy dudes! For the 10 most alluring ladies of 2012, click here!

10. Chace Crawford, What to Expect When You're Expecting

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)

What a Character: Ben Mendelsohn

This post is my contribution to the What a Character! blogathon as organised by ONCE UPON A SCREEN, Paula of PAULA’S CINEMA CLUB and yours truly, Kellee of OUTSPOKEN & FRECKLED which celebrates supporting performers in film. I have gone with a contemporary actor who has stolen the show in almost everything I've seen him in, Mr Ben Mendelsohn (aka the baddie from Rogue One).

I first noticed the actor before having watched him in anything, and it was seeing his name on the Starred Up poster (a film, lamentably, I still haven't seen, although it's high up on my to-see list for the trifecta of reasons that it's from the director of Hell or High Water, and it stars Ben and Skin's Jack O'Connell, easily the best actor to emerge from that show).

The reason Ben Mendelsohn's name struck with me is because there is a composer of the same name (albeit with two 's's, Mendelssohn), who composed the famous Wedding March from A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's funny how the mind makes irrelevant cognitive connections like that, but with a memorable surname like that, I was curious to watch his acting performances.

He had a short-but-memorable appearance in The Dark Knight Rises in a suitably shouty, sweaty cameo, but the film that gave him an outlet to truly show his acting range was in The Place Beyond the Pines, a three-act story which follows the intersecting fates of a bank robber Luke (Ryan Gosling) and the cop, Avery, who pursues him (Bradley Cooper).

In The Place Beyond the Pines Mendelsohn plays Luke's only friend and co-conspirator who helps him commit the bank robberies (a nice counterpart to the role he played in The Dark Knight Rises). The two men, both outcasts, share a tentative, wordless bond, and the chemistry between Gosling and Mendelsohn is excellent, deftly portraying how the latter can pre-empt the former's actions before he's even done them. In the final act, when we see Mendelsohn's character again, and in his inarticulate way, he shows how much he cared for Luke, hinting that there may well be honour among thieves.

Ryan Gosling enjoyed working with Ben Mendelsohn so much on The Place Beyond the Pines that he cast him in his directorial debut, the critically panned misfire Lost River. Almost everything about that film sucked, bar Saoirse Ronan (who is amazing in everything), and Ben Mendelsohn, as a smarmy bank manager Dave who will do anything to get his way with struggling single mother Billy (Christina Hendricks).

Throughout the film, Dave repeatedly tries it on with Billy, only for his brusque courtship to be knocked back every time. However, as one of the patrons of a local burlesque studio, and her financially precarious situation, Billy has little choice but to play right into his hands by first working there, and then agreeing to partake in an after-hours 'shell game' for more money. In this bizarre ritual, a woman is locked in a transparent case and the payer can do what ever they want... to the shell. In theory, the woman should be safe as the shell is looked, but that doesn't render the whole experience any less terrifying.

Naturally, Dave seizes his opportunity, and such has been his unsettling demeanour that you have no idea what form of depravity he will unleash onto the shell. As a matter of fact, he dances in front of it!

The lousiness of Ben Mendelsohn's dancing in this scene, accentuated by the neon backdrop and the electro-score playing in the background, that the whole sequence is incredibly discombobulating. The way he looks at Billy whilst doing so, too, tells you that this is his idea of asserting his raw masculinity, a kind of recompense towards the woman who has had the temerity to turn him down.

As a very amusing stray piece of trivia, Ryan Gosling revealed that the music Mendelsohn had during this scene was 'Bad Bitches' by Kendrick Lamar, which would explain a threatening line of dialogue he barks at Hendrick's character whilst dancing at her. At the time I thought it was his character being crude, but now I see he was just quoting the song.

Ben Mendelsohn has plied his trade as an actor playing villains, of which Director Orson Krennic in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, an appropriately evil performance, will add to his litany of baddies. One such villainous turn from him that I particularly liked was as Payne in Slow West, a character who teases with an (almost ingratiatingly) amiable veneer, but deep down, you wouldn't trust them as far as you would throw them. Mendelsohn uses his whole face when acting (a quick sly look sideways, a twitch of the lips, a twist of the jaw) to convey thorny characters who occasionally let their masks slip.

Ben Mendelsohn didn't rise to prominence until relatively late in life (he's 47 now), but he has such a characteristic look about him, that once you see the Aussie in one role, you won't forget him. His acting style is distinctive but never distractingly mannered. As I've always said, I tend to identify more with villainous characters in movies, so it was only natural that I would gravitate towards Mendelsohn, who's ability to mould sinister antagonists in films is prenaturally good.

I'm delighted at how well things have gone for him (he is a massive Star Wars fanboy so getting to play the main antagonist in the film must have been a special moment) and eagerly await whatever film roles he takes next.

My 10 Favourite Performances of 2012.

Powering through the series where I list my top 10 acting performances by year. Remember, the top 10 isn't so much a list of the top 10 best acting performances, per se, but more me playing favourites to actors and actresses I really dig, as well as performances that gave me the feels. You know, to quote Family Guy, 'all the things that make us, laugh and cry'. Which is ironic because a certain prominent member of the Family Guy cast is on this list. It's almost like I set up my own joke, isn't it?

If you're wondering why no performances from Lincoln or The Master are on the list, it's because I haven't seen those films. If you're wondering why none from Silver Linings Playbook is on, that'll be because I despise that dishonest movie with every bone in my body, and cannot abide Jennifer Lawrence's hammy, OTT, shrill performance in it, which was not an accurate portrayal of a woman with mental health issues at all, so much so, that the mental health community had backlash about her acting in it. There, I said it. J-law did not deserve to win that goddamn Oscar. The lady who I have listed first should have received the award instead, for what was, in my opinion, one of the best acting performances of all time.

10. Amandla Stenberg, The Hunger Games

09. Kristen Stewart, On the Road

08. Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild

07. Jonah Hill, 21 Jump Street

06. Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

05. Seth MacFarlane, Ted

04. Leonardo DiCaprio, Django Unchained

03. Keira Knightley, Anna Karenina

02. Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

01. Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

A couple of stats...

By Gender
Gals: 7
Dudes: 3

By BBFC certificate
18: 1
15: 4

12A: 5 (my favourite is Beast of the Southern Wild's warning: 'Contains moderate threat, injury detail and potentially dangerous behaviour')

Shameless favouritism (people who've been on before)

Keira Knightley: 8th in 2014 for The Imitation Game

Leonardo DiCaprio: 2nd in 2006 (for The Depahted; hi Scorsese!) and 9th (Blood Diamond) although that list was constructed a l-o-n-g time ago and would be subject to change, 2nd in 2010 (Shutter Island; another Scorsese collab!), 2nd in 2013 (The Wolf of Wall Street; directed by some Martin Scorsese bloke I haven't heard of)
Jessica Chastain: 10th in 2014 (for A Most Violent Year)

Jonah Hill: 3rd in 2014 (for 22 Jump Street; the sequel to the film he's on this list for. I'm pretty brazen with my Jonah fangirling), 9th in 2013 (The Wolf of Wall Street)

When Film Posters Lie: Crimes Against Billing Orders.

Today, I watched The Place Beyond the Pines, Derek Cianfrance's ambitious morality tale of how an encounter between bank robber (Ryan Gosling) and rookie cop (Bradley Cooper) affects their lives long after the meeting. I wasn't exactly sold on it; the three acts in the movie deteriorated monotonically, with the most gripping set pieces all being at the start of the film. The final act of the film focuses on the interaction between the two characters' sons, and the scenes between Emory Cohen and Dane DeHaan felt like a blasted mumbling contest.

Overall, I was mightily disappointed with The Place Beyond the Pines; there were some good elements: Bradley Cooper was as nuanced and as convincing as I've seen him (I usually can't take him seriously because he's appeared in some godawful Jennifer Lawrence collaborations and both of them bring out the worst in each other, especially when David O. Russell is involved), and the scenes between Ben Mendelsohn and Gosling were nicely done. Based on their chemistry together, I can see why Ryan Gosling chose to cast the Australian in his own movie, Lost River, 2 years later. You even get a tiny glimpse of Mendelsohn's terribad dancing, one of the few redeeming features of Lost River, in this movie.

But another gripe that I had with The Place Beyond the Pines that was no real fault of the filmmakers themselves was the sheer inaccuracy of the billing of Ray Liotta in the film poster. The way Liotta is credited here gives the (misleading) impression that he's the fourth main character in the film. He ain't. Gosling and Cooper are the co-leads, then Eva Mendes, then Dane DeHaan and then Emory Cohen. Ben Mendelsohn features in the first and third acts, so he would take sixth precedence. Being generous (and it would be being very generous), Ray Liotta is the seventh main character in the film. At best.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I can see why they did it. Although DeHaan and Emory Cohen are now gaining status and their acting technique has definitely improved (Cohen put his mumbling Brando impression to far better use as an adorable suitor of Saoirse Ronan in 2015's Brooklyn and you know he was good because I don't even begrudge him stealing Domhnall Gleeson's thunder), they weren't that well known in 2013, when the film was released. Whereas Ray Liotta is properly famous, not least for his iconic performance as Henry Hill in Goodfellas. So they were riding on the fame of his name. Fair enough, given the calibre the star they had on their castlist (Liotta's combination of charisma, screen presence and intense-eyed gaze renders him one of my favourite actors).

An even more brazen case of erroneous billing of an actor immortalised by a Martin Scorsese picture would be the combination of the name order and the appearance of a photo of Jonah Hill in the Hail, Caesar! poster. The fact that he's one of the five pictured could let you think he's one of the five main characters. He ain't. His role in Hail, Caesar! is genuinely that of a cameo, lasting less than a minute. As a huge Jonah Hill fan who's two main draws to this picture were the Coen brothers and him, I felt mightily short-changed.

As with Emory Cohen and Dane DeHaan getting trampled over in the Place Beyond the Pines poster, the biggest loser here is Alden Ehrenreich, who stole the show in Hail, Caesar! and if there were any justice in the world, would be in the running for a Best Supporting Actor nomination for what was a warm performance as a rodeo-come-actor who struggles with his lines of on point comic timing. Ehrenreich's role was the size that I had thought Jonah would be getting. Boy was I wrong about that, but it seems bizarre that the best thing about the film doesn't even get his picture on the poster.

Obviously, worse things have happened, and the world will keep spinning. And I can't begrudge Hollywood studios for trotting out their big names ahead of the lesser-known chaps, even if they had more prominence in the film. Money does talk, after all. And in both Ray Liotta and Jonah Hill's case, they succeeded at tricking me. By misrepresenting the magnitude of the actors' screen time in their respective movies on the film posters, the films' distributors lured me into watching the film under false pretences. I'm just too much of a Marty Scorsese fangirl for my own good, goddamnit!

But I'm not in the mood to be fooled for a third time this year by film posters. All I'm saying is, if Jonah Hill isn't actually the lead when I see War Dogs, I won't be best pleased.

Book review: THE INNOCENTS (Francesca Segal)

The Innocents opens with a quote from Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (and adapted in a 1993 film by my favourite director, Martin Scorsese), and it wasn’t until after I’d read the novel and googled it that I twigged The Innocents is actually a modern day reworking of said novel. Whilst this probably says more about my horrific lack of knowledge of literary classics more than anything, there could not be a better advertisement for Wharton’s book than The Innocents, which moves the setting from 19^th century New York to London, but aside from the setting, the themes, characters and decisions that are central to the novel transition effortlessly.

Book Review: Briefs Encountered (Julian Clary)

 

 

Celebrated actor Richard Stent has just won a BAFTA for his portrayal of the celebrated British actor and playwright Noël Coward, and such is his connection with the character that he leaps at the opportunity to buy Goldenhurst Manor, the Kent mansion that Coward occupied for him and his partner Fran. However, on moving into the house, he and his acquaintances all experience bizarre goings on in in that lead him to believe that the house could very well be haunted, and the spirit of Noël Coward is perhaps not fully at rest.

Review of the songs in the “Dynamic Duets” (S4E7) episode of Glee.

This episode was all about duets, and started with the Glee club, rather bizarrely, in a meeting for superheroes. My favourite of the rather eclectic bunch was Tina's guise as Asian Persuasian, naming her great power as Manipulation. Superheroes goes on to be a theme for the episode, as the singers don superhero attire in their performances. As Coach Bieste explains, when you don a cape, you become another person, not dissimilar to the effect of what happens when performing on stage. To that end, then, it seems an apt motif for the Glee club to take on this week.

The love-triangle of Marley-Jake-Ryder gets going too, with the two boys getting up into each other's face. "You wanna know how I know you're a badass? Cos you ride a razor-scooter. Nothing says badass like a razor-scooter." (For the record, I am Team Ryder. Everyone likes a bad boy but his straightforward charm shats all over Jake's ~tortured soul. As Ryder argued, no one likes guys who lead girls on, only to blow them off.) 

Later in the episode, Jake gets diagnosed with dyslexia, something he suspects he has had all his life but was too scared to act about, and it’s actually Jake’s helping hand that gets him the help he needs – a rare display of people showing genuine fraternity in Glee.

Quite light on the song front this episode, with just 5 songs.

The Dark Side - I didn't care for the cheesy way it started, but the message that Glee was trying to illustrate - how well Blaine fits in musically with The Warblers - was clearly made. He definitely has natural rapport with them and the choreography was simple but effective. The song itself didn't particularly grab me - regulation pop - the kind of stuff that serves Blaine so well - but it was a good performance. B+

I Am Happening - Ryder and Jake, who patently despise each other team up for this 60s classic. They are both serenading Marley, wearing suits (lucky girl), and in the build-up to their performance have some amusing trash talk, with Ryder saying his superhero alter ego is Mega-Stud, to which Jake retorts, “oh, so your superhero choice is to be me.” #banter. 

The choice of “Mega-Stud” is amusing because Artie and Finn don't know what the MS on their shirt stands for. The performance escalates into a fight which kind of detracts from the performance, which had energy but vocally nothing special. C

Holding out for a Hero – now this was fun! Kitty is a nasty piece of work and an all-round pain the backside but she is a top performer, with a great voice and in her cat suit outfit she also has a whip as a prop, which she is very adept at using (knowing her streak of Machiavelli, I was terrified she might use it to accidentally on purpose injure Marley, but she didn’t. Surely whatever evil plan she has planned for Marley will be much more concealed than that). 

Anyway, Marley lacks the sparkle that Kitty has, but vocally she is sound, as well as gorgeous to look out. A popular ditty (it was immortalized, for me, in Shrek), sung very well. A-

Heroes - chilled, mellow acoustic version of David Bowie starting with Sam (who supplied much of the mirth of this episode with his impressions of George W Bush and Bane from The Dark Knight Rises, showing the show's writers are keeping their fingers on the pop culture pulses!) also playing the guitar, with Blaine belting out the power notes. 

The contrast between Sam’s dulcet tones and Blaine’s more show-choir voice is exactly the sort of quality one looks for in a good duet. My favourite rendition of this song remains that in Moulin Rouge!, however. (After this rendition they go to Dalton to steal their Nationals trophy back, and as they're running off the letters BAM and SLAINE hit the screen. Classic ship names! Glee is quick to give the fans what they want, I’ll give them that.) A-

Some Nights - Another Fun. cover from the Glee club, except whereas Rachel took centre stage in their cover of We Are Young, Blaine, the new leader in her abscence (despite his flirtation with the Warblers in this episode) leads this one. The performance features some really lovely harmonization between Marley and Kitty's voices, which is undercut by Kitty rolling her eyes after.

But the best bit is Joe Hart delivering the refrain, a singer who rarely gets to display his vocal talent. Overall, the kind of high-energy "Don't Stop Believin"-type performance that Glee are famous for but haven't given in quite a well, finishing with Finn looking on proudly just like Mr Schue used to. 

The music video for this song is set during the American War of Independence, whilst it was a very powerful, sombre setting, I’m more of a fan of New Direction’s ~rainbows and butterflies~ slant on the song. A.

I want you to hit the pedal, heavy metal, show me you care.

Obligatory Wednesday food photodump!

Noodles, £2, Student canteen.

Cheesecake, Slug & Lettuce (part of deal with two other things below, £10)

Fish & chips, Slug and Lettuce.

Giant platter, Slug and Lettuce.

Chicken nuggets and chips, (cooked myself. ie I put it in the oven ;P)

Toffee nut cappuccino, Starbucks.

Full English with fruit, Liverpool Hilton (free for guests).

Film Review: Anna Karenina (Joe Wright, 2012)

Adultery. It’s always made for some of the most delicious film, TV and book storylines (and, as a Chelsea fan, I can't say I'm a stranger to my player's committing it #trollface). Indeed, between 1873 to 1877, Leo Tolstoy used it as the basis of his novel, which he published in eight parts. Joe Wright, always one for a literary classic (Pride & Prejudice, and to a lesser extent depending on how much you rate McEwan, Atonement), adapted this 19th century Russian lit classic to the big-screen. After scouting across the continent for filming locations, he finally settled for the unusual, somewhat Dogville-esque of having the vast majority of the film filmed on a stage. The big difference between Anna Karenina and Dogville however, though, is where the latter barely had any set at all, with the locations and props chalked into the wooden floorboard, the set of Anna Karenina, whilst discernibly all a stage, is vast and opulent, with moving backdrops and richly designed interiors aplenty. The purpose of Wright choosing to having the movie filmed on a stage was because he said that Anna felt like her entire life was “on a stage”, and, indeed, the scenes where she faces society and stylistic touches are added (such as dancing couples freezing into a tableau whilst she dances with Count Vronsky) are certainly very effective indeed.

 Performances in Anna Karenina are uniformly excellent. I remember, a decade ago, when Bend it Like Beckham first came out. It was a cute little movie about a girl juggling the pressures of her society and what she wanted, but one of the things that also stood out was Keira Knightley as the feisty friend who helps her get into a local girl’s team. It wasn’t the most polished performance, but then again, in Bend it Like Beckham, it didn’t need to be. A year later was Pirates of the Caribbean, where once again, she was appropriately spirited (her delivery of “you like pain? Try wearing a corset” is classic), but seemed to be continuing a trend of delivering solid, not spectacular, supporting roles as the pretty lady. Add in a few ill-fated turns in the likes of Domino, King Arthur and The Jacket, and the running joke amongst Brits was that Keira Knightley, though a pretty face (and a very beautiful one at that, something that is exhibited very well by Jacqueline Durran’s lavish costumes in Anna Karenina), wasn’t much scrub at acting itself.

Well, the era of mocking Knightley’s acting prowess is well and truly over, because she was quietly strong in Atonement, captured Lizzie Bennet’s playful cheekiness in Pride & Prejudice, and also more than up to the task as the crazy patient in A Dangerous Method. In Anna Karenina, she is excellent; I’d even go as far as to say she was awards-worthy. The thing about her Anna is, that not many viewers, reading the plot précis on the page, would have a whole lot of sympathy for a woman who voluntarily jacks in a comfortable marriage including a son she dotes on, all in pursuit of carnal desire with an admittedly dashing Count (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who wouldn’t say no). But Knightley imbues Anna Karenina with all the elements of her character, not just the ~selfish horndog~. She is a caring mother, a loyal sister to Stepan Oblonksy (a serial cheat, played with humour by Matthew Macfadyen; some would regard this is a quasi-incestuous casting, seeing as he played Mr Darcy in Pride & Prejudice, and that) and overall, Tolstoy and Wright would have us believe, not a bad person. I certainly didn’t think she was, and that is all to the merit of Keira Knightley’s wonderful performance. It is funny, because one of the things she is oft-criticized for in her acting (the way her lip pouts and her jaw juts out) is snuffed out for the majority of the film, and it is only when her affair with Count Vronksy sours that it re-emerges, yet, ironically, this quite suits Knightley’s acting and certainly helps convey the mad, irrational woman Anna is being driven to become.

 The support is also terrific, save perhaps Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who I still have my reservations about. Save his ridiculously obvious fake moustache, he more than looks the part of Count Vronksy, with his piercing blue eyes and thick muscular arms. But when delivering his lines, he comes across as a bit needy and drippish, rather than the potently sexual being that Vronksy is, and that Anna couldn’t resist. As such, it’s fairly easy to envision Anna turning him down, and one has to suspend some belief when Anna initially succumbs to her lust for her. Jude Law, on the other hand, as Anna’s stuffy, boring, but loving husband, is magnificent. It’s a thankless role, as the man 20 years her senior who sees his wife as beyond reproach, but his love and trust in her only stifles her further, but he delivers it with such subtly and nuance that the love triangle aspect of the film is appropriately murky in that I genuinely couldn’t take a side.

Then there is the subplot about Konstantine Levin (played by Bill Weasley off the Harry Potter films, Domhnall Gleeson) and his enduring love for Oblonksy’s wife’s sister, Kitty (newcomer Alicia Vikander, a very pretty Swedish actress). Whilst Anna Karenina’s love affairs are complicated in that she has two men to choose from, Levin is confused and increasingly antagonised by the state of Russia, and therefore it is his philosophies that hold him back. Some of his conversation with the workers in his father’s manor go on a little bit longer than necessary and certainly aren’t amongst the film’s most memorable moments, but indeed, this is a common criticism of Tolstoy’s source material; the love/sex stuff is ace, but the Russian politics bored even the most learned of literary critics. So we can’t fault Wright, or Gleeson too much for that. Furthermore, the Levin/Kitty romance forms the most emotionally affecting scene in the film; Levin, having gone away for months after his initial marriage proposal was rejected by Kitty, comes back to see her, where they speak wordlessly to each other using only cubes of letters; a sort of 19th century hangman/Scrabble amalgamation. As Kitty admits she was wrong to turn him down, Levin lifts his hands to reveal three simple letters; I L Y. Perhaps it doesn’t sound like much on the page, but on the screen, and with the earnest facial expressions of the actors thrown in, it really was a cathartic moment of redemption for Levin, one of the few genuine good guys of the piece.

 Overall, Anna Karenina is one of the most exciting things I’ve seen in the cinema this year, which is truly high praise for a 19th century set Russian love saga with not a car chase in sight. Joe Wright deserves much praise for his brave take on a literary classic and his cast more than step up to the task, with Knightley, Law and Gleeson all show-stealing. As with many other Focus Features films (Brokeback Mountain, The Constant Gardner, Swimming Pool), the film is a treat to look at, with its swirling camerawork and the set which changes in front of your eyes. Anna Karenina caused controversy aplenty when it first came out due to its depiction of infidelity, but in truth, there is so much more to the book, encompassing themes of love, life & death, conformity, femininity and individualism. In just over two hours’ running time Wright was never going to cover every single one of them, but the end product, like our fearless, misguided lead, is beautiful to look at.

Grade: A-

If you enjoyed this post, check out Poker Blogs' review of 21!

Film review: THE BOURNE LEGACY (Tony Gilroy, 2012)

In summarising the plot of The Bourne Legacy, I may fail somewhat, as I was more than a bit lost throughout my viewing of the film (a free advanced screening at a rather plush Vue cinema in Finchley Road, if I may say so).  

To the best of my understanding, what it involves is a group of people who were involved in “Outcome”, a different strand of the project Jason Bourne was involved, but the difference here being science is used to doctor their mental and physical capacity. A glitch in the set-up of the plan involving a YouTube leak of the connections between the people involved occurs and the film documents the lengths the creators take to avoid the catastrophic results of the Bourne saga. 

Eric Byer (played by Edward Norton), is the man trying to “shut down” the people involved, and whilst the majority are done so with ease (they are given a “new pill” to take which they believe will make them stronger but in fact sends them into cardiac arrest), Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) is the last man standing, who refuses to go without a fight.

I think the main problem with The Bourne Legacy is that they tried to tie it in with Robert Ludlum’s initial creation, and the Matt Damon films, when in fact everything that happened in the preceding films is very much in the background here. 

Had The Bourne Legacy been a different film, the character of Jason Bourne just been something of a prelude and the characters been given new names and companies, then I would have found The Bourne Legacy a lot less confusing. 

The continual attempts to try and tie the events of this film in with the third movie (the two storylines are supposed to be running parallel) definitely over-complicates matters. The story-line is more than cerebral enough to hold its own, and, as mentioned, the attempt to try and make this a spin-off of the Bourne movies is its ultimate downfall.

That being said, there’s a lot of good stuff here. The script is somewhat too clever for its own good in regards to the plotting, and there is little left in terms of characterization, but Renner, Weisz (playing Marta, a scientist working for a company who does the legwork of Outcome) and Norton all give strong performances. 

Norton in particular is very strong, as his character is far removed from the archetypal villain in that he is doing what he thinks he is doing for the greater good. He gives a brooding, tense performance and it is possible to imagine what it’s like for his character. Jeremy Renner has never been one of my favourites with his individual AVBesque brand of surliness, but I don’t find him as annoying her as I have found him in other movies, namely Mission Impossible III and The Town. 

Rachel Weisz, though unfortunate in that the script makes her out to be hysterical, acts very well indeed to make us sympathise for her character when the script was practically calling out for histrionics, as well as giving depth to Dr Marta Shearing in her facial expressions that is painfully remiss in the screenplay.

As with all the Bourne movies, the action sequences are a thrill to watch, and a chase sequence through the streets of Manila certainly doesn’t skimp on crashes, explosions and various other calamities. 

Slickly edited with some wonderfully glamourous locations spanning London to the Philippines, and featuring some genuinely tense moments (a showdown at Marta’s house when she is required to draw on her wiles in order to survive), it is, on the whole, an interesting watch, but not one that I was altogether satisfied by.

3/10

Outfit of the Day.

What I wore to enjoy a rare bout of British sunshine.

Sunglasses: a London street stall

Dress: Mango

Bracelet 1: A gift from Sicily

Bracelet 2: self-made

Earrings: Gift from House of Fraser

Belt: Accessorize

Shoes: Marks and Spencer

Putting my money where my mouth is (two lipgloss reviews).

Now that I make my own money, I pay more attention to how I spend it (which probably explains how I am able to remember the prices of every single meal I have). Lipgloss is something that I rely on pretty heavily – I despise my eyes so whenever I have the chance I hide them with sunglasses of various shapes, and tried to draw attention to the lower part of my face. I own several lipsticks too, all various shades of bright red, but bright red is a little too out there for the working world, and as such, lipgloss is somewhat of a close friend of mine.

So as a lipgloss enthusiast as well as a frugal economist (in the very literal sense of the word there – my degree is in Economics), I thought it worth parting with a few of my hard-earned pennies in order to partake in a little experiment. I bought two lipglosses on Friday, a Benefit one from the Debenham’s in Oxford Circus for £14 (in doing so overtaking my Soap and Glory Sexy Motherpucker lipgloss as my most expensive lipgloss buy at £9), and then in the Boots near Charing Cross Train Station, I bought a MUA lipgloss for a quid. So the laws of demand and supply say that the Benefit lipgloss should be 14 times better than the MUA.

And… you can’t argue with economics! The Benefit lipgloss PWNS the MUA lipgloss! The MUA lipgloss isn’t bad, per se, but I have a lot of them just like it; the gloss comes out dry and sparse on the brush and when I apply it to my lips the look isn’t so drastically different as if I’d just licked my lips. It earns points for having a nice fruity scent to it, being well-presented (the vivid red of the tube is thoroughly eye-catching) and ease of use, so I’m planning on keeping it in my handbag and using it during the week for work, as I don’t need to ~glam up~ hugely for work-time, just look presentable.

However, as a lipgloss, the Benefit one is in a league of its own. The scent is very strong when you open the tube – a sweet, lavenderish smell that I took to immediately, and whilst the appearance is a sparkly lilacish colour, I found the name of the lipgloss – Kiss You – a more accurate indicator of its prowess, for, once you’ve applied this one your lips, you will just feel so fabulous that you want to kiss people, ha. The gloss is thicker in quality, which accounts for the smaller bottle, so you only need the tiniest amounts. I put a tiny tab across my bottom lip, a tiny dab across my top lip, then smush the two together. And the effects are sensational! My lips genuinely do shimmer, and for a long time after as well. A fantastic buy, well worth the £14. I keep taking the cap off to smell it and try it on over and over again, and if my obsession continues, Kiss You is on course to be the top lipgloss I've ever owned.

So what I learned in that experiment, then, was that money does make the difference, and that, in this case at least, the more expensive product most certainly is the better product. I think I’ll be conducting this comparison test on other products in the future, to see if the pattern holds.


Benefit Kiss You lipgloss: A
MUA lipgloss: C

Lolita, was a meaneater, clocked him like a taximeter.

I know it's somewhat perverse considering the news coming out this week of Kristen Stewart's indiscretion, and I am in no way condoning infidelity (the man she cheated with, the director of the snoozefest that was Snow White and the Huntsman, was married with two kids, oh dear). But homewrecking aside, the news of Kristen's little transgression has made me like her more. 

I'd always regarded her as a pretty, but very bland actress, who I wasn't even sure had a pulse, judging from her awkward public appearances. But evidently, she not only has a pulse, but is a dark horse to be reckoned with, one capable of breaking British heart-throb Robert Pattinson (an equally poor actor)'s heart. And so, I decided to take a closer look at some pictures/gifs of her, and realised that the girl really is stunning.

(what colour are her eyes? Grey? Blue? Green? idk, I love them.)

Rocking the ponytail here!

Aww, poor heartbroken R-Prattz.

I still abhor Twilight, though

Film review: THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (Christopher Nolan, 2012)

After eight years of relative inactivity in the streets of Gotham, mainly thanks to a Harvey Dent act – constructed in false honour of Harvey Two-face from The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne is a recluse in his manor, hobbling around with a walking stick and never showing his face. However, he’s kicked back into life – quite literally – by Selina Kyle, a swish, sassy cat burglar who’s also not bad to look at. 

It soon transpires she’s working for a greater evil, Bane, a hulking badass who was born in a prison known as “hell on earth”. Walking around with a hugely creepy gas mask in front of his face and casually disposing of anyone who gets into his way, Bane christens himself “Gotham’s reckoning.” But Bruce Wayne, never one to take attack to his beloved city lying down, fancies letting Batman reckon with him.

Nolan’s final instalment of his epic Batman trilogy is the most ambitious of the three, and no shortage of love nor money has gone into creating it. Action sequences which would be hard to direct at the best of times are made ten times more so with the almost unmanageable size of the quantity of extras employed – the American football game stands out in particular here. 

There are one-on-one fight scenes, as well as thousands-on-thousands, and some of the martial arts sequences (particularly involving Selina Kyle aka Catwoman) are thrillingly choreographed. But the real challenge didn’t lie in any part of the action, but bringing the trilogy to a close in both an emotionally satisfying way, and one that did justice to the massive Batman franchise. Other critics have been left wanting by the ending, the direction of the film (at 164 minutes, it will test your bladder), as well as the sprawling nature of the screenplay.

Indeed, Nolan co-write this film with his brother Jonathan, and at times, the dialogue (between Batman and Bane in particular) feels twice as portentous as that of Inception, and, considering I sure-as-hell was no fan of Inception, that’s certainly saying something. Another aspect of the film that has bugged some people is that the majority of time, it was difficult to decipher what Bane was actually saying due to the mask in front of his face. 

This was infuriating and confusing, definitely, but overall, I was quite impressed with how it contributed to the eerie, ominous sense of the film. Then there are the plot holes. Usually when I watch a film, I choose to suspend belief and just go with it, but there were a few subtle things that even I couldn’t ignore – for example – how policemen who had been trapped under rubble for months were suddenly as sprightly and energetic as ever. I won’t reveal any others at the risk of spoiling the plot, but plot holes are so rife in the film that some wags have taken to giving TDKR the moniker “The Plot Holes Rises.”

But all this pales in comparison in the grand scheme of things, when the end product is so epic. Chris Nolan recruited the majority of the cast of Inception for The Dark Knight Rises, so he must really enjoy working with them. 

Of the Inception crew, Marion Cotillard impressed me the least here. There were times when her facial expressions were borderline Drama GCSE, and considering the amazingly accurate depiction of Edith Piaf she has given before, we all know she can do a lot better. 

Michael Caine was very good, as he has been throughout the trilogy, and he has a few heart-rending scenes in which he tells Bruce how much he means to him. But my favourite performance of the Inception bunch is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays a John Blake, cop, who, like Wayne, is an orphan, and thus sees him as a kindred spirit. Blake is very resourceful and comes to Batman’s aid at various points throughout the film and makes for a commendable supporting hero. And as the baddy, Tom Hardy is absolutely terrifying. He had a thankless task, having to follow-up Heath Ledger's terrifying Joker as the Batman villain, but he gives Bane genuine malice when the character could have easily become a hilarious caricature and for that, Laurels should be given to Hardy (boom boom :p).

Christian Bale, surely one of the most versatile actors in Hollywood, takes the lead role again wonderfully. It doesn’t quite match up to his work in The Fighter, The Machinist or my personal favourite, All the Little Animals (remember that film? lol), but in a role that is so easy to get wrong, he gets pretty much everything right. 

However, every scene he shared with Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman was stolen from her, for she was sensational. I had my qualms about seeing wholesome Princess Mia from The Princess Diaries playing such a sexy, amoral role, but Hathaway nails it. Her fight scenes are electrifying, and she deserves further plaudits when you consider she’s doing them in six-inch stiletto heels. Like a real cat, Hathaway slinks about the film like she owns it, and as a result, it really feels like she does. There’s also an engaging turn from English Rose Juno Temple as Catwoman’s friend and possible lover. Temple doesn’t do much, but it’s a proud moment to see her in such a huge blockbuster.

So engrossing that I did not check my phone once throughout the viewing of The Dark Knight Rises, I honestly couldn’t recommend it enough. It definitely has flaws, and several blog entries could be dedicated to the inconsistencies alone. But the overall good in the film – and boy, there is a lot of it – more than counterbalances it. 

Christopher Nolan has really done himself proud here, and for this alone, I am willing to forgive him for Inception (incidentally, Hans Zimmer’s score at points really do sound Inceptionish throughout the film (528491 from Inception sounds like it was played in every scene in TDKR), but we’ll allow). His brooding direction has given Batman what was seriously lacking in the previous cringeworthy George Clooney-starring Batman Forever films – soul. 

Much like Bruce Wayne, I haven’t been fulfilling my film critic duties much this year. But The Dark Knight Rises is my very own Bane, in that sense. The passion for cinema is back, all thanks to this film. 

And at the end of the day, there is no bigger compliment I can pay a film than that.

8/10

Half the year has gone.

Personal highlight of it? Why, that's easy:

And fall into my arms instead.

A couple of outfits I've worn recently:

Party!Bung.

Top: £2.50, Primark

skirt: £3, H&M sales

heels: £15, Dorothy Perkins sales

necklace: a friend's

Festival gal

Cardigan: £9.99, H&M

top: £8, Dorothy Perkins sales

jeans: £15, TK Maxx

clutch: £5, originally from River Island, bought in charity shop

Ladies who lunch

Flowery top: £12.75, Forever 21

cardigan:  £9.99, H&M (exactly the same style as in the previous cardigan)

Prom

Heels: as per before, dress: £17, Dorothy Perkins sales

necklace: a gift from Italy