Pub review: THE PIG AND BUTCHER (Angel)

To get a table on a Sunday at The Pig and Butcher, you have to make your reservation some days in advance. It's quite rare for a gastropub to be fully booked up, but when I visited this venue, that's exactly how it was.

The Sunday menu offers several roasts, some available for the single diner, and others only available as part of a two-person package. On our visit, my friend and I had the beef roast to share. The roasts came with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, creamed leeks and vegetables.

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.

A Silent Microaggression.

You know, for a newspaper who loves to lecture their readership about racial stereotyping (in a case of timing you couldn't make up, just four days ago they ran this hectoring piece about Asian stereotypes), you'd think they'd bother to learn the difference between Japanese films:

The caption pertains to A Silent Voice. Yet the image is a still from Your Name. I guess all Japanese animes look the same to Guardian sub-editors.

Perhaps of Guardian writers focused on say, actually doing the research they're paid to do, rather than preaching piously or shagging about, they wouldn't have made such a mistake. Just suggesting.

This isn't the first time they've confused two compatriots, with embarrassing circumstances. In their tribute to the passed away Cruyff, they published a photo of Rob Rensenbrink:

No wonder The Guardian are begging for money now. #FakeNews

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Bonus graphic, from The Evening Standard, which perfectly encapsulates my confusion on how Isabelle Huppert's icy tour-de-force in Elle lost to Yellowface Felicia dancing like she had two left feet:

Methink the lady doth protest too much.

Emma Watson has been working overtime recently in an attempt to quell rumours about her being too much of a diva to get the lead in La La Land, even saying 'I couldn't care less if I won an Oscar if I didn't feel the film I made said something'.

Whatever helps you sleep at night, sweetie.

Still, I guess she couldn't do La La Land, what with her busy schedule giving shite talks about white feminism.

Another newspaper cutting that attests to my theory that Po-faced Watson is an absolute diva who is completely unabile to take a joke:

Pious BAFTA grandstanding is exactly why I won't be watching the Oscars this year.

I didn't do too well in my BAFTA predictions, although at least I beat my performance last year, where I barely got anything right (as it was on Valentines Day last year, I took it as a sign that Carol would win the categories it deserved to win. That delusion).

Fantastic Virtue-Signallers and Where to Find Them. I heard JK Rowling is retrospectively writing yet another Harry Potter spin-off, about Professor McGonagall's uncharted secret past, where she had a Chinese girlfriend. Emma Stone is favourite to get the role of said Chinese girlfriend. 

Bar review: THE WINE STORES (King’s Cross)

Such is my addiction to Groupon deals, I felt the need to test out a wine bar I’ve not visited before  using a voucher that apparently promised bottomless Prosecco and a meat (or cheese) platter for 90 minutes.

Bar review: SCARLET'S (Covent Garden)

Scarlet’s is a bar that I’d visited quite a few times when it was called ‘The Verve’, but last weekend was the first time I’d been to the bar under its new name.

The drinks were pretty much the same as they were when I’d visited two years ago, although I did notice some pretty unreasonable inflation: the Pornstar Martini sharer was now £25. In 2015, it had been £20. Come on! 

Graciously, Happy Hour is still between 5pm to 8pm in Scarlet’s, where it’s Buy One Get One Free on cocktails and cocktail sharers/pitchers. Lamentably, it’s one of those inconvenient Fifty Five Camden-style Happy Hour deals where the two drinks you’re buying have to be the same, which is less than ideal because invariably, someone has to compromise and forgo their first choice.

OOTD and blocked by another Vardy.

Glasses: Red or Dead

Dress: Warehouse

Hairband: Accessorize

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By the way, you know how Jamie Vardy blocked me on Twitter? Well his missus has only gone and done the same...

The repellent couple are hardly doing anything to disprove the belief that they're racist against east Asians now, are they?

Restaurant review: AZZURRO (Waterloo)

My friend Kieran and I had lunch here on Christmas Eve (here's a picture of us) when we'd both had very little for breakfast and were starving, once again proving the rule that you shouldn't decide where to eat when you're hungry.

Two Guns (the Sequel).

The last time I waxed lyrical about Gary Cahill's insane biceps, Chelsea had beaten Manchester City at the Etihad. Well, this weekend, we beat Manchester City at the Etihad (ironically enough, the man with the golden guns scored an own-goal, but we'll just chalk that down to him kindly giving Agüero a masterclass in finishing), so it's time for another appreciatory post  for Gazatron's arms!

The best arms in football, bar none. Appreciate his commitment to constantly making them even bigger, too.

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I shan't be watching Passengers. It stars a certain actress who's acting prowess I don't exactly hold in the highest regard,  and I don't like sci-fi much (Arrival was an exception to this rule). Plus I don't see the point in hate-watching a movie when I barely have time to view the many films I actually want to see.

However, whilst I'm still staunchly 'you'd have to drag me to the cinema to see this', I have to admit the BBFC have trolled me slightly, in that by using 'sexual activity' rather than 'sex' in the short insight, my interest is piqued as to what the 'sexual activity' is.

I've noticed an increase in the prevalence of this curio turn of phrase recently. It seems to be employed for situations rather than intercourse, e.g. describing the masturbation scene in The Survivalist. In Childhood of a Leader (a shining example of a film I'd love to see but sadly didn't because the Odeon didn't screen it), a film rated 12A for moderate sexual activity, the activity in question is a husband running his hand along his wife's leg in a horny manner.

Which is fair enough, it's good to be prescriptive and delineate the lines between a shag and sexual behaviour to the audience. But I'm intrigued as to why it's been used in Passengers' case, given that in interviews about this film, Lawrence has been bleating on and on about her sex scene with Chris Pratt, and even falsely claiming this love scene is her first. (I've seen Serena, Jennifer. You might like to pretend that film never happened, but I saw it).  She also had a sex scene with the late Anton Yelchin (RIP) in Like Crazy, so I don't know why she's pushing selling the fallacious narrative that this is her, quote, 'first sex scene'. To sell more tickets for the film, perhaps? 

So I would have thought Passengers would feature an out-and-out love scene. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they start having Cesc, then J-law's character starts reading her whiny essay about how underpaid she was for American Hustle instead and Pratt's character loses his wood.

Just speculating.

My BBFC game (level 3)

Short insights with the word 'threat' in them.

I have no life.

Restaurant review: PIZZA PILGRIMS (Soho)

The servings at this much (over)-hyped pizza parlour didn’t taste anything out of the ordinary compared to a bog-standard oven pizza you can buy at Sainsbury’s, and compared to Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference, the meals completely paled in every department. 

Portion-wise, they left a lot to be desired; the cooks scrimped on the components of the meal that actually cost money (aka, the meat and veg, as demonstrated by the photo below), choosing to swamp you with dough instead. Big mistake: I prefer thin bases. And, ironically, they couldn’t even get the dough right; look how charred that is!

Fantastic Oscar-beggers and Where to Find Them.

Glaring mistake is glaring. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, starring professional awards-chaser Eddie Redcarpet, is a 12A, not a PG. Frankly, a PG certificate wouldn't be enough to contain all of Eddie's Oscar thirst and all of JK Rowling's virtue-signalling hypocrisy.

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The BBFC replied to my email on Someone to Talk to, by the way. It's a lot more satisfactory a response than the one they sent me about So Young 2 Never Gone:

Dear Emma

Thank you for your email.

BBFC classification decisions are made in line with available research and our Classification Guidelines which are a product of an extensive public consultation process. This process is repeated every 4-5 years and over 10,000 people contributed to the creation of the Classification Guidelines 2014, which are available here. 

They state that: 'Portrayals of potentially dangerous behaviour (especially relating to hanging, suicide and self-harm) which children and young people may potentially copy, will be cut if a higher classification is not appropriate. '

The level of detail depicted in both films with regards to the suicide attempts is permissible at 12A. However the suicide attempt in Two Days, One Night is shown to have little in the way of consequences. The lead character is shown to gag but otherwise does not seem to suffer any ill effects. She looks serene and healthy in her hospital bed and the doctors seem unconcerned about any possible long term damage. The scene is therefore better placed at 15.

In contrast, the character in Someone To Talk To is shown weak but recovering in hospital. Suicide is not presented as an attractive option and so this content is permissible at 12A.

The references to suicide in Someone To Talk To start early in the film and occur throughout, becoming part of the theme of the work. They were not considered to be a 'spoiler' in that it's not an issue that suddenly and unexpectedly comes up later in the film. Also, given the prevalence of the references - which are not simply an isolated moment or element in the work - it was necessary to warn people about them, even more so because this is a 12A film on which parents may want clear advice.

We have an FAQ about spoilers on the black card on our website which explains our policy http://www.bbfc.co.uk/about-bbfc/faqs#insight-spoiler You may also be interested in Podcast Episode 20 which covers how the BBFC approaches classifying self-harm and suicide http://www.bbfc.co.uk/case-studies/podcasts/bbfc-podcast-episode-20-classifying-self-harm-and-suicide 

Yours sincerely

Joe

 BBFC Feedback Team

From this much better, detailed email, I've inferred that the BBFC spend more time on a query if you complain that the film should have been higher than it was, as opposed to lower. The speed at which they respond to you is almost halved, too - my So Young 2 Never Gone email took exactly 2 weeks to reply, the maximum time they stipulated, whereas this took just 8 days.

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Finally, look who blocked me on Twitter:

Not the first time Jamie Vardy's been abrupt to an east Asian person, now is it?

(admittedly, a lot of my festering anger at this whole affair isn't just the fact that Vardy racially abused a Japanese man. It's the fact that he racially abused a Japanese man and esteemed football writers who purport to care about racism, like Henry Winter and Daniel Taylor, wrote sod-all about it).

#ByeFelicia

The Guardian are now begging for donations.

In a display of desperation that would make Felicia Vikander and Eddie Redcarpet look aloof, The Guardian's trust fund has dwindled and they are now begging their readers for money.

A coffee a week, or paying Sachin Nakrani and Daniel Taylor's salaries??

It's a tough one.

Review: Starbucks Fudge Hot Chocolate

Just in time to use Christmas to trouser more money away for themselves, Starbucks have introduced the Fudge Hot Chocolate. Ingredients are Milk chocolate and fudge syrup mixed with steamed milk, topped with fudge flavoured whipped cream and a sprinkling of gold chocolate curls. 

I wasn’t very impressed. The USP, the fudge, is used far too sparingly to make a distinctive impression, so it just tasted like a bog standard hot chocolate. My cream on the top was about a third of the amount other coffee chains give. Finally, the fact that my fudge hot chocolate was serve lukewarm did little to raise a festive cheer within me. 

For £3.25, you can get a much more satisfying hot chocolate elsewhere, or make one yourself, and put in a quantity of fudge in where it can actually be detected in the beverage. Perhaps Christmas drinks in early November is a little early. This was an absolute horrorshow.

Grade: E

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To read my restaurant and bar review, click here. If you would like me to review your restaurant or your products, email me at lemon_and_lime7@hotmail.com

Clever Girl (and Thirsty Girl).

The ultimate date movie Gone Girl is on Netflix, which allows me to pore over every shot and admire the precision with which David Fincher bought the novel to life. A touch I particularly liked was displaying Amy's undergraduate and Masters certificates:

Like the scheming eponymous lead, I also hold an undergraduate and a Masters degree. Unlike Amy Wexford Elliot Dunne, however, they're from institutions slightly less distinguished than Harvard and Yale.

All that being said, if my brother succeeds in graduating from Cambridge, then gets his MSc from Oxford or an American Ivy League, then he can consider himself as decorated as Amy!

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I saw The Light Between Oceans yesterday. I thought it was absolutely bloody awful (Light Between Oceans? More like SHITE between Oceans), bloated, over-sentimental, and various characters' actions didn't seem consistent with their personality that they'd exhibited previously. It was even worse than The Place Beyond the Pines, if that's possible.

Although Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander both gave strong, affecting performances as the parents who are blighted with miscarriage upon miscarriage, I'm starting to find Alicia Vikander's continual thirst for Oscar glory a little trying. You just won one girl, calm down a bit!

This frustrates me because there's no doubt that Vikander is a great actress (loved her work as the alluring robot Ava in Ex Machina), but I feel her talents would be put to better use if she didn't try so hard. That she won the Oscar this year for her work in The Danish Girl, a film which encompasses the Trifecta of Awards Thirst: Eddie Redcarpet, director Tom Hooper and Alicia, illustrates that begging for awards can reap its desired effect.

Personally, I'm not averse to an actor campaigning relentlessly if I thought they deserved the gold (#YouDoYou), which is why I'm a lot more forgiving to Anne Hathaway for working the awards circuit, hard, in 2013, because she slayed as Fantine.

But it's just a shame Alicia had to win and in doing so, stealing Rooney Mara's Oscar for such a brazenly awards-orientated role of the put-upon supportive wife, as opposed to her more intelligent and restrained performances in Ex Machina or The Man from U.N.C.L.E, performances that were far more engaging and allowed her natural grace to shine, rather than sobbing incessantly, which was all she did in The Danish Girl. I like my Oscar-winning acting turns to come with a bit more nuance.

I do like Alicia (when I saw her first in 2012's Anna Karenina I described her as 'a very pretty Swedish actress'), and those big brown eyes of hers were just made for emoting. And despite The Light Between Oceans craving awards, it probably won't receive them, as the film has (rightly) been received with muted reception in the US, so graciously, I won't have to resent her more during this year's Oscar season.

But with another Oscar-begging title out next year, Tulip Fever, I'm afraid I'm going to have to brand Alicia Vikander the female Eddie Redmayne in terms of serially appearing in awards-bait. Eddie Redmayne has a less-than-flattering monicker 'Eddie Redcarpet', given in reference to how he played a disabled character and a transgender character, back to back, in order to receive an Oscar win and a nomination, respectively. Alicia Vikander is approaching this level of strategic film choices, and thus, I have no choice but to dub her, Felicia Vikander.

Side note: Alicia wasn't the only one guilty of being a little too keen to win her Oscar this year, as Leonardo DiCaprio and Brie Larson were campaigning endlessly, to the point where it also turned me off Brie (I thought Saoirse Ronan should have won for her majestic performance in Brooklyn). Between those three, they made 2016 the desperate Oscar campaign I'd ever had the misfortune of witnessing. (I love you Leo, but was The Revenant a cold shoot by any chance? You hadn't mentioned).

These three's Oscar thirst was further accentuated when compared to the behaviour of Brit Mark Rylance, winner of Best Supporting Actor, who did zero campaigning, and didn't even show up to BAFTA, the movie award body of his homeland, to accept his gong, because he was acting on Broadway at the time.

So, whilst thirst paid off in Leo, Alicia and Brie's cases, it's encouraging to see that some actors don't feel the need to try so hard, and were happy to let their acting do the talking.

Restaurant Review: VIBE GELATERIA BAR (Orpington)

Me and my friend had an hour to kill before Bridget Jones’ Baby last week so we gave Vibe, the latest dessert parlour to open in Orpington, our patronage. (To be quite honest, there are now more ice cream places than Orpington needs. After all, the town only has a population of 15,000!)

I complained about one of Vibe’s main competitors, Cream’s, for having idiots for sales assistants, but at least the quality of their ice cream was infallible. The same cannot be said for Vibe, which was selling something as crap as this for £5.50:

It probably looks harmless, but the ingredients had a distinctly C-list taste to it, as opposed to Cream’s, where I was wolfing down my ice cream due to the moreish components of the inventions. Also, if you just peruse over the menus of the two parlours, you’ll find that you’ll get much value for £5 at Creams’ than you will here. And the banana tasted off. Just saying.

The main thing that irritated me about Vibe, however, wasn’t the below-par ice cream, but the ‘service’ (if you can call it that) that we got from the pushy waiter. Because Vibe has just opened, they were doing a deal, which was all cocktails a fiver. Normally, I’d be all over that; there are precious few things that make me happier than a good cocktail. But, like everything in life that I enjoy, there’s a time and a place for everything. A weekday where both of us had work the next day wasn’t the time for a cocktail, so we politely declined. Yet, he still kept trying to pressure us into buying one.

This man seriously needs a lesson in consent. No means NO. A fiver isn’t much money by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s still OUR money, and up to us how to see fit how to dispense the money. If we said we didn’t feel like a cocktail, he shouldn’t have been so damn persistent. Especially when, in a desperate attempt to stay relevant, the cocktails were named after films, and the Word Art job on the menu was not the most enticing: -

‘Godfather’ is one word, just saying. And maybe they should have named one of the cocktails 'Enchantress', given that if this gelateria were an actress, it would be Cara Delevingne.

Something else which irked me was that when I got my phone out to take a photo of the creation, to point out how poor value for £5.50 it offers compared to Cream’s £4.75 creation, the waiter asked me to check into Facebook, to ‘raise publicity for Vibe, as it had just opened’.

Mate, do I look like a shill to you? And even shills get paid. If he wanted me to check in, he should have said they’d waive the fee of the (crap) ice cream, or throw in something free for us. I sure wasn’t going to publicly acknowledge I’d been to this hellhole on Facebook for free. Nothing for nothing in this world, mate. Nothing for nothing.

Final part of the rant: the manager of the restaurant was working that evening, cruising each of the tables to ingratiate himself with the punters. He spent more time with tables which were larger, which is completely fair enough, as by Law of Averages, there’s more people on that table that are likely to generate word of mouth about Vibe. But when he came over to our table, all we got was a brief ‘good evening?’ and before we’d had time to give a decent response, he’d bounced onto the next table.

I am not impressed with that. We may have been but two mid-20s girls who seemed reluctant to part with our money, and sharing one dessert between two of us, but we were still paying customers like everyone else there. The manager made a huge oversight by ignoring us. I can generate word of mouth too, mate. Ever heard of a blog?

It’s probably a tad injudicious of me to keep reviewing places in Orpington, and being a Jennifer Lawrence-in-American Hustle-esque cow in my appraisals, given I can see myself slowly talking myself into being a persona non grata in most restaurants in this suburban town.

But I’m not the type of customer who takes being mistreated lying down. And when I can pop to Tesco’s and buy myself a tub of Neapolitan ice cream and dust some sprinkles on top, why would I want to visit Vibe again? My own makeshift dessert would be infinitely more delicious and substantially cheaper than the crap they offer at Vibe, and graciously not come with a side order of ‘bad attitude’.

#ByeFelicia

Grade: U

Restaurant review: THE CUBAN (Camden Town)

I went to The Cuban with my friend Joy a few weeks ago using a Groupon deal that cost £22, and it illustrated precisely why I’m hesitant to buy Too Good to Be True food deals from Groupon. This one definitely was.

On the Groupon page, it promised the holder to £88.45 worth of food. This is what you could get if you’d been given normal-sized dishes of the food (of which I was able to see on the tables of other diners around me). But this wasn’t what me and Joy (nor, having a peruse of Tripadvisor, anyone who went there using a Groupon voucher got). Instead, you get infinitesimal portions of the food. Blink and it’s gone! So it definitely wasn’t £88.45 worth of food, and if they were going to advertise such a deal, they should have scaled down the original price to represent the quantity of food you’d be getting, so that the buyer of the deal would have some indication of how much the food would really be worth.

I’m a fast eater at the best of times (pig.gif), but most of these portions photographed above wouldn’t even constitute half a bite. I was nowhere near full at the end of the ‘meal’.

On top of this, the restaurant was extremely understaffed. When we first arrived, there was one waitress manning the doors. She told us to sit down and she’d come to us, which we thought a little odd, as she didn’t ask where we were planning on sitting. Would she forget about us?

You bet your ass she did.

Yet, when I went up to her some 15 minutes later (we waited very patiently, deciding to give her the benefit of the doubt) to tell her where we were sat, she curtly gave me the brush off, telling me that she’d be with me. No smile, and faint flickers of an eyeroll, suggesting that if I tried to voice my discontent, she would bite my head off. An unhelpful dragon of a woman.

The cocktails were also uninspiring, both in flavour and presentation:

So yeah, pretty rotten food and service at this place, but I will shoulder some of the blame. I’d tried to get a delicious tapas experience on the cheap from Groupon and in the majority of the cases, they just don’t exist.

The Escapologist was an exception, rather than the rule, of when a Groupon deal actually delivers what it promises, but this relies on the vendor being honest and above board. The people who advertised The Cuban deal definitely weren’t that. I left feeling very short-changed.

In short, they lied.

Grade: F

Bar review: THE ESCAPOLOGIST (Covent Garden)

I visited The Escapologist bar with my friend Rebecca to use a Groupon deal (here we are at the place in question), where I’d bought six cocktails for £24. Unlike previous experiences using Groupon, LivingSocial or Wowcher, where the vendor gives you a completely different experience from the one advertised by way of passive aggressive punishment for you had the temerity to buy their product from a discount website, The Escapologist’s cocktails were just as immense and fabulous as if we’d gone there and paid full price for our drinks.

The cocktail menu of this Covent Garden bar is an absolute beast, and the waiters and waitresses certainly don’t scrimp on alcohol content of the drinks. My Old Fashioned was actually even more boozier than the one I’d had at Dandelyan’s, despite the fact that £24 would not buy you even two drinks at Dandelyan, haha. By the end of the night, the three cocktails had gotten me thoroughly drunk. Three drinks of comparable size in Slug and Lettuce won’t even make you vaguely merry.

The first drink I had in The Escapologist was the Flaming Zombie, which, true to its name, was served in a zombie skull and even featured the visual flourish of having a passion fruit on top, set on fire. This meant that in addition to it tasting great and getting me in a suitably light-headed mood to chat crap with my girl, I was also treated to visual pyrotechnics with my drink! Video below.

Obviously, because the deal is £24 for any six cocktails on the menu, it makes economic sense to order the most expensive cocktails, so in addition to the Old Fashioned and Flaming Zombie (both retailing at £11.50) I had an equally priced Cuban Orange, which I don’t think I’ve ever (knowingly) ordered before. It was sweet but not saccharine and the amalgamation of vanilla-infused Bacardi Oro, Gran Marnier, fresh lime and brown sugar worked a treat. I have a new tipple to order when I'm in bars now!

It wasn’t just the flavours and alcohol-levels of the beverages that were on point in The Escapologist, because the music was ace, and after a few sips of my first drink, I was bopping along, imagining I was singing it at the karaoke [admittedly, it doesn’t take much for the inner out-of-tune songstress in me to be unleashed]. The background music in The Escapologist was a great blend of popular music that’s currently in the charts, as well as hits from previous years that you might have forgotten about. Eminem and D12’s ‘My Band’ is an example of this – after my visit to The Escapologist, I had it stuck in my head for days.

Overall, I had a sick time at The Escapologist. I do, however, have to retell a sorry incident that happened at the start which made me feel sick in a different sense of the word. Before the serving of our first drink, a guy pushed in in front of me at the bar, and the waitress served him, despite the fact that I’d been queuing quietly and politely for well over ten minutes (it was Happy Hour, thus, rammed).

I know it’s churlish to fault The Escapologist for this, because it’s not like the waitress had eyes on the back of her head and could be aware where everyone was every second of the day, particularly as it was packed. How was she to know that I’d honoured the code of common decency and he had not, but merely been ruder, and thus, inadvertently awarded him for it?

It’s definitely the bellend who did so (#WhiteMalePrivilege, just saying) who was in the wrong, for being so entitled that he thought nothing of trampling all over me. The alacrity with which he swooped in ahead of me indicated that this wasn’t the first time he’d pushed in, so I shouldn’t take it so personally. But, nonetheless, this incident was fairly irritating.

I would love to make like the Taylor Swift lyric and Shake it Off, but these microaggressions happen far too frequently in popular London bars and I’m sick of this shit plus when have I ever been the bigger person and passed up the chance to hold a grudge about anything? #GoneGirlDNA. Thus, it is perhaps a little unfortunate that I must dock points from The Escapologist for what would otherwise be a perfect A grade.

Grade: A-

The Shade Between BBFC Insight.

Derek Cianfrance, the director of the sobering romantic drama Blue Valentine as well as the ambitious but ultimately disappointing The Place Beyond the Pines, both starring Ryan Gosling, has another film out this year, not starring Ryan Gosling. The film in question has a clunky title to rival its predecessor: The Light Between Oceans.

This film is already out in the States but is not released here until November, although it has been given a BBFC rating. It is rated 12A, unsurprisingly, given it got a PG-13 in the States (and as you should know by now, ~90% of PG-13s align to 12As here, and if they don’t, I usually write a blog discussing/questioning why).

The short insight made me cackle, as, if I didn’t know better, I would think the BBFC were throwing shade at the movie’s male and female leads:

The film revolves around a lighthouse keeper and his wife, who discover a baby washed up on the shore. Having grappled with conception and several heartbreaking miscarriages, they decide to raise the baby as their own. The protagonists are played by Michael Fassbender and stealer of Rooney Mara’s Oscar this year Alicia Vikander, who are a couple in real life.

However, the more cynical of moviegoers don’t buy this, and think that their relationship is a Weinstein Company-manufactured showmance, created for the PR of The Light Between Oceans; a belief given further fuel during the BAFTA ceremony this year, when the Kiss Cam centred on them and they refused to smooch. One person believes this showmance theory so much they even have a Tumblr account about it.

I’m undecided about the veracity of the claims on that Tumblr account, and frankly, celebrities’ love lives are none of my goddamn business anyway. But I was tickled by the BBFC insight, and immediately wondered if the BBFC were in their own way, giving a veiled message about how much they bought into the Fassbender/Vikander relationship. 

As if describing their sex life as ‘infrequent’ wasn’t bad enough… ‘moderate’, too. Dayum.

(Or, you know, they were just genuinely describing the content of the film and I could be reading too much into three words and need to stop assuming everyone is as Shady McGrady as I am.)

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In other sort of BBFC-related news, when my brother turned 18 this year, I couldn’t resist using it as an excuse to a) give a shoutout to my favourite film certification board and b) plug three excellent films that I'm always hollering at him to watch in order to enrich our level of repartee and inside jokes at others' expense.

Channel 4 pulled a blinder on Sunday night, screening The Wolf of Wall Street, so I forced Tom to watch it, which is good because for the sake of completeness, we’ve watched practically all the Jonah Hill movies together now (minus True Story, but I have zero interest in that film; it looks like a prolonged, failed, Oscar beg on his and James Franco’s part and no one got any time for that. It was gruelling enough having to sit through Jonah’s WoWS co-star beg for his Oscar).

Tom, being the good man that he is, said he enjoyed it a lot, especially given that he’d caught an outdoor screening The Big Short in London last week and found it dry A F. I’m glad his mathematical prowess translates to being able to determine the wheat from the chaff in terms of films about finance, too.

As I’ve said before, several of the clown dude-bros who I’ve had the serious misfortune of going on dates with fancy themselves a kind of Leo in WoWS-type character, so it was funny to watch the film with Tom and delve into the psyche of these clowns (or so they wish).

Next up from that Facebook status, I’ll be bullying my brother into watching Gone Girl, so he can understand the psyche of the woman these clowns have chosen to go on a date with. 

(or so I wish).