Cosplay for Hallowe'en: SQUID GAME with a touch of MIDSOMMAR

For Hallowe'en this year, I dressed up as 456 from Squid Game. Like most people, I was obsessed with the show when Netflix dropped it last year. However, I got on the bandwagon a little too late for Hallowe'en 2021, with most of the items of my cosplay, arriving after last Hallowe'en.

Thus, this year was the perfect opportunity for my 'make-up cosplay', and I did it in style, at the Ballie Ballerson, a Shoreditch hotspot famous for its massive, neon-lit ball pits!

it's me, hi, i'm the problem, it's me!

8 Lessons Learned from the 2019 BBFC Annual Report

The blog is rated 15 for strong sex references and drug references.

On Thursday, the BBFC dropped their 2019 Annual Report, which for film classification nerds, is also known as 'Most Complained about Films to the BBFC Day'. I spent Friday evening poring through the report, looking for clues and new information, and psycho-analysing every adjective used in the report. In short, I was in heaven.

Here were eight prominent things I noticed from reading it:

01. Emma knows her BBFC…

Tale as old as time… that the first point I make every year when discussing the BBFC annual report, is not an observation, but rather, a shameless display of braggadocio. The three most complained about films in 2019 were Joker, The Favourite and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, and I'd predicted all three of these in my prognostication blog.

OOTD: Repping my favourite and least favourite films of 2019

In this aesthetic, I'm pairing a Parasite T-shirt (my favourite film of 2019 and one of my favourite movies of all time; I was so buzzing to be proved wrong, and see it win Best Film and Best Director at the Oscars over CoD: WW1!) with a floral headband a la Florence Pugh in Midsommar. I despised Midsommar - it was all kinds of toxic indulgent garbage, but I will concede that floral garlands are a very pretty look.

T-shirt: RedBubble (bought online)

Floral headband: Accessorize

Earcuff: Etsy (bought online)

The result is a casual yet girly and very cine-literate outfit! Of course, a flower headband is only a miniature version of the full-on garland that Dani wore in Midsommar. But I did recently find a larger garland that was truer to the look:

Excuse my gross make-up-less face there. My face without make-up deserves a 15 rating.

It might be harder to square wearing this to work on Dressdown Fridays, though!

10 Most Attractive Women in a 2019 Film

Hey readers, hope you're all well and not going stir-crazy due to the lockdown!

I've decided to make lemonade out of lemons, and use this mandated stay-at-home period to spend more time blogging, something which I have done embarrassingly little of in 2020.

Thus, what better way to get back into it than by compiling one of this blog's yearly staples: most attractive women in a 20XX film?

Here is 2018's list, and as has become my habit, I will record next to each lady whether she was present in the previous year's list, or if she is a recent obsession!

10. Lili Reinhart, Hustlers (new entrant)

2020 Oscar Predictions

As I've been banging on for weeks on this blog, Parasite should win. But the Oscars are very rarely about "deserve". When Moonlight rightly triumphed over Blah Blah Bland  three years ago, that was such a surprise, because it's unusual for the Oscars to actually reward the best film of the year!

Going by that train of thought, I don't expect the Academy to pleasantly surprise me tonight, and thus, they'll give the big two awards to the cut-rate Dunkirk, instead of the genuine originality and acuity of Parasite.

Best Picture - 1917
Best Director - Sam Mendes, 1917
Best Actor - Joaquin Phoenix, Joker
Best Actress - Renee Zellweger, Judy
Best Supporting Actor - Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Best Supporting Actress - Laura Dern, Marriage Story
Best Adapted Screenplay - Jojo Rabbit
Best Original Screenplay - Parasite

Even though I pessimistically predicted Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood to triumph in this category at the BAFTAs last Sunday, I screamed with delight when I was proved wrong, and Flo Pugh announced Parasite as the winner!

Not just because Parasite is the infinitely superior written film, but because it meant the momentum was with Parasite to go on and win Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars. And thus, I am predicting it to rightfully be crowned here tonight!

Academy, don't let me down and give it to OUATIH! Quentin Tarantino does not deserve a third Oscar! He barely deserves one.

Best Animated Feature - Klaus
Best Animated Short - Hair Love
Best Documentary Feature - American Factory
Best Documentary Short - Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl)
Best International Film - Parasite
Best Live Action Short - Nefta Football Club
Best Cinematography - 1917
Best Costume Design - Little Women
Best Film Editing - Parasite

The bookies have the same odds for Parasite to take Editing as they do Ford vs Ferrari, and most Oscar-prognosticators are split evenly for who they're predicting for this category. Parasite has fewer cuts, 960 compared to the average in a film of 1,250, and Ford vs Ferrari's car-racing scenes were certainly cut with flair.

The Academy have historically rewarded the editing for frenetic films that rely on more editing (e.g. Whiplash, Mad Max: Fury Road and last year's egregious win for Bohemian Rhapsody), which would favour Ford vs Ferrari.

But I am stubbornly predicting hopefully here, almost in the hope of willing a win for Parasite. Much of the enjoyment of Parasite came from the economy of  each scene; there wasn't a superfluous shot in the film. Every shot served a purpose, even if you didn't realise its purpose until later. The editing in Parasite may be less flashy than in Ford vs Ferrari, but it aids the story (and Bong's vision) perfectly. So I hope the Academy repay my faith and reward the editor here.

It would send a great message that the Academy reward crafts on the quality of them, rather than the quantity.

Best Makeup and Hair Styling - Bombshell
Best Production Design - Once Upon A Time in Hollywood

Parasite deserves to win in this category (it deserves to win all six of its categories!), but sadly, I think the Academy will go for the more in-your-face sets of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. La La Land won this category three years ago, and the art decor in this film was reminiscent of LLL.

But in terms of astute use of the production design to assist telling your story, Parasite deserves this, hands down.

Best Visual Effects - 1917
Best Original Score - Joker
Best Original Song - "(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again," Rocketman
Best Sound Mixing - 1917
Best Sound Editing - 1917

So sadly, I'm predicting six awards for Call of Duty: WW1. I want Parasite to win all six awards it's nominated for, and to make myself feel better about the fact that it's probably not happening, I partook in some emotional hedging in the form of a monetary bet:

If 1917 is going to steal Parasite's awards, I may as well make £7.38 out of it! (I haven't gambled for nearly four years, and I lost £10 that time. I would gladly take the money hit this year, if it meant Bong's masterpiece was justly rewarded!)

BAFTA predictions, 2020.

My predictions last year were decent, especially in how I anticipated that we'd give Best Film to Roma, a move that was not mirrored by the Academy Awards, who went for Green Book.

Thus, as is a tradition on my blog, I'd try my hand at predicting tonight's British Academy Film Awards! Remember, the below is who I think will win, which very rarely overlaps with who I think actually should win.

Best Film: 1917

Sadly, I think this uninspired Dunkirk rip-off will triumph, even though it's not a patch on Dunkirk, and feels like watching someone play a computer game for 2 hours. I see BAFTA falling for the 'made to look like it was filmed in one shot' gimmick, and even more sadly, the Oscars to do the same next week.

Film review: TERMINAL (Vaughn Stein, 2018)

A waitress talks to a dying man. Two bickering assassins await orders on their next hit. And a quirky janitor lurks around a dilapidated train station. These seemingly disparate goings on in an anonymous neon-lit British town are all somehow linked, and slowly the plot pieces together in Vaughn Stein’s crime caper that plays out as a terrible Quentin Tarantino rip-off.

My 25 Favourite Performances of 2017

My final post commemorating the cinematic year that was 2017 is my favourite: the acting!

This list is judged from two factors: acting quality, and my heavy, unrepentant sense of favouritism. I like to think that I wouldn’t put a bad performance on the list, but it would also be inaccurate to claim every performance listed was one of the 25 best acting performances of 2017 (for example, I’d have a hard time arguing that Gal Gadot was better in Wonder Woman than Emma Stone in Battle of the Sexes, say).

Warning: the following blog under the cut is gif heavy! (To paraphrase Hamilton, ‘We rendezvous with Rochambeau, consolidate their GIFS!’)

25. Will Poulter as ‘Krauss’ in Detroit

Fun fact: one of my friends works in the same building as Poulter's father (who's a very big dog in his field of science). Thus, whenever I see the BAFTA Rising Star winner in a film, I feel like we're mates (by three degrees of separation, but still. 😂)

The 10 Most Attractive Women in a 2017 Film.

For every new year that I do this, I’m going to mention whether there was any movement from the actress on the list in the previous year! I like doing these lists because it means that even when I watch films that ultimately irk me (like the almost unwatchably bad Song to Song), I don't regard it as a complete waste of time, because it all counts as research for the blog :)

I haven’t seen Blade Runner 2049, but had I, Ana de Armas would easily make the list and be a strong contender for first place. Her rosebud lips and big green eyes are out of this world! (I have a thing for green eyes. ohai Tim!)

10. Halle Berry, Kingsman 2: The Golden Circle (new entrant)

Thoughts on the 2018 BAFTA nominations

On Tuesday, I woke up to the blandest bunch of BAFTA nominations ever. Each year, the British Academy – which have recently morphed into a glorified Oscar prognosticating body – find new ways to disappoint me, but this year, there were extenuating factors which meant that they did so with more panache than ever.

Film

Call Me by Your Name

Darkest Hour

Dunkirk

The Shape of Water

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

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.