This is not just a photoshoot. This is an M&S photoshoot.

Happy Hump Day, readers! The World Cup starts tomorrow, and I am officially pumped.

Despite me supporting France in the 2018 World Cup as I did in the 2016 Euros (with my second teams being South Korea, Japan and Croatia), and me following the England national team with the same emotional whiplashing (not-so-subtle plug of a sick Miles Teller film, there) of love and hate that I had for them in the 2016 Euros (because of that racist Vardy), I will of course be keeping a beady eye on the exploits of my national team. How can I not, when Gary Baehill is in the squad?

The team had their official photoshoot yesterday, kitted out in a rather dapper, and more than a little tight Marks and Spencer three-piece-suits:

Couple thoughts on this photo:

The Worst Acting Performances of 2017 [5 to 1]

Emma’s shade-throwing at bad acting continues! Read 10 to 6 here. I like to think I was relatively measured in my snark before. As we’re now onto the bottom five, I can’t promise to be so kind! Ehehe.

05. Johnny Depp, Murder on the Orient Express

As the sketchy art dealer Ratchett, Depp’s character is killed off early on, leaving Kenneth Branagh’s sleuth the rest of the film to piece together whodunit. The Johnny Depp of old, the Depp we saw in Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one, not the 34897 laboured sequels after), Ed Wood and Edward Scissorhands would have seized this role with aplomb and made an indelible impression in his limited screen time.

10 Hottest Men in Film, 2013.

Happy Hump Day! I've been a bit lax with these lists of late, but, as we're entering the Christmas period, I thought I'd revisit these list series, to raise the temperature a bit!

The female version of the 2013 list is here!

10. Leonardo DiCaprio, The Great Gatsby

Album review: REPUTATION (Taylor Swift)

A month shy of turning 28, Taylor Swift has been around the block and suffered a few knocks to her standing (not to mention her heart) for her troubles. Her sixth album comes at some time when some self-reflection is much-needed.

With a title like ‘Reputation’, she’s certainly cognisant of that artefact. It would be trite to dub her 15-track album as a ‘confessional’, as she’s always been very forthcoming about wearing her heart on her sleeve, and channelling her painful life experiences into song-writing inspiration, but there's a salient self-awareness in this album that was perhaps lacking in her previous work.

10 Fittest Chaps in Film, 2014.

Happy Hump Day! Previous entry in this series (which contains a link to the preceding entry in the series, and so on). Also, Happy Birthday to my Irish queen and my pick for Best Actress of 2015, Saoirse Ronan!

10. Miles Teller, Whiplash 

10 Fittest Males in Film, 2016.

I’ve gone off Ryan Gosling because I still have ear damage from his singing, Dev Patel’s bad acting in Lion put me off him and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, whilst being an absolute babe in real-life and the best husband ever to his lucky wife, played a vile character in Nocturnal Animals, hence their omissions from the list.

The ladies version of the list, if you were curious.

10. Andre Holland, Moonlight 

Moonlit dreams.

As I said in my prediction post, I didn’t watch the Oscars live on Sunday, because I anticipated a La La Land sweep, culminating in it winning 8 Oscars, including Best Picture.

In fact, it did win six of the eight I’d predicted it to. It did not, graciously, take Best Sound, because the superlative that should be awarded to its sound is quite the opposite of ‘best’.

But the real miracle was that it also didn’t win Best Picture.

Bar review: OLIVER'S JAZZ BAR (Greenwich)

A labyrinth-style underground bar that features live jazz acts in Greenwich, this was my first time in seven months listening to live music, and the performers were so adept at their music that it definitely didn't disappoint. 

Half-birthday Top 5s of 2016 (so far).

It's my 26.5th birthday today, so I thought I'd list my top 5 of the dominant 'Oscar' categories as of now (having seen 42 titles). 

For the acting categories I'll try my best to be objective and list in order of 'best' rather than 'favourite'. For example, my favourite performance of the year so far is Jesse Eisenberg in Café Society because I identify with his character the most. He'll almost certainly make my 10 favourite performances of 2016 list, but I concede that it's not necessarily the best male lead acting performance of the year.

To further illustrate this point, in my favourite performances of 2015, I listed Domhnall Gleeson in The Revenant because he looked damn gorgeous with a ginger beard. But objectively, he was probably only the fourth best performance in that dull film after Leo, Tom Hardy and Will Poulter.

I'm doing these lists now so I can show my love to some actors who didn't necessarily appear in prestige pictures, as they might get bumped out of the top 5s when Oscar bait like La La Land and Fences drops. For example, Jena Malone in The Neon Demon, an excellent, arresting turn, wouldn't get near the Oscars, but it was so good it needs to be highlighted. And not just due to the shock of Johanna Mason from The Hunger Games romancing the dead, haha.

And obviously, top films are not so objective because those are just favourites, haha.

Film

01. A United Kingdom 
02. Zootropolis
03. Café Society 
04. Kubo and the Two Strings 
05. Hell or High Water 

Direction
01. Amma Asante, A United Kingdom
02. Travis Knight, Kubo and the Two Strings
03. Pedro Almodóvar, Julieta
04. Dan Trachtenberg, 10 Cloverfield Lane
05. Nicolas Pesce, The Eyes of My Mother

Actor, Leading Role
01. David Oyewolo, A United Kingdom
02. Chris Pine, Hell or High Water
03. Jesse Eisenberg, Café Society 
04. Jonah Hill, War Dogs
05. Miles Teller, War Dogs

Actress, Leading Role
01. Emily Blunt, The Girl on the Train
02. Adriana Ugarte, Julieta
03. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, 10 Cloverfield Lane
04. Rosamund Pike, A United Kingdom
05. Emma Suárez, Julieta

Actor, Supporting Role
01. Alden Ehrenreich, Hail, Caesar!
02. Ben Foster, Hell or High Water
03. John Goodman, 10 Cloverfield Lane
04. Jeff Bridges, Hell or High Water
05. Tom Bennett, David Brent: Life on the Road

Actress, Supporting Role
01. Kate McKinnon, Ghostbusters
02. Jena Malone, The Neon Demon
03. Viola Davis, Suicide Squad
04. Haley Bennett, Magnificent Seven
05. Kristen Stewart, Café Society 

Screenplay (adapted and original) because I CBA to google which were original and adapted and hence do separate categories for both, haha
01. Café Society 
02. War Dogs
03. Zootopia
04. Julieta
05. The Hunt for the Wilderpeople

I haven't watched enough big hitters to do the aural/visual categories, as the best scores and camerawork are usually in the films which aim high and have budgets to match. But yeah, that was that!

--

Because I'm a shady cow...

Worst Film

01. High-Rise my only 2/10 score of the year. What a load of bloated wank. Also, it should have been rated 18 because it was so unpleasant to watch.

02. The Boss

03. Mission Milano

04. So Young 2: Never Gone

05. Absolutely Unfunny Fabulous

Worst Performances

01. Cara Delevingne, Suicide Squad this probably won't change at the end of the year
02. Kris Wu, So Young 2: Never Gone 
03. Ricky Gervais, David Brent: Life on the Road
04. Sienna Miller, High-Rise
05. Chris Pratt, Magnificent Seven

Good Dads.

I watched War Dogs and Bad Moms this weekend, and it must be the hot weather or something, because, in addition to guffawing heartily at both comedies, I was ogling the actors in both films. 

In War Dogs, I yo-yo'd between swooning at Miles Teller and his on-screen girlfriend Ana De Armas (she played one of the nutty chicks who raped Keanu Reeves in in Knock Knock). And in Bad Moms I both admired Mila Kunis' impossibly shiny hair (a real-life overworked mum definitely would never look that sleek!) and stunning hazel eyes and grinned goofily at her on-screen love-interest Jay Hernandez.

This made me notice that in 2016 alone, I've been treated to my share of male eye candy in movies. Thought I'd share pictures of some of the hotties in question.

The DILFs

Miles Teller, War Dogs

I'm currently fangirling so hard for Miles Teller. I even watched Two Night Stand last night just to stare at him. His arrogant swagger and slightly douchey off-screen demeanour renders him even sexier to me for some reason (Freud, feel free to go to town on this one). His bromance with Jonah Hill was brilliant and the two's joie de vivre really made War Dogs the entertaining movie it was albeit one that stole very liberally from The Wolf of Wall Street. And every time Miles Teller grinned.... SWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON. Dat smile.

Jay Hernandez, Bad Moms

Diablo from Suicide Squad doesn't clean up too badly, eh?

Ryan Gosling, The Nice Guys

Ryan Gosling is so fine that he can even make that ridiculous moustache work.

The younger models

Dave Franco, Nerve

Definitely the hottest Franco brother!

Dave Franco, Now You See Me 2

Lizzy Caplan's character in Now You See Me 2 says to Franco's, 'that face doesn't belong behind the screens'. PREACH.

Dave Franco, Bad Neighbours 2

If Hollywood cast this pretty man in a movie, I'll always watch it. No matter how much dross it is. Especially if it's a double bill of dishy with...

Zac Efron, Bad Neighbours 2

Zac Efron, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

I'm glad I watched this film by myself, because every five minutes I kept muttering 'Zac Efron is SO HOT!!!!' to myself. He's just got it all: the face and the physique. Genuinely don't think we've seen such a fine example of the male form since Leonardo DiCaprio in his William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Titanic-days. 

Take a bow, Zac preferably in an ill-fitting, tight T-shirt.

And finally.... The non-human 

Nick, Zootropolis

Before you call animal services on me, I'd like a chance to justify this slightly left of field inclusion. Nick is sensitive, witty, resourceful, caring, and the quintessential bad boy who keeps his walls up because he was hurt in the past. I love film characters like this, so it's no surprise I was drawn to Nick.

Plus, for a fox, he is kinda handsome, eh? EH????

My first ever e-mail to the BBFC and Jonah Hill fangirling.

I saw this at London Bridge underground station today which I'm hella excited for. Miles Teller was in my no. 1 film of 2014, Whiplash, in which he possessed formidable screen presence, as well as engineering sweet chemistry with Shailene Woodley in 2013's underrated romance The Spectacular Now. And it also stars Jonah Hill, that rotund comedy sidekick who also excels at being a leading man who I never go on about!!! Hopefully he's in it for longer than 20 seconds as was the case in Hail, Caesar!

War Dogs is rated '15' by the BBFC, and given that it's from the director of The Hangover, I don't doubt it merits that rating. Do you know what doesn't deserve a 15? 

Onto today's main attraction...

As you know, I pretty much watch the BBFC's every move. I don't always agree with their decisions (2 Days, 1 Night and Doubt were both very soft 15s and Kick-Ass 2 was a very hard one), but most of the time when there's a contentious decision, I side with them (in the case of the Diary of a Teenage Girl controversy I was staunchly #TeamBBFC), as of yet, I haven't been motivated enough to get my ass into gear and email them over my minor disagreements.

Well, after watching that terribad So Young 2: Never Gone on Monday (which, unlike The Specatcular Now, most certainly did not boast strong chemistry between its leads), I was finally moved to email. That was just such an impossibly soft 15 that I couldn't let this one slide, regardless of the low quality of the film and the fact that barely anyone would be particularly bothered about the BBFC certificate of some corny Chinese romance. All I ask for is consistency. About Time, with 6 f-words and constant mentions of 'blowjobs' was a 12A. And this was a 15 because of some coy behaviour around kissing?!

Cue a rather pedantic and verbose email (not like me to be verbose, now is it? #ehehe).

As annoying AF as you might find my smug, bloated writing style, you can't argue that I make some valid points. The film in question should not have been a 15. There was no sex or sexual dialogue. I've seen worse PGs (Grease). The fact that I just shoehorned in references to two mediocre Leonardo DiCaprio films, among various titles, is just me showing off how many films I've seen.

The BBFC website say they'll take 10 working days to respond to emails. I sent this on Tuesday morning. It will genuinely make my day to receive an e-mail from them, given that, to me, the BBFC are basically Kings.

Watch this space!