My attempt at writing a BBFC report for BEAST (2018)

It was William Shakespeare who remarked ‘brevity is the soul of wit’, and with regards to that quote in many walks of life (for example, intolerable guys who’s arrogance would make Gaston from Beauty and the Beast appear modest droning on about how oh-so-clever they are for having passed their CFA exams), The Bard was not wrong.

My Seven Favourite Songs from Disney Musicals

I’ve restricted the options to just songs from Disney musicals, as opposed to songs that appeared in Disney non-musicals, such as ‘When She Loved Me’ from Toy Story 2, otherwise it would have made a hard task even harder (I love ‘Le Festin’ from Ratatouille)!

07. Hellfire – The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

A left-field shout, given the crux of this song is about the sexual frustration a pious priest feels towards the beguiling gypsy Esmeralda. But I had to nominate Hellfire because it’s memorable, taboo, and tonally, so recherché (what other Disney film features the line ‘he made the Devil so much stronger than the man’?)

Essentially, the message of Hellfire is ‘if I can’t have her, no-one can’. It’s every possessive ex-boyfriend, immortalised in a Disney song, and fits in neatly with the plot, as dastard Claude Frollo’s unsatisfied urges are his motivation for a Domino effect that leads to Paris burning. The religious imagery employed in Hellfire only go to compound Frollo’s sense of sinful lust for a woman he both despises, yet will do anything to possess.

I like songs which shine a torch onto the hypocrisy of religion, and Hellfire offers an insight to this holier-than-thou priest’s mindset. Turns out, his thoughts aren’t so holy, and the choir-like vocals accompanying Frollo’s disturbing soliloquy underscores this irony nicely.

(On a slight film ratings tangent, the likes of fluffy Frozen and Tangled getting rated PG when The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by far one of their darkest films, was only a U, is mighty misleading. It ought to be at least a 12 for the creepy overtones in this song alone).

06. Prince Ali – Aladdin (1992)

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:

A Midsummer Night’s Wedding

Rock N' Roll Bride is my favourite wedding blog and I’ve been a long-time lurker of Kat’s terrific individual take on edgy and bold weddings. I’m very far away from getting married myself but that doesn’t stop me from browsing through all the pages of beautiful weddings for inspiration for my big day – should I ever get one! ;)

So when Rock N' Roll Bride teamed up with Next for a wedding stylist competition – for us to create a wedding look based on a theme of our own selection using a budget of £500 on Next items, I had to get on it! It sounded like amazing fun and I love to try my hand at playing designer.

The theme I went for is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, particularly the King and Queen of Fairies, Oberon and Titania. I picked this for several reasons – the play is one of my favourites from Shakespeare, the film adaptations always make me smile, as well as the fact that the idea of having a wedding in the park, at home with nature, appeals to me massively.

So with the characters of Oberon, Titania and the fairies as bridesmaids in mind, I got window shopping.

The Bride - Titania

In films and plays, Titania is always filmed wearing flowing gowns, or dresses with huge trains or skirts. I found this Lipsy dress which captured both Titania's being at home with nature - the flowers embedded across the chest, as well as adhering to the classic brides' colour of ivory. Gorgeous.

In the play A Midsummer Night's Dream, Titania is a proud character, and her pride leads to her husband Oberon playing a mean trick on her - enchanting her so that she falls in love with a man with a donkey's head. However, as the wedding is one of the most important and beautiful days of a girl's life, I thought a tiara - to reinforce the Titania-esque regal status she has on the day - was a good accessory to have, and as such, I've picked a particularly glittery one.  

I didn't pick a necklace due to the flowers on the top half of the dress being more than sufficient decoration around the neck, and I didn't pick a ring with the view that on a wedding day there should only be one ring on the bride's fingers. So in addition to the tiara, the other accessory that I thought would suit a Titania-type bride are these elegant feather/leaf-dangly earrings, once again illustrating her ethereal persona.

And finally, the shoes. I went for silver/ivory heels with gorgeous sequins along the side (to match the tiara), as well as fairly long heels to re-inforce the image of the Bride as the Queen of Fairies.

The Groom - Oberon

The Next website boasts a broad range of classy suits, from black ones to grey ones, but I opted for a brownish hue for the groom's suit, due to the motif of forests and nature and colours adhering to that of brown and green. Perfectly, the model here is wearing a dark green tie, which is striking as it is an unusual colour for the groom's tie, and furthermore, the colour green symbolises balance and harmony, which the union of Titania and Oberon should bring.

Bridesmaids - the Fairies

Continuing with the themes of fertility, rebirth and nature that green brings, these dresses would be perfect for the bridesmaids. The botanical print invokes images of flowers and grass, and the cheekiness of the print also reflects how in the play A Midsummer Night's Dream, Titania would often call upon her Fairies to do her bidding whenever in a ~war with her husband.

As the print of the bridesmaids dresses are colourful enough, I opted to only have one accessory for them. I would have them wear their hair up (much like the model in the photo above), and then at the side of the head wear this cute flower diamante hairclip. In films and plays Titania's fairies are often pictured with ringlets of flowers in their hair, and this is a silky modern day spin on that.

And this floral theme is continued in the bridesmaids' footwear; classy ivory heels with a corsage to the side.

Overall, these pieces came to:
Lipsy One Shoulder Applique Dress - £65
Jon Richard Raised Diamanté Tiara - £45
Sparkle Feather Earrings - £8
Ivory Mesh Peep Toe Shoes - £36
Brown Puppytooth suit set - £90 + £40 + £50 + £26 + £50
Botanical Print Dippy Dress - £45
Jon Richard Diasy Comb - £15
Ivory Corsage Platform Sandals - £36
All this comes to £496 - within budget!

So, having created a Shakespeare inspired wedding look for less than £500, I feel rather proud of myself! Might reward myself with a viewing of the DVD now...

Gnomeo & Juliet (Kelly Asbury, 2011)

William Shakespeare’s timeless tale of star-crossed lovers gets an animated makeover, with our characters now gnomes of two next door neighbours who hate each other – reds and blues. Gnomeo is a handy lawnmower racer and Juliet is desperate to prove she’s not “delicate” like her dad believes. Cast as the eponymous couple are two bright young British stars who also happen to be two of my favourites – James McAvoy and Emily Blunt.

From top to bottom, Gnomeo & Juliet is an unqualified failure. The in-references to other Shakespeare plays are forced and will be lost on their target audience anyway. None of the characters draw you in; one of the main things that appealed to me about the play was how Romeo was such a hopeless romantic, as well as Juliet’s sense of isolation and malaise. 

Needless to say, by making their characters gnomes, we lose all sense of characterisation and they just become, well, cartoon characters.

This flaw would be easy to overlook were they at least drawn well, but the way every gnome resembles one another with very little distinguishing features just smacks of laziness. Each character is crudely rendered and has nothing interesting to say; at one point, Gnomeo makes a “let’s go kick some grass” line, which was funnier than first sixty times I heard it in other cartoons. The overall quality of the writing is extremely poor.

Furthermore, taking the Ocean’s 13 approach – cramming as many famous actors in to do the voice work just makes the endeavour even more embarrassing. 

Ashley Jensen epitomizes this as Nannette, Juliet’s nurse figure. In this film, she’s a frog, and she loses all of the lovability she had as Extra’s Maggie. Emily Blunt and James McAvoy are left to do very little other than read their lines and pick up their pay checks without cringing too hard.

If I try really hard, I can find a few things I didn’t despise about this “film”. Jason Statham has good fun voicing the Tybalt character, and Michael Caine is less annoying here than he is in Inception. 

To be fair, I greatly enjoyed Stephen Merchant belting out his version of Your Song, which was corny, but vaguely entertaining. 

But to be honest, I couldn’t warn you off this film hard enough. It physically pained me to see Shakespeare being bastardized so much – Juliet’s spin on the “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” was clearly scribbled on the back of a napkin. 

Translating the spine of Shakespeare’s stories into children’s films can be done, as illustrated by the heavy Hamlet overtones in the masterpiece The Lion King. But for it to carry off, love and time must be invested into the project. Here, the amount of time making the film seems to be proportional to the time I would spend attempting to glue back a broken gnome; that is to say, very little time at all.

A final note -- if you amalgate James McAvoy and Emily Blunt's names, you get James Blunt. 

I adore these two stars separately and I so hope so hard that one day they can collaborate on something that isn't such a piece of turd, but if you were to ask me to pick between listening to James Blunt sing or watch this piece of trash again, I'd probably opt for the former. 

And that ain't a compliment.

My Favourite En-Screen Couples.

01. Jake Gyllenhaal & Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
02. Cary Grant & Ingrid Bergman, Notorious
03. Marlon Brando & Vivien Leigh, A Streetcar Named Desire (not quite but still)
04. Gregory Peck & Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday
05. Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall, The Big Sleep
06. Kenneth Branagh & Emma Thompson, Much Ado About Nothing
07. Adam Sandler & Emily Watson, Punch-Drunk Love
08. Clark Gable & Vivien Leigh, Gone with the Wind
09. Tony Leung & Maggie Cheung, In the Mood for Love
10. Adam Sandler & Winona Ryder, Mr. Deeds
11. Trevor & Celia Johnson, Brief Encounter
12. Woody Allen & Diane Keaton, Annie Hall
13. Leonardo DiCaprio & Claire Danes, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet
14. Joaquin Phoenix & Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line
15. Ryan Gosling & Rachel McAdams, The Notebook

Happy Birthday, Mr. Shakespeare.

In honour of this very special occasion,Coffee, coffee, and more coffee is holding a Shakespeare on Film blogathon. My contribution to this will be…

Top 5 Cinematic Hamlets.

05. Ethan Hawke in the 2000 Michael Almereyda version.
Mr. Hawke does a fantastic job in the role, giving us the moody, confused, lovesick, and ultimately self-destructive adolescent that Shakespeare intended. His performance fits the contemporary style of the movie’s perfectly. Quite fine too. :P

04. Derek Jacobi in the 1980 Rodney Bennett version.
An actor who has appeared in many Shakespeare adaptations, including playing Claudius in Branagh’s 1996 version, Derek Jacobi captures the true essence of the character, from the beginning to the brutal climax. His experience of Shakespeare shows through, and, through him, Hamlet is a dreamer, a plotter, a voyeur in the corrupt court of Denmark. He makes the four hour epic worth the watch.

03. Kenneth Branagh in the 1996 self-directed version.
Probably my favourite cinematic version of the play, and, in my opinion, the truest to the original source. Some have dubbed his performance Hammy, but I think he played out his character exactly as Shakespeare intended, with the audience continually second guessing his supposed madness. His sharp, irresistible performance is one of a kind, and manages to stand out in a supporting cast that boasts the likes Judi Dench, Julie Christie, Helena Bonham Carter and Jack Lemmon.

02. Simba in The Lion King.
Yes, really, The Lion King. The Hamlet influences are clear, think about it! And Simba was such an influential movie character to me ever since I was little, that I just had to list him. In The Lion King, the role of the young prince whose father is murdered is embodied in the rookie form of Simba, whose naiveté procures him more than his fair share of hardships and troubles. But watching his trials and tribulations are an utter delight for the audience, and I adore every second of this movie. Although much of entertainment make it appear like nothing but a Disney singalong, if we probe deeply enough, we can find connections to some of the greatest literature of all time. Can you feel the love?



01. Laurence Olivier in the 1948 self-directed version.

The pace is slow, at times it feels stiff and artificial, the woman who plays Ophelia is a joke, but this movie has to be seen, if only for Olivier’s master class in acting. As the man who cannot make up his mind, his subtle acting brings to his role a deep understanding of his character's inner struggles and dilemmas, both moral and practical. Through him, Hamlet is every bit the enigma we read about: dignified and noble, reserved and mistrustful, emotional and ruthless, and deeply, deeply frustrated. And his soliloquies shall blow you away. Already an international star from his turn in Henry V, he won an Oscar for his work here, but didn’t bother to turn up to collect it. Probably because his performance surpassed any awards; it truly is that good.

So, hope the Bard has a good one.