Emma's Girlcrushes, 2.0

Sixteen months on, a redux of this list, in which only two women who were on that list have made the cut this time round. This says a lot really; chiefly, that first and foremost, I'm quite the fickle when when finding female celebrities to lust after/wish I looked like. Secondly, that there are just so many gorgeous women in the media today, and to truly celebrate the beauty (both outer and inner) of them all, would take much much more than a simple, artlessly made blog post. Also, I am being rather shallow in the constructing of this list, so it comprises of ten stunners who's looks - purely physical - do it for me. Of course, there are countless other definitions of sexiness, but for this list, I'm going by just looks.

10. Kaya Scodelario

Maaaan, girl is just completely and utterly gorgeous. She has stunning blue eyes - which is often coked in vampish make up on Skins to turn her sex factor up to an eleven, an enviable size six bikini body and amazing personal style.

09. Selena Gomez

She's Public Enemy No. 1 for all the Beliebers, but I couldn't care less about that little scrote and if you ask me, that boy's damn lucky to have Selena, for, in addition to being a very talented young performer, she possesses the most beautiful smile I've ever seen.

08. Kimberley Walsh

If you stripped all of Girls Aloud off their magical make-up, this Yorkshire lass would probably come across as the most naturally beautiful; she can survive with just her fake lashes and lip gloss. Flawless skin, tiny waist, womanly hips and a brilliantly warm energy to go with all that, it's impossible not to like Kimbo.

07. Ana Vidic

I'm less than fond of the man standing next to her, but for me, Ana Vidic is the Queen of wags. Despite mothering two sons, she has a body to rival Victoria Beckham's, and boasts the most spectacular range of Jimmy Choos and Louboutins. Furthermore, as with Fernando Torres' wife Olalla, who just missed this list; she combines beauty and brains - both woman have Economics degree. As Beyonce said, "smart enough to make the millions, strong enough to bear the children."

06. Una Healy

I sort of hate myself for bunging two members of The Saturdays on; they're frequently dubbed "the New Girls Aloud" but that's like saying Jordan Henderson and Luka Modric are en-par trololololo, but I can't resist a bit of Una. She's the only one in the band who doesn't assail my ears when she opens her mouth to sing, her fiery red hair and electric blue eyes make a killer combination and, as the oldest of The Saturdays, I'm digging her devil-may-care-swagger.

05. Mila Kunis

I could say a lot about Mila, not least commending her awesome voice work on Family Guy as the long-suffering Meg and the wide range of outfits she's rocked on the red carpet, but I just wanna talk about one thing to be honest: her licking Natalie Portman out in Black Swan. I consider myself fairly straight (although judging from this list and the comments that's reaching Wenger-levels of delusion [and the fact that Kaya & Selena - two girls younger than myself are on here indicates that's probably not the only thing I have in common with Arsene trololololo], really) but that scene? Something happened downstairs at vaga del Bung~~ Get it, gurl.

04. Nadine Coyle

Her solo album was widely regarded as a flop (although I firmly maintain that it had some real treats including Natural, Unbroken and the single Insatiable itself), but Nadine is and always will be the most talented singer from Girls Aloud. Her voice lifts practically all of their songs to pop treats to transcendence and the sass she exudes when GA go on tour is priceless. Plus: LEGS.

03. Rihanna

When my brother was getting a poster of his guycrush - Gareth Bale for Christmas 2010, I got a poster of one of my ultimate girlcrushes - Barbados babe Rihanna. Along with Kaya Scodelario, she's one of the only two who was on this list 16 months ago, and unlike Kaya, she's climbed up even in the face of countless other beauties. The reason? Well, a mixture of things. I loved her effortless cool on the music video of What's My Name, as well as the minimal clothing she wears, showing off her to-die-for body. But the main reason she's made such a surge is how she wore her heart on her sleeve in her performances of Love the Way you Lie Parts I & II. Both songs must have hit super-close to home, and it shows, in the strength and power of her vocals. 

02. Dianna Agron

Glee has a lot of beautiful girls - Heather Morris and Naya Rivera were just hovering outside the top ten, but its cheerleader Quinn Fabray ala Miss Agron who truly feels my heart with, er, glee. #needtotrainmyjokes Those big hazel eyes, that stunning bone structure, her natural regal of carrying herself, her gorgeous blonde locks... I'm a little bit in love.

01. Frankie Sandford

I actually really hate myself a little bit for this. Were I to redux my love/hate list, Essex-born Frankie Sanford would be right at the top. I don't think she can sing, and the fact that she's dating Wayne Bridge (a player I used to cherish but now I'm very "eh" about, basic #ChelseascumDNA get over it) are automatic gamebreakers. But... girl is stunning. She was always pretty little Francesca in S Club Juniors and with long hair, but the short hair just really brings out her cheekbones, eyes, and general gorgeousness. She's had a pixie cut done recently which looks amazing, although I do prefer this older cut. Girl has some of the most photogenic features I've ever seen, and were I an artist, I would be devoting time trying to draw her, she's that  stunning.

Agree with my choices? Disagree? Think I need to train?

Book review: MELTDOWN (Ben Elton)

Pride, as we all know, comes before a fall, and nothing epitomizes this better than the recent financial crisis, wherein ill-advised gambles made by bankers and a hubbub of lending loans for people who weren’t ready to buy a house came together in the mother of all hubrises. Ben Elton uses the credit crisis as the backdrop to his book, wherein a group of University friends who have all lucked out – to varying degrees – in their following life choices find that none of them are untouchable from the financial woes of the world.

At the centre of the story is London investment banker Jimmy Corby, an affable, happy-go-lucky man who fell into his trading job with the touch of good fortune that had accompanied him in almost every other step of his life, including meeting his ditzy, well-meaning wife Monica, without whom, it is generally agreed that Corby would have spiralled into the descending spiral of a heart attack or crack addiction. 

His old Uni mates, which include fellow banker Rupert, who carries his craft out with much more of a sneering veneer than Jim, Dave, an established architect, Henry, a self-conscious political activist and Lizzie and Robbo, a married couple, amongst whom she is the frontline of a popular food company that caters for upmarket events and he, mooching off her success.

The friends – and all their wives – have all been in frequent contact since their callow University days, though it is noted that their friendship has barely been tested, such is the cushiness of their jobs (all of them are comfortably on £50,000, minimum, their kids are in private education and they all have big-ass mortgages to match.)

But then along comes the financial crisis, and everything the main characters are used to, comes crashing down. Jimmy and Monica, with their three kids in their gigantic £7million house in Notting Hill, first have to let their nanny go, before facing the awkward conversation with the Headteacher wherein they’re told that as they can no longer afford their son Toby’s fees, they won’t be welcome there. Social satire is rife; the conversation between Jim and the teacher when state education is suggested as a viable option wouldn’t be out of place in a Catherine Tate sketch.

Before the crunch, Jimmy had invested in a road in Hackney with a view of having his friend Dave’s company re-designing it, making it more glamorous and bringing in some big bucks, but when the possibility of this goes out of the window, the street becomes nothing more than a popular squatting site for a local hobo called Bob. In one hilarious moment, Jimmy contemplates re-using a nappy on his youngest daughter Lillie in order to save 18p.

The fall-from-grace overtones could not be clearer, and Jimmy realising the error of his city culture ways is the ultimate in bolting the barn door after the horse has bolted, but there is joy and bathos to be had in his adventure.

Ben Elton throws in a few of his signature twists in the story, and with the unfurling of various friends’ economic situations, also reveals that the oh-so-perfect lives that each of the friends thought they led were really anything but – and how important their finances played in sustaining the illusion that all was well.

It’s very hard to be at the bottom, especially having been at the top for so long, but Jimmy and Monica are fairly likeable protagonists who we as the audience can warm to, even if some of their dialogues (such as the one when first deciding about what state school to put their son in) hint at the blissful ignorance that those who perceive themselves to be the upper strata of society have on certain life matters.

For the most part, Ben Elton tries to abstain from coming across as overly preachy and playing the blame game in his cautionary tale, and rather than pointing fingers or going for the banker bashing route, cannily points out that he without sin can cast the first stone; Henry, at the time of the crunch an esteemed politician, reprimands Jimmy and Rupert for their heady banker ways, yet he doesn’t hesitate to claim benefits on his second house in Berkshire – a wily nod at the actions of various MPs in the news currently.

The majority of the novel is written in his pithy, witty tone, but there is the odd line of writing that exhibits genuine emotion and does the impossible – has us sympathising for characters living in a mansion. There’s an uncharacteristically sweet denouement from Elton at the end, which, whilst pat, doesn’t ring any less true; it takes losing all the superficial stuff to work out what really matters in life.

Money, after all, doesn’t buy one love.

Grade: A-

Film review: SWINGING WITH THE FINKELS (Jonathan Newman, 2010)

Martin Freeman and Mandy Moore play an urbane married couple in London who find their marriage at a nine-year-itch. The frequency of their love-making is, we’re told – “once or twice a month”, and, witnessing the disintegration of the marriage of their close friends after the husband has an affair, leads the two to question the strength of their own marriage. They try various methods to cure their marriage – from her attempting to masturbate with a cucumber to him dressing up as a fireman in an attempt to instil some spice into it – but all fail miserably. Finally, the idea of swinging is suggested.

Mandy Moore, who was surprisingly funny as the sanctimonious, evangelical Christian teenager in in Saved!, gives another strong performance here, a capable blend of comedy and drama. Her acting in the cucumber scene was hilarious and she never veers into the “nagging wife” caricature at any point. At the same time, Martin Freeman re-visits the lovable shtick that suited him so well as The Office’s Tim. 

The supporting performances are all equally good, not least Melissa George as the mother who’s devotions, having swung to her kids, has lost her husband’s. The two leads have an easygoing, likeable chemistry that produces some charming moments at times, and the backdrop of London - I spotted Primrose Hill in one scene - gave the film - as it frequently gives films shot in London - a scene of whimsy and magic.

So the acting is not really the problem here. The main problem is the shoddy script and superficial depiction of a marriage in the danger zone and the precautions taken to try to fix it. In real life, marriages are rarely solved via some Love Actually-esque montages of cheesiness that can be summarised with a weak banana analogy and an over-arching "the grass isn't always greener on the other side" message, less so by some swinging, then the couple getting mad at each other before finally realising just how much they love each other and all being well in the end. 

Admittedly, the hectic-looking film poster for this film was a fair enough advertisement for what we could expect from the film, and in-depth insights into marriage was not one of them. But all the same, for the glittering cast, upbeat editing and potential for comedy gold that was available, Swinging with the Finkels was a very poor effort. The new millennium has not exactly been a fantastic advertisement for romantic comedies, and Swinging with the Finkels is another one to toss into the trash pile.

3/10

Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002).

Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is a bit of a loser. He buys pudding just for the frequent flier miles even though he doesn’t have any where particular to go, and breaks things in random bouts of self-loathing. And in his loneliness, he calls up a sex line run by some crooks in a nearby Califoronia town. And that sex line calls him back, blackmailing him for money. At the same time, he finds himself tentatively courting Lena, a woman almost as damaged as he. Together, they form an unlikely, and very sweet romance.

Punch-Drunk Love is dark and mature, most unlike the stereotype of Adam Sandler’s other work. But in a more dramatic role, the man thrives. Kitted out in a jarring bright blue suit and sporting a whole arsenal of odd little mannerisms, Sandler is very convincing his depiction of a weird but oddly lovable man who deep down has a heart of gold and only acts out due to desperation. Emily Watson is just as well cast as the kooky, jaded, but adorable Lena. Philip Seymour Hoffman steals the show as the mastermind behind the sexline con, with his self-important strut and devil may care demeanour. The supporting cast are all excellent, and we ourselves really feel the sense of stifling that Barry Egan suffers due to having so many pushy sisters.

Punch-Drunk Love is an impressive, offbeat, bizarre film that offers a whole whirlwind of emotions in the viewing experience. The music and script are sometimes almost distractingly random, but that suits the disjointed style of the film. Furthermore, the fusion of comedy, romance, drama, violence all plays out to be an enthralling little number. Plus, I’m willing to bet money that you were totally rooting for Barry when he defends his woman’s honour with a crowbar; I know I was! Delicately, sensitively written and maturely directed, Punch-Drunk Love is a punch-drunk masterpiece.

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.

The Apprentice, episode 2.

Second episode in, 15 contestants left. The participants are awoken at the figurative crack of dawn via a recorded message on a laptop. Alan Sugar tells the group of their new challenge – to market and sell a new mobile phone app. I liked this challenge a lot, in this day and age, a huge majority of people are fiddling with apps on their phone when on the tube, and there seems to be an app for almost everything, however weird or wacky, so it would be an interesting thing for the teams to do. Once again, they’re grouped boys vs girls, the ladies have a man advantage.

When picking Project Managers, Leon puts himself forward, although he has an agenda; in the last episode, Alan Sugar had commented that he wasn’t involved enough, so he wants to prove Sir Alan wrong. Several other men volunteer to be PM as well, but eventually it goes to a vote and Leon gets the role. The boys are moving along at a good pace and before long have decided on their app – Slang-a-tang, an app that gives soundbites of people from all over the UK, as well as over the world.

Things are going considerably less smoothly over at the girls’ team, where Susan gets herself into a bit of a mess when trying to pitch her idea. She says something along the lines of “Imagine I’m here, and you’re there. And I’m me and you’re you-” Needless to say, the team are massively underwhelmed with her idea and Project Manager Edna tells her to pipe down, which Susan refuses to do. When she’s finally silenced, Susan sulks in a fashion dissimilar to a spoilt child. It’s impossible to warm to the woman.

Time’s running out for Edna’s team, and finally they settle for the rather mediocre sounding app which gives out a range of sounds, whether it be annoying, congratulatory, or animal sounds. They call it Ampi-App, which is apparently a play on words, but I’m struggling to think what pun it is. Whilst the women drive off to get their ideas developed, Susan tried a bit of shit-stirring by bad-mouthing Edna, but Melody, who is sat next to her and practically draped in cheap make-up, isn’t having any of it and practically ignores her.

Could she look any more like a five dollar hooker?

In the boy’s group, four of them, Glen, Jim, Vincent and Alex cast themselves for the app, taking on a range of personas from cockney sparra, Scouser, Welshman, etc. The Wales soundbite is “has anyone seen my sheep?”, and the Liverpudlian one is “How’s your wife and my children?” which I found hilarious, but can see why people would find it offensive. Nick observes the boys indulging in laddish banter, not overly impressed, remarking he finds their product a little on the asinine side, “Unless I’m too old”

Back to the girls, their app is going into development and it really isn’t setting the world alight. Admittedly, the boys’ app isn’t the most inventive thing in the world either, but the girls’ one is dumb for a 13-year-old, let alone busy adults in a rush. “I think we could be heading for a bit of a disaster,” Susan remarks, and she is struggling to keep the glee out of her voice; one senses that she would take her team failing just to see Edna fail and get fired.

Overnight, the teams sleep whilst the computer boffins do their magic to put the ideas and components into the finished product. In the morning, the two teams work on their pitches. The boys team’s pitch is pithy and witty, albeit with a play on the word “app” too many. Leon, Vince, and Jim, suited and booted, get to the pitches, although there’s a bit of tension because Gavin clearly wanted to help pitch too. In terms of the pitches, they start fairly well, Vince initially taking centre stage, but at one point he fudges it up and Jim, cool as a cucumber, swoops in and rescues the pitch.

Jim is calm and collected in his pitch, and, furthermore, completely unafraid to address the difficult questions, which is that of taste; amusing as the boys team’s product is, it can’t be denied that it isn’t in the best of taste. There’s an awkward turtle moment when one of the men at the Online Magazine considering taking the app queries about the racial stereotypes, Jim denies as such. But what of the Australian man in the funny hat? “That’s just to show he’s Australian!” Jim protests. Er.

Over at the girls, Melody’s pitch is absolutely awful. She tries to butter up the company by giving them some stats about themselves; saying they have a following of 70-something-thousand. It’s actually several million, which the man isn’t at a lack to tell her. Fail. “The pitch is as good as the product,” Melody comments after she’s embarrassed herself, which just smacks of someone who’s getting their excuses in early.

The two teams then go online to see if their product has made it on the websites of the companies they have pitched to, of which there are three in total. The boys make it onto two of them, the girls, the remaining one, however, the website that they made it onto has a substantially bigger following than the other two.
The two teams then head to a technology expo , in which there are 500 bloggers, twitterers and technology experts, eagerly awaiting to hear about the two apps that the teams have on offer. Edna delivers the talk as if she’s selling some groundbreaking product, but from the reaction of the audience as well as the boys, who can scarcely believe their good luck, it isn’t that great. More pertinently, Edna fails to explain to the audience how and where to download the app from, which is, needless to say, quite a big deal.

The boys don’t make such a mistake, and their talk, in which two of the men have dressed up and take to their roles jovially, engages the audience a lot more. One dresses up as a Scouser, the other, a Cockney, and judging from the reaction of the audience, they’re loving it. The boys crank up the charm offensive by offering the audience doughnuts in return for downloading their app, which they show the crowd how to do.

So, all signs would seem to point to a resounding boys team success. However, it’s the figures that do the talking, and, in the boardroom, Karen and Nick are the ones with the figures. And, bombshell of bombshells, because the women come out triumphant winners, with 10,667 downloads, in the face of just 3,951 downloads for the boys. So that horrid, horrid women’s group, headed by the massively unlikable Edna and the two even more infuriating Melody and Susan, are treated to a delicious meal cooked especially for them. “Is that… victory I taste?” Melody asks, smugly. Urgh.

Back in the boardroom, the boys are as shocked as we the audience are to their failing. They had far more team rapport than the women from the start, I personally preferred their product (though an app that rates how smelly your faeces is would be more useful than the piece of crap the women came up with), and their pitches were more intelligent. But, humanity is an odd, odd thing, and the masses went with the women’s monstrosity. In the boardroom, the boys are in a hurry to lay blame with each other. Jim explains that he thinks the failing occurred when they didn’t get the deal with the bigger magazine, but Alan Sugar questions that even if they had gotten it, would their product have been downloaded anyway, as, whilst popular in the UK, it lacked global appeal. The boy’s Achilles heel in this challenge, I think, was their naivety.

Anyway, Leon, as project manager, has two pick two more people to bring into the boardroom with him. He contemplates picking Jim, which I think is an awful idea, and Jim also knows it, and isn’t afraid to defend himself, and that he does, vociferously. So Leon changes his mind, and goes with Alex and Glen. It was Glen’s idea for the project, and he picks Alex because he felt that Alex shirked his responsibilities. In the boardroom, Alex gets bold and bigger than life in fighting his own corner, but the wool isn’t pulled over Sir Alan’s eyes. He figures Alex, rightfully, I feel, meaning that Leon and Glen get to go back to the house, to live another day. App-solutely fabulous!