Restaurant review: STEAK & CO. (Leicester Square)

One of the things that this new world order of social distancing and lockdowns has prevented me from doing, that I miss the most, is the weekends on the town I used to have. These Saturdays in London would usually follow an itinerary of going to a steakhouse, drinking cocktails and watching a film at the cinema, although the order varied depending on reservation and cinema showing times.

Film review: REBECCA (Ben Wheatley, 2020)

A young woman (Lily James), working as a paid companion to the snobby Mrs. Van Hopper (Ann Dowd) is swept off her feet in Monte Carlo by Maxim de Winter, who is out there holidaying alone following the death of his first wife, Rebecca. After a whirlwind romance, the two marry, and return to his handsome estate in Manderley.

Thoughts on five perfume samples ordered from FeelUnique - part 2

My obsession with smelling new fragrances means that I'm ordering five samples from FeelUnique, subject to their limits on ordering (one order of samplers per month).

Below are my thoughts on October's batch!

Thoughts on five perfume samples

The new world order that we're currently in means that shops are being a lot more careful about putting out samplers. In most cases, they're erring on the side of caution and not leaving out samplers at all. This makes perfect sense from a health and safety perspective, but I do so very much miss being able to try fragrances before you buy!

Graciously, a neat little workaround of this problem is to order five samplers from the Feel Unique website. You then just have to cover the price of the postage and packaging, of £3.95. You can use this amount to spend on your next Feel Unique order too!

The five I ordered were: YSL Libre, Viktor & Rolf Bonbon, Issey Miyake L'Eau d'Issey, Jean Paul Gaultier Scandal, and Kierin Nitro Noir. Aren't the samplers just darling?

My thoughts on the fragrances, from left to right:

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.

Book review: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES (Suzanne Collins)

Set 64 years before The Hunger Games, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is Suzanne Collins' prequel to her dystopian YA trilogy, a book series whose film adaptations launched the Hollywood career of that awful over-actor and recipient of the most undeserved Oscar win ever, Jennifer Lawrence.

For that reason, then, you'd think that I would dislike The Hunger Games books. But I actually really enjoyed them (I even enjoyed some facets of the films). The world-building exhibited in the books was extremely inventive, and, whilst it may have been a tad derivative of Battle Royale and various Roman and Greek myths, I maintain that most good art contains inflections of other artists that preceded it.

Central to the books was the first-person narrative of Katniss Everdeen, the tribute from District 12. Throughout the trilogy she displayed courage, resilience and resourcefulness beyond her 16 years, and her actions were underscored with familial loyalty to her more fragile younger sister, Prim. Collins shrewdly avoided painting her heroine as a Mary Sue, however, as Katniss was also stubborn, unforgiving, whiny and often downright unlikeable.