Hello everybody ,
Not much reviewing going on here is there ? I think it’s time to make this blog a little more current and relevant , so I will be giving it a new name , new look and new topic ! (Note* – topic is highly likely to be baby related . Does the world need another parent blogging about their child ? Probably not . But you have a baby and then try not to talk about it )
Brainstorming in progress !
Until next time …
Hello everybody,
This will be a true test of the WordPress “Schedule post” function. You won’t find out until later, but by the time you do I will have had a baby. Yes, a real life miniature human will be added to our story.
Several things are going through my mind as I’m writing this, namely;
Mostly, I cannot wait to see how we do this. Our very own person that we can shape into whatever we want.
Hello everybody,
If you ignore Matt Damons’ questionable behaviour in recent media which includes colourful quotes exhibiting racism and homophobia amongst other things , if you ignore all that .. The Martian is not a bad movie.
It has the usual set-up of a Ridley Scott space movie. Key ingredients:
I should say , about 1 hour and 30 minutes into this movie my husband asked the very valid question :
Where are the f***ing aliens?
It’s not that kind of movie.
Instead, Mark Watney (Damon) and his crew attempt to leave Mars when their mission goes awry. The crew start to board their rocket (I’m sure there’s another word for their transport) , but leave Mark behind after he’s struck by a satellite dish and presumed dead.
Turns out, being struck by a satellite dish does not kill you and so Mark is left on Mars to fend for himself.
What follows is the laid back and often funny story of his survival. Using his background in botany, physics, chemistry and every other science (because he’s a man and he knows everything – don’t even get me started on female leading roles! ) , Mark manages to keep himself alive growing his own food whilst the people on Earth try to figure out how to reach him on time.
Thankfully, this space movie also has a great soundtrack for once. This personally made it 90% better for me.
I’d encourage you to watch this, even if you’ve hated every other Ridley Scott movie or indeed don’t know who he is .
Enjoy the weekend folks!
Two blog posts in a week ! Aren’t you lucky.
You can quite easily google what happened to Robert Durst, but for those of you who are lazy or have not yet watched it , I am about to spoil it all.
The Jinx is a documentary series about the case of Bob Durst who was a suspect in the disappearance of his wife in 1982, a suspect in the murder of his good friend Susan Berman in 2000, and a suspect (later admitting) in the killing of Morris Black; shooting him and dismembering the body.
Durst was tried for the murder of Morris Black but the good jurors of Texas gave a Not Guilty verdict after it was felt the defense proved he was acting in self defence. As the body was only dismembered after the shooting, the jury didn’t judge Durst for this . Apparently dismembering a body is normal when you panic.
Soon after the trial, director Andrew Jarecki decided to make a movie about Durst and gained an unlikely fan.
After seeing the film, Durst reached out to Jarecki and asked to be interviewed to give his own account of events; the Jinx is born!
What follows is a detailed investigation featuring interviews with virtually everyone involved in the case as well as Durst himself who is , in my opinion, one of the most chilling individuals I have ever seen (and that includes my 5th grade teacher ).
In the finale of the series, Jarecki and his producers come across letters written by Durst to Susan Berman. The handwriting is an exact match to the anonymous letter sent to the police after Susan’s death , detailing Susan’s address and the word ‘cadaver’. Jarecki confronts Durst with this information. Durst denies it but appears visibly shaken on camera.
Off camera, Durst excuses himself to go to the toilet. He forgets the microphone is still plugged in.
We hear him say :
“What the hell did I do ? Killed them all, of course ”
Durst was arrested less than 24hrs after the documentary aired. Jarecki is now reportedly under investigation for withholding some of this information until the show aired publicly. The case continues.
If you’re a fan of crime documentaries or criminal investigations of any kind, you will not be disappointed with this!
Happy viewing 🙂
Hello friends ,
This week I urge you to do at least one of these things because , in my opinion, they are all amazing . And because you’re here and my opinion is the only one that matters ; you should listen to me.
Watch ‘Frank’
An interesting little movie based loosely on Chris Sieveys’ character Frank Sidebottom who wore a giant fake head when performing weird music which , quite frankly (see what I did there), I did not understand. The story follows an aspiring musician who finds himself pulled in to Frank’s band. They hole themselves away in the woods to record their album and nothing much happens. It’s honest, funny, sad , and you should watch it.
Read ‘An Untamed State’ by R.Gay .
Ever since reading Bad Feminist I have been waiting for her next book to come out. I’m still reading it but so far so good. Be warned though if you’re expecting a repeat of Bad Feminist-y vibes, this is totally different and is about a woman kidnapped in Haiti.
Listen to these Podcasts:
Last year it was avocados, this year I’m all about podcasts . They are my new thing.
If you’re a podcast newbie , here are my favourites so far :
Serial – because who doesn’t love a good story about crime, innocence and an unfair justice system!?
Call Your Girlfriend – two friends and feminists talking about social media, being ‘diagnosed’ with menstruation, race, what an asshole the pope is , and everything inbetween.
Another Round – two friends and feminists (yes there’s a trend in my listening) talking about racism, sexism, popular culture, everything.
This American Life – the podcast that has it all , because there are over 500 episodes dating back to the 90s.
All of these podcasts are free online , otherwise if you have an ‘Apple-anything’ product you can also search for them in your Podcast app.
In other news :
I got to vote yesterday for the first time ever in my ten years of being in this country. For those who have not experienced it , it is mostly quite dull and there are no snacks offered in the poll stations (for anyone who was wondering).
Have a good weekend wherever you all are !
Worth seeing !
Joss Whedon has done it again with this sequel to the first Avengers movie and it is as witty and thrilling as the first, if not more.
The cinema was full down to the very last seat next to mine , which was occupied by a little girl who wouldn’t stopped complaining about how boring the movie was . (I’m pretty sure she was the only one who felt this way. I tripped her on her way to the toilet . Not sorry )
In this sequel , the Avengers team up once again to go against new baddie Ultron ; a super computer determined to destroy Earth. The same old special effect tricks are applied , buildings are blown up, destroyed, etc, but it doesn’t get boring.
There were some new faces and we get our first look at the new set of Avengers including the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Vision (played quite well but all too briefly by Paul Bettany) .
All in all, a great experience minus that annoying child.
Next on my watch list is next years’ Batman vs Superman movie . Why do we have to wait so long for these things?
In other news , we have started our next house project.
The mission? To get our cat to build a garage.
He’s doing quite well so far.
Hello everybody,
In true worst-blogger fashion, here are some things that were fun to do last week which I didn’t tell you about on time . And now they have ended and are no longer available.
First up:
Crepe Suzettes at this place:
The restaurant is located at the very top of Covent Garden overlooking the market grounds. I would like to say that we stumbled upon it by accident , but it was the result of one of us being fixated on having a crepe suzette and doing the following google searches :
“crepe suzettes in London”
“best crepe suzettes in London”
“crepe suzettes anywhere in London”
“where the f**k can I get a crepe suzette somewhere in London”
“show me the crepe , London”
Fortunately, one of these was a success and we ended up in Brasserie Blanc. The fact that they no longer served crepe suzettes when we got there was a slight blip in an otherwise great evening.
Also happening last week was Carl Orffs’ Carmina Burana at the London Coliseum, choreographed by David Bintley.
One of us cried at the end , and the other one of us didn’t fall asleep. So you know this was good.
Keep an eye out for tickets near you !
Wishing you all a great weekend ahead 🙂
It’s that time again !
Coffee shop time.
Honestly I’m not longer sure about whether I go to these places because I like coffee, or because I like telling you to go there.
Either way, some great and not so great experiences were had last week:
Double Shot Coffee Company
A cute little place in the middle of Covent Garden, but kind of to the side (specifics are small details here right?). It does great coffee, and great granola if you are as hungry as a small village of medium sized people.
Workshop Coffee Company
Thank goodness I was alone.
Workshop Coffee describe their coffee drinking space as the following:
With standing room in the front of the space, and a secluded seating nook at the rear, we’re looking forward to serving as our neighbourhood’s connection to the lively and discursive meeting spaces of yesteryear.
It’s a f***ing nook alright.
I couldn’t take a photo of my coffee because I didn’t have enough room to move my arms. They might as well have sat me down with an extra long straw; sip, don’t move.
I headed downstairs first to what I thought was an additional seating area but it was just a toilet.
On asking the staff if there was maybe another way through the toilet and into another area, I was looked at as if I were crazy to think that a coffee shop should accommodate more than 5 people (<– this is actually a real statistic, there were 5 of us there). Or maybe they thought I was crazy to want to go through a toilet to sit down.
If you’re desperate for this particular experience, head on over to Mortimer Street, near Oxford Circus. Or , they do have other branches elsewhere, which I discovered too late.
Until next time, have a great week all !
Hello friends,
If you’re looking for a light movie which you will forget the next day , go and see Focus ! It’s the shiny new movie with beefy Will Smith and a bunch of other people ( you don’t really care for their names do you?).
Smith plays a con artist who falls in love with another con artist, and then they spend the rest of the movie playing cons on each other. Are they having coffee or are they stealing each others watches?
There are a few funny moments but mostly it doesn’t make for memorable viewing.
My other Focus this month (see what I did there?) will be to start running again and to generally improve fitness from the last couple of months. My last steady stint of running was last years’ British 10k in July ; one week of not running turned into two weeks, and then eventually all of the weeks, coupled with more than occasional bad food choices. So I’m writing this down because promising to do something to a world of strangers is the first step.
In other news, Birdman basically won all of the Oscars and I’m pretty sure my review had something to do with it . I did say it would be the best of 2015 . So pleased.
Enjoy the first week of March and the beginning of Spring !
Hello everybody,
This weekend we went to see 50 Shades of Grey . I will not judge you if you un-follow me right now.
Books are always tricky to adapt into a movie. Good books are difficult . Bad books I’m pretty sure are impossible. Enter 50 Shades of Grey as the absolute worst adaptation I have ever seen (I kid you not , the movie ends mid-sentence).
I wished that they had thrown out the script entirely. Actually I wished I was watching a different movie altogether (it was a choice of this or Paddington Bear . I’m sorry Paddington, I should have gone with you ).
I’m not so concerned with giving this a proper review because let’s face it , the internet has been broken with reviews of this movie. Although I do feel I should warn you about what to expect from your entire viewing experience:
– Be prepared for a full cinema . Couples, mothers and daughters (yeah, I know), friends, individuals on their own, they’ll all be there sitting next to you through a dozen sex scenes. There were people sitting in the front row yesterday ; your eyes will hurt but you get to see a 70 foot penis ! Yay!
– Advertising is different for these movies (who knew!) . Up first was an advert for Durex pleasure gel, followed by a barely dressed model having an orgasm over 0% fat yoghurt.
Warnings aside, I have to say I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard with an audience. All of what this movie was going for was lost on us. We hated it, and it was hilarious.
On the way to the cinema though, we saw something actually worth seeing; an art school spraying graffiti (legally) on to shop shutters for an art project.
Also in the same alley was a new gallery which had just opened. The name I can’t remember so that’s not very helpful. Most of the paintings were over £1000, which also isn’t very helpful. Great seeing new places popping up in any case , go and check it out if you can ! (take the tram in to Croydon and wander, you’ll find it eventually 🙂 )
Review Me Vee 