Terrible Movies from Netflix:triple bill

I had my birthday week off in february (I am 26 now and still in denial about it). Instead of arranging lots of lovely things to do, I found myself sitting around in my pyjamas a lot. It was like depression but I don't know why I would be depressed… I probably didn't eat enough… ANYWAY. On one of these days I struck upon a beautiful vein of random Netflix movies.

It started with They Came Together starring Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler. I had seen that this film was on Netflix and I knew I had to watch it because of the title and cast, but I knew it had to be watched alone because it would almost certainly be demented and not something to inflict on another person. It was hilariously demented. I loved it because it was an affectionate send up of Nora Ephron movies and starred Amy Poehler but I can also understand why it has 1.5 stars on Netflix. The film is basically an overgrown sketch – Amy Poehler runs a tiny independent sweet shop in Manhattan (New York is like another character in the movie!) and Paul Rudd works for a company called Candy Research Solutions (or something similarly sinister) who are opening a superstore around the corner. His job is to ruin her business and yet they fall in love. Does this sound familiar?

I would watch They Came Together again in a minute but I know that I would be instantly embarrassed if I watched it with another person.

Next was A.C.O.D. (Adult Children of Divorce) which starred Adam Scott (ie. Ben from Parks and Recs) as an adult child of very bitterly divorced parents. Amy Poehler plays his step-mother which is why Netflix suggested it to me. Netflix knows what it's doing when it suggests film purely based on Amy Poehler being in it. I watched this film by accident because I thought I was clicking on A Case of You (below). Carter (Adam Scott)is a successful restaurant owner who accidentally gets his parents back together when he's helping organise his brother's wedding.  I don't very have much to say except that I enjoyed Jane Lynch's appearance in the movie because she is excellent. And Amy Poehler because I love her face.

The final film I watched purely because it was called A Case Of You which I hoped (in vain) would be a Joni reference. This movie starred Justin Long as a frustrated Brooklyn novelist who writes the novelisations of terrible vampire movies. Like Greeting Card Writer in 500 Days of Summer, Writer of Books Based on Terrible Films is a job the character moans about but I think sounds awesome and would do in heartbeat. Justin goes to a café a lot and a girl called Birdie works there with Tyrion Lannister as her boss. Justin likes her but rather than just talk to her like a normal human, he decides to find her on facebook and become her perfect man, This is incredibly ridiculous as she is annoying anyway and it's the kind of ridiculous movie plan that no one would do in real life as it would obviously NEVER WORK. I know it's a film BUT COME ON! How could anyone think it would work? And if it did, he'd have to pretend to be someone else FOREVER or come clean about his creepy creepy lies. This film should be renamed MEN ARE CREEPS. The only bright points in this film were Peter Dinklege and references to Joan Baez. 

So yeah, I know how to waste time on Netflix and then drag it out by writing a blog post about it. 

Stuff I Found on Netflix: God Help the Girl

I watched this film one night when Paul had gone to bed like a sensible person and I decided to sit up late and watch telly. I chose it because the picture made it look like a bittersweet end of adolescence/one long summer type film which is exactly what I want to watch late at night. Plus the description said it was a musical by Stuart Murdoch from Belle and Sebastian which sounded intriguing. I pressed play, knowing it would make me feel sad that my adolescence was too boring to make a film out of and that my outfits were rubbish.

Here is an extremely brief outline of the plot:
Eve is in hospital receiving treatment for anorexia. All we know about her is that she loves music and has incredible cheekbones. (This is all we ever know about her.) She leaves hospital against medical advice and starts a band with a sweet nerd called James and Cassie from Skins. I say Cassie from skins, not just because the actor played Cassie in skins, but because she is playing Cassie from skins again AND the character is actually called Cassie. Cassie, James and Eve have a fun summer as a band but ultimately it comes to and end when Eve moves to London to go to Music College.

From the outline it sounds like it could be fun. It definitely featured a long summer! It had beautiful youths and music and quirky day trips on boats. It was promising. 
We even had Maria from the Sound of Music running along after them at one point:

Sadly the inclusion of a Julie Andrews lookalike wasn't enough to make me love God Help the Girl.

The problem with the film is that none of the characters felt like fully realised. Eve, for example, is supposed to be the main character and yet we never feel part of her world. We know she's Australian, has anorexia, and loves writing songs but we don't really see any more of her than that. As an audience we don't know any more about her than the other characters do and so we don't develop any of that false intimacy that makes it feel like she is our entrance point to the film. Instead of being part of her story it feels we are just creepily watching her. The entire film is through the male gaze - Eve is just a beautiful object that we gaze on and aren't given the chance to understand. There is no depth to her, like the person making the film doesn't know that women are fully people and have personalities outside what is immediately noticeable and attractive to men. Perhaps I am reading to too much into it? It just felt very empty to me. I found the choice to give her anorexia (or at least the way it was dealt with) troubling because it felt like it was used as a marker for her character-type  – beautiful, tortured depressive pixie dream girl. The choice to have Hannah Murray playing Cassie automatically made me, and I'm sure everyone else, think of Cassie from Skins and therefore another anorexic character which further enforced the whole thing of "quirky anorexic girl" as character type and it was a bit icky for me. 

I can't ignore that the film is madly, painfully twee. I actively love twee so think isn't really a problem for me. I am drinking out of a mug with hearts on right now, I wear unicorn brooches and I am very much a fan of the peter pan collar*. But this film gets so hung up on the twee that there is barely anything else there. It would have been much better as a long music video as the songs are the best part of the film anyway. 

All fur coat and no knickers. Or, all hipster hats and no insights.

*is this twee or just kitsch?

Pre-Christmas Christmas: 5 Christmassy films aren't actually Christmas Films

Apologies for the bad picture... I just feel like all posts need a picture, even if they are bad as this..

Full disclosure: I am listening to Christmas music while I write this because I am a hypocrite.
It's not yet advent and I am going crazy for Christmas. I have bought and started to use a Christmas mug, I've bought 2 pairs of Christmas print leggings and I'm on the lookout for things that I can watch and enjoy that are not technically "Christmas" things. Christmas needs to be kept just for Christmas or it won't be as special... but the same time I still need the childlike glow of Christmas joy to get me through until I've got an advent calendar and I've started calling each day Christmas Eve's Eve's Eve's Eve (etc).

Here are the films I watch to feed my Christmas Spirit before December when I can just sit with a tin of Quality Street on my lap and watch Elf 24/7:

1. Meet Me in St Louis. Meet Me in St Louis is the best of these because it's about a family over a whole year, so it's not really a seasonal film but it just happens to contain the most heart-warming Christmas scene in all cinema – Judy Garland singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
2. Little Women Little Women is Little Women, you all know about little women. The film has a few Christmases in and what would be more cosy and heart-warming than the story of the March sisters? I always stay up and watch it on Christmas Eve when everyone else has gone to bed. 
3. You've Got Mail I shouldn't need to have to tell you why you should want to watch this film. Nora Ephron, Meg Ryan, bookshops and some hilariously 90s emailing. It's all about big chain bookshops ruining the world and also love.
4. Frozen Is there anyone who hasn't seen Frozen? It is the best because there is no mention of Christmas (that I can remember) but there is singing and ice and sisterly love. Perfect for dark Sunday afternoons.
5. Bridget Jones Diary This film begins at Christmas time and all the important things seem to happen at Christmas and in the snow.

BONUS LOOPHOLE FILM: Love Actually. The opening scene is 5 weeks before Christmas and therefore it's clearly fine to start watching it already. But that depends on whether you can bear to watch it. You just need to get over: people calling Martine McCutcheon fat, the idea of Hugh Grant being prime minister, the whole creepy Andrew Lincoln/Keira Knightly thing and the fact that nearly all the characters are horrible, and those that aren't will make you cry (I'm looking at you, Emma Thompson, Laura Linney and Liam Neeson)

See also: Harry Potter and Grelims. 

Good Afternoon

I was supposed to conclude October with a post on the 31^st with a little update and a celebration of the end of my 11 hour days at work… I didn't really manage that and then Paul fractured a bone in his foot and I became a tired house elf for a week while I did every household task that involved standing.

So here's a belated update on my life.

In mid-October I went to New Market with some old friends to meet another old friend who now lives in New Zealand.

Here is the selfie I made us take in a windy multi-story car park:

We've all been friends since primary school and we've not been all together since Issi's last visit to the uk when we were 18. But the strangest part of the day was how natural it felt to be together. It doesn't matter that we don't spend whole weeks together at school, or that we don't get to see each other as often as we should, we all still get on and tease each other for the same reasons we always did. 

I think this day marked the beginning of the intensification of my Christmas excitement which has already caused me to buy and eat these:

I spent the weekend dressed in what Primark so beautifully (and rightfully) labelled a "smock" with my very sexy woolly penguin leggings underneath. This is how I intend to dress until the end of the winter.

Each month brings a new Lucky Dip Club box and October's was diner themed and contained this golden doughnut necklace:

I wish I could say that this is the only jewellery I bought this month but that would be a massive lie...

Here are the books, blogs, tv shows, films and music I've read, watched and listened to over the last month:

Reading/Listening
1) I have become hooked on Serial and listened to all the episodes so far within 24 hours.
2) I listened to The Monogram Murders and Little Face both by Sophie Hannah, courtesy of my Dad's audible account
3) I've been reading Carol by Patricia Highsmith on the bus into work 
4) Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay
5) I also listened to Lady Susan by Jane Austen from the library's awesome and freee audiobook app. Lady Susan is brilliant. Hilariously funny and, to use my favourite granny phrase, Lady Susan is no better than she should be.
6) She & Him's version of Time after Time from their new album that isn't out till December 

Watching
1) I've give the Gilmore Girls a bit of a wee rest, mostly because it's getting to the angsty bit with all the heartbreak and boat-stealing.
2) My friend from New Zealand told me about a really depressing film called Once Were Warriors and a work friend (who happens to be from New Zealand) lent it to me. The film is brilliant but incredibly harrowing. I wept throughout.
3) Paul and I have begun watching 1 Harry Potter film per week ready to watch the last one with my family on Christmas Eve. This is making me extremely happy.

New Blog Crushes
These are some blogs I've recently discovered
Ella Masters - Ella is an illustrator who sells prints and awesome bags and tshirts (like this) her blog is full of tips for creative people and lifestyle posts.
Miss West End Girl - Lynsay is a awesome Glaswegian blogger who wears awesome clothes and feeds my obsession with Scotland. 
Lemon Freckles - cute lifestyle blog written by Toni who has blue hair and lives in Sheffield 

Random stuff I found on Netflix: Girl Most Likely

**THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS**

I chose this film because this was the blurb: 'After staging an unsuccessful suicide to get her boyfriend's attention, a struggling playwright moves back home to live with her mother and two men.' and Kristen Wiig because DUH. 

I love any film that starts with someone's life falling apart and them having to go and live with their mother, so much the better if their mother is played by Annette Benning. I also love finding films that I have never heard of but are full of famous people/people from other things that pop up and make you go IT'S THINGY FROM WHATSIT!!

Here is a list of people (I remember) from the film:
Blaine from Glee
Nicky from OITNB
Phoebe's dad in Friends
Sadie from New Girl
Sophie from Frances Ha.
Plus Kristen Wiig, Matt Dillion and Annette Benning.

 
Imogene (called Kristen Wiig from here on because that name is so dreadful it made me sad and distressed each time I heard it) was a promising playwright in her young adulthood but by the time takes place, she has become the person who writes blurbs about other plays for magazine and lives in a very fancy apartment with her apparently very rich boyfriend. 

The rich boyfriend dumps her and she loses her job. Like anyone in a ridiculous film, she decides that the best answer to her problems is to fake a suicide so that her boyfriend will realise he loves her. Shockingly this backfires. She ends up rejected by her "friends" and back in New Jersey with her mother. 

Here I expected her to have some montages, meet some quirky hometown people and then rebuild her life, possibly falling in love in the process. This did not happen.

Firstly she gets home and discovers that her room has been rented out to Blaine from Glee and that her strange loner brother is in love with Nicholls from OITNB. Loner brother is also troublingly obsessed with crabs and has built his own metal crab shell for humans. 

She discovers that her whole New York life was a lie and that maybe her mother isn't as bad as she had believed. Her mother is dating Matt Dillon who claims to be a CIA agent. 

Then she discovers that the father she thought was dead is actually Phoebe's dad from friends and also a massive dickhead.

Finally, a scary guy with a gun turns up looking for a Matt Dillon and she saves her whole family by wearing the crab shell suit thing. 

My favourite thing about the whole film is that a) Blaine is in a Backstreet Boys tribute act AND b)it's no big deal that he sleeps with Kristen Wiig even though she is 41 and he is 27.

Fully, fully, bizarre and I loved it. 

 

 

 

Ruby Sparks

My copy of August/September issue of BUST arrived yesterday (or maybe the day before) which is obviously awesome, but a little freaky when you’re reading “I’ll start with one of the obvious joys of fall: fashion.” And “Fall is when we begin our slow retreat indoors.” on the hottest day of the year so far. Hey ho. 

I’ll get back to the point (yes, there is a point).

BUST features an interview with Zoe Kazan who has written (and stars in) Ruby Sparks, a film about a novelist (played by Paul Dano WOO) who is suffering from writer’s block and general life frustration when he finds himself completely captivated by a character he has created – Ruby Sparks. A week later he finds her in his home, having been imagined into existence. Weird.  Kazan says: “In romantic comedies, I find there’s a lot of male wish fulfilment that’s subliminal, or subtextual, or not blatently on the surface so they kind of get away with it. I just wanted to put a spotlight on that.” On reading this I instantly went MANICPIXIE DREAM GIRL! Because what is a manic pixie dream girl if not the idealised version of some 30-something male writer? Hopefully this film will be a way to look at the mpdg trope without bashing women who have fringes.

Snow White and the Huntsman

Snow White with her shield (that what looks like the white of minas tirith on) (from empireonline.com)

**** If you don’t want to know the plot details of Snow White and the Huntsman, don’t read this!****

I went to see Snow White and the Huntsman over a week ago weeks ago but I haven’t been able to write the review because I am a fool whose brain has turned to porridge. I spent a whole evening last week reading early versions of Snow White (all deeply creepy) but didn’t manage to write my Huntsman review. Here is my millionth attempt:

Happy Barbra Day

Today was just a normal bank holiday - too many people in the house, no proper plans, we've all eaten too much chocolate and the weather is too grim. I was feeling like a bored and sulky teenager until I saw that a GENIUS at the BBC decided to show Funny Girl followed by The Way We Were! I rechristened today Barbra Streisand Day and there was much rejoicing! 

I urge you to go and watch some Barbra films and worship her as well. 

The trailer for Funny Girl:

The trailer for The Way We Were:

Deleted scenes from The Way We Were (scenes that make the film make sense):

p.s.If you are in the UK you can watch Funny Girl on iplayer here