World Book Day

So, today is World Book Day.

Today is also my first blog post of 2011 so I'm going to try and make it interesting.

Because it is world book day, you may have guessed that this post is going to be relating to... Well, books.

Anyone who knows me will know how much I love to read, but unfortunately in the last year or so I probably haven't read much more than a dozen books.

A few years ago, a dozen books is about the amount I would go through in a month.

I'd love to tell you that the reason for this is due to my increased social life and the amount of time I spend going out with friends, but that would be a lie. And as this source is completely unbiased, I will be sticking to the truth (Historical Reference Number 1).

World Book Day is a yearly event, that was first celebrated back in 1995. Although traditionally on the 23rd April, we in the UK like to be different and so celebrate it on the first Thursday of March.

World Book Day is a fantastic thing when you're young. You get to attend school in fancy dress and receive one of those memorable £1 book vouchers, built to encourage us to read. But as one gets older, less emphasis is placed on what - really - should be quite a superb day. After all, where would we be without books?

For the last few years, I have done nothing for World Book Day. But this year was a little different, as my English Literature class decided to discuss favourite books and eat book cake...No fancy dress though.

In reality, this blog post has little point other than to add a bit of activity to my dying blog, commemorate World Book Day and despair over how little time I have to read now, due to the amount of school work I'm faced with.

Of course, I can't just blame school for my lack in reading over the past few years. When I was in Year Seven, I used to read more books simply so that I could fill up my reading log as fast as possible (ah, back in the days!), now; however, I always find other things to do, whether it be TV or skimming around the world of the internet, I simply do not read enough.

I aim to resolve this however! Even though it takes me months now to read a book that really is not /that/ thick, I feel it is important to have some time just to lie back and lose oneself in another reality.

So now, I'm going to hand over to you and ask anyone who reads this blog to recommend one book. Just one book that you think I should read. And I aim to at least attempt to read every book recommended to me before 2012 begins.

Happy World Book Day. :)

The Best of TV – But, Is It Worth It?

A rather different reflective blog post today, with a slightly odd perplexing question, heading today’s subject.

The question being, whether, the pain and angst we feel when our favourite TV Shows begin to head downhill is really worth it. Okay, so today’s post is going to be rather overdramatic, for I am, of course, imagining that TV has a huge impact on each and everyone of our lives, and that, one actually cares about how the stories are evolving and characters are changing. But, really, it depends on your emotional attachment to things, such as TV Shows. With some of us, when our favourite character is brutally and stupidly killed and we cry for three hours straight (I am, of course, not speaking from experience here…), one begins to wonder whether watching this same favourite TV show is ever going to be the same again. However, some of us will simply lean back in our chair and enjoy the fact that we no longer have to suffer the awkward moments where we’re watching TV with our parents and two grown men are playing naked-hide-and-seek (What will we do without these moments, ay?).

With a lot of people, TV is simply, something to do. It’s nice to be able to sit back on a Monday evening and have a laugh whilst watching The Inbetweeners (Sadly, this is no longer) or to catch up on the latest episode of Spooks with a cup of hot chocolate and the BBC iPlayer. I, however (as you may have guessed), am one of those people who really enjoys, and gets a lot out of TV – which is funny, seeing as I don’t really watch that much of it. Quality over quantity, I say. Mind you, I do watch the X Factor (Shouldn’t have admitted that, should I?) on a regular basis so I guess I can’t really talk.

With a lot of TV shows, there is often, too much quantity and not enough quality. They tend to start off brilliant, which is usually why another series is commissioned, and then start to head downhill. The first series is always the freshest, the funniest and ultimately: the favourite. So what can one do to ensure that a TV Show stays just as quirky, just as action-packed and just as brilliant, without going overboard and thus, becoming unbelievable (Unless, of course, it is Sci-Fi in which case – pretty much anything can happen)? Of course, I am not saying this is the same for all TV Shows; I can name quite a few where the first series was not my favourite, but as an overall view – the first series or first couple of series are usually the best.

Take Skins for example, pretty much 90% of Skins viewers will tell you that the first two series were by far the best. The storylines were better (After all, in the first two series, no-one was clubbed to death with a baseball bat), and the characters were a lot more likeable and easy to emphasise with, producing actors, such as Dev Patel who went on to star in Slumdog Millionaire. For me, personally, the third and fourth series ruined Skins – so one might ask, should they have left it there after the first two series? Did we need to continue or would it have been best left as a memory? Having a new episode of Skins to watch every Monday Thursday? was a novelty but by the end of the series, I was turning to 4oD a few days later, with no particular interest in whether JJ could actually get a girlfriend or not. Give me Maxxie and Tony back any day. In some TV programs, total cast changes can and would work. For example, thinking about it, I believe a new series of The Inbetweeners with a completely new cast could work, so long as the same writers are kept on. However, it’s always a risk, and with the aforementioned ‘Skins’, I don’t think this risk paid off.

Now, this blog post was evidently going to lead onto one of my favourite TV Shows: Torchwood. What started off as a five or six men main cast has now been brought down to a grand sum of… two. My front is simply that the programme has changed, and not for the better – or at least, I will find out this summer whether all those losses were for the benefit of the programme or not, although I highly doubt it. The first two series were made up of 13 incredible episodes each, every one of them brilliantly scripted and full of mystery, romance and action. At the end of the second series, two of the five-man team were killed off, with, as far as I know, neither actor requesting their character’s ending. So, we’re left with three main characters left. Now, I am in no way complaining about this, for Exit Wounds was a superb series finale, full of tension and lines that made even the less-compassionate folk shed a tear. But, then I ask the same question – Should it have been left here? Should we have left these two wonderful series of 13 episodes each where they were? Back

Unfortunately (Well, and fortunately) I cannot complain about the quality of the third series of Torchwood: Children of Earth for it really was a fantastic drama that kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. But I still don’t see what happened at the end of Day Four as necessary. Possibly one of the most likeable characters in TV at that time being axed off the show, and once again, not at the actor’s request, seemed superfluous and frankly, quite stupid. Of course, I see the other side to the story, for it was brilliantly done and certainly affected almost everyone watching in some way or another, but was it really necessary? As a fan, I will definitely be watching Series Four when it comes out in the summer, but the show has lost what it once was and I’m not sure I can see it being as funny, as sexy or as dazzling as it was renowned for.

But whose fault is it when shows come down to this? Is it the writers who ultimately decide what happens – who lives and who dies? I am a fan of Russell T Davies, writer of episodes of Doctor Who and Torchwood, and creator of Queer as Folk, however there is one thing that he said which grates with me, I do not have the exact quote (if anyone does that would be brilliant) but it was something along the lines of “I do not write with the audience in mind, overall – who cares what they think? I am here to write a story not please the masses. I write for myself and myself only” I find this to be a very self-centred egotistic approach to writing a story. Although I agree, that ultimately, it is Russell’s story and thus, he can do with it what he likes, sometimes you need to take the fans views into consideration, for we are the ones who watch, love and appreciate the stories he is telling us. One screenwriter who does, or did, do this is that of Marc Cherry, creator of Desperate Housewives. In the original drafts of Series 6, the character of Mike Delfino was to marry Katherine Mayfair, but after realising how much of a fan base Mike and Susan Mayer had, Cherry changed his mind and re-wrote it. Perhaps it would have been better and more of a challenge to stick with this first less popular coupling, and attempt to win fans round to supporting them, but sometimes I think you have to listen to your viewers, and that is exactly what Cherry did.

Ultimately, this is just my own highly opinionated view on what TV is turning into. And this all came, from myself humming a tune that used to be in Hollyoaks back in the golden years (Craig and Jean-Paul ftw). But please do leave me a comment expressing your view, whether it be similar to mine, or completely different.

John Barrowman: Set List and Videos

Warning: As the title suggests this blog post WILL include spoilers for John Barrowman's 2010 Concert Tour! Some people have asked for me to include the set list in a blog post, so I'm going to post that here. Alongside 13 videos which I took from the first date of John's tour in Oxford, a few of which I would not recommend watching if you have yet to see it and are planning on seeing it before 2nd November!


So the songs performed by John were:
Act One:
Get This Party Started
You To Me Are Everything
Viva Las Vegas
Don't Cry Out Loud
Unusual Way
Spiderman/Wonder Woman Medley (For this John got his dancers dressed up as spiderman and wonder woman, I did, thankfully, take a video of this!)
Memory
Cry Me a River - Jodie Prenger
Mambo Italiano - Jodie Prenger
Fireflies
Rain on my Parade

Act Two:
Conga/Turn The Beat Around
Let Your Love Flow (John's song dedicated to Scott)
Man, I Feel Like a Woman (One of the best of the night for sure. John's male dancers wearing pink dresses was brilliant. John could not stop giggling!)
Remember When (A beautiful song which John's parents danced to)
Proud Mary - Jodie Prenger
Nobody Does It Better - Jodie Prenger
So Close (Duet with Jodie Prenger)
CopaCabana (This was brilliant! John decided to test out his dancers acting skills by getting them to act out the song xD)
The Doctor and I
Rule The World
Let's Get Loud

Encore:
From This Moment On (Dedicated to John's fans)
I Am What I Am

What an incredible playlist.

Click here for a link to my playlist on youtube of the videos I managed to take on John's tour. :)

^ John being...well, John!

John Barrowman's Tour 2010.

So I'm not going to talk too much about what the tour was like/what was said etc, partly because most people reading this will be seeing him live anyway and partly because I really don't have the time!



In this blog post I will be stating the prices of the merchandise for anyone who wants to know, and hopefully tomorrow I will be posting some videos I took at Oxford, for anyone who is unable to attend JB's tour.

For now though, just the merchandise.

So merchandise wise, off the top of my head you can buy (in decreasing price order)...
Signed huge picture of John: £40
T-Shirts: £20-£22
Tea-Towel(!): £15
A set of Coasters: £15
Mugs: £10
Bags: £10
Pictures of John: £10
Keyrings: £2

Personally I bought a t-shirt, bag, mug and keyring! Pictures to follow sometime. :)

I also bought a Programme, which cost £10.

P.S. There are some adorable photos of Scott!
And if you have any questions about songs he sang, feel free to ask. I would post the whole setlist but personally I think it's better as a surprise. What I will tell you though, is that John's mum and dad's dance was wonderful, Jodie and John's dynamics are spectacular and John...well, John's fantastic!

John and Scott in OK!

Hello! I'm here today with an exclusive (we-el) interview with the one and only John Barrowman and his lovely partner: Scott Gill!

Complete with brilliant, extremely cute pictures, John's thoughts on the 'coming out of Joe McElderry' and general information on the two of them.

Here is the interview and pictures with John and Scott in Ok! Magazine.

Page One.

Page Two.

At the bottom it says:
Scott: Not plates. But I threw you against the fence once!

Page Three.

Page Four.

I still cannot get over the fact that Scott once threw John against a fence because he was flirting with another guy! Or the fact that John and Scott have a cardboard cut-out of Taylor Lautner... in their living room!

If there's anything you cannot read just let me know and I'll type it out for you... But personally I cannot wait to stick that first picture of John and Scott up on my wall!

Killers (No Spoilers)

So once again I made use of Orange Wednesdays and thus yesterday I went to see Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher's new film, which you may have seen advertised on many a bus: Killers.

The film is basically about Jen (Katherine Heigl) who goes on holiday to France with her parents after recently splitting up with her boyfriend. There she meets Spencer (Ashton Kutcher) a seemingly normal but extremely attractive young man. As far as she knows he's a contractor, actually he's a contract killer and similar to the film of Stormbreaker we see him going about his daily job, out on a mission with an impressive action sequence. Deciding he wants a normal life Spencer quits his job and settles down with Jen, marrying her. Three years later his old boss attempts to get him to go back to his old job, which ends up with Spencer and Jen being chased by people they had thought to be their friends and neighbours aka Killers.

Now to be honest there wasn't really much of a plot. Reading the plot above makes the whole thing sound a bit absurd, especially seeing as much of the film was Spencer and Jen being chased by activated Killers attempting to kill them. The genre however suited the plot perfectly, I'm more of a rom-com fan myself whereas this was an action comedy, yet the comic elements were done brilliantly through the occasional funny scene, Spencer's apparent paranoia and Jen's inability to use a gun properly.

A reasonably short film it was all a bit far-fetched. I can't say too much without giving the plot away but everything was very extreme and personally I found the overall motive for the hunting down and attempted murder of Spencer to be a bit of a cop-out and didn't really work for me.

Luckily I found the funny parts were very funny and there were some brilliantly crafted scenes. My favourite being the scene set in the supermarket when Jen and Spencer search for a pregnancy test (Whilst being on the run) and Spencer's sheer but humorous paranoia.

Not the best film I've seen in a while, but perhaps worth seeing if you like a bit of action (Lots of gun shots I tell you) as well as something funny. Plus, Ashton Kutcher really is gorgeous, and spends a lot of the film topless...

Here's the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND69q158IZI

6.5/10

Letters to Juliet (No Spoilers)

Finally my exams are almost over which meant that yesterday I had the chance to go and see a film! Firstly, the cinema itself was amazing. I mean, it's my local cinema but thanks to Orange Wednesdays and teen tickets we only had to pay £2.35 each, madness!

Now, onto the film review.
It doesn't include spoilers, just the basic plot line and obvious happenings.


In my own words, the film was based on the story of an elder woman who goes on a hunt for her love from 50 years ago, thanks to the 'Secretaries of Juliet'. Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is on what is supposed to be a romantic pre-wedding holiday with her fiancée. Unfortunately for her her fiancée is probably the most infuriating man you will ever come across, he is obsessed with his food and wine, so much so that he spends the whole of the holiday talking of "Win-win" situations where he gets to go to wine auctions and Sophie does whatever she likes. Romantic... yeah.

Therefore Sophie goes exploring the area they're staying in and comes across a wall where hundreds of girls come every day and leave letters "To Juliet". Four voluntary women then pick up the letters in a basket and reply to every single one of them. Sophie soon gets herself involved and finds a letter in the wall that has been there for 50 years. So what does she do? She replies of course.

A few days later a young man, Charlie (Chris Egan), turns up at the doorstep of the Secretaries of Juliet clearly not particulary happy about the fact that his grandma, Claire (Vanessa Redgrave), has received this letter and is now keen to find Lorenzo again. The rest of the film highlights Claire, Charlie and Sophie's search for the real Lorenzo in and around Verona, leading to quite hilarious results as they meet the maddest Lorenzo's on their way.

One thing that, in my opinion, was brilliant about this film were the relationships. Claire was a fascinating, lovely character who somewhat teased her grandson, Charlie. Charlie and Sophie's relationship started off as a mutual disliking which is absolutely full of sarcasm (and some great lines!) but as you can guess... developed somewhat. Now being a hopeless romantic I absolutely loved this film. I knew from the trailer that I would because it's a sweet story of their search for this man who Claire left 50 years ago, it shows the hope that Claire and Sophie both have in comparison to Charlie's complete pessimism and it's a genuinely funny film.

I think the message in the trailer just about sums the film up "The greatest love story told... is your own". Just re-watching that trailer made me remember quite how lovely a film it is, it's really one of those films that makes you feel a lot happier although if you hate romance kinda films, probably not your thing!

Can I also say that the acting really was great. I thought Amanda Seyfried was amazing in Mamma Mia so I had high expectations for this and Chris Egan was brilliant, I especially love it when foreigners use typical English accents!

Now, if you're interested, or even if you're not, here's the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP2V4mt4XWQ

8.5/10