Breakfast at Spoons.

Wetherspoons is a very popular chain of pubs in the UK, recently I spent quite a lot of time in one of these in Derby, named The Standing Order. Which is a fitting name as you usually can't find a place to sit. Ever.

But anyway, the other night I may have, in the company of Boyfriend and two flatmates, gotten a little bit drunk on stupidly named, and coloured, cocktail pitchers and a substantial amount of JD and coke.

So the following morning I woke everyone up and took them to 'Spoons' as we have so affectionately nick-named it. It took a while to get everyone there as I seemed to be the only one with any energy left, we sat staring at the breakfast menu like genuine idiots for a good 15 minutes before we had any inkling about what we wanted to eat. Or try to eat.

I, unlike my then brain-dead companions, went for a classy eggs benedict. While my three zombie followers went for a plain english breakfast. Which I don't think any of them finished.

This being the first time I'd had eggs benedict I was quite impressed, I would have been more so if my eggs were a little softer but you can't have everything in life. Certainly not soft eggs at least. When we decided to leave we got outside and found possibly the foulest weather I have ever known to happen in Derby, which we often refer to as 'Derbados' due to it's unreasonably tropic climate. Not only was it chucking it down, but the wind was enough to nearly blow us off our puddle soaked feet. We ducked into a nearby Primark to wait for a little break in the weather. Which never really happened. We all ultimately returned to the flat wet, windblown, slightly nauseous and rather unhappy. Morale is; never do breakfast at Spoons after a night out.

Films I'm looking forward to.

Today I'd just like to list a few films I'm really excited to see over the next few months, I'm really into films and love seeing them. After seeing them I'll most likely review them on here but for now I just wanted to list a few so you can see what film I like and such.

Marvel Avengers Assemble (Always been a fan of The Avengers, Iron Man and Thor are my favourites)

Safe (This looks really interesting, would be good to see Jason Statham in a serious role)

Dark Shadows (This is kind of a silly one but I enjoy a good laugh, Johnny Depp looks hilarious in it)

Men In Black 3 (Because my childhood wouldn't be complete if it weren't for MIB)

Prometheus (Noomi Rapace directed by James Cameron? Please. I don't even need to explain)

Snow White and The Huntsmen (It'll be nice to see a better, less fluffy and facnyful take on Snow White)

The Dark Knight Rises (Because I'm a massive Batman nerd, as explained before.)

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Because I could actually see Lincoln being a vampire hunter. And John Cusack is on of my favourite actors)

The Bourne Legacy (Me and my Dad are massive fans of this series, I think it'll be really good to see someone else in the postion of Bourne than Matt Damon)

Total Recall (Not going to lie, I loved the original with Arnie, I think Colin Farell might not be the best to take the role but we'll see)

Dredd (Even though the original with Stalone wasn't that great the plot and ideas were good. Also I'd love to see some of it redone with the SFX we have to hand these days)

Resident Evil: Retribution (I'm a big fan of these movies, even though the last one was kinda naff I still wanna see them all)

Skyfall (New James Bond film, how could I not?!)

Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (I've been waiting for this for so long!)

That's it for the rest of this year, not sure where the money for this is coming from but I can always hope!

Tv shows.

Today I was watching some TV and I wondered how many American shows I watch compared to British. I thought it was an interesting point to make so I'd write it here. I'll also note the genre so we can see how I don't really stray from Detective series. (I'm not very good at naming many genres and some I couldn't figure out but I gave it a go)

AMERICAN: BRITISH

Castle (Detective/Comedy) Being Human (Sci-Fi/Comedy)

X-Files (Detective/Sci-fi) Doctor Who (Sci-Fi/Comedy)

The Mentalist (Detective/Comedy) Shadowlines (Crime)

True Blood (Sci-Fi) Torchwood (Sci-Fi)

Haven (Detective/Sci-Fi)

Falling Skies (Sci-Fi/Survival)

Dexter (Suspence/Crime)

The Big C (Sitcom-ish)

Lost Girl (Sci-Fi)

New Girl (Sitcom)

Mad Men (Period Drama)

I obviously prefer American shows, which I hadn't realised unitl I listed them. I realise most of the shows are quite similar which is interesting. I also left out sitcoms that have been going for longer than I can remember, things like Friends and Frasier and Scrubs. Wemight not make all that many shows but when we do I really enjoy them and think that we make really gritty hard hitting stuff where as all the American shows have a certain, fluffyness about them. Apart from Dexter. Dexter is amazingly dark and somehow has you rooting for what would usually be considered as 'the bad guy'. 

Another blog about films.

The other week I decided to watch a film called Suckerpunch. It was directed by Zach Snyder, being familiar with some of his previous work like Watchmen (2009), 300 (2006) and the 2004 remake of Dawn of The Dead, I expected the film to be quite good. And it wasn't. At all.

Suckerpunch makes you believe that the film is about a young girl named BabyDoll. It's not, it's actually about another named SweetPea, but I'll get to that later. We follow the life of BabyDoll as her mother dies and leaves her and her sister everything, the begrudging stepdad is enraged and gets drunk and goes after the girls. In an attempt to defend her sister BabyDoll picks up a gun and fires it. She completely misses her stepdad and instead accidentally shoots her sister. She is then taken, without questioning or investigation to a mental asylum where in her stepdad pays to have her lobotomised. BabyDoll spends the entire film daydreaming essentially. Instead of seeing the mental asylum she believes she works in a brothel, then whenever she is asked to dance or do anything remotely mind damaging in the brothel she imagines another world where she fights 12ft tall zombie samurai or Nazi zombies. 

This film basically drove me mad. It's like Snyder tried to make something like Inception, but on LSD. And crack. And pretty much everything else. 

Yes, the film is very pretty and the cinematography in amazing, which is common for Snyder. The characters are semi-beliveable if you think of them in the brothel level. And yes, okay, it is kinda fun to watch scantily clad ladies fight dragons and whatnot but I just cannot bring myself to enjoy this film when it has 10 more plot twists than isnecessary. It seems that with every film Snyder makes my actual liking of him and what he makes just goes downhill. Which is a shame after starting on such a high as Watchmen.

Reviews

The other day we had to read out a review we had written about an exhibition we had seen recently, having never written a review before I was really nervous. I tried my best to be neutral in the main section of my review and then add my opinion near the end as I thought this would look and read a bit more professionally. I thought I may have been a little vague in my description of the exhibition but then I heard a few others and realised it wasn't too bad. I tried to keep in mind the marking parameters whilst writing it but it was a hard task. I find it much easier to write about films but this does not mean I will shy away from a similar task in the future. 

I was really nervous when it came to reading it out because I often trip over my words and get ahead of myself but I didn't do to badly, I tripped up a couple of times but not too bad. I think it kinda comforted me that the rest of the class was nervous too.

Music

Today I want to talk about music and the recent songs I've been listening to. I really love finding new music and listening to all sorts of genres, I often pick up songs from TV adverts, films, TV shows etc.

Number 1 most listened to song in the past week has been Serpents by Sharon Van Etten, she has such a fantastic ethereal voice that she layers over in recording and the guitars are very reminicent of early 90's indie type music. Suprisingly this song was only released last year, though it sounds a lot older. I heard this song in the finale of TV show named Lost Girl. I'll post the song below from youtube.

The next is an album I've loved for a very long time, technically it's my Dads but I put it on my iTunes because I love hearing it. It's Hejira by Joni Mitchell. I'm absolutely in love with her voice and her slow, happy-but-sad voice and the way she plays guitar. I hear that as a child she had polio which lead to her hand being crippled so she has to play the guitar in a slightly different way to other musicians, but I think this is good because it lends itself to her having a different sound.

This is a song called Amelia, it's one of my favourite from this album.

The other album I've been playing a lot recently is Real Gone by Tom Waits. I've loved his music since I heard the track 'Dead and Lovely' in an indie comedy film called Wristcutters (worth a watch by the way). I bought this album just before Christmas and I intend to buy more. My Dad tells me that his friend has half of Wait's music on vinyl. That would be worth a listen, I enjoy playing vinyls and I like to hear the slight scratch of the needle on the disk. 

I'll post both 'Dead and Lovely' and 'Sins of my Father' which are my favourite songs from this album.

I really hope you give these a listen and enjoy them, I know I have quite an old taste in music compared to some my age but I just try to like what I like and not like it because it's what I should like at my age.

New cameras.

Recently I bought a few new cameras and wanted to share them on here. I bought a Pentax K1000 because it reminds me of college where we had to use these all the time. I know most people are inclined to say it's a terrible camera but I love it, I've never had any problems with them, they always work and my images come out lovely. I've actuallu had more trouble with the Nikon F2's we're encouraged to borrow from uni than my Pentax. So here's the Pentax;

I also bought a Polaroid Colour Swinger 2 Land Camera. I know the film is discontinued and it really expensive to buy any that's left but I really wanted to experience how photography has moved on. Also I think it's amazing that we have a camera that takes and develops the image right in front of you in under a minute. I'm really looking forward to using this for general purposes over summer and maybe even for a project next year!