Return of the Trews, the squad reassembles, and protesting

one.
Maddie from Dinner with Maddie launched her new Podcast series and from the first episode, I'm already loving it - talking about feminism, beauty and even Kim Kardashian? You can't really go wrong - listen to it here! :-)

two.
I watched Bridget Jones' Diary with a couple of my house mates and I just wanted to turn to you guys and ask, out of Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, who do you think is more attractive? We were all quite divided, whilst I love Colin Firth, I'm definitely more of a Hugh Grant girl (especially in the first film with his floppy hair)

three.
Very happy to hear that Russell Brand's Trews are returning to YouTube. Whilst I don't agree with everything he says or does, I do really enjoy the Trews and I've really missed watching them.



four.
Doctors has been so good at the moment! If you don't know what it is, it's a daytime soap on BBC about Doctors - it's the only soap I can tolerate, but it's been so juicy right now, in the saddest way but it's been so so good.

five.
My friends from home came to Brighton to visit me and it was so much fun - one thing I learned, do not buy £3 rosé, you can get a lot of alcohol on the cheap but don't skimp on the rosé.

six.
I've been doing more vegan baking and I made some cookies (which I thought were rather nice and so did my house mates) so I shall hopefully get a recipe up for them on the blog soon!

seven.
I went to the demo in London against tuition fees and actually made it into the Guardian, excitedly told everyone, then I was removed from the article just a few hours later (just my luck) but I did manage to screenshot it - my glorious 2 hours of fame.

eight.
I've become really obsessed with the band Screaming Peaches - I think I discovered the song Sad Kid on a Spotify playlist and proceeded to listen to basically everything they've done, really top notch. Sort of The 1975/Arctic Monkeys kinda vibe?

nine.
Speaking of being obsessed with music, I've been really into Elvis Costello & The Attractions too - I literally listened to Oliver's Army for about 3 hours on repeat!

ten.
I've come back to London for my reading week to spend time with the family and for birthday celebrations (yet to come, it's on the 10th if you want to give me virtual gifts) - quite the journey to get here though, my trains kept getting cancelled so I was about an hour and a half later than I originally was meant to be!

How have the past couple of weeks been for you?

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What I've been watching #5

Since I've been off school from exams I've been filling up my time with . . well nothing, to be honest. I don't know what to do with myself (although I'm finally getting into Orange is the New Black) but I've found time to watch a few new films, and we have a mix of modern and classic films so there's something here for everybody so give it a gander and tell me your thoughts!

GET HIM TO THE GREEK (2010)

★★★

Get Him to the Greek is the story of an executive at a record company called Aaron Hill, played by Jonah Hill, who gets given an assignment to escort rock legend Andlous Snow, played by Russell Brand, to L.A's Greek Theatre for the first stop on his comeback tour. However, Andlous is constantly off his face on drugs and is being a generally irritating rock star making the whole procedure rather bothersome, as well as trying to win back his ex. The film generally follows Andlous making Aaron's life a lot more difficult.

Me and my friends watched this in the middle of a break from history revision because we all quite like Russell Brand and were in the mood for a comedy. It's definitely enjoyable, Russell Brand and Jonah Hill was never going to be a bad combination so it was inevitably going to be enjoyable. It was a light comedy, a bit of film fluff if you will, so it was enjoyable but I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again and it's not one of those must-see films, but there were a few laugh out loud moments - my favourite being 'this is not an appropriate time to say namaste', which I had seen on Tumblr and Twitter a few times but I didn't know it was from this so it was nice to have the connection made!

RENT (2005)

★★★★

Rent is a musical set in the 90s about a group of friends in New York who are experiencing issues to do with their love life, careers and AIDs. Mark, an aspiring filmmaker, and Roger, an HIV-positive musician, are struggling to make ends meet and pay the rent. Meanwhile, their friend Tom has fallen for Angel who's slowly dying of aids. So the film is essentially a musical focusing around the effects of HIV, struggling to make ends meets, and general love life issues.

I really liked this film! I wasn't expecting to because when I first got it and looked up reviews of it I saw a lot of bad ones, but I really liked it. I'm not sure if that's because I love musicals and 100% of the time I wish my life were a musical or at the very least an episode of glee, but it was very enjoyable. The songs were enjoyable, the cast was great - I have to congratulate them on the amazing POC representation, I know that won't mean much to some people but as a POC it's always great to see a lot of representation in a film. Also, Indina Menzel was in it and I love love love her. The songs were great and I reckon I'm going to have them stuck in my head for a week, and the storyline was really touching. If you don't like musicals, you won't like this, but if you do, I reckon you'll really like this - definitely think I'll be returning to this at some point in the future!

TAXI DRIVER (1976)

★★★★

Travis Bickle is a veteran living in New York City who suffers from insomnia so he takes up night shifts as a taxi driver. He drifts from society and becomes somewhat of a loner. When Travis meets a campaign worker called Betsy, he becomes obsessed with this idea of saving the world and cleaning up the city. The story follows his trials in trying to clean up New York City in as violent a way as possible.

I quite liked this film, the plot was quite interesting and it was pretty fast moving but there was also enough time for development in the storyline. I'm going to say right now, if you don't like blood - do not watch this. There is a lot of mindless violence in this, but if you can get past that the storyline is really interesting and I think it's probably one of those must-see films. It reminded me a lot of the book (and the BBC adaptation made for schools, so virtually impossible to get your hands on) Stone Cold by Robert Swindells, which came after so I'm not sure if there was any sort of inspiration there but Stone Cold is a lot like Taxi Driver. Essentially, a pretty good film and probably one that any film enthusiast should've seen - plus Betsy's theme is a really beautiful piece of music, so it's probably worth watching it just for that.

MOULIN ROUGE (2001)

★★★★

Moulin Rouge is story about a poet called Christian, played by Ewan McGregor, who comes to Paris to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. He soon meets a group of Bohemians who convince him that he should write a musical show for them to be performed at the Moulin Rouge, which is a pretty popular night club. On the night Christian first goes to the Moulin Rouge, he meets a courtesan called Satine and falls for her, and she eventually falls for him too (after a bit of convincing). However, problems occur when the club owner invests in a wealthy Duke to help pay for the club, but the Duke will only pay if Satine is his. The story follows this love triangle and its twists and turns.

First things first, I don't know how I went so long without watching this film given its popularity and the fact that I'm a big film enthusiast - pretty darn cray cray. This film was pretty darn good. I knew I would find it aesthetically pleasing because Baz Lurhmann creates some aesthetically pleasing films, but I also quite liked the love story and the soundtrack was pretty bomb. Despite the fact it was set in the 1800s, it featured many pop songs but with orchestral twists (I love rearrangements of pop songs and when a pop song has interesting instrumentation, so this was pretty cool) featuring Queen, Nirvana, and Elton John just to name a few. Basically, I liked this film a lot and I think it would be one that would go down well with a lot of people (if you've not already seen it, I do feel like I'm one of the last people in the world to have watched this film)

THE SHINING (1980)
★★★★
The Shining is about a character called Jack who takes a job at the Overlook hotel as a caretaker, he stays with his wife and his son Danny who seems to have psychic premonitions, so he keeps on seeing things that are going to happen and they're quite traumatic for him. Danny's visions become scarier whilst they're at the hotel and Jack becomes psychotic to the point where he becomes homicidal.

I quite liked this film, it was very much about the tense build-up and the soundtrack helped this especially. I thought Jack Nicholson captured the psychotic part of Jack Torrance pretty well and even though I don't find films scary, he did genuinely freak me out and I thought this film was a great horror. I was expecting it to be a blood bath kind of film but there isn't actually a whole lot of death in it, it's a lot more about Jack's descent into madness and the worsening of Danny's visions. I did find that there wasn't a lot of consistency in the film in the sense that the scenes felt very disconnected and there were visions that Danny had that weren't explained or made clear necessarily, it's definitely the sort of film you'd have to analyse afterwards to make sure you get it (which we did, and we spent a long time looking on Google to see what other people, but it's a whole debate so you'd have to watch it and think about it for yourself). I'm glad I've finally watched this because it's one that I've always felt that a film enthusiast should watch, but I hadn't watched it, but now I have I can maintain my title of film enthusiast - definitely worth a watch.

What films have you been watching recently?

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Rad albums, phallic tattoos, and political YouTubers

one.

I reached 400 followers on this lil old blog and the thought confuses me a hell of a lot, that's nearly 4 times the amount of people in my year at school, what the heck (yeah I have a small sixth form but the point still stands!!)

two.

I've rediscovered the Is This It album by The Strokes - it's a consistently good album, and I'm glad I've rediscovered it because it's amazeballs.

three.

I went round to Isabella's to revise History with Ma'Suma and it was pretty cool, we watched The Other Boleyn Girl (relevant, it's the Tudors) and most of We Need to Talk About Kevin.. wow, we missed the beginning but talk about messed up (but also kinda great), we arranged how my ashes are going to be tattooed into them when I die, because you see, when I die I want my ashes tattooed into those closest to me in the form of a phallic doodle, hence the penis with my name under it.

four.

Bethan from the YouTube channel musicalbethan uploaded a video on dodgy sizing in shops (specifically in H&M) I've actually suffered an opposite problem and found that their sizing was far too big the last time I bought anything from them, but it's definitely something I've found in other stores and it's an issue that deserves a lot more attention because it makes shopping a lot harder and can affect people's body image in a really negative way, which obviously sucks.

five.

Rumbie from RumbieLove did a post about getting the right base for darker skin tones, and I just feel like this needs to be shared with the masses. If you watch my YouTube makeup videos, you'll have heard me complaining about my foundation shade a ridiculous amount of times, but posts like these are really helpful in knowing where to look - nice one Rumbie!

six.

I've recently discovered the app Dubsmash, and also wasted an immense amount of time on it - it's just so much fun recreating vines, totes #bantz.

seven.

Had a massive cringe because one of my Philosophy teachers from last year found my YouTube channel, and it was a really old video, and she didn't hesitate to tweet me about it from her school account. To be fair, she's a hella cool teacher so it's not too bad but I did spend a good long time cringing.

eight.

Russell Brand uploaded an episode of the Trews talking about the Queen's speech and he essentially summarised my thoughts about it, definitely worth a watch (as are all of Russell Brand's Trews)

nine.

Owen Jones has created a YouTube channel and he's just killing it, I already think Owen Jones is pretty fab journalistically and he's just generally so educated on political current affairs, but he's not at all pretentious or condescending. My brother described his YouTube channel as a better version of Russell Brand's, which is debatable as I love Russell's YouTube channel too, but my brother hates Russell Brand, and Owen Jones never told people not to vote so I guess he's marginally better. Anyway, I would definitely recommend giving his first video a watch about the direction Labour is headed in.

ten.

I have shared a few Button Poetry videos on these posts before but I've found another one that I just have to share, it's called 'Black Privilege' and it's just really moving.

How have the past couple of weeks been for you?

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Ten things and ten blogs #6

one.

I was looking back at some of my old videos on my YouTube channel, and I found the cringeworthy vlogs I did with one of my best friends a while ago, and it got me thinking that I want to start vlogging again once I get a new phone (I would like to buy a vlogging camera but y'know baby steps), I'm thinking of making a side channel for it though rather than having everything on my main channel - not sure though, please tell me whether you'd like that!!

two.
I got the results of my grade 8 piano exam that (I feel) I've been harping on about for ages, I passed!

three.
I reached 300 followers on this lil old blog of mine, I know that's not a lot to some people, but I'm still surprised that 1 person wants to listen to what I have to say let alone 300 - so y'know thanks for following us here on fashion, beauty and an existential crisis!

four.
For April Fool's Day, my friend decided to prank us (on a Whatsapp group chat) saying she had decided to vote Conservative rather than Labour in the upcoming 2015 election. I predicted this was a prank but she denied it initially, so we spent about an hour telling her why voting Conservative was generally one of the worst things a person could do.. for her to then say, I can't believe you fell for it. I THOUGHT IT WAS A PRANK, I SAID THAT FIRST OF ALL, seriously where is pranking etiquette these days?

five.
Cynthia Lennon, John Lennon's first wife, died and I'm really upset as she's my favourite Beatles girl. She had developed cancer and she was 75 but I really liked her, I read her book 'John' quite a few years ago and it moved me so much reading about her turbulent relationship with John and I grew to love her as individual outside of the mania of The Beatles.
R.I.P Cynthia.

six.
I had a lovely meetup with a few of my friends, as we usually do, we did a little bit of baking (see the picture below) and watched a Disney film, this time it was Aladdin which was really lovely although it's the first Robin Williams film I've watched since he died, so that ruined it a little bit for me. Plus it hit me how much Jasmine and Aladdin look like sister and brother, like I'm sorry if I've now ruined it for you too, but whilst I loved it these things were at the back of my mind the whole time.

seven.
Maddie uploaded a video on her YouTube channel about body confidence and I just thought everything was well said and it's definitely worth a watch!

eight.

I haven't really been doing much over the Easter holiday except for revising and watching films (which you can now see what they are in my new series - what I've been watching), but I've strangely been really enjoying revising Psychology. It's the course I've opted to do in University and I'm planning to retake one of my As Psychology exams, and I've really been enjoying going over the As stuff because we did a whole topic on gender and basically whether we're born gender neutral or cisgender (although that's not the word they use in the book) and it's just generally really interesting which is good!

nine.
I finally got round to watching the last episode of Glee (yes I got back into Glee about a month ago, deal with it haterz) and I cried just a lil bit. Everything I could've ever wanted to happen in the finale happened and whilst I'm sad that it ended in the series where it got good again, I'm glad they've ended on a good note and I don't think they could've done any more series. I'm just a bit sad because I started watching Glee when I was 12 and I'm 18 now, it's literally been there my entire teenage life.

ten.
I've been obsessed with Russell Brand's Trews recently, I don't know whether it's just because it's coming up to the General Election and what he's saying is just more relevant now, or whatever the reason is, but I've just been looking forward to his Trews. I had watched a few in the past and I remember liking them but they have been the highlight of my morning (as I've been off school the past couple of weeks, I've been able to get up a little bit later and have a cup of tea whilst watching the Trews, it's been rather enjoyable)

blogs.
Mermaidens
NikkieTutorials
The rawrdrobe
Behind these closed eyes
Hannah Louise fashion
Citron and Guavaberry
PYT
Splashes with fabulosity
Bluebirds & Bunting
Mouldy fruit

What's the best thing you've done in the past couple of weeks?

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