The hour and a half I spent watching The Orphanage in the cinema is officially the most scared I have ever been whilst at the flicks in my whole entire life. My sister was physically shaking. Sophie and Faye couldn’t even look at the screen. It’s terrifying. Yet amazing.
Another amazing movie is Lars and the Real Girl. The beautiful Ryan Gosling falls in love with a sex doll. It sounds really odd and creepy but it’s actually lovely and made Bam cry. It’s currently showing at the Cornerhouse, you should make the trip.
Here’s something I learnt this weekend – never bite off more than you can chew. You’ll end up in the middle of a dancefloor surrounded by people you don’t even know, competing in an impromptu danceoff, while the DJ spins Run DMC’s ‘It’s Like That’. Everyone will find it funny apart from you. And there will be incriminating photographic evidence. As a side note, if you do happen to find yourself in said situation, avoid challenging the super cool guy who is clearly a very good dancer, thinking you’re better than he is. You’re not, and he will only let you ‘win’ out of pity.
Wednesday, 26 March 2008
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
'What's a sociopath?'
On recent trips to the flicks, I saw trailers for 2 upcoming films, 21 and Funny Games. They both look awesome. Don’t believe me – see for yourselves:
21
Funny Games
21
Funny Games
Thursday, 6 March 2008
A.W.A.Y
When listening to this song, you need to make sure the volume is set to LOUD. It will make you want to shoot yourself in the head. In the greatest possible way.
Foals are gracing Manchester again next week. I'm going to see them for the gazillionth time. You should go too.
Foals are gracing Manchester again next week. I'm going to see them for the gazillionth time. You should go too.
Monday, 3 March 2008
The 6th Dimension
I went to see Be Kind, Rewind yesterday. I love Michel Gondry, but to be honest, I thought it was only okay. There Will Be Blood is definitely still the best thing currently showing at the cinema. See it see it see it see it.
On Friday night, Magee, Bam and Faye came round. The official plan for the evening was to get a Chinese and some wine and watch an old 80’s B-movie (which was called Forbidden Zone, and was truly terrible – sorry, Magee). We ended up drinking a lot more wine than one bottle, and invented a spoof chat show called Woprah Infrey. We filmed a couple of ‘episodes’, and although they’re funny as hell (we think so, anyway), we’re so shamefully drunk that I’m a little reluctant to post them. So watch this space. If I change my mind, you may soon see me playing Danny Dyer, and hearing Sarah (as fellow chat show host Shelby-Jo Jo Jones) exclaim, in a Southern American accent, ‘I’m the biggest thing on TV since Boy George’.
On Saturday, I met up with Katy at the very early hour of 5pm to buy cheap Aldi booze, went to her house, promptly drank it. At about 9 we rolled into the Night and Day Café to see MGMT. Our vision was a little off, as was our balance, considering the copious amounts of booze that was fermenting in our blood stream, but they were great. Luckily, they played Time to Pretend right at the start of their set, so it has stayed in my memory. The set finished late, so we went to meet Magee, Bam and Victoria in GC and then headed to Overdraft. I was so drunk by this point that I was falling asleep on the table, so Magee put me in a cab. Got in, my sister was up watching Alpha Dog, so I watched it with her (if you haven’t seen it, don’t assume its some rubbish ‘we’re so ghetto’-esque film – it’s actually brilliant) and then fell asleep where I always fall asleep on Saturday nights – the sofa.
Sunday, Steph rang my doorbell at 8.30am. It’s something I will forever resent her for. With my eyes half open, I managed to fumble into my Morning After drawer and pulled out the Anadin and lemonade. Immediately, I felt better, so figured I would go downstairs to see everyone. Long story short, I misjudged the steps and fell all the way down the stairs. Noone in Rachel’s room could talk for laughing. My sister watched in despair from the bathroom, while Charlotte just stood open mouthed, unsure if I was dead or alive. If I ever had to fall down the stairs, it had to be when everyone was in full view. I’m covered in bruises today, I look like a battered wife. Anyway, an hour later, while still stifling laughter, we went to Thomas Cook and begged them to give us a reason to get up every day – a summer break. We have booked to go to Greece in August. I wish I could tell you how much I can’t wait for it. The weather in this country is probably the only thing I hate about it, but it’s so bad that it could be a major force in the increase in suicide rates. The thought of a week in the sun, by the beach, with a gazillion bars all around me is the perfect cure for the ‘it’s Monday morning in Manchester, and it’s fucking snowing’ blues.
Glastonbury update – if you haven’t registered yet, you have 2 weeks left. Get it done!
On Friday night, Magee, Bam and Faye came round. The official plan for the evening was to get a Chinese and some wine and watch an old 80’s B-movie (which was called Forbidden Zone, and was truly terrible – sorry, Magee). We ended up drinking a lot more wine than one bottle, and invented a spoof chat show called Woprah Infrey. We filmed a couple of ‘episodes’, and although they’re funny as hell (we think so, anyway), we’re so shamefully drunk that I’m a little reluctant to post them. So watch this space. If I change my mind, you may soon see me playing Danny Dyer, and hearing Sarah (as fellow chat show host Shelby-Jo Jo Jones) exclaim, in a Southern American accent, ‘I’m the biggest thing on TV since Boy George’.
On Saturday, I met up with Katy at the very early hour of 5pm to buy cheap Aldi booze, went to her house, promptly drank it. At about 9 we rolled into the Night and Day Café to see MGMT. Our vision was a little off, as was our balance, considering the copious amounts of booze that was fermenting in our blood stream, but they were great. Luckily, they played Time to Pretend right at the start of their set, so it has stayed in my memory. The set finished late, so we went to meet Magee, Bam and Victoria in GC and then headed to Overdraft. I was so drunk by this point that I was falling asleep on the table, so Magee put me in a cab. Got in, my sister was up watching Alpha Dog, so I watched it with her (if you haven’t seen it, don’t assume its some rubbish ‘we’re so ghetto’-esque film – it’s actually brilliant) and then fell asleep where I always fall asleep on Saturday nights – the sofa.
Sunday, Steph rang my doorbell at 8.30am. It’s something I will forever resent her for. With my eyes half open, I managed to fumble into my Morning After drawer and pulled out the Anadin and lemonade. Immediately, I felt better, so figured I would go downstairs to see everyone. Long story short, I misjudged the steps and fell all the way down the stairs. Noone in Rachel’s room could talk for laughing. My sister watched in despair from the bathroom, while Charlotte just stood open mouthed, unsure if I was dead or alive. If I ever had to fall down the stairs, it had to be when everyone was in full view. I’m covered in bruises today, I look like a battered wife. Anyway, an hour later, while still stifling laughter, we went to Thomas Cook and begged them to give us a reason to get up every day – a summer break. We have booked to go to Greece in August. I wish I could tell you how much I can’t wait for it. The weather in this country is probably the only thing I hate about it, but it’s so bad that it could be a major force in the increase in suicide rates. The thought of a week in the sun, by the beach, with a gazillion bars all around me is the perfect cure for the ‘it’s Monday morning in Manchester, and it’s fucking snowing’ blues.
Glastonbury update – if you haven’t registered yet, you have 2 weeks left. Get it done!
Friday, 29 February 2008
There's something strange in the neighbourhood
I’ve just heard word that the drummer from Vampire Weekend (my new favourite band – ) was hit by a car in London last night and is in hospital with head injuries. Poor bastard. At least his healthcare will be free.
Last night, I had a séance. Well, tried to. Looks like I don’t have the powers within me to channel the spirits of the dead, because fuck all happened. Maybe my new house just isn’t haunted. I grew up in a haunted house, and even though nothing much happened to me post-childhood, it was still a damn eerie house. It just has this atmosphere. The landing is always cold. You’d never stay in it alone and if you did, you had all the lights on. My new house isn’t like that at all. It’s very calm. The only thing that scares us is the constant rumblings in the alley behind the kitchen, leaving us all frozen in our seats looking nervously at one another, wondering what exactly we would do should some maniac climb in through the window. Once, said maniac did climb in through Rachel’s bedroom window. She shot out of bed, told him to fuck off and he did. Crazy days.
So anyway, back to the ghosts. Before I get into it, I’ll clear this up first – yes, I am an atheist, and many people question how an atheist can believe in ghosts, as surely that means there is afterlife, but I read into a lot of Buddhist teachings, which, in a nutshell, state that each body is inhabited by a soul, and as much as I believe that when people die their body will simply perish, the soul can live on. Either in the spirit world or through reincarnation. Besides, there is no way I could have grown up in my parent’s house and not believe in ghosts. They were in every bloody room.
The first one I saw was a little boy called Peter. At first my mum though he was my imaginary friend until one day she said she saw me talking to him and my eyes were fixated on something, as if it were right infront of me, even though to her there was nothing there. I vaguely remember him. We used to play in the living room. I asked him to come to school with me one day and as soon as we left the front door I lost him, and then never saw him again. Then there were the scarier incidents, as we got a little older, like the tape player constantly stopping, rewinding, fast forwarding, all by itself. The night that I was lying in bed and heard a pen rolling across a flat surface, then stop, then roll back again. The night I went to bed with my curtains closed and woke up with them having been pulled open. The weird black figure that ran past the window when me, Vik and Rach were watching a DVD (we looked outside, there was noone there). The time Vik was playing with her new camera phone and took a photo of the landing; when she looked at the picture there was this grey figure at the top of the stairs. The best occurrence ever though, happened to my dad. The only non-believer, oddly enough. Me and Vik had gone on a night out afew years ago, and my dad woke up at about midnight as my Mum has gotten up to go to the bathroom. He saw what he thought was me, standing at their bedroom door waiting for Mum, and then ‘I’ followed her down the landing. He thought nothing of it and went to sleep. The next day he asked me if I was ill.
‘What?’
‘Were you sick last night?’
‘No? What are you on about?’
‘You, last night, in our room. You went with your mother to the bathroom.’
At this point my Mum chimed in: ‘What are you on about? The girls didn’t get in until after 2.’
Dad looked puzzled but said nothing. It was only down to me and Vik badgering him about it later that he told us he’d seen a young blonde girl in a long blue dress following Mum down the landing. I so wish I’d seen that. Ooh, I just remembered another one – afew years ago we were looking through a bag of old photos. There was one from my birthday when I was a kid, and I’m sat on the stairs with my friends and cousins. And then, on the stair behind us is this girl, wearing a very dated dress, just sat smiling. Noone has any idea who this girl is. I’ll try and dig out the picture and scan it, it’s super creepy. I should call Yvette Fielding, get her round. It would make for a killer programme.
Last night, I had a séance. Well, tried to. Looks like I don’t have the powers within me to channel the spirits of the dead, because fuck all happened. Maybe my new house just isn’t haunted. I grew up in a haunted house, and even though nothing much happened to me post-childhood, it was still a damn eerie house. It just has this atmosphere. The landing is always cold. You’d never stay in it alone and if you did, you had all the lights on. My new house isn’t like that at all. It’s very calm. The only thing that scares us is the constant rumblings in the alley behind the kitchen, leaving us all frozen in our seats looking nervously at one another, wondering what exactly we would do should some maniac climb in through the window. Once, said maniac did climb in through Rachel’s bedroom window. She shot out of bed, told him to fuck off and he did. Crazy days.
So anyway, back to the ghosts. Before I get into it, I’ll clear this up first – yes, I am an atheist, and many people question how an atheist can believe in ghosts, as surely that means there is afterlife, but I read into a lot of Buddhist teachings, which, in a nutshell, state that each body is inhabited by a soul, and as much as I believe that when people die their body will simply perish, the soul can live on. Either in the spirit world or through reincarnation. Besides, there is no way I could have grown up in my parent’s house and not believe in ghosts. They were in every bloody room.
The first one I saw was a little boy called Peter. At first my mum though he was my imaginary friend until one day she said she saw me talking to him and my eyes were fixated on something, as if it were right infront of me, even though to her there was nothing there. I vaguely remember him. We used to play in the living room. I asked him to come to school with me one day and as soon as we left the front door I lost him, and then never saw him again. Then there were the scarier incidents, as we got a little older, like the tape player constantly stopping, rewinding, fast forwarding, all by itself. The night that I was lying in bed and heard a pen rolling across a flat surface, then stop, then roll back again. The night I went to bed with my curtains closed and woke up with them having been pulled open. The weird black figure that ran past the window when me, Vik and Rach were watching a DVD (we looked outside, there was noone there). The time Vik was playing with her new camera phone and took a photo of the landing; when she looked at the picture there was this grey figure at the top of the stairs. The best occurrence ever though, happened to my dad. The only non-believer, oddly enough. Me and Vik had gone on a night out afew years ago, and my dad woke up at about midnight as my Mum has gotten up to go to the bathroom. He saw what he thought was me, standing at their bedroom door waiting for Mum, and then ‘I’ followed her down the landing. He thought nothing of it and went to sleep. The next day he asked me if I was ill.
‘What?’
‘Were you sick last night?’
‘No? What are you on about?’
‘You, last night, in our room. You went with your mother to the bathroom.’
At this point my Mum chimed in: ‘What are you on about? The girls didn’t get in until after 2.’
Dad looked puzzled but said nothing. It was only down to me and Vik badgering him about it later that he told us he’d seen a young blonde girl in a long blue dress following Mum down the landing. I so wish I’d seen that. Ooh, I just remembered another one – afew years ago we were looking through a bag of old photos. There was one from my birthday when I was a kid, and I’m sat on the stairs with my friends and cousins. And then, on the stair behind us is this girl, wearing a very dated dress, just sat smiling. Noone has any idea who this girl is. I’ll try and dig out the picture and scan it, it’s super creepy. I should call Yvette Fielding, get her round. It would make for a killer programme.
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
An Open Letter to Duffy
Dear Duffy,
After hearing about you on the grape vine for some time now, I decided to look into you further about a month ago. How glad I am that you did. Yes, your song are fabulous, but your talent is what is truly inspiring. I saw you on Jools Holland last week and you are so effortless when you sing; a true talent. You’re at number one, and are about to be thrust into the limelight.
Now, onto the more serious part. The last time I thought this about a new singer was when I saw a certain young female singing over the radio by the name of Amy Winehouse. When I looked her up she, like you, seemed shy, unaware of just how great her voice really is. Perfectly normal looking, a normal figure with long dark hair. Back to Black was later released and yes, she had started up a relationship with some heavy duty liquid eyeliner and ‘dabbled in drugs’, but much was still the same. I bought the album almost immediately as it was so good. And now look at her. So thin she may actually break during high winds, hair that is just plain ridiculous, eyeliner up to her brows, a woeful addiction to heroin and a husband who is ‘incarcerated’ (which she feels she has to remind us of at any given opportunity). It is really very sad, and what with her being Queen of the tabloids these days, the magic in her music is seemingly lost, buried under the tittle tattle and rumours about her dwindling personal life. So Duffy, I ask you this – please take heed. Avoid the seedy clubs, the men who promise the world, the pedestals they will force you upon to make it easier to tear you down. Please just make your music and play your shows, and stay the humble Welsh girl that I saw on TV afew days ago. Be the example others can follow.
Emma
PS: The shoes you were wearing on Jools were killer, please let me have them in return for my sound words of advice.
After hearing about you on the grape vine for some time now, I decided to look into you further about a month ago. How glad I am that you did. Yes, your song are fabulous, but your talent is what is truly inspiring. I saw you on Jools Holland last week and you are so effortless when you sing; a true talent. You’re at number one, and are about to be thrust into the limelight.
Now, onto the more serious part. The last time I thought this about a new singer was when I saw a certain young female singing over the radio by the name of Amy Winehouse. When I looked her up she, like you, seemed shy, unaware of just how great her voice really is. Perfectly normal looking, a normal figure with long dark hair. Back to Black was later released and yes, she had started up a relationship with some heavy duty liquid eyeliner and ‘dabbled in drugs’, but much was still the same. I bought the album almost immediately as it was so good. And now look at her. So thin she may actually break during high winds, hair that is just plain ridiculous, eyeliner up to her brows, a woeful addiction to heroin and a husband who is ‘incarcerated’ (which she feels she has to remind us of at any given opportunity). It is really very sad, and what with her being Queen of the tabloids these days, the magic in her music is seemingly lost, buried under the tittle tattle and rumours about her dwindling personal life. So Duffy, I ask you this – please take heed. Avoid the seedy clubs, the men who promise the world, the pedestals they will force you upon to make it easier to tear you down. Please just make your music and play your shows, and stay the humble Welsh girl that I saw on TV afew days ago. Be the example others can follow.
Emma
PS: The shoes you were wearing on Jools were killer, please let me have them in return for my sound words of advice.
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