Film and Theatre Lover!
I really hope you aren’t reading this post on 2nd February for the second or one hundredth time! I wish I had thought about a post like this earlier though, especially considering my daily quote calendar had the following on it . . .
Over the weekend I have booked up to head to New York in July for my birthday. It has been a pretty long time since my last trip there so I am very much looking forward to it. In the build up and celebration of booking thought it was only right for New York, New York to be the Musical moment today!
I will be looking to see a few shows on Broadway, if I can figure out how to find cheaper tickets as the prices are so high is unreal!
I am also going to visit film related places so if you can think of any please let me know, Katz Deli from When Harry Met Sally is certainly one place I want to go!
As expected I totally loved La La Land, although I was a little bit scared that I might have been disappointed with my total love for musicals. As you will already know if you follow my blog I am very big on not only movie musicals but also going to the Theatre and have seen a lot of musicals on stage.
I am therefore a little bit annoyed and sick of people saying that La La Land has saved the musical genre, as we have actually had some fantastic musicals released to film in the past few years. The problem is though the fans of musical films seem to be few and far between now. The hype around La La Land will leave people disappointed I am sure, especially if they don’t usually like musicals.
Don’t get me wrong though as I am happy that it will help increase awareness of the genre, but I really do think that we should be thankful for some of the films we have had released over the past few years. The films I have picked in the list are from the past four years. So while we don’t get as many musical films out each year, we do still get a steady flow. I have tried to vary my choices on different types of music to really help show that no matter your music tastes you will be able to find a musical that suits your tastes.
I guess the biggest problems seem to be the adaptations from more well known stage shows, as they seem to be quite tricky to do! As I guess some scenes, songs and moments just work better on stage and don’t transfer to the screen in the best possible way. Sometimes the casting causes issues as well, but we have to just deal with that as well!
Continue reading “7 Recent Movie Musicals You Should Watch!”
This morning the EE British Academy Film Award nominations have been announced and it certainly has included some rather unexpected choices in some of the categories!
BEST FILM
ARRIVAL Dan Levine, Shawn Levy, David Linde, Aaron Ryder
I, DANIEL BLAKE Rebecca O’Brien
LA LA LAND Fred Berger, Jordan Horowitz, Marc Platt
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA Lauren Beck, Matt Damon, Chris Moore, Kimberly Steward, Kevin J. Walsh
MOONLIGHT Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Adele Romanski
OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM
AMERICAN HONEY Andrea Arnold, Lars Knudsen, Pouya Shahbazian, Jay Van Hoy
DENIAL Mick Jackson, Gary Foster, Russ Krasnoff, David Hare
FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM David Yates, J.K. Rowling, David Heyman, Steve Kloves, Lionel Wigram
I, DANIEL BLAKE Ken Loach, Rebecca O’Brien, Paul Laverty
NOTES ON BLINDNESS Peter Middleton, James Spinney, Mike Brett, Jo-Jo Ellison, Steve Jamison
UNDER THE SHADOW Babak Anvari, Emily Leo, Oliver Roskill, Lucan Toh
I thought I would put together a new list this year for what I saw in 2016 (here) with the standout female performances of the year, this is going to combine the whole leading and supporting roles. Just what I have been really impressed with!
Let’s take a look at who made the list . . . Continue reading “Top 25 – Female Performances in 2016”
A little late getting this post out due to the end of year posts! A very busy month at the cinema although I do expect this month to be the busiest ever!
I thought it would also be a great idea to highlight the amazing value for money a Cineworld Unlimted Card is at £17.40 per month and seeing eight films that meant I paid £2.17 for each film!
I managed to see the following films:
7th – Sully: Miracle on the Hudson – Review
8th – Snowden – Review
14th – Moana – Review
14th – Office Christmas Party – Review
22nd – The Nightmare Before Christmas – Review
27th – Rogue One: A Star Wars Story – Review
29th – Why Him? – Review
29th – Passengers – Review
I thought I would put together a new list this year for what I saw in 2016 (here) with the standout male performances of the year, this is going to combine the whole leading and supporting roles. Just what I have been really impressed with!
Let’s take a look at who made the list . . .
I am going to make a monthly post from now on having a little look back at how many films I managed to catch at the cinema. I will also be picking my film and performances of the month!
I thought it would also be a great idea to highlight the amazing value for money a Cineworld Unlimted Card is at £17.40 per month and seeing six films that meant I paid £2.90 for each film!
I managed to see the following films:
6th – The Light Between Oceans
9th – Nocturnal Animals
16th – Arrival
18th – Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
22nd – Allied
30th – The Edge of Seventeen
My incredible Nanna passed away almost 5 years ago it was 1st December 2011, after suffering with Dementia for a few years. Which really feels like losing your loved one twice and in different ways. When she was moved into a home, everything had to be emptied from her house. Including some diaries she had kept over the years. As you can see from the above picture from 1953. She had written birthdays in and almost wrote in it every day. She was 22 and then turned 23 in the August of that year. I thought it was a perfect way to celebrate her memory by posting this blog post!
What I have found is that in 1953 it was a big deal to wash your hair and have a bath, which usually happened just once per week, this is documented in the diary. Visiting your friends to watch TV as not everyone had them, writing letters (my Grandad was in the RAF and used to go away a lot) and receiving them. But the main form of entertainment and well enjoyment was the cinema (and sometimes theatre) I am very lucky to therefore say that my Nanna actually wrote in each film she went to see. She used to go most of the time with my Grandad, her best friend, her sister and occasionally on her own.
I have therefore decided to turn this into a blog project and attempt to watch all of the films she went to see at the cinema in 1953! This is going to be rather tricky for some of the films, I am still trying to work out some of them as well struggling with the writing and then trying to cross it over with a film from either 1952 or 1953 as it gets later in the year, the only thing is though that sometimes older films were also shown. The fact that some films have since had a name change as not helped at times either! She did seem to get bored of writing in the diary by November as it had less in and hardly anything at all in December, maybe she actually lost it for a while?
For the first ever Sky Cinema are dedicating a channel to an actor, which better actor to do this for than Tom Hanks? He is impossible not to love, has given us so many outstanding performances. We now get the chance to watch so many of these great performances back to back.
From Monday 10th – Sunday 16th October we will have this pleasure!
Let's Go To The Movies 