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Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols by The Sex Pistols
Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols by The Sex Pistols
1977 | Punk
8.9 (15 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"That was a big album for us. Just the title alone amused us. From a sonic perspective, this one sounded fantastic. We were drawn to it because of the simplicity and the way it’s put together. It transcended punk, because it was such an important album for a lot of musicians in the 70s that were still hippies. Them boys had our attitude, and we liked that attitude. We liked the Clash, too, but we didn’t really like any of the other punk bands. But this album, even if it didn’t have the surface, the title and all the hype, you’d still think it was a fucking great album. It could have been a Metallica album. We could have played that album. We had a little bit of the anti-establishment attitude in songs like ‘Strong Arm of the Law’, which didn’t get played on radio despite being a single, because it was anti-police. We looked like hippies but we had the attitude of punks. That period was a melting point of different musical styles, and as punk faded we were there to take its place, as was the new romantic movement, which was the other side of the coin – we’d be doing Top of the Pops with Motörhead and Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran."

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Léon: The Professional (1994)
Léon: The Professional (1994)
1994 | Action, Drama, Mystery

"Léon. Or, as it’s known in the United States, The Professional. But in France it’s called Léon. It’s so weird because for years I’d always called it The Professional and then for some reason it switched in my mind. I mean, that movie was an amazing blend of an international eye within the context of an American… That movie still feels extremely international, certainly with its lead actor but also the way that it was shot and made. But at the heart of that film is this incredible relationship between a cold blooded killer and a young girl. And it’s still so effective and so powerful. I think one of my favorite sequences in the film was when the two of them are kind of like, it’s like this beautiful montage of their relationship as they’re, like, cleaning the apartment and these sort of things that they’re doing together, this really adorable, emotional relationship. And it’s all cut to “Venus as a Boy” by Björk. It’s such a great sequence and there’s such whimsy to their connection. And of course the movie goes into a really dark and awfully sort of tragic place, you know, and it’s really about a man whose sole purpose in life is to be cold and calculated, but it’s all about this girl finding his humanity. It’s just such a beautiful film."

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Stealing Home
Stealing Home
8
8.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
This was a quick, and fun read. This is my first Becky Wallace book, and it certainly won’t be my last. Her writing style is both captivating and unique and really pulled me in, as a reader.

Wallace’s characters, Ryan and Sawyer were so awesome together. The sweet chemistry that you instantly feel between their quirky characters is fantastic. It’s just enough to spark the romance between them, while not being crazy and wild. Definitely what I like to see in a young adult read.

Seeing Ryan and Sawyer work together to help Ryan’s dreams come true was another refreshing point to the story. I felt like I was right there with them, cheering from the side lines we call life.

If you like a young adult read that has just the right combination of fast paced reading, gripping characters, and sparks of romance, then this is definitely a 4 star book you don’t want to miss. This baseball read has me ready for summer to come and another amazing book from this talented author. Great job on hitting a home run with this fan, Ms. Wallace!

*I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley and was under no obligation to post a review, positive or negative.*
  
Contains spoilers, click to show
So as you'll know if you've followed my last few reviews, that I've been pretty obsessed with this series over the past couple of days. I don't know what it is with these questionable straight guys and the gay/bisexual guys they end up with but I've pretty much devoured them.

This one was all just a bit too strange for me. For these guys to be so obsessed with each other--well Gabriel anyway. Jared was trying to move on but one request from Gabe and he was running back to him like the man in love he was. It was rather unhealthy and maybe a little twisted. I didn't understand it much.

I kinda wanted them to get together but at the same time it didn't seem right. Gabe had a girlfriend and a baby from pretty much the start of the book and...just no. I like my M/M stories to not have children attached unless they're grown up (Or a certain book that I loved by M.J. O'Shea and Piper Vaughn :D)

This has been my least favourite of the series so far but I will read the next book in the series to see what it's like.
  
Music for the Jilted Generation by The Prodigy
Music for the Jilted Generation by The Prodigy
1994 | Rock
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I had an older friend who was hugely into dance music. He was a proper teenager with decks. That was all cool to us. The Prodigy were absolutely the band of the moment, we would just listen to them so much. You always feel like you're listening to a real drummer with The Prodigy, even though you're not and you're listening to highly processed drums, they always retain a sense of reality. To this day, The Prodigy have a sense of rawness and aggression and reality, and they have always felt like a real band to me, even though it's just a guy with a laptop and a couple of idiots jumping around. They made the world shift for me, and made me feel like I didn't have to choose between a PC and Nirvana, and that's liberating, knowing I could do anything I want. The music I have in this Baker's Dozen is influential, because the albums are all about breaking rules, or don't fit into camps, and that's where my band has always been. People don't really know what to call us or describe us, and that has come from having diverse influences. The best bands don't fit."

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The Mule (2018)
The Mule (2018)
2018 | Crime, Drama, Mystery
Verdict: Simple & Enjoyable

Story: The Mule starts as Earl Stone (Eastwood) a horticulturist that has spend too much of his life on the road away from his family, missing the major events in his family’s life. After he doesn’t cope with the changes in the market, he is left with nothing and looking like failing his granddaughter Ginny (Farmiga), only for her fiancée Mike (Freeman) offer him a chance to just drive.
With Earl taking the job, it turns out he has been transporting drugs, with Agent Colin Bates (Cooper) and Agent Trevino (Pena) trying to track down anyone smuggling drugs across the border. How long can Earl keep this up before he gets caught, even though he is spending the money on helping the community.

Thoughts on The Mule

Characters – Earl is a horticulturist, he has spent his whole life in this business, which has seen him sacrifice major family events, making him distant to most of his family. He loses his job and is given a chance to become a driver for a cartel, which he soon becomes the most successful in the industry he even gives the money back to the community he has seen struggle for years. Mary is the ex-wife that has finally become tired of the let downs that Earl has left the family with. Ginny is the granddaughter that has been promised money and doesn’t care as long as her grandfather is willing to be there for her on the big days. Agent Bates is fresh to the force he is tasked to try and stop the smuggling and spends most of the time trying to learn about the new mysterious mule for the cartel.
Performances – Clint Eastwood is a joy to watch in this film, he comes off like an everyday older person that just wants to be willing to help people around his life, even though he is filled with regret about his family life. Bradley Cooper doesn’t really get too much time to shine or do anything in his role, while the rest of the cast don’t seem to get that much time to show off their characters.
Story – The story here that follows a retirement aged, he has worked his whole life and ends up becoming a drug mule for a cartel, which sees him becoming one of the most wanted men in America. This is based on a real man that took this role because he enjoyed driving, he isn’t like anybody else they have worked for, but his style makes him harder to track down. The story does use the themes of regretting losing time in life which is clear in the behaviour from Earl along the way. We do have a few plot holes with how the cartel carry out their jobs, because this just seems to end, without any consequences, why would they give up the success they were having too.
Crime – The crime side of the film does feel like just somebody casually taking part in the drug mule business, he is only ever put to a test once he needs to decide his own future.
Settings – The film uses the settings to show the locations that Earl stops along the way, which does make him harder to track.

Scene of the Movie – The last run.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – Nothing seems to happen to the cartel.
Final Thoughts – This is an easy to watch crime story that shows just how one person can casually commit crimes without anybody noticing them.

Overall: Easy Watch.
  
Ready Player One (2018)
Ready Player One (2018)
2018 | Sci-Fi
Good family movie
I’ll be honest, I haven’t read the book yet (well, I’ve read the first five chapters, so I don’t think that counts). I took my two sons and husband to watch this, knowing my eldest (13 year old) loves computer games in all their many forms, my youngest isn’t far behind, and my husband, like me, is a child of the 80s. So, something for everyone! My husband is probably the grumpiest cinema go-er you’ll ever meet. He resents paying to sit in a large room with other people, when he could just wait for it to come out online/ on dvd and watch it in the comfort of his own home with a cup of tea! But what do you know? Every time I looked round to see his reaction, he was smiling (unheard of!!)! My eldest son kept pointing out all of the game characters, and my youngest was just mesmerised (there was a particularly scary part that I was a little concerned about, but we had no nightmares last night, so all is well!).
Oh, and I really enjoyed it too. A great, but different rags to riches story, something that points out that friendship and working together is important. And it was just exciting and fun. What more do you need?
I’ll go and finish the book now. I’ve decided that the way to get around the disappointment of a film made from a book, is just to think of them as two entirely different entities. We’ll see.
  
A Monster Calls (2016)
A Monster Calls (2016)
2016 | Drama, Fantasy
There was real sense of story telling (0 more)
A truly delicate book adaption
I went into A Monster Calls with big expectations from an absolutely brilliant and enchanting trailer and came out wondering why there aren't more people making films like this.
Before watching the film I had not read the book, and haven't still, in fact (although it is on my list and very close to the top).
A Monster Calls has so much clever story telling that it's hard to believe it wasn't made for film. Adaptions (especially from books) usually struggle to make a storyline out of an already existing one. This film however managed to evoke a feeling, rather than strain to tell a story. The narrative is so effortless that as an audience I could simply focus on being swept away by the characters. In fact, I want to go so far to say that watching this film was almost like reading a book. It kept me hungry for more every second of it, gave just enough away to evoke a feeling of understanding but kept enough secret to make me believe that this is a story just for me that only I understand.
The characters are so deliberate that none feel out of place and their interaction with each other felt very natural.
The cinematography was absolutely stunning. There was a feeling of fantasy, mixed with something very familiar that works very well for the topic at hand.

All that being said, I think it's clear that I am absolutely in love with this film (even though it did make me cry more than once).
However, I have not seen this film in some time and therefore will stay a bit vague with this review as to not make assumptions. I will update/write another review once I've rewatched the film and actually read the book.
  
Mellow Gold by Beck
Mellow Gold by Beck
1994 | Indie, Rock, Singer-Songwriter

"The thing about Beck was that he felt like a well-kept secret for a while. I can’t actually remember how I stumbled upon him, but it was way back around the time of his second album Stereopathetic Soulmanure, that was before he had his big breakout, crossover albums. This track is from Mellow Gold, which was his third album and had ‘Loser’ on it, so other people were starting to pick up on him, finally. I couldn’t believe that nobody else had heard of this amazing talent; he was completely doing his own thing and you could tell he had real soul. The fact that this was around the time of Britpop just made him stand out all the more to me, I couldn’t stop listening to his early stuff. ’Truckdrivin Neighbors Downstairs (Yellow Sweat)’ sums up what I loved about him in those days and why I still do now. It crystallised the appeal of those records, it’s got such an amazing narrative and it was obvious that it was a true story, that he really had lived above or below that truck driver who was on weird speed or angel dust. He just encapsulates that sort of nightmarishness of having problems with the neighbours and the pitched-down vocals make it sound totally ominous. There’s such an experimental flavour to it musically and lyrically and you can hear how he would cut and paste ideas. That’s how those early albums were - every track different to the last. I love everything he’s done really and that experimental flavour has never really left him, all the way up to making a pop record with Colors. I absolutely battered his first few albums though and for a while I felt like I was the only one. The guy’s a real one-off."

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Skellington by Julian Cope
Skellington by Julian Cope
1989 | Alternative, Indie
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"""My favourite Julian Cope is loose Julian Cope. Back in the day, I was already a fan of his, because of World Shut Your Mouth and Saint Julian; those were great records, not super loose, but very rock and roll. Then, he put out My Nation Underground, which I was pretty dissatisfied with. It had its moments, but it was too produced, and so '80s. I think even he’s disowned that one now. ""After that, I’d be surprised, because I’d be going to the record store and he’d be putting out these albums with no announcement. One of them was Skellington, which this song is from. That record was huge for me, to the point that I named one of my early bands after it. Droolian came after that and it just felt like, when he really hit his peak with Peggy Suicide and Jehovahkill, it was those previous two albums that really laid the groundwork. ""They were totally loose and off the cuff, he was mumbling the lyrics and the liner notes said that he hadn’t ever really finished them. They’re not commercial records and that made them all the more fascinating to me. They’re more human. It was a lesson - not every record has to be polished. You don’t need to appeal to everyone who’s known you up until then. It’s good to throw up the occasional roadblock. ""Plus, at that moment in time, he was doing the whole “Being a rock star” thing better than anybody else. I hung off of anything he had to say; it felt like nothing he was saying wasn’t extraordinary. I mean, the title of the song says it all. He's just an amazing character."

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