Friday Favourites

Friday Favourites: Ways to Amplify Melanated Voices

books, films, Friday Favourites

Black and Pink Black Lives Matter Instagram Post

 

It’s been a really long time since I last posted a Friday Favourites list. To be honest, the series was getting tough and I was bored with it. I couldn’t think of interesting ideas and it was taking me too long to write them. So, I decided to scrap it. I was intending to come up with something different to post but it never happened. In light of the recent protests surrounding race discrimination, I decided to bring it back to life once again. I know that I don’t have a particularly big platform or that I have the ability to influence someone’s decisions. However, I have been lucky enough to be born with a privilege that many people don’t have. I have a voice and I need to use it. Last week, I posted a few suggestions for ways people could learn more about the things that the Black Lives Matter movement is marching for. To learn more about the systemic racism that exists in our society. It should not be up to black people to tell us what to do or how to do it. They’ve been doing the work for us for too long. So, I did something. I wanted to know what I had missed and what I needed to know. And, to help people in the same boat, I thought I’d share it. Hopefully, it can give other people some ideas.

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Friday Favourites: Ranking the Star Wars Main Saga Films

films, Friday Favourites

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Monday was Star Wars Day. It’s that day of the year where every card-carrying geek sets out to prove their geek status by mentioning it as much as possible. I mean, if you don’t post as many Star Wars Gifs as possible are you even a real fan? Speaking of real fans, it’s also a day where the hardcore fans get to moan about how much the franchise has been ruined over the years. But has it really? We get it. The loyal fans who were there at the start don’t want to embrace change. They don’t want to admit that their way isn’t the best it can be anymore. They want to say awful things about Rian Johnson on the internet because they have nothing else in their life. If it makes you feel better then go for it. But, come on, are the more recent films in the Star Wars series really that bad? I set out to solve this once and for all by definitely ranking them from best to worst. Now, I did only use the main episodes in the Skywalker saga because we have to be honest, Rogue One would have beaten most (if not all) of them had I included it. So, it didn’t seem fair to count that. Even if it does include the single greatest Darth Vader scene in the franchise’s history.

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Friday Favourites: 10 Influential Films

films, Friday Favourites

 

Last week’s Friday Favourites post came out of a social media challenge that I was forced to take on board. This week is a similar thing. This time the challenge was:

Post a still from a film that’s influenced me over the next 10 days. Every day I’ll nominate one person to do the same.

Normally if someone tags me on a Facebook thing I just pretend I didn’t see it and walk away. Selfie challenges, Ice Bucket challenges, you name it, I’m avoiding it. But I haven’t got to where I am today by missing the chance to show off my love of films. So I did it. Even though I knew that trying to whittle down the list down to just 10 films would almost beak my brain. But I did it? Did anybody care? Nah. But nobody really cares about this blog and I’ve been doing this for nearly 10 years. It’s part of my charm.

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Friday Favourites: Albums

Friday Favourites, music

 

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You’ve probably seen that Bill Clinton Swag thing going around Instagram, right? You’ve probably even been tagged to do it. Well, yesterday some absolute bastard tagged me to do it. Now, I’m a very indecisive person. Although, I’m not actually sure I’d describe it as indecisive. I just don’t like the idea of ranking the things I like. Why should one thing be superior to the rest? It depends on the context. Why is everyone so obsessed with finding out what my favourite book or film is? I have loads. I love Goodfellas but it’s not the kind of film I’m going to want to watch all of the time. I love The Monk but it can be a bit much to read at times. That’s why we have collections. But I decided to try and play ball and it was going well until I was thrown another curve ball. Another friend made a point about everyone picking male artists and I realised I’d picked 4 albums by male artists. So, I went back to the drawing board to make it more even. But I still had too many to decide between. At least it gave me a Friday Favourites idea. I had to limit myself or I’d have been here forever but I think this is a pretty cool list.

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Friday Favourites: Fictional Lockdown Companions

books, films, Friday Favourites, television

I’ve seen a lot of those “Choose Your Quarantine House” things going around Twitter recently and I can’t say any of them have really appealed. There are plenty that just include the names of people I’ve never heard of and there are those that are just too niche for me to care about. Even the bookish ones aren’t really for me. They’re for people who think Hermione Granger and Katniss Everdeen are the standards we should set for well-written female characters (visualise my doing a massive eye-roll here please). So, I decided to stop waiting around and just pick my own damn quarantine house. I promised myself that it wasn’t just going to be a list of people I’m attracted to because that would clearly be my go-to. I’m actually going to try and think about people I could be okay being in lockdown with. People that I wouldn’t want to kill after about 5 minutes alone with them. Let’s see who makes the cut.

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Friday Favourites: Ranking Buffy Seasons

Friday Favourites, television

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I currently have a lot of streaming services on the go and it means that I never really know what I want to watch. Normally it means that I just watch the same old thing over and over again. Take this week for instance. I didn’t know what to start so started watching a random series of Buffy. Unfortunately, the one that Amazon recommended to me was season 7. Yes, I still watched it but I didn’t exactly enjoy it. Is there anyone out there that enjoyed season 7? Why the show didn’t stop after season 5 is still a mystery. But it got me thinking, which season did I really think was the best. And as it’s Friday, I only went and ranked them. Initially, I was just going to do it based on how attractive I find Giles. I think he peaks around season 5 for me. But then the singing in season 6. God, the singing. But I’m getting away from the point.

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Friday Favourites: Simpsons Episodes

Friday Favourites, reviews, television

When I first opened Disney+ this week, I didn’t automatically go straight to the original content. I didn’t catch up on The Mandalorian so I could get some context for Baby Yoda. Nope. I started rewatching old episodes of The Simpsons. The animated show that has been going for over 30 years has plenty of great episodes and having them all in one place is too good an opportunity to miss. I know that it gets a lot of bad press these days and it can’t be denied that quality has gone downhill. But it’s not as if it isn’t watchable. There’ll always be something nice and familiar about it. To celebrate and justify my week of watching 90s episodes of a cartoon, I decided to discuss some of my favourite episodes. There are so many of them at this point that it was pretty difficult. This is by no means an exhaustive list because who can remember everything that’s happened in the past 30 odd years? But there are some genuine gems here.

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Friday Favourites: Self-Isolation Reads

books, Friday Favourites, reviews

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It feels like every year since 2016 has tried to trump (bad choice of words) the previous one for shittest year ever. 2019 was a terrible year for many reasons and a lot of us were hoping the new decade would be a time for change. Unfortunately, 2020 had different ideas. Thanks to the medication I’m taking, I’m one of the more vulnerable people, so I’ve essentially gone on lockdown for the foreseeable future. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to work from home, which is taking a bit of getting used to. I’m also lucky that I don’t really need to go out for anything major. I’ll have a few of my regular hospital appointments and stuff but that’s not a major issue. Of course, it will mean a lot of time spent inside. I’m an introverted bookish person, so I figured that this would be a good thing in the end. I had visions of me reading endlessly and using my spare time really well. So far, that’s not happened. I’ve become lazier and less productive outside of work. To inspire me, I decided to make a list of the books I was hoping to get through during my period of isolation. Well, it can’t go any worse, can it?

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Friday Favourites: Female Comic Book Characters

books, Friday Favourites

Last weekend was International Women’s Day. The one day a year when all of the pathetic men out there can go on social media and say “er… but when is International Men’s Day?” Yep, you can really see why the patriarchy has thrived for so fucking long, can’t you? It’s such a fun time. Still, the day is always a good excuse to celebrate women and their impact on the world. Reading books by female writers or watching films directed/written by women. This week I’ve been reading the final part in Alexis Marie Chute’s fantasy trilogy. I’ve also been watching some fantastic female superheroes. So, I decided to carry on the comic book theme and discuss some of my top female characters. Most of them will be very obvious because I’m an obvious person and I’ll miss out plenty I’m sure. There are just too many of them!

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Friday Favourites: John Hughes Movies

films, Friday Favourites

During my TBT review of Sixteen Candles, I suggested that having the film as your favourite John Hughes movie probably said a lot about you as a person. The film is great, as I say in my review, and was a solid debut for him as a director. It was also a great breakout role of Molly Ringwald. The problem is, it’s quite rapey and kind of racist. I know it’s an 80s thing but watching it now makes me uncomfortable. To be fair though, most of them do. But I decided that it would be fun to decide which my favourite movies were by him as either a writer, director or both. So, here are mine. What is your favourite John Hughes film?

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