Flick Chicks Hiatus: An Update!

Hi guys! So, as much as I promised I was still lurking, I realised I've gone quiet on you all over the last week. I have a good reason, I promise. Now that I've finished Christmas shopping and wrapping presents (don't ask about deliveries) I've used some spare time to set up my solo blog. I'm using Wordpress for this one which is entirely new to me, so I've spent many a late night Googling format issues and all sorts.

This new blog will be exactly what I originally intended it to be, an outlet for me to blog about much more than movies. For now there will probably be quite a few movie related posts to satisfy my blogging itch whilst Jenna's still on a break, but I really want to make it clear that I'm not leaving Flick Chicks behind. I am so excited for Jenna to come back, so that we can write the dual-posts that you guys so often tell us you love to read. The upcoming Oscars season is going to be so much fun!

For now though, if you don't mind adding my new blog to your feeds, I would be very grateful. I won't be posting very frequently over Christmas, but I'm planning some New Years Resolution type posts for the start of January, and then it'll pick up a bit in pace from there.

The blog is called Often Off Topic, named because of my tendency to, well, go completely off topic when I'm meant to be focusing on something. Here's the link, and you can also click on the banner which is hyperlinked too.

I'm still trying to sort out the format, and set up Social Media sites for it, so don't panic if you're suddenly being stalked by an Allie Adkins or Often Off Topic, it's just me! Also, if anyone who uses Wordpress can help me out with something, I'd be so grateful.

I've used the Wordpress reader to follow all of the blogs I follow already here on Blogger, but some just won't show any posts available. Do you use the Wordpress reader or do you use an external site?

Flick Chicks Is On Hiatus

Hi guys. This post has been in the works for a week or so now, but I eventually realised there’s no point in flowering it up. This blog is going to go on hiatus for a while. For the last couple of months I’ve tried my hardest to keep Flick Chicks updated on it’s regular schedule whilst Jenna has been away, but it’s getting exhausting, and to be frank, I’ve ran out things to talk about.

December is my favourite month of the year, and my most busiest, so rather than dish out half hearted posts that I’ve rushed to put together I thought it best to take a break all together. The onslaught of brilliant cinema releases has been super useful for writing purposes, but at home I’ve found myself watching a movie for the sake of having something to write about, and that makes both the movie itself and the blogging not as fun as it should be.

I’m not going anywhere though, I promise you that. I’ll still be checking my feed everyday and reading everyone’s posts, I mean let's face it, how else am I going to know what I should be watching? Plus, I love you guys, and it’s you who make this so much fun to do.

As far as the future is concerned, I have plans. This year I feel like I’ve really found my passion for blogging, so much so that I’d like to expand my horizons a little. I want to read more books, and review those, I’d like to talk about some of the games I play, and Flick Chicks isn’t the place to do that. I still predominantly want to talk about movies, but I’d like to create a platform that allows me to combine all of my hobbies. If I do this, I think it’ll be in January, and I hope you guys will follow me over there.

With regards to Flick Chicks, I would love to continue this blog too, just not by myself. So if Jenna wants to come back, I’ll be back too, watch this space!

So I’m not really saying goodbye, because I’ll still be around commenting as much as I always have done, but it might be a while till you see a new post here!

Looking Forward to Seeing at the Cinema: December 2016

Even though the nights are dark, it’s freezing cold, and my Christmas tree is up, I can’t quite believe this is the last ‘Looking Forward’ post of 2016! Where have you gone, year?! After a record number of cinema trips in November (I actually made it once a week) I’m preparing to inevitably fall off the wagon, probably because I’m nearly done Christmas shopping and am now poor.

Anyway, my choice for December was already decided 12 months ago, so before I gush about Rogue One I thought it might be fun to look back at what my choices from the rest of the year were!

January: The Big Short - I started off well and saw this at the cinema. Little did I know how much I would be blown away by Spotlight, though.

February: Deadpool - Yaaaaas! Best Valentine’s Day cinema trip ever.

March: Hail, Caesar! - I had 3 planned and cancelled cinema trips for this one. It just wasn’t meant to be…

April: Midnight Special - Such a good movie. Plus, mine and Jenna’s first cinema trip together of the year.

May: Warcraft - My wedding month! Needless to say, I had to wait for the DVD release of this one. Better than I expected, too!

June: The Nice Guys - This came out whilst I was on honeymoon and disappeared quicker than my wedding cake. A shame because I absolutely loved it when I finally got the chance. Still don’t know how nice my wedding cake was, though.

July: Finding Dory - How have I not seen this yet?! Still waiting a DVD release yet. Let’s hope Santa is listening!

August: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping - We almost watched this on the only bad weather day on honeymoon in June. I had to wait for a UK release instead. Worth every day of the wait!

September: Swiss Army Man - The wait for this was torturous, but worth it in the end. Still the weirdest movie of 2016, if not ever.

October: The Girl on the Train - I never even got round to reviewing this one, because I still don’t know how to feel about it. Kind of wish I’d never read the book and gone in blind.

November: I was greedy last month and picked 4 movies, Nocturnal Animals, Arrival, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and Patterson.

Which brings us onto December. This is always a big month for me when it comes to cinema, because my family get together on the weekend before Christmas to see something big at the IMAX. It started with a special screening of The Polar Express back in 2008, and has been a tradition ever since. This year will be slightly different because of work patterns, so we’ll be seeing Rogue One on Boxing Day instead.

It feels odd to be honest, this has probably been my most anticipated movie of the entire year, but this time last year I’d never even seen the Star Wars movies and was making my way through them all so I’d know what was going on in The Force Awakens. Skip to the present day and my current handbag has a Stromtrooper helmet on!

I’m not going to find a trailer to post in here, because I’ve somehow managed to only see the first proper trailer. I’ve heard a lot of TV Spots have been made but I’d rather see as little as possible! At the moment I’m mostly looking forward to seeing Ben Mendelsohn’s character, Krennic. Did you see him rock up on stage at the European Star Wars convention earlier this year in full costume? Dude knows how to pull off a white cape! I just about stopped myself from buying his Pop! Figure at Birmingham’s Comic Con the other week.

What movie(s) are you looking forward to catching before the year is up? 

The Fall: Season 3

After waiting what felt like 2 years (it might have actually been that long) for Season 3 of The Fall, I never even watched it at the time it was shown on TV. Doh! Talk about double standards. I started watching BBC’s The Fall not long after is started in 2013; it came onto my radar when a bunch of whingers complained about the violence in it. What is it about a show receiving complaints that makes it so irresistible? Maybe it was a ploy all along. Plus, Jamie Dornan was the lead and with the rumours going round that he was playing Mr Grey in Fifty Shades, I wanted to see what he was all about.

If you’ve never heard of The Fall, let me fill you in a little. It’s a British Crime/Drama, a cat and mouse game between the police, led by Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) and serial killer Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan). Spector has a career as a grief counselor with a wife and 2 children back at home, but in his spare time he preys on women and murders them in unsettling ways. That’s as far as you need to go if you haven’t seen Season 3 yet, the rest of this post is going to riddled with spoilers.

Season 2 ended with Spector being shot whilst in police custody, and it was questionable whether he would survive the ordeal when the credits rolled. I liked this ending, and although it would have been a shame if Spector died from the attack, I could envisage how the rest of Season 3 would go. It seemed reasonable to assume he would live, but when Jamie Dornan started promoting the new Season a few weeks before it returned, he told everyone that Spector was going to survive, and that took the edge off a little. Why tease us if it was that obvious?

Episode 1 was arguably more difficult to watch than some of the actual murder scenes. There’s a reason I don’t watch shows like ER! The entire episode was dedicated to the hospital staff trying to save Paul Spector. Interesting, but it was unnecessary to drag it out an entire hour. Of course, the big twist here is when Spector wakes up, he has amnesia, and thinks it’s 2006. I’ll admit, I didn’t see this coming, and it was quite exciting to see how this would change the investigation.

From there however, everything blurred into one, long episode. There were plenty of new plot points opened up, how Spector’s babysitter Katie (Aisling Franciosi) was going off the rails, how Spector’s poor wife Sally Ann (Bronagh Waugh) was driven to attempt to kill not only herself but her children, and the case being built by the scumbag lawyers against Gibson. The problem is, as interesting as those points were, they got scrunched up and thrown into the trash with that ending.

I haven’t been so mad about a TV Show's ending since Dexter. It’s not the fact that Spector died, it’s the fact that so much story got abandoned in the process. It made the entirety of Season 3 pointless.In the end, I felt much like Gibson. Tired. I even read today that the writers aren’t sure if that’s the actual ending or not. So there might yet be a Season 4! Well, at least a new Season of Fargo is around the corner to fill this void in my life.

Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

Does anyone else think perfume adverts are more than a little ridiculous? Perhaps now 4DX screens are becoming a thing they have a place in the world, but has anyone really ever paid much attention to these ads? You’re probably actually wondering what the hell perfume has to do with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. 

Well, at the cinema the other night, right before the featured trailers aired, an advert of sorts was played for what looked like a period drama movie or TV show starring Domhnall Gleeson (AKA General Hux, AKA my favourite grumpy space ginger). I got so excited I did a little dance in my seat, until I realised it was an advert for Burberry perfume. What. The. Frick?! NOT COOL Burberry, not cool. Although I might buy your aftershave for my husband now...damnit. It works.

Anyway! Harry Potter fans will be aware of the book on every Hogwarts first year’s required reading list, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Who’d have thought all these years later it would be adapted into not one, but 5 movies?! I wish I could go back and tell 12 year old me. This movie is the story of the author of said book, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) who travels to New York in 1926 to release one of his beasts back into the wild where he/she belongs. Whilst there, several creatures (including the ever adorable Niffler) escape from Newt’s magical suitcase.

Newt gets himself into trouble for involving a no-maj (American muggle) called Kowalski (Dan Fogler) and then not wiping his memory, so gets himself caught by disgraced Auror Tina (Katherine Waterson). Amidst all this, a dark wizard called Gellert Grindelwald is on the loose, an anti-magic cult is throwing their weight around, and a rather dapper Colin Farrell is hunting down a talented young witch. Got it? I sure all hell don’t, there’s so much going on!

Let me first say though how wonderful it is to return to the wizarding world of Harry Potter. The sheer excitement at hearing that familiar music with the Warner Brothers logo was enough to make me cry (for the second or third time that night, after so many Christmas adverts), and there are plenty of references for the hardcore fans to spot. Eddie Redmayne is the perfect choice for Newt, confident in his abilities and passionate in his subject, but terribly awkward at the same time. It’s the first time I’ve ever really loved him on screen.

The beasts themselves are indeed fantastic. The Niffler is the real show stealer, but all the creatures we are shown either bring laughs or a feeling of awe. It’s a lot of CGI to have thrown around, but it works. Almost the entire supporting cast were new to me, but their characters were played so well and even ones that have a high risk of being annoying (I’m looking at you, Queenie) were actually incredibly likeable.

Where this movie falls down is largely the messy plot. Considering this franchise is going to be dragged out into 5 movies, there was too much packed into the first installment. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I would have been happy for the entire first movie to be an introduction to Newt and Co, chasing down the beasts across New York. Save the dark wizard stuff for movie number 2! Who is the target audience, anyway? This was far too dark for young children, but the plot was far too obvious for the older fans. It’s a shame.

I’ll always be happy for more Harry Potter movies, but I’d have liked them to go down the Star Wars route with a collection of one offs instead. Let’s have Fantastic Beasts, then how about a movie for Hagrid and how he got kicked out of Hogwarts? A Marauder’s movie would be amazing too! There are so many stories that could be expanded, without the need of dragging them out.