Today’s Big Issue on the Catboy & Geordiebird Breakfast Show was all about whether or not women are any good at recommending good stuff at the cinema. Alright, it’s a bit of a generalisation but I don’t care. It’s about time somebody stood up and said it! There’s a comments box at the bottom of this post. If you think I’m talking twaddle, tell me what your favourite films are. The ones you’d recommend above all others.
To get you started, I asked Geordiebird to compile a Top Ten list of movies she’d recommend to other people. However, she saw through my ruse and compiled a list that reads like it was drawn up by the average thirty-five year old man… Rocky, Terminator, James Bond, Last of the Mohicans, etc. I know for a fact she’s lying. She has never mentioned any of these films in the seven years I’ve known her. She has put Ghost and How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, which is a slight bit of honesty… But not much.
On Friday, I was press-ganged into watching The Lovely Bones. The book, which every seems to love, sounded quite wet but I went to the cinema with an open mind and an equally-open bag of Maltesers. The Maltesers were fantastic. The film was awful. I’ve ranted about it on Facebook already, so I won’t go on. Needless to say at the end the girls pre-empted my “two hours of my life I’m not getting back” catchphrase. They had nothing good to say about it either.
I’m getting really fussy about cinema of late. Life’s too busy to waste on bad films. These days I scan various (trusted) review sites before I even think about going to the flicks. I don’t know if it’s just that I’m getting old and boring or films are just being made in the same style as painting-by-numbers. It could be that I’m in Dubai and there aren’t as many decent independent films shown. It could even be down to the occasional hatchet-job on the UAE editing. I don’t know.
Those issues aside though, I can’t remember ever being recommended a good film by a woman. I’m not trying to be controversial. It’s just a fact. I’ve been recommended a plethora of great books and numerous decent TV shows by women but when it comes to the silver screen, nada.
So, I’d like to use this opportunity to hear back from you. If you’re a man, leave a comment below and tell me if you’ve ever been recommended a decent film by your wife, girlfriend or female colleagues. Women, tell me what you’d recommend to me. And please don’t tell me what I want to hear. Be honest. I’ll endeavour to watch the ones I can find and I’ll report back. I promise if I like them, I’ll apologise.
Rumour has it when CB&GB sent home their latest promo photos, CB’s brother set about his Grandparents’ wall with the spray paints. That’s proper working class proud, that is…
A primary school in Somerset (South of England) has banned Valentine’s Day cards from the premises. The headmaster, Mr Turner, told parents that cards declaring love can be “confusing” for children under the age of 11, who are still emotionally and socially developing.
Call me a killjoy but I’m with Mr Turner. I’ve always hated Valentine’s Day and am still haunted by memories of the popular girls at primary school counting their cards in class. One year a little girl called Emily Pattinson got nine. Seventy percent of the boys in our class sent her a Valentine’s Day card! I got one card that year from my dad. He signed it ‘To my little princess, Happy Valentine’s Day darling, love Daddy’. I remember thinking “Great! Can’t even pretend it’s from a boy.”
The next Valentine’s Day to stand out in my mind was during the first year of middle school when I was 10 years old. My best friend at the time was Nicola Booth and it was the first Valentine’s Day that we both had ‘boyfriends’. Nicola’s boyfriend was Blinky Paul and I was dating his best friend Irish Glenn. We were pretty serious, you know we had done stuff like ride to town on the bus together, held hands a few times and the four of us had watched Mutant Ninja Hero Turtles at the cinema twice. So when Valentine’s Day came along Nic and I were both really excited about buying cards. I put a lot of thought into mine and eventually decided on a red card with brown monkeys on the front personalising it with a cheesy roses are red, violets are blue type poem.
That year (1990) the 14th February fell on a Wednesday and the first lesson of the day was English. Nic and I were naturally feeling a little apprehensive about handing over our cards so we decided to half the embarrassment and present each others. She went first and what happened next changed my perspective on Valentine’s Day forever. First I heard a group of boys are making ‘upchuck’ noises and then saw my mokey card making it’s way back to me all ripped up, still in it’s envelope. To top off the morning, Nic and I then had a blow-up because she obviously, like any right minded person, didn’t want me to give Blinky Paul her card. Can’t really blame her, can you?
Not long after that, Irish Glenn left the UK to go back to Ireland. I just tried to find him on facebook to see what kind of grown up he’s become. He’s not on there or on Friends Re-united or Twitter. I like to think he flunked school and he’s too thick to work a computer. Either way, I’m pretty confident that my life is going better than his but I do wonder if the monkey card ripping incident will cross his mind tomorrow? I doubt it!
In a nutshell that’s why I’m with Mr Turner on his Valentine’s Day card ban. May no little girl this year suffer the shame I did in 1990.
Check out the photos section for more photos from our visit to Sharjah English School but here’s some sneaky photos of Geordiebird having a pop at the not-so-high jump and, well, see for yourself…
