Author: Becci Jameson

As it’s sunny in New York at this time of year, members of the four year old Outdoor Co-ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society have been stripping off everywhere they can; the group want to celebrate good books and sunny days and enjoy both as long as the law lets them. It’s not clear what connects reading and being topless but these women are evidently having a lot of fun proving there is one. Founder A. Andrews said that, ‘four summers ago, my best friend and I were talking about the law in New York that says women are free…

Is feminism still relevent in the 21st century? Tom Andrew Munro and Becci Jameson discuss. Tom Andrew Munro is a second-year student studying English language and linguistics with media. He is arguing for feminism. Do we still need feminism? To answer this curtly, I believe we do, despite women in the UK striving for and achieving roles in our society of ‘equality,’ –  possible examples of this including Margaret Thatcher and J.K. Rowling. Even though their fields are not linked they have both achieved great things, and the common denominator that has allowed them to achieve such success is feminism.…

Amazon have recently introduced a new project to their already full repertoire. They gave us the Kindle which helped us read on the go, keeping all our favourite books in one handy place, ready at the touch of a button. Love Film lets us watch what we want when we want including Blu-Rays, DVDs and Games through the post. Amazon Prime offers free two day delivery while Amazon Art deals in all the rare and limited edition works of art from selected galleries. With all these fingers in pies, you would think that Amazon could rest on their laurels and…

I was slightly worried about how I would feel about this film, the first one was such a big success and it pushed boundaries with violence and shocked us with Hit Girl’s language. In this one Chloe Grace Moretz is a little older so we are more accepting of the language and it seems that the violence of the first one wasn’t enough for the second one so they had to take it up a notch which might be too much for some people. Kick-Ass 2 sees Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) taking his crime fighting to the next level and joins…

Monsters University sees the first Disney Pixar prequel, we take a peek at Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sulley (John Goodman) in their freshman days at Monsters University and the mayhem that is unleashed as they try to become scarers and get in with the right fraternities. The usually best friends were not always that close and this is the story of them forming that friendship as well as setting up the events for Monsters Inc. This is the perfect summer film for kids and big kids like me, who are experiencing university for themselves. Sequels and prequels are never expected…

Paul Feig’s latest blockbuster, The Heat, sees him reunited with Oscar nominated Melissa McCarthy as they look to take the buddy-cop genre by storm. Sandra Bullock stars in her first role since her Oscar win as an uptight FBI agent who doesn’t play well with others who has to team up with McCarthy’s no nonsense Boston street cop to take on a mysterious drug lord. It is a genre that seemed to dominate the eighties and nineties and to be honest I thought we’d seen the last of it. It is refreshing but also cliched to see two females in…

Trance is the new film from director and Bangor University alumnus Danny Boyle. This is his first piece of work since the London 2012 opening ceremony (being shot before and edited afterwards). Boyle has said that all the dark material he was unable to include in the opening ceremony is in this film. It starts off as a heist movie, but then quickly descends into a psychological thriller. Simon Newton (James McAvoy) is an artist auctioneer who is involved with a group of criminals led by Franck (Vincent Cassel). Simon is the inside man in their attempt to steal a…

I was initially sceptical when I heard that Stephanie Meyer’s other novel was being taken to the big screen. The giant shadow from ‘that’ series weighed down on me as the lights dimmed, was I to be subjected to hormonal teenage longing and ridiculous u-turns to a well established genre? What I can say about this film is that there is more extra-terrestrial face hugging than in the Alien franchise. As expected the storyline follows young lovers who have been ripped apart by an alien invasion. These ‘souls’ have latched onto the humans, erased the people inside and are walking…

This year’s Best Picture winner at the Oscars could not have been surrounded by a more competitive atmosphere. Whilst at first it seems unsurprising that Ben Affleck’s third film in his ‘Thrillergy’ achieved so much praise and recognition at the Academy Awards, compare it to its monumental peers such as Lincoln, Life of Pi and Zero Dark Thirty which all deal with colossal themes and subjects and Argo seems like a more muted affair. Perhaps this is because of the film’s relatively anonymous context: based on a covert C.I.A. operation to retrieve six U.S. diplomats during the 1979 Iran Hostage…

Silver Linings Playbook Review I would watch anything with these two beautiful people, and after her Oscar win, it enticed me even more. Silver Linings Playbook tells the tale of former teacher Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) as he tries to get his life back on track after a stint in a mental institute and a failed marriage. He meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) who has some problems of her own, and they embark on an odd agreement to try and fix themselves. With supporting roles from Robert De Niro, a serious-ish Chris Tucker and Julia Stiles, this is an odd mix…

 By Thomas Bickerdike Goodfellas, 1990 “Three Decades of Life in the Mafia”. Goodfellas tells the real life story of the rise and fall of Henry Hill in the world of organized crime. At a young age, he runs errands for a family of mobsters; as he gets older, he progresses up the hierarchy. Adapted from the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, it is brilliantly directed by Martin Scorsese and is reminiscent to some extent of his early Italian-American mob film Mean Streets. It features an Oscar-winning performance from Joe Pesci as the psychotic, yet funny, Tommy De Vito. “What do…

Walt Disney Animation Studio’s sixth computer-animated picture Wreck-It Ralph can easily be mistaken for a Pixar film. The feature embraces the torch passed down by that studio’s first feature, Toy Story, in seeking to tell a story about the everyday inanimate. It’s almost a natural progression then for 21st Century children, teenagers and adults that the toys of today are very much that of the virtual, those that exist inside the avatars and screens we surround ourselves with. Because these characters exist in a digitised binary world – don’t be mistaken into thinking that they remain two-dimensional. The film takes…

Iron Man 3 3rd May We dive into our 2013 superhero movies with Iron Man 3. Robert Downey Jr. reprises his role as Tony Stark, out to find the people who ruined his life and take down the deadliest villain he’s faced yet: The Mandarin. The film also stars Ben Kingsley, Guy Pearce, and Don Cheadle. Man of Steel 14th June Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel plots yet another origin story. Superman, played by Henry Cavill, is adopted on Earth and grows up to discover and use his powers to protect the world that he loves. Christopher…

On the 8th October 1985, Les Miserables was first performed on stage. After a shaky start, it has become the longest running musical of all time. So it is about time they made it into a film. Packed with an astonishing amount of star power, including Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables is expected to bring in the audience in the lull after Christmas with its delightfully melancholy subject matter and sombre belters. The film is adapted from the musical which is based on the 1862 novel Les Misérables by French author Victor Hugo. It sees Jean Valjean (Jackman) leave…

Ted (15) A talking animal, pop culture references and offensive humour. It could only have come from the mind of Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane with his debut as a live-action movie director. Luckily this film is funny enough for him to get away with it. If you can get past the fact that the Ted’s voice jumps between Peter and Brian Griffin which is thankfully referenced, Ted himself is brilliant. He sucks up all the best lines, and brings out the best in Mark Wahlberg. The Italian Job star is highly likeable as a slacker whose relationship with his…

LJ – The Grinch The Grinch is a lot like me. He’s nasty and he’s hilarious. Much like him I only care about my dog, who happens to share the same name as The Grinch’s; Max. Christmas films are ripe with joy and singing and stupidly happy people who can’t wait to spend the holidays with their families. The Grinch has this too, of course, except right at the top of the mountain, glaring down on everyone is Mr Grinch. Its my life in a Christmas film. The worst part, of course, is that in the end he kind of…