What I Watched In May '13

A month of films, of which an unreasonable amount seem to have red-centric posters. If you've been following my monthly recaps since January, you'll notice that May has almost half of my usual viewing figures. This is down to a number of things; writing my last assignments and finishing my third year of uni, taking a 5 night trip to London to visit Rosita while she is on a work placement, and my decision to plough through the first season of Once Upon A Time, one of the many TV shows I intend to catch up with. Nonetheless I managed to get quite a few films watched, and amazingly only one of them was a re-watch. I've also decided to remove the 'Most likely to watch again next month' section of my monthly breakdown because, as far as I can tell, I have never re-watched the films that have received this title the following month.

Raspberry Tart and the London Eye

 

You can find my Pinterest here.

Rise of the Guardians

I'm a Pixar boy. I just want to put that out on the table to begin with. I spent the better part of my childhood growing up on their films and fell in love with the company in the process. As a result of this I have to admit I've developed a slight case of animation snobbery, which has for the most part found a target in DreamWorks. Outside of the Shrek franchise nothing DreamWorks has put out has really caught my eye, however when How to Train Your Dragon started generating praise from both friends and critics I did start to rethink my quick judgement. This review is my exploration of the other face of contemporary animation.

Texas Chainsaw

1974 saw the release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That film boasts being one of the only horror films to contain an antagonist that genuinely terrifies me, Leatherface. Ignoring the slew of sequels, remakes and prequels that have since developed the original into a fully fledged franchise, Texas Chainsaw goes back to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and promises a direct sequel that is in keeping with the intensity of its predecessor. Oh, and it's in 3D too, although I didn't allow myself the pleasure of experiencing the film in that form.

Bicycle Theives and Scarlet Letters

Todays Pinterest post is a little different. Rather than the general mixed bag of everything I've pinned over the week, this one is entirely themed around film. This is partly due to the fact that this week I found a cinema board that was full of so many great pins that I couldn't narrow it down to just a few, and also to mark something significant that has happened today, I handed in my last Uni assignment, ever.

The assignment in question was looking at Easy A as an adaptation of The Scarlet Letter, a topic that was quite special for me as I fell in love with the book during my A-Level studies and the film during my time at Uni, and so for my last essay to focus on them was great. Collected in the above Pinterest collage are a collection of films that I have either studied, written about or been introduced to during the five years that I have spent studying film.

So, now I am essentially free. I have no more assignments and no more classes. Next Saturday will be my Graduation Ball, but besides that I don't really have much panned for a little while. Because of this I am going to put a great deal more of my energy into keeping this blog filled with new reviews, trailers and other goodies. I look forward to spending a lot more time in this little blogging bubble.

You can find my Pinterest here.

Tufted Sofas and Strawberry Fingers

Today I had my final ever seminar at University. Is that not completely terrifying?

Although I major in film, I've also been studying minor Creative Writing. My first seminar of my first year at Uni was Poetry, and my last today was also Poetry. Although it's not been my favourite subject to study, and I do primarily identify myself as a film student, I really appreciated the sentiment of that observation. It's like coming full circle.

I have four assignments due over the course of next week, so I may once again go off the radar a bit. No doubt my friday post will be rather emotional as I'll have just handed in the last assignment of my degree.

Here go the last seven days of my degree...

What I Watched In April '13

40 films in total.

8 of these films were re-watches.

32 weren't.

5 were foreign language.

5 received a 5-star rating.

2 received a 1-star rating.
2 were short films.

Best (New) Film of the month: Rust and Bone

Worst Film of the month: Beneath the Darkness

Most Surprising: Hunky Dory

Most Disappointing: Akira

Best part of a terrible film: When it finished (Beneath the Darkness)

Worst part of a great film: That I'll never get 'Whip Crack Away' out of my head (Calamity Jane)

Most likely to be watched again next month: Iron Man 3

Let me know what the best and worst things are you've watched this month and be sure to leave me recommendations for May!