Every Monday I share with you my favourites from the last week; what I have been watching, reading and listening to. Hope you enjoy and find something you will love of this list!
Coco x
Podcast of the week
The Russell Brand Show on Radio X
As a member of the Matt Morgan Appreciation Society, I think this show should be called The Matt and Russell Show. Anyone who listened to the original show on Radio 2, will have felt the unbelievable joy when the whole gang got back together, Russell, Matt and their resident poet laureate Mr Gee. The best things about this podcast are the length(sometimes nearly 2 hours long which I love), the fact that Noel Gallagher is often on the show (you could almost call him the Third Co-Host), and the fact that these are really hilarious men. The bad thing about this podcast is that Russell sometimes eats on mic and it makes me want to kill him.
Books of the week
This week I have no full book reviews for you as I am currently reading three. However, I am loving all of them so far and so definitely recommend them:
Biography
Mary Pickford - Scott Eyman
Blurb:
Chronicles the life of film's first "celebrity," recounting Pickford's rise to stardom, her tremendous power and influence in the film industry, rumors of her bout with alcoholism, and her marriages to Douglas Fairbanks and Buddy Rogers
Autobiography
Bossypants - Tina Fey
Blurb:
Once in a generation a woman comes along who changes everything. Tina Fey is not that woman, but she met that woman once and acted weird around her.Before 30 Rock, Mean Girls and 'Sarah Palin', Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: that one day she would be a comedian on TV. She has seen both these dreams come true.At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon - from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.
Non-Fiction
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Blurb:
The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs. Brilliantly conceived and executed, this powerful evocation of twenty-first century America gives full rein to Margaret Atwood's devastating irony, wit and astute perception.
Music of the week
Balcony Scene - Craig Armstrong.
This is actually my favourite score of all time, with the particularly stunning part from 4:14 onwards giving me goosebumps every single time I hear it. It was composed for the score of Baz Lurhman's Romeo and Juliet and then used in the stand out song of the soundtrack - Kissing You by Des'ree.
Another one of my favourite songs is called Still In Love (Kissing You) by Beyoncé and it too uses the Balcony Scene as the backing track.
Tv-Shows of the week
Favourite TV Show
The Handmaid's Tale - Channel 4
Based on Margret Attwood's acclaimed book, this show is one of the best things I've seen on British TV in a long time. The acting and casting is perfect and the slight tweaks they have made to the book's timeline work perfectly. It is gripping watching this dystopian universe of handmaids and Commanders, to then release from the flashbacks in each episode that this is set in our time, iPhones and all. Most fascinating to me was Attwood's ability to highlight how this could happen in modern society. When Attwood wrote the book in the 70s would have seemed far fetched (or at the least far from our reality), the idea that political leaders would suspend the Human Rights Act (something Teresa May suggested doing this year), and then be legally allowed to take away basic human rights and implement retro-effed up laws (*cough* Trump banning Transgender people from the army *cough*), seems all too familiar now.
Favourite Reality TV Show
Love Island
This was such an amazing show and I already miss it (although I still have the Reunion show to watch which I am very much looking forward to!) I made a joke video (complete with Essex accent) about the biggest thing Love Island taught us:
Movie of the week
Suffragette
I watched this film with my sister and best gal Hannah and we were in tears watching this incredible film - it was so shocking as British woman ourselves to see the way women were treated in very recent history of England. It really gets you thinking and it led to a huge conversation about how fucking grateful we are of what the Suffragettes did for us. It has an amazing cameo from Meryl Streep as Emily Pankhurst and issues that I had never considered when studying Women's Suffrage in school were explored e.g. that becoming a Suffragette can lead to your husband kicking you out and legally stop you from seeing your children (women did not have rights over their children until 1925), and also the other side - that there were some amazing husbands who also put their lives at risk to help their wives get the rights they deserved. Every women should watch this film as there is finally a film that does these incredible women's stories justice.