Veronica Mars: Season One

Two television posts in the same week? You guys are going to be spoilt for choice ah tells yah! So while Ben gave you guys the low down on a fairly recent television show, I'm travelling back in time a little bit - travelling all the way back to 2004. Now before you scoff and say, "2004's not that long ago!", let me remind you that was ten years ago. Almost eleven. Yeah. Let that sink in. Now that's left you feeling old and useless, let us look at the show that came out way back when: Veronica Mars.

Veronica Mars: setting unrealistic life goals since 2004.

First things first; what it's all about? Veronica Mars is a high school student/private eye (please bear with me). A year before the series begins, Veronica's best friend Lily was murdered and when her father Keith Mars, the (then) town sheriff, accused Lily's father (the resident billionaire and social string-puller), things started to get complicated. Another man confessed to the murder, Keith was booted from office, all of her friends cut ties with her and her mother ditched town. I know this seems like an awful lot of information to be giving away, and before you all take to your keyboards with cries of 'spoilers!', I'll remind you that all of this is explained to the audience in the first five minutes of the first episode, so calm doon.

Utopia: Brutal, Bloodstained Beauty and Colour Theory

Note: I apologise in advance for the picture-heaviness of this article. You'll understand why, I promise.

Note Note: Some of you may have heard and yes, it's true. Utopia will not be renewed for a 3rd series, despite it being fucking awesome... So much cry... It's still worth watching though, so get on it!

"They call me mellow yellow..."

The words 'great', 'unmissable' and 'ground-breaking' are tossed around a lot when talking about TV nowadays. It seems like in the past 5 years we've been drowned in award-winning quality programming being thrown at us from all directions, each deemed great and ground-breaking and unmissable. Utopia, which has just recently finished it's second series, has received similar praise from many, although has yet to travel far from our warm British shores to join its American brethren. Is it because the US doesn't like us? Or is it because, as with some of these other shows, it receives a tad more praise than it deserves? Ooo, lookie, I'm not telling you what I think straight away; you're going to have to read on! *twiddles moustache*

First Week Of Uni: A Preparation Guide ft. Shutterstock

Hello wonderful people who read this blog! How are you? I'm great thanks for asking, and I've just finished my first week back at university, yes, a whole week into third year, isn't that some terrifying stuff. Halfway through our (or mine anyway) degree! Two years away from being forced into the real world and harassed into becoming functional members of society. Ew. Anyway, I thought I'd put together a little preparation guide for going back to university since my uni starts somewhat earlier than other universities and this post may be of some help to you! So, whether you've already been doing this university thing for a few years, or this is your first year going in, here are some pieces of advice from someone who really doesn't have any authority, and these will all be things that you're either already doing, well aware of, of have tried and don't work. But on the off chance it might offer some help, I thought I'd give it a go anyway!

For some added watermarked fun, I've only used really bad sample photos I found on shutterstock, cause nothing shouts "classy blog" like pictures with a pale white cross and a company logo across them.

Film Facts 3b: Dying In Die Hard - Part 2

Hello, and welcome back to part two of our epic odyssey into the world of quantum immortality and action hero deaths. Last time, we looked at how many bullets it takes to chew up John McClane's fleshy carcass before he stops moving, and today we'll keep the festivities going by looking at more fun and interesting ways our favourite cop would have got himself eviscerated in a giant ball of fire and broken glass:

Stranger by the Lake, Let's Talk About You

So, guess what I watched the other day? Stranger by the Lake (or L'inconnu du lac, for all y'all intellectual types), yes, you're right! Wait, how'd you know? Get out my flat.

No witty caption today, I actually really like this poster.

So I was going to write a semi-meaningful introduction about how Stranger by the Lake, directed by Alain Guiraudie, was pulling in pretty impressive reviews, like critics from The Observer, The Guardian and The Telegraph slapping four stars on the top of their reviews, but then I got distracted by this little gem on IMDb:

Lol.

Film Facts 3a: Dying In Die Hard - Part 1

I learned a thing: the theory of quantum immortality. That is the most metal name ever and I'm totally shotgunning it for my cutesy pre-teen boy band. What it suggests is that, in a situation where a person (herein called the "experimenter", because who doesn't love toying with their own mortality for science?) has a 50:50 chance of survival like if you were to fire a half-loaded gun at your head Russian roulette-style, the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics would dictate that "a superposition of the experimenter [would] necessarily exist, regardless of how many iterations [of shooting yourself in the face] or how improbable the outcome [of not being shot in the face]".

Essentially from your own perspective you are incapable of dying, the only universe in which you can continue to experience anything being the one where you didn't die every single time. Sure, you'll have created hundreds of separate universes where your family have to come to terms with the loss of a child who committed suicide because they thought they were Neo but, dude, immortality.

Sadly we live in a universe where the Wachowski brothers didn't kill themselves after the first movie. Lol, the sequels are so shit.

The coolest thing about this theory though is that it explains why, in action movies, the hero manages to avoid insurmountable odds with nary a scratch on his/her perfectly sculpted sex-abs; we're watching a movie set in that single universe where every bullet and piece of shrapnel and stray throat-sized chicken bone misses, leaving only a trail of epic carnage and passers by to assume that this guy must be the luckiest bastard alive. But if that is true, how many other universes where our good guy gets eviscerated in five minutes by a hailstorm of ass-kick would there be? I aim to find out with the only movie that is fit for the job: Die Hard.

Die Hard!

Top Five- Just Joking! Shameless (US) Review

Holy cannoli! A post by Rhona, on time and not in list form? What madness is this? Okay, okay, that's enough from you, wise-ass. Shall we just get on with the review?

Fun drinking game - take a shot whenever someone says
the name Gallagher. You'll be blackout wasted in four minutes!

Okay, so this is an American remake of the 2004 British series by the same name, but I've not seen the original version, so I won't be pulling any comparisons between the two shows. The main reason I began watching the show was because I was watching a Comedy Actress Roundtable and I was pretty familiar with four of the six actresses that were being featured - Emmy Rossum and Edie Falco being the two I wasn't overly knowledgeable of, however I thought both said some pretty funny and interesting stuff, so I took it upon myself to take a look at their respective shows. Now that I've all caught up with Shameless, I'll need to crack on to Nurse Jackie! Also, not to lie, but another big reason for getting into the show was Tumblr. Yeah, gifs galore finally piqued my interested.

For a bonus edition of the previously mentioned drinking game:
drink whenever someone mentions that they're a family!
Guaranteed liver failure in minutes!

Russian Ark: A Cinematic Museum Visit

Pretty much everything I know about Russian history boils down to three things: Stalin was a murderous bastard, Peter the Great was an epicly drunk murderous bastard who trained bears pull carts and serve vodka, and Vladimir Putin gave a new meaning to the phrase "massive, purulent cunt that squirts angry bees infected with AIDs". It's not a very oft-used term.

He does regain points by being the most homo-erotically charged Bond villain since Raoul Silva. 

As a crash course in Russian history, then, I decided to pick up Alexander Sokurov's technological and organistational nightmare, Russian Ark, and see how much history it could learn me in 90 minutes. The answer is quite a bit.