Best and worst of 2015: Film

Favourite films of 2015

I see a lot of films, being an unlimited cardholder, although there was a slew of films in the middle of the year that I missed out on due to the whole lack of arms thing, so I perhaps saw slightly fewer than in previous years. My favourites aren’t always necessarily the films that I consider of the highest quality in terms of cinematography, script and so on. Although obviously films that score well in those categories I can also love. What I tend to go for are those films I will want to watch again and again, and that’s how I’ve made my judgements for the most part-with a few exceptions of films that I thought were really good, but may not have a huge amount of rewatch value, for one reason or another.

Best and worst of 2015: TV

So, trying to keep up this blog whilst Strictly and The Apprentice were on was too much hard work in this post-arms era, who knew? Anyway, I may as well do the unoriginal thing everyone is doing and list my top fives of the year. I’m steering away from music because I am at that annoying stage of life where all I remember is my old favourites and I forget to buy/Spotify/note the songs I like when I hear them on the radio, so let’s just not embarass myself there. I am also leaving books out because I am not sure how many I’ve read were actually from 2015. So I’m sticking to TV, film and beauty products over in the next 3-4 posts. First – TV.

Palette test: No7 anniversary palettes

So here is the palette test that I promised ages ago: the Boots 80th anniversary No7 palettes. This review is a little dated now, but the smokey palette seems to still be available on the Boots website even if you can’t get them in shops now. The nude one might have sold out, but as you will see, it’s the weaker of the two. Apologies for the limited and crappy pics in this update, BTW, I have no idea what was going on.

Adventures in beauty: US haul

Apologies for the long gap between posts. It’s not because I haven’t wanted to blog, or that I haven’t had anything to say-quite the opposite, in fact. However, I think I underestimated how tiring it would be going back to work full-time and blogging both The Apprentice and Strictly whilst still not recovered. Because I still can’t write physically for any great length of time and still relying on the voice software for extensive prose, blogging has not been the most essential task for me and therefore has fallen by the wayside a little bit. However, there are lots of things I want to cover and so I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things a little bit, although I recognise that posts are probably going to be a little bit sporadic at least until Christmas due to keeping up the other blogs.

OK, that over with… I went to America recently for work, to Phoenix, and I have to say, I was incredibly excited at the prospect of all of those American beauty retailers: Ulta! Sephora! Nordstrom! In practice, I didn’t really get much opportunity to look around wider Phoenix, so I mainly stayed in the area where the conference is being held, which had a Macy’s and a Mac store. However, I did manage a walk to the fairly close by Ulta store, where I picked up a big old haul of goodies.

Book reviews: The Bone Clocks; Funny Girl; The Narrow Road to the Deep North

So I stacked up the books since I last wrote and I’ve already forgotten them a bit so I’ll give some quick and snappy reviews as best as I can!

Cineworld: Ricki and the Flash; American Ultra; The Visit

Been watching a few films since the last review update came out, so there are three today and another two coming along soon – both YA adaptations. Firstly, though, three completely bonkers films, with mild spoilers lurking beyond the cut…

Strictly Come Bitching is back!

For those who don’t know, every year Steve and I write recaps of Strictly Come Dancing over at Strictly Come Bitching. Our recap of the launch show is live and we usually post up Saturday and Sunday recaps a day or two after broadcast. We’ve not yet decided whether our Apprentice blog (with Helen), The Apprent-bitch, is returning when the new series, but it may well do! I’ll keep you posted, or follow us on Twitter for news.

Palette test: Make Up Revolution: Mermaids Forever

Apologies for the long gap in posting – I was DYING OF ALL THE ILLNESS last week (/had a bad cold). Anyway, so behind am I that I’m not even on the palette after this one, but the one after that. It’s a similar story with the films, books, weird new foods and so on. So – onto business, my review of Make Up Revolution’s Mermaids Forever palette.

Weird new food: Rolo dark dessert

I didn’t really mean to buy the new Rolo dark dessert, but they were on offer and they’d run out of the milk chocolate ones, so I picked these up instead. Now, I’m not really a lover of dark chocolate, so I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d like these, although I do quite like the milk ones.

If you’ve not had any of the Rolo desserts, they have a consistency similar to a thick yoghurt and have a chocolate layer on top of the caramel layer. They don’t particularly taste like Rolos the sweets, but there is a definite caramel and chocolate vibe going on.

However, these were perfectly fine for me as a non-dark chocolate eater. They tasted, in fact, pretty much exactly the same as the milk chocolate ones. If you were a dark chocolate lover, I imagine these would be pretty disappointing. So, if you like the milky ones, you will like these, but their similarity sort of defeats the point of them being a new product.

Book review: The Good Girl by Fiona Neill

I’m sure the publishers of The Good Girl wanted to be the new Gone Girl or Girl on the Train. Hey, books with girl in the title and a vague sense of mystery are the hot thing, right? However, this book is nowhere near in the same league as those two. I’m not necessarily saying either of them were the height of great literature, but I am saying that this book is truly, truly terrible. I’m gonna put a lot of spoilers below the cut to explain why it’s so bad, so you can look away if you don’t want to know-or you can just read the review and be glad you didn’t waste time on it.