Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my blog! This will be the place of my casual film ramblings, reviews an analysis. Before I get into the full flow of blogging, I thought I’d let you know a little bit about myself, through the form of a Cabinet of Curiosities. A Cabinet of Curiosities is something that has been used for hundreds of years by scholars, who collected together objects that interested them, in an attempt to understand the world. Today, however, they are commonly used to present items of interest to an individual, and this is how I’ll be using it today.

My ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ is more of a ‘Shelf of Stuff’ really. I am a bit of a collector (or hoarder, depending on your point of view) and this has led me to have a wide variety of things in my room, ranging from the mildly interesting, to the naff and rubbish. Everything on this shelf, however, has meaning to me one way or another. Whether it has inspired me, given me a nice memory or I just think it’s cool, every object means something to me, and I hope this post will help you get to know me a bit better through my shelf of stuff. Naturally space was an issue, so one major aspect of my life is not included. I’ve played the piano for 9 years, and got to Grade 8 level before I stopped lessons. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t put my piano on the shelf, because everything else would’ve been crushed. Anyway, without further ado, let’s begin.

1. My Grandparents ashtray. They didn’t smoke, but they did own this novelty ashtray which always sat on their fireplace, which I just love.
2. A sketchbook with paint and pencils. I love art, particularly caricature, and this sketchbook is one of three crammed with caricatures and other doodles.
3. Monty Python Book. This is just one of about 10 Python books I own. This is my favourite, because its signed by Michael Palin.
4. Beano Annual from 1965. One of 56 Beano annuals I own. I grew up loving the Beano, and this one is my favourite one.
5. Statue of Liberty bobble head. A reminder of a great New York holiday I had in 2015.
6. Gromit Statue. This was a blank Gromit statue that I decorated with an old Beano comic.
7. A Dalek. I’m a massive Whovian, particularly David Tennant’s era, which I grew up with.
8. A mini Bailey’s bottle, my favourite tipple.
9. Wallace and Wendoline statue. My favourite scene in A Close Shave, the emotion created from a couple of lumps of plasticine is amazing.
10. My favourite books. A Series of Unfortunate Events and Angels and Demons.
11. Simon Pegg selfie. While in New York, we stumbled across the premier for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, where I met Simon Pegg. It was amazing (not pictured is a signed poster I got from that premier, signed by Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, JJ Abrams and Simon Pegg)
12. My first iPod. I developed my love for music with this iPod. It is broken now, unfortunately.
13. Poster Lids. I worked at the local Odeon for two years, and in that time I collected a pretty big collection of movie posters. These are the lids from a couple of the tubes.
14. Colosseum model. A memory of a lovely roman holiday with my mates.
15. Turtles. I’ve been collecting model turtles from holidays for years. I own over 40 and here are just a couple of them.
16. Badges from work. While at the Odeon, I created a mini joke training video, which the CEO commended and I got a couple of gold badges which I wore while on shift.
17. Scarjo mug. I love Tea. I love Scarlett Johansson. Pretty self-explanatory.
18. Lego model. I loved Lego from a young age. I never owned any actual sets, but spent many happy days creating my own models from random bricks.
19. Shot glass. I bought this in Canada, for no other reason than I thought it looked funny
20. Mariachi Man. On holiday in Mexico, me and my dad decided to buy 10 ceramic Mariachi men, which are laid out as a full band on my window sill. This is just one of them.
21. Homer figure. I loved The Simpsons growing up, though I now favour Family Guy. That hasn’t stopped me collecting a full shelf of Simpsons-related merch though.
22. First Video Camera. This camera is what I first started making films with, so its quite important to me.
23. A Delorean. A lovely mini replica of the Back to The Future Delorean, one of my favourite films, and definitely one of the coolest movie cars, maybe only second to Bonds DB5.
24. Fossils. These are fossils I dug up myself from a cliff in Charmouth, just down the beach from the Broadchurch cliffs.
25. Fortune stuff. I’m not superstitious, but I held onto this fortune stick, saying “You will have success in music or the stage” and a fortune cookie paper saying “there are riches headed your way” just in case they came true!
26. A couple of my favourite albums. The Wall by Pink Floyd and War of The Worlds by Jeff Wayne. Also featured are my two favourite film scores; A Series of Unfortunate Events and American Beauty, both by legendary composer Thomas Newman.
27. The Wall programme. I saw ‘Roger Waters: The Wall’ live twice, and it was the most incredible show I had ever seen, mainly due to it being a stunning multi-media spectacle.
28. Richard E. Grant signed picture. I love this photo, and the personal dedication quoting the film “I’m gonna be a star” sings to me, because hopefully one day I might be.
29. DVD’s. A selection of my favourite films on DVD and Blu-ray.
30. Oscar Statue. I love acting, and I was given this for ‘Best Newcomer’ after performing as Herbert in Spamalot (my favourite musical). Hopefully one day I’ll swap it for a real Oscar!
31. Gerald Scarfe letter. This hand signed letter from the amazing caricaturist Gerald Scarfe told me that I was very talented, and that the best way to progress is hard work, hard work and more hard work. It has inspired me to continue to strive for the best.

And there we have it. Hopefully you enjoyed this little insight into who I am. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next post (don’t worry, they won’t all be this long!)