My Tumblr: an Introduction

It has come to my attention that my new Tumblr layout is somewhat confusing so I'm gonna try to clear things up as much as possible.

www.tiffanyalwaysknows.tumblr.com

First of all, not every picture (GIF, audio, video) on my Tumblr is my own. However I'd like to think about 60% of it are my own photos (for example the pictures marked with a red star in the photo above are mine).

If you're not in the mood for going through a blog full with (mostly) photos that gives me the tingles and makes me happy for being alive in this creative world, and only wants to look at photos that I've taken you can click on the  'My photos only' link (red sq in photo above). The link is quite tricky though, because the text is small and you often have to click on the white space above the text instead of on it. As you can see there are also links to my Streetstyle blog 'Hello Fancy', my twitter account 'Tweet me', my archive and so on. You can also leave me a message by clicking on 'Ask me stuff'.

As you've realized the whole photo is not shown on the page. Being the sensible person as you are, you will click on the photo if you wish to see the whole thing.

For your convenience (or not) I've also enabled endless scrolling, so you can just keep scrolling and scrolling until there aren't anything to see anymore.

Toodles,
Tiffany

Review: How to love 'A pocket full of Sunshine' by Natasha Bedingfield

Photo: Screen Gems

Being one of the last people in the world to see Easy A (2010) had its up and downsides. One being the long line of praisals of both Emma Stone and the movie's humour which made you feel like an complete outsider for not seeing the comicality in GIFs of Emma Stone shampooing her hair (which people on Tumblr are/were eager to reblog in masses). On the other hand, with all the recommendations and "actually-it's-not-that-funny" comments flying around one couldn't help but to build up quite some expectations of the movie.

However, a severe case of laughing cramps and a loud sing-along to Simple Mind's "Don't You" later, I just wanted to hit the play button again.

Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) is a clean-cut 17 year-old who's not very popular with the guys, or as she describes it: if Google Earth was a guy, he couldn't find me if I was dressed up as a 10-story building. Little did she know that a small lie about losing her virginity to a college student would travel á la Gossip Girl style and reach every student at the school in a matter of a few hours.

Enjoying the newfound attention, Olive agrees to pretend to have sex with a guy friend, to stop people from bullying him for being gay. One thing leading to another, she soon finds herself in a 'pay-me-and-you-can-tell-people-we-hooked-up' business that's just waiting to go wrong.

The brilliance of the movie lies in the novel take on teenage life and the spot-on comedy. Casting aside the overdone boyfriend-revenge, unrequited love and mean girls stories, Easy A explores the impact and hilarity in rumour spreading and the thin line between being a virgin-nobody and a "dirty sk*nk".

With a Diablo Cody-sharp dialogue and a brilliant performance by Emma Stone, Easy A is one of few teen movies that neither makes you want to scratch your eyes or wish you could strangle the movie characters half way through. In fact it's one of the best not-a-girl-not-yet-a-woman movies since the Breakfast Club.

(and this is why I've developed a weird fondness of A Pocket full of Sunshine)
Tiffany

THIS

Matthew Seadon-Young,

I don't wanna see no more

This song is currently kicking the showbiz music out of me (and I don't know if I'm comfortable with that). I know it's such a clichée but I'm genuinly crazy about this song at the moment.

As a former super Jonas Brothers fan I'm obliged to say that it's very different from the JB sound and Joe is so different now bladibladibla. However the bottom line is: Chris Brown did a good job.

Watch me listen to it the 11th time on repeat.

Toodles,
Tiffany

Review: Love Never Dies



Photo: andrewlloydwebber.com

Any person's reaction to finding out that Love Never Dies is the sequal to Phantom of The Opera is usually either a frowned brow, a scornful chuckle or simply a long 'What?!' (Mine was certainly the latter)

Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's decision to spin-off Gaston Leroux's classical story about the impossible love between a deformed musical genious and his apprentice still baffles people today (that is if you exclude the improbable reason to wanting to heave in thousands of pounds of course).

Set out across the Atlantic in New York, Love Never Dies takes us ten years after the Paris Opera House has burnt down. The Phantom (Ramin Karimloo) and his protegés Madame Giry (Liz Robertson) and Meg (Haley Flahrety) have established themselves at the vibrant funfair, Coney Island.

As the title suggests, Phantom is still very much in love with Christine (Celia Graham) - the obsessive love of his life whom married another man, and yearns to get her back. Such plans are at work when Christine comes to New York for a special performance together with her now drinking-and-gambling-happy husband, Raoul (David Thaxton), and their neglected 10 year-old child, Gustave.

While Karimloo does a strong and intimidating Phantom, the real star of the show is Thaxton, whose troubled Raoul is impeccably portrayed. After Thaxton's moving performance of the melancholic 'Why Does She Love Me', one would a heart of stone not to root for him in the strife over Christine.

From the inside of the Phantom's tower to a lonely beach, the set is consistently breathtakingly extravagant. One of the most ingenious scene arrangements were the introduction of Coney Island, in which the curtain is used as a projector showing the funfair's surroundings while the actors move behind it, giving the scene a vivid sense of Coney Island's vibrant atmosphere.

However brilliant and stunning the acting and set may have been, Love Never Dies couldn't make up for the dull and overreaching story line - and not to mention the awkward personality changes of the main characters. What's most puzzling is still why they insisted on creating a relationship between Phantom and Christine that never was intended. Adding to the awkwardness is 'Beneath A Moonless Sky', in which Phantom and Christine sing (more or less) word for word about their night together.

How much one may have wanted to know what led to Christine death in Phantom of The Opera, we definitely could've done without.

Love Never Dies (2010) Andrew Lloyd Webber, Aldelphi Theatre, London
Performance: 19/04/11

Tiffany

Questions people never ask me 4.0

What do you feel about the making of Les Misérables as a musical movie?
Excuse the language but, I'm peeing my pants out of excitement to be honest. Tom Hooper (director of the King's Speech) is going to be the director, can it be any better? Although I can't think of anyone less suitable for Valjean than Hugh Jackman, I'm sure he'll do a decent job.

What I'm least looking forward to however is all the songs cutting (one of my favourite songs in Chicago is Class which they cut) or translating songs into dialogue. I can't bare the thought of cutting out any of these amazing (i'd like to say phenomenal but then you'll just think me weird) songs. But then again they can’t have a 2,5 hr movie with no dialogue so I just have to live with it. Good lord, if they dialogue Red & Black I will strangle someone.

What are your guilty pleasures?
Honestly, I like (perhaps a bit too much) going through things I've blogged/tweet about and photos I've uploaded. From time to time I like scrolling through my tweets/tumblr/blog posts and think hey that's quite funny or wow, I am really sad.

What do you genuinly think about Nick Jonas in Les Misérables?
(Judging from the O2 concert) He's not great because of 3 reasons. 1. He's not a good enough vocalist for musicals 2. He's not a very good actor 3. His performance is overshadowed by all these real show-biz people who are, let's face it, mind-blowingly amazing. Although he's not great I genuinly think he wasn't bad, he just wasn't as good as the others.

Who's this Scott Garnham person you keep talking about?
Why, that's an absolutely splendid question. Thanks for asking (This is Tiffany roleplaying with herself). Scott is a current actor in Les Misérables at West End in London. He currenty plays Feuilly and is understudying Enjolras and Marius. (Very interesting stuff yeah?)

The reason I talk about him, other than that he's plain awesome, is because I'm a really sad person. The most recent time I went and saw Les Mis (27th May to be exact), I for some reason felt compelled to tweet about how awesome Mr Garnham was during 'Drink with Me'. Little did I know that I would wake up to find my tweet retweeted with a comment by Scott himself. There you go! Go ahead and laugh all you want but you're not the one having 3 @mentions from him are ya?!

If you could go anywhere in the world where would it be?
New York or Hong Kong (or backstage at the Queen's theatre in London would also be nice)

How many times have you seen the musical Les Misérables? (actually people ask me this all the time, but I'd just like to accentuate how awesome it is)
4 times, one of which was the 25th Anniversary concert at O2.


(Wait, there was a theme in there somewhere.....)

Yours sincerely,
Tiffany

Phantom Of The Opera: Twitter style

Insipired by Twitterature I decided to have a go at Phantom of The Opera (rewatched it yesterday). However, rather than retelling the book (by Gaston Leroux) I'm retelling the movie (Phantom of the Opera, 2004). Yes, it's somewhat vulgar but that's all in the spirit of the Twitterature.

Phantom of The Opera
@ChristineOftheOpera

Got this awesome song teacher. Don't know his name but he sounds hot. Let's call him Angel of Music or Phantom.
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OMG, the new opera patron is my childhood sweetheart Raoul. Yup, he still wants me.
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Phantom took me down to the dungeons tonight. T'was awesome and not scary at all. He groped me but it's ok.
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Despite that scary ass mask, I'd totally tap that.
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Think Phantom likes me. He told everyone I should have the lead in the next opera. Think daddy would've been proud.
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Opera owners decided to give the lead to that diva bitch who can't even sing. Phantom wasn't happy, he killed a guy.
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I went to the roof with Raoul. Yup, we totally did it. Think some perv was watching us from behind the statue. #privacyplease
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PARTY TIME! Raoul proposed. Don't want to tell anyone yet. What would daddy think?
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Phantom totally crashed the party and was pissed at everyone. He had a black mask. My panties dropped to the floor.
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He said I was his forever? Wuut?! Confused. Wish daddy was here, he would sort this out. Right, gonna visit his grave.
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Daddy? Is that you? Darnit, it's just Phantom. Raoul's here too. They're fighting each other now. Too tired to intervene. #boyswillbeboys
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Raoul made a trap to capture Phantom. Planning-Raoul is so hot!
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Shite, I must be the bait. What if Phantom takes me? Did I tell you the dungeons stinks?!
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Haha! Tore your mask off in front of the whole audience. That's what you get for groping me!
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In the dungeon, listening to Phantom's sob history. Nobody loves me sob sob... Oh yes Raoul's here to save me!
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Feel sorry for the deformed dude. Alright I'll kiss you and you better let us go!
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We're free! But the opera burnt down. Oh well. Andrew Lloyd Webber better not make a sequel and call it Love Never Dies or something stupid like that.

Twitterature

Nowadays I'm a full-time lazy ass, which is incredibly nice. I've been reading quite a bit. I finished Sherlock Holmes' The Hound of the Baskervilles a few days back and went on to read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone, which I've never read in English before (yes, gasp and disgrace). While at the library I stumbled upon this absolutely brilliant book:

Picture: Penguin Books

You may know I've had some serious cases of Twitter addiction and I would like to believe it's better now, however some of it is still there I'm afraid. Twitterature takes 60 classical books and retells them in tweets. Beowulf, Pride and Prejudice, Dorian Gray, the Odyssey, you name it! The brilliance lie in the straight forward and sometimes quite vulgar comments (tweets) which tells the story in its uttermost essential and what you should've picked up from reading between the lines.

Excerpts:

Emma (Jane Austen)
@Darcylover1815
Isn't it funny how I'm always thinking about things I seem to not care about, people I don't love, and marriages I don't want to have?

Hamlet (William Shakespeare)
@OedipusGothplex
WTF IS POLONIUS DOING BEHIND THE CURTAIN?

Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë)
@heathbar
My dying wish: that my spirit be united with Catherine's, that we roam the heath together forever, and that Kate Bush writes a song about us.

Cheerio,
Tiffany

Happy July

Can't believe it's July already. In a couple of weeks time I'll have had summer break for 2 months. Jeez, time flies.

For a whole week now I've basically done nothing, i.e reading, watching TV and randomly break out to Les Mis. However wonderful (but occasionally boring) that may have been, I feel like I must get off my lazy butt and actually do something. I have a list, I'm not gonna lie.

Here's an excerpt:
Study PR (got a stinkin C last term, so I just wanted to recap things before the other PR module in the fall)
Study Chinese (you know, when I get bored and feel ambitious)
Drive and study driving theory (still not decided if I'm going to try to take my license in September but either way I'm preparing for it now)
Get together a decent review portfolio and contact Malmö Opera (got this crazy idea of getting a press pass, I know completely crazy!)
Travel and take photos (need to work on this. So if you're going anywhere, please let me tag along)
Read books (currently finishing Sherlock Holmes: the Hound of Baskerville. Have a PJ Wodehouse waiting and planning to reread the Harry Potter series, however the latter seems a bit farfetched)
Get a decent tan (is that such a crime?)

Bonne chance to me.

Toodles,
Tiffany