Category Archives: Entertainment

No More Harry Potter DVDs

Entertainment,

So at the end of this year Warner Brothers will stop shipping the Harry Potter movie DVDs to the stores as no more will be produced. Obviously this is a bit of a marketing ploy to get people to buy them, particularly as Christmas is approaching, but it might just work. With the last DVD just out (or coming out shortly in the UK) and the box set just released, this is the perfect time to give the Harry Potter movies as a Christmas gift before they are no more.

The rumour is that Warner Brothers will start only releasing special edition sets of the DVDs from next year so the standard ones will only be available on sites like ebay.

Top 5 Halloween Costumes 2011

Entertainment, Society,

So this year there have been a few unusual Halloween costumes popping up in addition to the standard and everyday Halloween costumes. So I would like to give you my top 5 Halloween Costumes for 2011.

1. Often Halloween costumes follow the trends and this year is no different. With the release of The Smurfs movie starring Katy Perry as the voice of Smurfette, the Smurfette Halloween Costume as become one of the biggest selling costumes of the year, if not topping the list. It is one costume that is quite easy to create and to do a basic version on with say some blue face paint and a white hat or blue stockings – check out this article on the Smurfette Halloween costume for info on where to get these accessories.

2. Another big seller for this year which has come about due to a certain person’s antics over the year, is the Charlie Sheen Halloween costume. You can get full head masks of the ex-two and a Half Men actor or just shirts and a face mask.

3. With the new TV series just launched, the Pan Am Halloween costume is another one that is going to be popular this year – choose from pilot or stweardess in these sexy outfits.

4. Or, to take on the popular game/app, you can get some great Angry Birds Halloween costumes – whether you are looking for costumes for adults or kids these will go down a treat!

5. I wanted to throw in a couple of traditional costumes for my number 5, particularly for the children – there are the kid’s pumpkin costumes and for the girls the princess Halloween costumes.

No doubt next year we will also be on the look out for something new and trending in the Halloween costume arena so we will have to wait and see who fits the bill on that. In the meantime these are my top 5 Halloween costumes for this year.

 

 

 

Music – Lady Gaga

Entertainment,

Lady Gaga has never been one to shy away from the shock factor. Although her music is probably considered quite mainstream, her personality and shock appearances at many music awards and the like have made her into a well known figure.

Not content with dressing up as a piece of meat at the MTV music awards in 2010 and also appearing hatching from an egg at a performance at the grammys, she added another string to her strange bow of outfits by dressing up as her alter ego – a man called Jo Calderone.

The question is, is Lady Gaga doing this all to seek extra publicity for her music? And if so, firstly does she actually need to do this as her music seems to stand up for itself, having won many awards and sold in large quantities, and secondly, if she is doing this to publicise her music then how is she going to keep up with the wacky things she has done so far?

Not only this, I think we need to ask, that if she does not exhibit all of this bizarre behaviour in the future, then will her future sales be affected? How much of her personality is rubbing off on the reason why people by her music? Is it cool to buy music by Lady Gaga because she is a wacky personality and would people still buy it if she was just the everyday girl on the street?

There is no doubt that her music is good, and usually original (although I do believe that some songs show a distinct similarity to Madonna in my opinion) but how long will she last? Only as long as she can think up the next wacky outfit or publicity stunt?

Beyonce on YouTube

Entertainment, ,

So recently Beyonce announced that she was pregnant by her husband Jay-Z at the VMA awards. As I did not get to see these awards I tried to check out the announcement on YouTube. However, one annoying thing about youtube is that people often load up their videos with misleading titles and so you don’t really know what you are going to get until you load the YouTube video.

I searched for Beyonce and the VMA awards on YouTube and I must have looked through about 20 videos before giving up and deciding that the announcement of Beyonce’s pregnancy was not on there. Maybe it was but I found it impossible to find. All that I got were people sitting in front of their computer and commenting on the fact that Beyonce had announced her pregnancy. Maybe the proceedings were protected by some sort of copyright but I just couldn’t find  the YouTube video that showed what she said.

I was interested in seeing the recording of the VMAs thenselves as some people I know had not been very complimentary about the way that she announced it and how that might impact other people who were trying to get pregnant but were struggling.

Anyway, I might keep checking YouTube to see if I can find the real Beyonce video but in the meantime if anyone finds it I would be interested to know and would appreciate a link here in the comments, thanks.

 

Amy Winehouse Lyrics

Entertainment, ,

Since the death of Amy Winehouse in August 2011 there has been a lot of discussion about the lyrics of Amy Winehouse songs and how much they tell about her thoughts and her life. Obviously some songs were written by other people for her or were a cover that she has done. For example, one of her most popular songs was Valerie and a lot of people think she wrote the lyrics for that and even wrote the whole song but Valerie was originally a song by the Zutons and it was in the charts not that long before Amy Winehouse actually covered it (with Mark Ronson).

However, one song that was very popular for Amy Winehouse and for which she did write the lyrics was ‘Rehab’. It is said that she sang the hook line to Mark Ronson as they were walking down the street and that he encouraged her to make it into a full song. Obviously the lyrics to this song were taken from her own life experience when her management company wanted her to go to rehab for her alcohol addiction. But at the time she denied that she had a problem with alcohol and said that she would not go to rehab.

Recently, since the death of Amy Winehouse, the album ‘Back to Black’ which contains the song ‘Rehab’ as well as many other self-penned songs such as ‘Tears Dry on Their Own’ and  ‘Love is a Losing Game’ became one of the best selling albums of all time. The lyrics from most of the songs on the album came from personal experience and are a reflection of the troubled times that she had.