2010.

So. It's that time of the year again.

The end of the year.


Which, if you think about it, doesn't make much sense.


...


Anyways.


Moving on.


Thought I'd make up a little "rewind" for 2010. So here's a top ten for some of the good times, good days, good music, good photos and good movies.


COMMENCE!

MOVIES (Cinema)

The title of the blog is called "Confessions of a movie geek", so this would be a logical thing to begin with.

Add both parts together to get my Top 10 movies.

Though, I've seen some pretty amazing movies this year, so I've been forced to seperate it into two parts, Movies I've seen in the cinema and movies I've seen at home.

Number one: 'Inception'

I confess... 'Inception' is one of my favourite films of all time. Nolan's directing was near enough perfection, as was his script, and he continues to prove that he is one of the best directors as yet another film he has directed leaps intIMDB  the Top 250. The ending made our screening gasp and made me fall in love with it.

Favourite scene: The spinning hallway. That, or the scene where we find out that (highlight to reveal) Mal killed herself. So beautifully done. Tragic. But Beautiful.

Number two: 'Toy Story 3'

I'm such a big kid at heart. I love 'Toy Story 3', the storyline was just flawless and proves (once again) that Pixar can do no wrong. No other animation company can make grown men cry over toys. 

Favourite scene: Any scene that included Spanish Buzz.

Number three: 'Scott Pilgrim vs The World'

Cinematography did it for me. That and the AMAZING script. I wasn't expecting a lot from this film, but it really is an "Epic of epic epicness" as the tagline so modestly puts it. The term "Comic book movie" will never be the same again. Every scene basically runs like a comic book, moving from scene to scene with various "WHAM'S!", "ding dong's" and even a "pee gauge". I love this movie so very much.

Favourite scene: The L word conversation or the scenes where he wakes up, then his room mate wakes up beside him, and then his room mates boyfriend. Brilliant comic timing.

Number four: 'Easy A'

Emma Stone is a great, although under-rated actress. 'Easy A' seems like another one of 'those' rom-coms. A hot, clumsy, but otherwise completely average girl falls for a hot, kind of mean guy and goes through some sort of change to wind up happily ever after with him. You know, a completely one dimensional, superficial film. 'Easy A' instead focuses on Emma's character, Olive, and how she is a bit of a geek. Incredibly intelligent, a little bit safe but, most of all, kind hearted. This movie is so sweet and easy to love. It's funny in most parts and heartwarming in others, this is probably one of the best teen movies since John Hughes' 'The Breakfast club'.

Favourite Scene: The scene where Olive's adopted father asked Olive's black adopted brother Which country he was from. Unexpected, a little bit racist but fantastic none the less.

Number five: 'Despicable Me'

Best non pixar movie I've seen since 'Shrek' back in 2001, Universal really caught onto a winner with this one. The minions make this movie what it is, there's so many of them, and yet each one seems to have their own personality. Scenes had me laughing out loud on more than one occasion and the storyline couldn't have been more adorable. Voice inputs from Steve Carell and Jason Segel were original and made their characters stand out. One of the better 3D films I've had the pleasure of watching

Favourite scene: Without a doubt, The Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat minion!

MOVIES (Home)

Number one: 'Fight Club'

Easy choice to make. This film will shock you, make you laugh, make you think and make sure that you can never hear 'Fight Club' without thinking to yourself (or saying aloud) "The first rule of Fight club is you don't talk about fight club. The second rule of Fight Club is you DON'T talk about fight club". Edward Norton and Brad Pitt were amazing in this movie, as was David Fincher's directing. This movie is so quotable and the ending is just delicious. A must see.

Favourite scene: Either the ending for the shock or the scene where Tyler shows the narrator how he makes soap.

Number two: 'Crash'

Wouldn't be surprised if you haven't even hear of this movie. That makes me feel sad. It's set in America, and the entire movie revolves around the theme of racism. It's such a beautiful film and acted amazingly well. You won't expect things to play out as they do, there are no major shocks but the story isn't straightforward. The one scene that I will always remember this movie for is the scene where a little girl runs out to her Daddy and leaps in front of him to save him from a bullet. Ahh man, you should have seen my face. Purely heartbroken.

Favourite scene: The scene I just described to you or the conversation between Sandra Bullock's character and her housekeeper at the very end of the film.

Number three: Shutter Island 

Fantastic film. DiCaprio is really on great form right now. Scorsese's directing is flawless, if you watch the film twice you will understand why. The last half an hour of this basically turns your whole world upside down, it's very easy to follow and then WHAM! You're not sure about anything anymore. Brilliant.

Favourite scene: "Realisation of what happened" dream at the end. And the line at the very end. So simple, so effective. I'm a sucker for a great quote.

Number four: Life is Beautiful

I know you guys aren't going to like this...

The movie is subtitled Italian

SUCK IT UP!! So you have to read! You are rewarded heavily for it.

The movie is VERY beautiful, funny, heartwarming, tragic... It starts off as a love story between Guido, who is sweet and only has one desire: To win the heart of his "Princess", Dora.. And he does so, eventually, and that part of the story made me Laugh out loud on several different occasions. The two characters have a son and the three of them get shipped off to a Nazi Death camp. For the rest of the movie, it's focus is on Guido and how he tries to prevent his son from seeing the horrors of the world. It's tragic, and at the same time, manages to create gentle humour. It's a movie that's hard to describe. It's just great.

Favourite scene: When Guido is translating the guard's German orders into Italian for his son... you see, he told his son that the Death camp was all a game and if he won, he got a tank.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y9aKqawdUQ Worth a look.

Number Five: The Silence of the lambs

Watched this at 2 o'clock on a Saturday morning... Biggest mistake of my life. This is a good film because unlike most Hollywood horror thrillers, there's not actually that much blood or gore. It's mostly psychological. And it's horrible in that sense... Ahh man... I get scared just thinking about it. Brilliant.

Favourite scene: "Hello Clarice". Now you know where the quote comes from people... Learn some pop culture knowledge!! 

MUSIC

It's been a great year for music.

Or... at least... I've found some pretty good music this year.

This is going to be too difficult... Top ten albums that I've heard that came out year??

Number one

The Script - Science & Faith

Number two

Katy Perry - Teenage Dream

Number three

Wakey!Wakey! - Almost Everything I wish I'd said the Last Time I saw you

Number four

Butch Walker and the Black Widows - I liked you better when you had no heart 

Number five

My Chemical Romance - Danger Days: The True Lives of the fabulous Killjoys

Number six

Myke Black - Nice Little Earner

Number seven

One Republic - Waking Up

Number eight

Travie McCoy - Lazarus

Number nine

Every Avenue - Picture Perfect

Number ten

Motion City Soundtrack - My Dinosaur life

I don't really mind if you disagree, I just love those albums!

PHOTOS

The other part of me, my photography, cannot begin to describe how much I love doing photography! 

So, shameless self promotion alert, ten photos I took this year!

Number one: Cameron (My Cousin) playing with his toys.

Number two: Karate kids  at sundown (Me and Halle)

Number three: My Birthday Picnic at the Duthie Park (Megan, Linzie, Jennifer, Laura... and Claire is in the background... bless)

Number four: Chloe's dog Leo

Number five: Pink at Hampden, on her Summer tour

Number six: Rico the Butterfly

Number seven: Aberdeen skyline at Sunset

Number eight: Flower

Number nine: Hayley Williams at Paramore concert at AECC

Number ten: Fanta can water droplet 

2010 has been a busy year for my photography thanks to Project 365, got Ross into it now too, so he'll be doing a 2011 Project 365 http://365.ross-gilmore.co.uk/

I'm not sure if I'm going to do it again... haven't decided yet.

GOOD TIMES

2010 has been an amazing year, so this will be difficult to narrow down...

Number one: Pink's Summer Carnival tour weekend with Halle.

This tops my list of good times for my entire life (Okay, it might not, but I haven't got one so I can say that). 

Honestly, this was one of my favourite weekends ever, we stayed for two nights down in Central Glasgow and ate subways for Dinner each night. We ate ice cream and watched rubbish TV but oh wow it was so fun. In fact, I tried showing her Pink, but this weird DVD came out of the DVD tray... It had someone's name on it and I thought that it felt like a horror... We didn't watch it... I begged her not to play it because I was scared that it was going to be like the ring or mega awkward because we'd be watching a porno or something.

We had our own apartment (Posh eh?) anyway and Halle said that the lamps looked like Pixars. They totally did.

The next day, we got to Hampden at 10.12 and sat there until we got into the arena at 5. The atmosphere was amazing. There were these die hard Pink fans who were hilarious. This one girl was going through the list of all she has had to drink today (There was a LOT of alcohol) and was struggling to think of more she's had...

BOOZY LADY: Lildt!

SOMEONE ELSE: Diet Lildt!

There was about 600 Pink fans behind security guards holding a piece of duct tape, we were all shuffling, trying to get to the front first, someone basically said "Screw this" and ran for it. 599 people followed. Someone fell down but she managed to pick herself up and was standing right beside me. The show itself was amazing, so many good memories. Can't wait to do it again. But doubt any concert will ever quite match up to this.

Number two: Christmas with my family


Can't beat Christmas.


This year I was NOT looking forward to Christmas, first one without my Grandma you see... but I'm sure she was there in spirit because everything went by so beautifully.


I just felt so loved. Spent the whole day with my Mum and my Dad, went to see my Auntie, Uncle and Little cousin, my godmother came up to give me my Present and have a chat, got Merry Christmas messages from everybody I love and got a few phonecalls from relatives too far away to visit. Just an amazing day...

Oh! And my Mum made Christmas Dinner and it was like tasting happiness... MMMMMM!!


Number three: The day me and Chloe baked (the first one)


Ahhhhh, what a good day.

We went into town in the morning to get "Baking supplies" but came back with paper lasers, I shouted "I love Pooh!" in the Swaroski shop, we were making cookies and cupcakes out of packets (one was specifically designed to be easy enough for kids and even said "Have an adult put your cupcakes in the oven) and we still managed to do it wrong. List of fails: 


Me and Chloe ran to my Grandma's house with a packet of eggs just to realise that the recipe doesn't ask for eggs.
I somehow managed to cut myself with a butter knife
The cut wouldn't stop bleeding.
I couldn't find any plasters so I used a food label to cover it up.
It still wouldn't stop bleeding so I accidentally made a bloody cupcake
Somehow, cookie mixture got into a hole in my camera and I had to suck it out. Ew.
Chloe OBVIOUSLY didn't grease the bottom of the baking tray properly ;) so the cookies stuck to the bottom of the tray and it took half an hour to scrape them off
Chloe made sixteen giant cookies (You were only meant to make eight) and they all grew into one HUGE cookie mass...


Amazing day.


Number four: Sandy Heels day out (A.K.A Art buds at the beach)


Me, Sara, Bev and Kristina all hung out at the beach. Was a great day!

Although, it wasn't really "Beach" weather because it started to rain so were all huddled under umbrellas. Still, it was the day that started the Kristina/Lauren photography partnership so BRILLIANT day none the less.


Also, there was a creepy "Canadian" (He was clearly American) that looked like a cowboy and was staring at Kristina's chest... hmmm... he says he was looking at her necklace but I'm not so sure. He was completely drunk and it was only 4 in the afternoon... kind of sad if you think about it but at the time? Hilarious.


Number five: Paramore Concert


This was just a great concert, atmosphere was amazing! Made me fall in love with Paramore. Heard the weirdest thing as well...

GIRL: You just elbowed me in the boob!

Ahhhhh. Only in a concert. 


Number six: Bowling/Beach/Pizza Hut/Restraunt with Chloe, Heather, Dawn and parents

Was a strange day, there was rabbits on a crazy golf course (Golfing rabbits), I was having a REALLY bad day bowling (I somehow managed to roll SIX gutter balls in a row), We won a trio of ducks in a 2p machine, Me and Heather did a slow mo run (Baywatch style) along the beach and the whole day finished with me, my Mum and Dad and Chloe going for a meal and seeing a double rainbow. Good times.


Number seven: Working with the Prefect team (A-team)


Sometimes you don't understand why you enjoy certain days, or weeks, but you just know that you enjoy them and that's enough for you.


This was one of those weeks, I was put in a team with Ashleigh, Kyle, Rachel, Andrew and Cameron and we had to work on a Countdown game for the rest of the school to play on Interhouse Competition day.


We made up three slides of Nine lettered anagrams, with four Countdown themesongs to every showing of the presentation (which, in total, happened about fifteen times in the day? We were going insane.) Yes. I still hear the countdown clock late at night. I still have nightmares about it. 


Still, it was the making it that was the fun part. We finished in the first couple of days so Thursday was really just roaming about school, chilling. Was great. We were just hanging about in Ms Ashley's room and we found paint... LOTS of paint... In fact, I think she had more paint in that room than the art department had in it's entirety. Someone said that it was body paint and each colour represented a different flavour.... mmmm... bubblegum. Then there was a balloon that was pretty small (boob shaped) and we were playing about with it, I almost popped it and Ashleigh shouted

ASHLEIGH: Don't pop my third boob!!

Good times. 


Number eight: Toy Story Treasure Hunt


Me, Halle, Ashleigh, Ross and Liam went into town and there just so happened to be a Toy Story weekend taking place. It rocked. We even met Woody and got our picture taken with him (Although, he had no "Andy" written on his boots so we think he was an imposter). Then we went around the shopping Centre, following clues that were obviously designed for children and finding Cut outs of Toy Story 3 characters. Me and Liam had to go into a spa to get one of the numbers... was so embarrasing. An eighteen year old and a sixteen year old going into a spa to get the number for a Treasure hunt designed for three year olds... but it was amazing.


Me and Halle went to see "Get him to the greek". Made my day even better.

"Stroke the furry wall!"

Number nine: Games night with Halle and Harrison


Such a short night but one of the best of the year, was nice to chill out, kicking it back old school.

We played all of the eye toys... they seem to be more... faultier... than I remember. Ahh well, fun none the less. 


Oh! And me and Harrison had a lightsaber fight. I totally beat him ;)


Number ten: Passing exams


Hey... Nuff said. It felt amazing to know that I'm not completely useless after all.


Still, 2010 will always be the year that I lost my Grandma... Despite all of these amazing memories, that will be the one that is stuck in my mind.


Love you Grandma, forever and always.


And I love all of my friends and family for making this year so great. 


Hope you all have an amazing time at New Years and have a great 2011!

Lots of love, Lauren xxx