It is with genuine regret that we are announcing the death of yourfaceisanadvert.com. After almost five years of amusing ourselves and hopefully one or two other people we have decided that we need to focus on other projects.

A big thank you to every one who has ever read what we have had to say, you have no idea how much we appreciate your help. This website has set us all on some amazing adventures and we couldn’t do it with out you.

But all is not lost. As we all crave so much attention you can still find us across the internet and in one case on stage. If this were a TV series this would be the moment of flash forward or a tear jerking montage but instead you will get some text and a hyper link or two. Less impressive, but functional.

Claire Blakeborough

Claire has become Queen of online at 69 Degrees. She is also continuing to put words and squiggles on paper- some for children, some definitely not- all in the hope of accidentally creating the next Harry Potter.” You can also catch her ramblings on twitter (@blakeborough.)

David Blackett

David has gone one a bit of a tangent and now rules space, well at least the space centre website and all digital content (spacecentre.co.uk.) David also likes to write for himslef, but you can look too, over at boysies.tumblr.com, boysies.com and of course twitter @boysies.

David Morgan

We fully expect that you will be so sick of the name David Morgan by the end of this year that you will rue the day you ever heard it. Mr. Morgan has taken to the stage to tell funnies, you can keep track of what he is up to over at thisisdavid.com or his youtube channel youtube.com/thisisdavidmorgan and on twitter @thisisdavid.

We also can’t forget Mr. Mark Small who is now a historian type and doing stuff with chruches, you can find him on twitter here: @thehistoryb0y. There was also the wonderful Kirsty Coffield-Brown who gave us some of the most articulate pieces, she is now teaching kids to be as fantastic as her.

We hope you all become amazing people. We all plan to be.

Thank you.

The yourface team.

To watch the full collection of videos go to my YouTube channel (youtube.com/thisisdavidmorgan)

And just because it’s hot (well apart from Antony Costa! That’s right, keep your top on and stay at the back.):

Adverts, adverts, adverts. They’re the reason we started this blog in the first place.

Unfortunately I seem to be the only person that cares about these two. One of them is extremely badly worded and the other is either a devastatingly stupid thing to do, or an attempt to get the ad talked about.

The offenders are Natwest and Marks & Spencer.

Apparently they don’t want anyone to actually look at their adverts- so after 45 mins of searching for a link to the damn things, I’ll have to make do with trying to record them for you.

Natwest- you’ll have seen it. I guarantee it. If not, it does seem to be on during every ad break, so I’m sure I’ll record it soon. Somehow I feel the line “nothing hidden; just the facts.” was a bit of a mistake. If not and this was someone trying to be funny and/or clever- then don’t. Just don’t. Everyone in the UK hates the banks. Regardless of how much we do or don’t own of you.

Marks and Spencer- I honestly thought I had this wrong. However, this press release proves that I don’t.  As apparently M&S’s first menswear ad, the tagline ‘Utterly Repellent Menswear’ is just horrible. It doesn’t matter that your new disgustingly shiny suits are water repellent. Repellent still means repulsive. You know what, maybe these adverts have worked because I’m talking about them and actually the M&S one doesn’t offend me as much as Natwest. Who just offend me in general.

Jessie J, Jessie J, Jessie J what exactly are you?

This is the question I have been asking myself since her second single ‘Price Tag’ entered the airwaves. When the first rumblings were hitting the internet about Jessie J she was being touted as the UK Gaga – a singer songwriter extraordinaire with the style, attitude and brains to beat her American counterpart. ‘Do it like a dude’ had a gangsta edge but with pop beats that let it stand out from the crowd and showed a promising and exciting artist coming our way. She looked like she was going to be Cheryl Cole turned up to 11 but then confidence seemed to be lost in this Jessie persona and she was re cast as a Lilly Allen clone, if you don’t believe me please look at exhibits A and B.

A

B

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL6DlOQIwaY

Is it incredibly witty to parody your first video in your second? Or does it just show a management team that actually have no idea what to do with you?

Then you come to the album ‘Who You Are’ (is the name actually a joke I’m not in on, WHO ARE YOU JESSIE?) which was seen as innovative in the way it brought its release day forward due to public demand. Or so the press release claims. What we ended up with is a half baked album that just feels like her team were scared that the public would become bored of her in the time that it would have taken to create the album that Jessie J deserves, you would think they would have learned from X Factor by now. She is clearly a fantastic songwriter and her voice is amazing but this album jumps from sounding like Alicia Keys to The Saturdays by way of Christina Aguilera, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t make a cohesive product. I think all new pop artists need to take a leaf out of the Gaga book, I’m not suggesting every one should be popping out of eggs willy nilly but they should have a very clear identity and brand around their music, I dont think Jessie has that.

Or possibly the problem is that because she has written for so many different artists Jessie J is yet to find the songs that she actually writes for herself.

If you recently heard a collective sigh of not caring or felt a slight wave of disappointment that Steps weren’t reforming, this is the reason why.

But before we completely write of this inevitable fail of a comeback let me take you on a journey back in time through some of their greatest hit and some pictures of the boys topless, hoorah.

All Rise

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkWQDDv_qdg

And that concludes our music retrospective as these guys have had surprisingly few hits.

But lets look at how well they have done individually.

Duncan James

First of all he is well fit! Second of all he is recently bi-sexual (read as gay.) After Blue went its separate ways Duncan had a less than successful pop career so decided to take to the stage and was rather good at it. TV presenting beckoned and he was also rather good at that too. Little is known about why he wants to return to Blue but I suspect it is unfinished business with some of the boys *nudge nudge wink wink.*

Lee Ryan – Poon Hound

Slept through most of the ladies in the UK so chances are he is joining in this Eurovision ‘lads night out’ to dip his wick. A non existent pop career and claiming that 9/11 were blown out of proportion meant Lee wasn’t the most popular fellow. Last seen shouting ‘Every holes a goal!’

The most incredible story about Lee Ryan can be found here – http://tinyurl.com/4cdctx2

Simon Webbe

The Gary Barlow of Blue – well that is what we were led to believe. After a few soulful songs every one remembered that we had already got over the Lighthouse Family so had no need for Webbe. He went into the jungle and took his clothes off a lot, we rejoiced. His return to Blue will hopefully be shirtless.

Antony Costa

He has applied for Eurovision before.

So there we have it, if any one is wondering why they have reformed to go to Eurovision you now know that they had no choice. Sadly things are looking a bit blue for Blue because they could come out and sing the worlds most perfect song but there is no way they could compete with :

Amazing.

I can’t overstate how important I think this programme and those that promote the understanding of sex are. I could easily rant (again) about how weird I find it that blood, guts and murder on TV are perfectly acceptable but it is deemed morally reprehensible if some one slips a nip. I could also go on for far too long about how sex education in the UK is an absolute joke. And it wouldn’t be too much of a hop leap and a jump to use this programme to vent about the hypocrasy of our fabulous tabloids and how dangerous their mixed messages are. One week they are yelling that the UK has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy and demanding the government do something about it. Then the next week mis-representing reports to make it sound like primary school children are going to get touched up by pedophilic men. No wonder teenagers aren’t asking questions and STI’s are on the rise.

But no – this is about something much worse. Billie JD Porter*.

If you haven’t caught this lady in action just think the absolute opposite of the amazing Dawn Porter. Where as Dawn would get her hands dirty in what ever weird situation she had decided to place herself in, Billie has already made her mind up that, she won’t like it and who ever does X, Y or Z are clearly fucked and should be judged. Her smug ‘I’m so London face’ ruins the whole point of the show, her complete lack of understanding of sexual relationships and the different ways people enjoy their bodies casts a dark shadow over ‘The Joy Of Teenage Sex’ which otherwise does an excellent job of celebrating and guiding young people through their sexual activity.

*This implies she became a groupie and did a couple of freelance free interviews – can any one smell a family member that works in television that helped her get onto the box?

Somehow it’s been 3 whole years since Heath Ledger was found dead of an accidental prescription drug overdose.

He was in some utter shite (A Knight’s Tale) but with Brokeback Mountain, The Dark Knight and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus he was really starting to be in some genuinely good and exciting things. Also, as slated as it often is, I adored 10 Things I Hate About You. In fact, now that my Sky is broken I may have a Heath Ledger day.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6XGUhzfutc

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8PxG5zvgOM

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c293gMejW3o&playnext=1&list=PL75312B7BDEBD2896&index=13

I’ll warn you now. There will be spoilers in this post. Admittedly there’s not a massive plot point like Shutter Island that I could completely ruin, but there are plenty of twists and turns in Black Swan which you’ll enjoy it a lot more if you don’t see them coming and I am going to talk about them. You’ve been told.

Black Swan is the tale of Nina (Natalie Portman) who is a highly accomplished but slightly dull ballerina with a New York dance company. She longs for bigger roles but she lacks the passion and abandonment that the other dancers do so she’s always sidelined in favour of someone ‘sexier’ and a lot less OCD. When the company’s star performer Beth (an ‘Is it her? It looks like her…’ performance from Winona Ryder) retires, the artistic director Thomas (Vincent Cassel) decides that they will be performing Swan Lake. Obviously Nina wants the part of the Swan Queen but Thomas favours sexy dancers like Lily (Mila Kunis- yes Meg Griffin) because he needs someone that can dance the pure and virginal role of the White Swan but who can also manage to represent the character’s change into the dark and sexual Black Swan. He tries to seduce Nina to make her all sexy but she’s not having any of it. The roles are announced and Nina is sure she isn’t going to be the Swan Queen, but lo and behold, Thomas has picked her anyway. Hmmm.

By this point in the film you’ll have started to realise that Nina isn’t well and things are about to get weird. There are constant references to her scratching herself and scenes of her overbearing mother crying in her creepy creepy bedroom full of really bad portraits of Nina. Lily takes her out for drinks and drugs and they end up back at Nina’s mum’s house having a lovely lesbian romp. Extremely hot by the way. Many reviews I’ve read so far have said that this scene is misogynistic, porny and exploitative. As a woman, and a lesbian woman I can say that no, it’s not. Well, it’s a little porny, but what’s the harm in that? It’s just two really hot women having some really hot sex. Good watchin’ I say. Also, it’s kinda important to the story because Nina’s all virginal until this point and this scene spells the start of her descent. I didn’t know how I felt about that image at the time- lesbian sex=journey to the dark side- but it turns out that Nina hallucinates the whole thing anyway so I sort of can’t be cross with it. So I won’t.

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot the wanking bit. Nina has a wank. Potentially her first one ever because she seems to just lay on her hand for a bit then gyrate. Still, it looked lovely and she was having a nice time. Sadly her mother was also in the room asleep in a chair. Reminded me a bit of Switchblade Romance where the girl frigs herself to the gentle strains of reggae.

Anyway, I digress. And I’m going to speed this up because the speed of the film jumps about a million notches after all of the cunnilingual action. The company rehearse for Swan Lake and Nina is pushed and pushed to ‘let go’ of herself otherwise her Black Swan is just not going to be good enough. Which is not really very good advice, because when she does let go she starts to get a lot more crazy. I don’t want to give the whole thing away, but essentially Nina starts to become the Black Swan. Feathers an’ all. Opening night and Nina dances the White Swan perfectly then during the interval does a murder (or does she? dun dun dunnnnnnn) and dances the Black Swan incredibly with all of the passion and anger and abandon that was being forced on her all along….

And I’m going to leave you with a cliffhanger. I really don’t want to spoil how this ends- because you really should just go and see this because it is MAGNIFICENT. I didn’t expect I was going to see Save The Last Dance, but I really didn’t expect this to be a horror film. Portman is incredible. Not just the dancing- which is completely her- but everything. This is a really tense story with quite a slow build-up but she manages to keep you with her the entire way. I’ve always quite liked her as an actress but if she doesn’t get the Oscar for this I can promise I’ll be complaining about it at length. She manages to make you completely believe the character and I was gripped throughout; even when Nina starts doing some real crazy things, I was right there with her and nothing felt jarring or out of place.

Everyone else in this gives a really solid performance but Natalie Portman is the film. I honestly cannot gush enough about her performance and her dance as the Black Swan moved me to tears.

Seriously, go and see it. Today. Don’t go and read another review that tells you the ending; go and actually see it. I’m not sure who I’d say this film is for. 99% of the audience at the cinema yesterday were women, but you definitely don’t have to be a ballet fan to enjoy this and I think men will like this just as much. Although I should say that if anyone is hoping for some lesbian titillation you should probably just stick to X Tube because you’ll be missing the point entirely. If you appreciate good cinema, tense storytelling, don’t mind some really gross and gory bits, can put up with a few scares and quite fancy Natalie Portman then this will be your perfect film.

5 out of  5 Yoshi Eggs

There are some unexplained plot points and the beginning is a tad slow, but stick with it and this is one of the best films I’ve ever seen. Natalie Portman has established herself as a leading lady- no longer just Padmé- she could potentially be massive after this.

]]> http://yourfaceisanadvert.com/2011/01/black-swan-film-review/feed/ 0 http://yourfaceisanadvert.com/2011/01/your-body-is-rockin-but-youre-still-kerry-katona/ http://yourfaceisanadvert.com/2011/01/your-body-is-rockin-but-youre-still-kerry-katona/#comments Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:41:31 +0000 Blakeborough http://yourfaceisanadvert.com/?p=3359

There’s no denying that I would like a body like this. Both for myself and also on another ladyperson. Sadly this one has Kerry Katona’s head attached to it, so that is where this tale ends. If you screw your eyes up, or have eyesight as awful as mine, this sort of looks like a sexy Joan Rivers. Goodbye libido.

Strangely enough I was looking for more info about the ancient ritual of ‘grabbing’ as revealed to us by Big Fat Gypsy Wedding but I ended up looking at this.

You can see Kerry showing off her body and face on Dancing on Ice on ITV1 which I think is on for pretty much the entire weekend.

Image taken from Daily Mail article at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1349098/Dancing-On-Ice-queen-Kerry-Katona-sets-temperatures-rising-sexy-photoshoot.html

I honestly feel dirty admitting I’ve even been on there.

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When X Factor hit our screens last year Simon Cowell made the decision to try and keep away from sob stories and instead focus some of the attention back onto the potential ‘pop sensations.’ However as the class of 2010 were boring to the extreme (apart from Glorious Wagner obvs) this left the story writers and editors with so much time to fill that some of them actually died*.  Instead we ended up hearing about Rebecca Ferguson being a mother and how she missed her kids and blah blah blah.

This has become a worrying feature of reality TV. Watching American Idol last night and any female contestant that had forced new life through her beef curtains were  immediately pointed out. Americas Next Top Model does the same, making sure that at least five minutes of each episode is spent with a woman weeping down the phone to a child that has barely learned to throw up. This has now seeped out of the world of reality TV and into how we talk about celebrities. How many times do we have to read about X, Y or Z finding it a challenge to be a Mom and work?

This sends out a bundle of worrying mixed messages. Foremost is the lack of men leaving their children at home, are these women creating children by themselves? As far as I was aware both a penis and a vagina are needed to create life, if this has changed recently can you please let me know. Why do we never hear about ‘Troy father of three who has left his children to become awesome” or Larry the Irish lumberjack with a home brimming with kids?   Why in the world of television are men absolved from child care responsibilities? On one (patronising) hand this is saying;  Look! Women are just as good as men, if not better, they can raise a child and become Americas Next Top Idol. Look how brave she is following her dream to help her family. On the other hand, telling us that these women have a family has a much darker subtext, implying that their selfish desire has caused them to abandon their family (can any one else smell the tale of Adam and Eve?)

I have no interest if these woman as parents,  I think that its a grotesque short hand so please television people can you stop being lazy or start giving me the complete genealogy of all your participants.

*This may not be entirely accurate.