Oscar's Hotel for Fantastical Creatures - Episode 1 Review

The KickThePJ team have delivered one of the their most ambitious projects yet. Originating as a short film funded by New Form Digital on YouTube, Oscar's Hotel For Fantastical Creatures now become a six-part web series available on Vimeo On Demand.

The eccentric Oscar (Andrew Ableson) and his nephew Oliver (Chris Kendall) run a hotel for strange and fantastical creatures. Soon, Oscar leaves for cosmic council duties and Oliver, the only human in the place, must manage the hotel and all its surreal adventures.

Available on Vimeo On Demand

Episode 1, The Party Nightmare was released on Tues 15 September 2015 and it wasn't long before the Oscar's Hotel hashtag became the top trend in the UK. Director and creator PJ Liguori had been releasing behind-the-scenes snippets and photos on his side channel and Instagram for several months and the audience have been waiting impatiently.

In the first episode, Oscar's advert is failing to attract interesting clients, especially with the Dull Head twins (Joe Bereta and Elliott Morgan) bringing down the mood. Resorting to desperate measures, Oliver phones up the Party Nightmare (Jake Roper) - an "insane boogie gun wielding demon horse" - which brings disastrous results...

Classics I Haven't Read But Probably Should

I've been in education for 16 years, and studying English Lit at university for two years. I confess - there's a lot of big titles I haven't read. Try not to explode from indignation.

I based most of this list on the standard Western canon - so lots of books by old dead white men. If you have recommendations please let me know!

The Reviews Hub: 'Extravaganza at Exeter Phoenix' (27 Aug 2015)

This review was originally written for The Reviews Hub 

Devised: The Company
Reviewer: Christy Ku

Four men, two unicycles, one unitard. Le Navet Bete and their troupe of modern clowns bring out their craziest show again.

A company in residence at the Phoenix Arts Centre, the stage is their home. They become unruly adolescents whose parents are away for a holiday, opening the house for a madcap party. To warm up the crowd, Hans wanders among the seats and the bar, greeting everyone. He does a fantastic job – with his charisma, the audience connects with him immediately and feels comfortable. This later becomes crucial due to the amount of audience participation in this show – expect to be serenaded at some point.

Writing Update #13

Contain your excitement - this writing update is actually going out on time.

Writing

I've written SO MUCH! Here's a run down:

• Finished a poem, currently reworking an old one and working on a new one. I've signed up to compete in my university's poetry slam (my first ever one) so I'm both excited and terrified. I'll try and record my performance(s) to share. 
• Screen scripts; I've been working on a series and I just need to finish off all the drafts. If all goes well, it'll be made but that won't be for several months. Also, I have an idea for a satire on student politics, but that depends on if I can work with a team of writers - felt this wasn't a one person job. 
• Radio scripts: I'm revamping the old jazz cafe idea (again). I've stripped it down (again) as I think I've finally found a way for it to work. More on that another time. 

Lots of writing makes me happy. Although, now there's a little voice saying my drive will soon run out and I'll be lying on the floor making carpet angels of uninspired misery. Thanks dude. 

The Student Journal, Review: 'The Honeymoon Hotel' by Hester Browne

Originally published on The Student Journal, November 2014.

Christy Ku reviews The Honeymoon Hotel by Hester Browne: 'predictable but fabulous'.

Welcome to the Bonneville Hotel, a former refuge for royalty and movie stars. Full of beautiful suites, ballrooms and a glamorous history, the hotel is being transformed into the wedding venue with the work of Events Manager, Rosie. Focused and ambitious, she tries to live her ideal London life. She has a respected food critic, Dominic, as a boyfriend and is in charge of the biggest, high-profile wedding the hotel has ever seen; there's nothing to stop her. Until, of course, she stumbles across a half-naked man in the honeymoon suite; Joe, the eccentric and outspoken son of the hotel owner...

The Honeymoon Hotel was the perfect book to be reading on the train home after attending a London wedding show with my sisters (the eldest is to be married, Miss Austen). Upon reading the blurb, I was worried that it would have a generic business-woman chick-lit plot. We know what that is: the typical ‘I-have-no-time-my-for-own-love-life’ female protagonist suddenly meets the gorgeous (but annoying) guy and they argue for every chapter...until they ultimately end up together. The plot was exactly that, and entirely predictable. And it was utterly fabulous.

We know what’s going to happen in the story. Browne addresses the problem of this clichéd plot commonly found in so many similar books by challenging it in the very first paragraph of chapter one; “People make a lot of assumptions about wedding planners. Either we’re hopeless romantics (I’m not). Or we’re terminal singletons (I live with my boyfriend)”. She sets the story up to be different, but ultimately it falls back into the typical plot line anyway. But, everything is written and created so amusingly that it makes the book such a fun read.