The Help

Last Friday, Bobby's thoughts on The Help were featured on BBC Radio Five Live's flagship film programme: Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's Film Review. Upon hearing it, we jumped around Bobbysix Towers like schoolgirls dancing to Bros (that's a contemporary pop reference, right?). Here's an elongated review:

The Help tells the story of an aspiring author (played by the ever-amazing Emma Stone) during the civil rights movement of the 1960's, who decides to write a book from the perspective of the many African-American maids that work for white families in the neighbourhood.

While this story of daily hardship, oppression, racism, friendship and morality is overt in its audience manipulation and certainly has both eyes focused firmly on The Oscars, the performances are fantastic, pretty much across the board. Stone especially continues to establish herself as a really fine actor and, to be honest, if she simply read from the phone book for a couple of hours, it would probably still be enrapturing. There are also fine, utterly believable turns from Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer.

A little long at 146 minutes, and clearly Oscar fodder, The Help may tug on the heart strings with mathematical precision, but tug on them it undoubtedly does.

Review by Bobby Townsend.

Easy A review

A couple of years after the simply wonderful Juno comes another teen comedy with a brain in its head. Easy A sees a high-school girl, Olive, tell a seemingly innocent white lie about losing her virginity, which snowballs to the extent that her life begins to parallel Hester Prynne's in The Scarlet Letter. Olive, played by Emma Stone, decides to use the rumor mill to advance her social and financial standing until, inevitably, things begin to spiral out of control.

A loving homage to the John Hughes teen movies of the 1980's, Easy A is well-observed, nicely placed and, crucially, very funny. The dialogue, similarly to Juno, is snappy and sharp as hell, and just like you did with Ellen Page, you'll find yourself totally engaged and charmed by Stone. In fact, the redheaded young actress is by far and away the best thing about Easy A. For someone that we have only really seen in the supporting roles in Zombieland and Superbad, she absolutely owns the screen from start to finish. Funny, sassy and intelligent while all the time purveying the kind of vulnerability that most teenagers feel, Stone's performance suggests we'll be hearing a lot more from her in the future.

Easy A might be a love-letter to the likes of Sixteen Candles, Say Anything and Ferris Bueller's Day Off rather than being an equal to them, but it may well stand the test of time and isn't too far away from those era-defining, female-led teen flicks like Mean Girls, Clueless and Juno.

Easy A ticket giveaway

Easy A, the new teen flick starring the rather wonderful husky redhead Emma Stone, comes out today. The story is thus: After a little white lie about losing her virginity gets out, a clean cut high school girl, played by Stone, sees her life paralleling Hester Prynne's in The Scarlet Letter, which she is currently studying in school - until she decides to use the rumor mill to advance her social and financial standing.

To celebrate its release, BobbySix.com has two pairs of tickets to give away to its Sydney-based, fashion-loving readers.

How to win:

As we told you last week, a brand new pop-up store is launching this Friday. Entitled Dear Pluto, the Surry Hills space will host regular vintage and retro clothing sales/markets/movie nights and all manner of other events. BobbySix.com will be there to enjoy the festivities on Friday, so all you need to do to score a free double pass to Easy A is head along to the launch and go up to the counter with the answer to the following question: "Which artist's new song is called Making Up For Lost Time?" (Clue, have a look a bit further down the page).

The first two people to give the correct answer on will each score a double pass.