The Other Boleyn Girl - Book to Movie

My second favourite book of all time has recently been made in to a film. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory is a truly brilliant book which gives a fascinating insight in to the Tudor way of life. Full of corruption, deceit, sex and scandal it is a complete page turner which I just could not put down.

So when I found out they were making it in to a film I didn't know whether to be excited or worried. I am a big fan of the Dan Brown books especially The Da Vinci Code, however after watching the film and leaving disappointed I swore to never watch another film remake of a favourite book of mine.

But… I am going to give cinema one last chance. With 2 Americans and an Australian as the leads in a movie set in England, I am hoping their accents will have been sorted. Having watched the trailer, it seems Nat Portman who is playing Anne suits the role amazingly as does Eric Bana as Henry. I am however completely failing to see how Scarlett Johansson works as the sweet, innocent Mary - we will see though hey!

The Other Boleyn Girl is out on 7 March 08 so I will post my review of the film sometime next week.

For those of you who are interested, here is the trailer http://imdb.com/title/tt0467200/trailers-me701036451

New Woman magazine closure

GuardianMedia has today reported that Bauer Consumer Media will be axing First and New Woman Magazine. The article claims around 49 journalists risk losing their jobs due to the closures, which begs the question did anyone see this coming?

New Woman's circulation figures have fallen by 45.3% since 2006, so it is obvious the re-branding in to NW 2 years ago did not provide the miracle the magazine needed. My sympathies go out to anyone who is losing their job due to these closures and I hope the decline of readership is not something which affects all women's magazines.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/feb/08/emap.pressandpublishing?gusrc=rss&feed=media

New Woman Magazine

On http://www.nwdaily.co.uk New Woman magazine's website, it states that:

"NW Magazine was recently, voted the PPA Magazine of the Year. And deservedly so, as NW magazine is one of the biggest, brightest, best-selling women's magazine's currently to be found on your newsagents shelves."

Now what sort of bright magazine would, in an article titled "Are you suffering from Boyfriend Envy" (In December issue 07) in a box at the end of the article titled "'DON'T FANCY YOURS MUCH!'", include a photograph of troubled actor Owen Wilson with a caption next to it saying "He'd dazzle everybody with his wit, but you could never trust him with your razor blades"

Now to me this is not the sort of thing "the biggest, brightest, best-selling women's magazine" should be producing. This is irresponsible, naive journalism at the very least.

I have made no secret of that fact I used to be manic depressive, self-harmed and on more than one occasion tried to take my own life. I was diagnosed with depression when I was 15, manic depressive at age 19 and self-harmed for around 2 years, however I am not ashamed of my illness.

According to the 2001 census 1.7% of 16-19 year-olds, and 2.2% of 20-24 year-olds or about 127,000 have suffered from a depressive episode.

Further research conducted as part of the national inquiry in to self-harm called “truth hurts” also found that 1 in 15 young people (aged 11-25) have self-harmed.

A survey conducted in 2002 where 6020 young people were questioned called 'Deliberate self-harm in adolescents: self report survey in schools in England' showed that females are more likely to self-harm than males.

So why is a female orientated magazine aimed at young women making light of something as painful and upsetting as self-harm?

A lot of people already find it hard to discuss mental health problems, including self-harm which makes it a “scary” taboo subject. However with the media making sick jokes about these issues, they are surely making the problem worse?

If I put myself in that dark place I found myself when I was self-harming and depressive, then read the comment made by New Woman I immediately feel belittled. It feels as if someone is saying “No-one would want this guy because he has mental health issues” so I think “No-one would want me either because I have the same issue as him…”

This is a very scary place for someone to put themselves in, the last thing a depressed young woman or indeed man needs to hear is that someone in the same frame of mind as them is unwanted, mocked and isolated from society.

I have never felt so alone then when I was self-harming, which may sound selfish as I had amazing support from my friends and family. However what I refer to as my “demons inside” were telling me that those people didn’t care, it was me against everyone else and it was always going to be like that.

Even now when I have had a bad day I will find a little voice in my head saying self-harm will make it that little bit more tolerable, but I can say with all sincerity that it doesn’t. Not for the long term anyway.

The pain and absolute hell I went through made me who I am today, it taught me that it is ok to cry in front of your friends and family, that it is ok to rely on other people and not always be “happy happy”.

So for anyone who has or does self-harm the advice I can give you is to talk to someone. We need as a nation to talk to each other more about problems such as this and not be ashamed of them. People may accuse you of being attention seeking, but they don’t know what is going on inside your head so tell them… Their accusations (in my case anyway) just highlighted their own insecurities and by trying to blame me as being attention seeking they were trying to deal with what they saw happening to me… they were scared too.

I hope this helps someone, but at least it is out there now. I am not going to be taboo about self-harm or mental health as a journalist so why should everyone else?

A few useful links:
http://www.selfharmuk.org/docs/The_truth_about_self_harm.pdf - Truth Hurts
http://www.youngminds.org.uk/ - Young Minds Organisation
http://www.selfharm.org.uk/default.aspa - Young people and Self-Harm
http://www.mind.org.uk/ - Mental Health Charity
http://www.nshn.co.uk/ - The National Self-Harm Network
http://www.samaritans.org/ - The Samaritans

European Young Journalists Award

This is an award which an ex-student from the University of Lincoln is advertising, for more information go to http://www.eujournalist-award.eu/your-competition.html

I am going to enter, will let you know what story I end up doing and the outcome.

Emma

Flying Start - Women Jan 08

Well the Christmas buzz is over and done with for another year, well for journalists another few months as I started getting press releases in August last year for Christmas 07!

I always neglect my blog over the holidays, but seen as Christmas was the last holiday as a student for me this should no longer be a problem.

I am off to York tomorrow as I won a place on the Flying Start programme for female entrepreneurs. I am hoping to develop Pulp Magazine in to something I can continue with and make succesful once I graduate from university.

Anyway had better go to bed now, I will let you know how it goes... wish me luck!

Emma

http://www.flyingstart-ncge.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=152&Itemid=104 (link for more information)

"Journalists are scum"

http://www.flaregun.org/?p=77

I hate to say it... but the guy raises some pretty good points!

Pulp Magazine Front Cover

I am currently working on getting the pdf of the first issue of Pulp Magazine uploaded on to here. For now though all I can get up is the Front cover... just wish I knew why the blue has turned orange! More info to follow.