As our Christmas countdown edges into double figures and you realise that you have, what, three days left to do your shopping (don’t forget about Susan in Marketing, because you know she’ll get you something even if you’ve already done Secret Santa and it’s always awkward), what better way could there be to fritter a few minutes of our last pre-apocalypse day than by reading our tenth successive holly-draped blog about nothing much?

Gender bending is one of the lost arts. There was a period in the 90s when you couldn’t move in Hollywood for transvestism. It sort of became the default mode for any comedic scene. Chuck in a corset and a couple of fake boobs and BAM! You’ve got cinema gold. Although the subject of emotional turmoil, sexual identity and gender reassignment has been covered sensitively and dramaticly by some amazing films, you’re not going to find The Crying Game on this list. No, we’ve cobbled together our favourite horrifying gender bending scenes from film. Get out the fishnet stockings, folks!

Pop Up Screen events take place throughout the year, and can turn a movie-outing into something special. Over the next few days, the Christmas screenings continue, (thankfully) taking the films inside, away from that cold, damp English winter. To sample the silky hot chocolate, the crunchy popcorn and the homey mulled wine, Best For Film was invited to a screening of Bad Santa in a cosy warehouse just off Brick Lane.

Three quarters of the way into our Christmas countdown, we’re relaxing our previously bird-centric attitudes to focus on the ladies who make Hollywood dainty and sweet-smelling and so on. Except for Lady Snowblood, who’s a mass murderer. And Margaret ‘Iron Lady’ Thatcher, who wore awful suits and destroyed British heavy industry more or less on a whim. And Lady, who’s a dog and reportedly spent most of her time off-camera licking her own vagina in a pile of fox shit. Ladies are unpredictable, is our point.

Can you believe that there’s only 6 days until Christmas!? Let us commiserate at the implacable march of time by considering our top 8 maids a-milking. There’s a lot of fertile subject matter here, but it’s become a little tribute to some of the most important themes of Christmas – family, togetherness, the sacrifices of a loving mother, baby Jesus and… um… Joe Pesci? Whatever. Milky maids. Let’s do it.

FINALLY! It may be only day 7 of our Christmas countdown, but we’re diving into the sherry because it’s the last of the bloody bird-related ones. Do you have any idea how hard it is to be funny about twenty-three sort-of birds over the course of a week? No wonder we’ve ended up writing about such tenuous nonsense. Still, take heart – Christmas is just a few days away and there will be maids for you tomorrow. Until then, Christmas swans ’til death!

A national treasure, a gay icon, a Shakespearean behemoth, a level 4 magnetic mutant and Mithrandir himself, Sir Ian McKellen is one of the greatest actors of all time. At the age of 73, our 5 foot 11 inches undertaker continues to astound, most recently in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Did you know that Sir Ian attended Cambridge University where he studied English, and that he only got a 2:2? NO!? Then you’d better read our Ian McKellen Cheat Sheet!

We’re already half-way through our 12 Days of Christmas! Where has the time gone? Let’s take a GANDER (geddit?) at Best For Film’s Top 6 Geese. Are you EGGcited? OK OK no more goose puns. We couldn’t think of anymore anyway. Enjoy!

Here we are, at everyone’s favourite refrain! Let’s celebrate by considering 5 of the best “gold rings” (they’re not all gold, they’re not all rings). We here at BFF are so very kind that we scoured cinema history in order to deliver 5 shiny circles into your brain via your optic nerve. You might remember Michael Fassbender doing a similar thing to Kevin Bacon in X-Men: First Class, but we promise to be more gentle than that.

Christmas is getting closer and closer, and our 12 Days of Christmas blogs are getting better and better. Today we present Best For Film’s Top 4 Calling Birds, and we’ve really stretched the boundaries of definition to bring you some interesting presents. We’ve also fallen upon a rather fun theme for our choices, and that theme is Death. ENJOY!