It would be harsh to describe Misfits as ASBO X-Men (because that sounds fucking awful) but that’s pretty much Misfits in a nutshell, though imagine X-Men had a much smaller budget, no much much smaller, keep going, imagine the budget for the catering for X-Men, half it, half it again and that’s probably the budget for Misfits.
I was late to the Misfits party after initially dismissing it as Marvel Hollyoaks but after actually watching it I was thankful that it wasn’t nearly as traumatic as that description. For all its flaws (and there are many) Misfits is a surprisingly funny show, and guess what Phone Shop? It’s not even a comedy and it has more jokes than you! Much of said comedy has come from the depraved and amoral Nathan, whose dirty mind would make The Inbetweeners’ Jay shudder with fright and disgust, so much so that he’s the best thing about Misfits.
Or he was the best thing about Misfits. Upon hearing of his departure from the show every fan must have muttered “it’s not going to be as good as it used to be”, myself included, and now the third series has ended, it isn’t. The correlation shouldn’t imply causation however, yes Nathan has left, yes it’s not as good but there are other reasons for this, and Nathan’s replacement Rudy isn’t one of them. The writers must have been aware what the character of Nathan brought to the show as Rudy pretty much embodies the same degeneracy and delivers the same kind of dialogue. Either that or they based him, a sex crazed northerner, on Vernon Kay. As the series has progressed Rudy - much like Nathan - has quickly become one of the best things about Misfits.
So Misfits is still amusing but this series has been somewhat lackadaisical, without a direction the show has started to go round in circles retreading the same territory as the last two series. Surely there are only so many probation workers they can kill before it goes from tongue in cheek to absolutely ridiculous? The premise of the show, some naughty kids have powers, seems to have gone to the wayside and is more of an afterthought.
The powers have always been fairly low key, nothing that would result in expensive special effects, but they have been massively downgraded in series three from relatively heroic abilities to more pointless and humorous ones. It might be funny to juxtapose the “chav” stereotype with the ability of a rocket scientist for a scene but there’s not much you can do with it afterwards. Curtis’ ability to change into a woman produced an entertaining Woof! style episode accurately answering the question “what would men do if they had a vagina?” but again there is only so much you can do with it.
This has been a common problem with Misfits with the protagonists’ low key abilities offering little in the way of character development. How long could they really go on for with Alisha’s ability to be susceptible to rape? The introduction of Seth - the man with the ability to change abilities - has to an extent allowed Misfits to remain fresh and full of ideas though the bell end with the dragon neck tattoo is as dull as February. He was initially very mysterious and powerful looking sat in his weird office like he owned a club in Eastenders but as soon as we saw him sat in the world’s shittest bar he just looked a bit pathetic, and boring.
Despite these niggles I’ve still enjoyed Misfits, with the exception of one episode in particular. Doctor Who had a go at killing Hitler this year (and quite frankly a shit attempt) so why couldn’t Misfits have a go as well? When an attempt to kill what looks like Ricky Gervais dressed as Hitler goes wrong, the Nazis are left with a mobile phone and the subsequent advances in technology lead to the modern day misfits living in a Nazi nightmare. An intriguing and ambitious concept is turned into a series of events that just don’t make sense. Respect the space time continuum! Why is that dude back from the dead but no one else is? Why are they still doing community service? Why does that Nazi officer keep switching between German and Irish accents? The whole thing left me confused.
This series may have given the impression that it was wandering aimlessly without a “BIG PLOT!” but just as the final episode looked to be finishing it broke away from its “fit more sex scenes in than an episode of True Blood” record attempt to tie up that whole time travel thing I forgot about. The show had been begging for a direction but it’s only when drama is introduced into Misfits that it feels a bit silly. Zombie cats and gender swaps strangely go together but throwing in any serious drama feels out of place, just as a cancer scare would in The Mighty Boosh. Seeing death after death with no consequences has desensitised the whole thing, we can’t have an emotional response to a death of a main character because like every other death, it’s just another grave to dig, and another murder to get away with (is there such thing as the police in this show?).
Maybe I expect too much - I have my cake and I’m bloody well going to eat it, all of it, I like cake - but Misfits has bent reality and it can’t…unbend it. How are we supposed to believe that these characters who have been caught by the cops for minor offences can evade the five-o for a string of murders that they have all been connected to? I can believe the powers thing, that’s fine but this? no no no, this is shit, and is the whole world contained in a community centre and a bar?
We’ve been given three good series of Misfits but its future is looking bleak. With another two cast members leaving and a rapidly dwindling stock of low budget super powers it surely won’t be long before Misfits’ plug is pulled. Let’s just hope series four doesn’t turn out to be Marvel Hollyoaks.
Saturday 24 December 2011
Monday 5 December 2011
Camp Twisted Razzle Dazzle
What’s better than a good old fashioned American horror story? If you’re me, just about everything. Horror isn’t a genre I dabble in all too often, I don’t want to spend ninety odd minutes watching unpleasant things in a wilful attempt to be scared, it’s irrational. I live by myself, I’m scared enough as it is, it only takes the fridge to spontaneously come to life at 1am to get me going.
Despite this I still felt compelled to watch American Horror Story which seems to have garnered quite a reputation for itself judging by the internet and my twitter feed. Hey, I could like it, I didn’t think I’d like guacamole and I did. So with this newfound optimism I set out to watch the pilot episode of American Horror Story.
The first thing that became apparent about American Horror Story was that it was created by the folks who gave us Glee, which should have been enough to turn it off there and then, but persevered I did. It doesn’t take long to realise that you’re basically watching The Amityville Horror in a serial format, it’s a haunted house where weird stuff happens and some idiots move in because they’re idiots.
Idiots are a hallmark of the horror genre but this is a series, we’re going to have to live with these dickheads for a long time, at least make one of them likeable. I think they want us to like the daughter what with her “brash and quirky” dialogue but I can’t like any girl who wears a trilby. The husband cheated on his wife and instead of getting a divorce they move into a creepy looking house where she spends all of her time hating him. We know he’s a bad guy for cheating and that she’s even more of a dick for staying with him and stating that she doesn’t let her family drink out of plastic bottles.
It feels as if the idiocy of this protagonist family is quite tongue in cheek and they’re supposed to be dicks but it could also be that they’re just accidentally that way, it’s impossible to tell. As a drama American Horror Story is boring, the family are going through some incredibly mundane problems and are incredibly mundane themselves, so the show is reliant on the horror side of things to be interesting.
The house does indeed look very creepy which only further amplifies the family’s stupidity because who would move into that house, let alone let the defining factor be the knowledge that the last owners were murdered? But hey, that’s horror for you. There are many moments intent on frightening you throughout this pilot episode but it feels somewhat like a ghost train, plenty of frights but without any narrative or context, and by the end of the credits I was still not sure what the show was about.
Having been made by the creators of Glee there are inevitably a few parallels between the two shows. American Horror Story could be considered as the anti-Glee - for every sparkly smile and song in Glee there’s a weird and ghastly fright in American Horror Story - if it wasn’t so much like Glee. The biggest flaw of Glee is its insistence on cramming as many musical numbers as possible without any regard for context and the same can be said for American Horror Story’s “weird bits“. There’s no reason for finding a gimp suit in the house just as there’s no reason to break out into song every five minutes.
American Horror Story might be saturated with mystery and weirdness but it comes in such regular and expected beats that it’s rarely shocking or exciting. It’s greatly disjointed and incongruous while its characters are tedious and two dimensional. It’s unclear whether American Horror Story is supposed to be a parody on the horror genre or just camp twisted razzle dazzle. For a true American horror story you’re better off watching the Kardashians.
Despite this I still felt compelled to watch American Horror Story which seems to have garnered quite a reputation for itself judging by the internet and my twitter feed. Hey, I could like it, I didn’t think I’d like guacamole and I did. So with this newfound optimism I set out to watch the pilot episode of American Horror Story.
The first thing that became apparent about American Horror Story was that it was created by the folks who gave us Glee, which should have been enough to turn it off there and then, but persevered I did. It doesn’t take long to realise that you’re basically watching The Amityville Horror in a serial format, it’s a haunted house where weird stuff happens and some idiots move in because they’re idiots.
Idiots are a hallmark of the horror genre but this is a series, we’re going to have to live with these dickheads for a long time, at least make one of them likeable. I think they want us to like the daughter what with her “brash and quirky” dialogue but I can’t like any girl who wears a trilby. The husband cheated on his wife and instead of getting a divorce they move into a creepy looking house where she spends all of her time hating him. We know he’s a bad guy for cheating and that she’s even more of a dick for staying with him and stating that she doesn’t let her family drink out of plastic bottles.
It feels as if the idiocy of this protagonist family is quite tongue in cheek and they’re supposed to be dicks but it could also be that they’re just accidentally that way, it’s impossible to tell. As a drama American Horror Story is boring, the family are going through some incredibly mundane problems and are incredibly mundane themselves, so the show is reliant on the horror side of things to be interesting.
The house does indeed look very creepy which only further amplifies the family’s stupidity because who would move into that house, let alone let the defining factor be the knowledge that the last owners were murdered? But hey, that’s horror for you. There are many moments intent on frightening you throughout this pilot episode but it feels somewhat like a ghost train, plenty of frights but without any narrative or context, and by the end of the credits I was still not sure what the show was about.
Having been made by the creators of Glee there are inevitably a few parallels between the two shows. American Horror Story could be considered as the anti-Glee - for every sparkly smile and song in Glee there’s a weird and ghastly fright in American Horror Story - if it wasn’t so much like Glee. The biggest flaw of Glee is its insistence on cramming as many musical numbers as possible without any regard for context and the same can be said for American Horror Story’s “weird bits“. There’s no reason for finding a gimp suit in the house just as there’s no reason to break out into song every five minutes.
American Horror Story might be saturated with mystery and weirdness but it comes in such regular and expected beats that it’s rarely shocking or exciting. It’s greatly disjointed and incongruous while its characters are tedious and two dimensional. It’s unclear whether American Horror Story is supposed to be a parody on the horror genre or just camp twisted razzle dazzle. For a true American horror story you’re better off watching the Kardashians.
Tuesday 8 November 2011
How I Came To Hate Music
I’ve made a pact to myself to tidy this room by the end of the day. I didn’t do anything yesterday and if I’m not productive today then I’ll go to bed smelling of shame and guilt, and I don’t want that, it’ll manifest into a strange dream where I’m attacked by the mess that I didn’t clean up. So I really have to do something. There are several CD’s stacked on a desk, many are missing their cases and don’t even match the empty cases next to them, and as I spend the next half hour dusting the once shiny discs and putting them away I realise something, most of the CD’s I own are shit.
When I was sixteen I owned about five albums, South Park: Chef Aid being one of them. At twenty four I have over 8000 songs on my hard drive and I cannot like more than a thousand of them. The South Park album isn’t even on there, nor are several other albums I regrettably own. Not so long ago I tried to make a CD of all my favourite songs, songs that I love, songs that I never get bored of, songs that get better with every listen, and I couldn’t fill the 120 minute CD, not even close. Out of 8000 songs I own there were only eight that met my criteria. If I press the shuffle button on iTunes there’s a 0.1% chance that I’m going to love the song that comes on. I don’t like those odds.
Since my ipod broke I put some music on my iPhone (last time I mention an Apple product), I couldn’t put my entire collection on it, so I put 300 songs I knew I liked onto it. This didn’t cure my obsessive shuffling disorder though. Despite having only 300 songs which I knew I liked, I still shuffled through most of them because apparently I didn’t like them as much as I thought I did.
The problem is that my collection of over 8000 songs mostly reflects my adolescence and early adulthood when I thought music was supposed to be loud and brash or Snow Patrol. Half of my collection must consist of pop punk and hip hop, and I don’t really like pop punk or hip hop these days. It would be embarrassing to admit that I own three All-American Rejects albums, and if I listen to any of them I can only think of how embarrassing it would be if people found out. “HA HA HA, you’re listening to shit that girls listen to, what next? Avril Lavigne? HA HA HA”.
So even if I like a song it comes with baggage, heavy embarrassing baggage. You might say that you shouldn’t be embarrassed, that it’s your right to listen to anything you want, but to that I say to you that you don’t own two Limp Biscuit albums, you don’t know what it’s like to own two Limp Biscuit albums. To have Fred Durst shout at you all of his vacuous lyrics like “fuck you” and “fuck this”, and not just listen to him but to be fine with it all. I didn’t care, and I carry that around with me, like a cross on my shoulder. Two fucking Limp Biscuit albums. I have two 50 Cent albums, you don’t know what it’s like to own two 50 Cent albums. To have “Fiddy” shout at you all of his vacuous lyrics like “fuck you” and “fuck this”, and not just listen to him but to be fine with it all. I didn’t care, and I carry that around with me, like a cross on my shoulder. You don’t know what it’s like to own two Pitbull albums…and neither do I.
I look back and what was I thinking? Why did I buy this album and how did I ever think this was good? So what happens to the music that I didn’t buy? The music that I already dislike? What will come of Pitbull, Coldplay, and Cheryl Cole? Are they going to get worse with age? Or is this what good music sounds like? Maybe I’m doing this whole music thing wrong, after all I have a success rate of 0.1%, maybe the likes of Pitbull, Coldplay, and Cheryl Cole are brilliant, and I’ve been blinded to the fact by my seething hatred.
Obviously they’re not brilliant, but I can’t prove it. There is no way to criticise music, it’s impossible. Pitbull is an abomination, dressed like a high class rapist in his white suit and sunglasses, like a Puerto Rican Jay Gatsby, rhyming “picture that with a Kodak” with “take a picture of me with a Kodak” (THIS IS NOT HOW RHYMING FUCKING WORKS!), and he’s only ever in a club or on a boat. Pitbull is a moron for morons. And you Sean Paul. I think Pitbull is worse than Sean Paul but I’m not sure, how can you tell? What’s worse? Horseshit or cowshit? I have nightmares that they’ll combine like Station in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey and they’ll become the all powerful PitPaul.
I can’t prove that Pitbull’s music is bad though, to say so is essentially calling anyone who’s bought it an idiot, and I’m just not like that. All I can do is find people who share my opinion and get them to sign a petition. But they probably like Coldplay, or worse, metal. We might not be able to objectively critique an artist’s music, but what about their actions? I’m sure we can all agree that people like Chris Brown and Chris Brown sympathiser Dappy are complete cunts. We can’t stop them making music but perhaps we can put a warning sticker on front of the album, “WARNING: ARTIST IS A CUNT”.
I hear that music is supposed to bring people together, and it does in an all too literal sense, but all it really does is cause arguments. Yeah you might connect with someone because you like the same band, but it won’t end well. Yeah, you both like…Franz Ferdinand(?), and you’re talking and having fun and sharing memories of how you went to see them and you really wanted to hear that song and they went off stage and you were disappointed that they didn’t play it and suddenly they came back on and they played it and it was the best night of your life until you saw them again where the exact same thing happened, and then they say, “but they’re not as good as The Kooks”. You hate The Kooks, you’re fucking livid, how can this person like The Kooks? That naïve song is fucking shit, I don’t want to talk to this person! And meanwhile they’re thinking how can this person not like The Kooks? That naïve song is fucking brilliant, I don’t want to talk to this person! And not only do you not want to talk to each other, you resent each other.
I’ve had people call my favourite bands “shit” and I’ve taken it personally. I don’t think it’s irrational, if you introduced me to you partner and I came out with “Him? He’s shit!” you’d be offended, and it’s the same with anything, if someone insults something you like, you’re going to be somewhat hurt, and if everyone knows this then they know that when they call your favourite band shit, they’re going to offend you. Music does bring us together, but to fight and squabble about it.
As I’ve grown up I’ve acquired this bitter outlook on pretty much everything and it’s probably why I have so much disdain for my 8000 songs. I don’t share the same fervour for pop punk as my younger self, I can’t go on living with a soundtrack that’s come straight out of a Tony Hawk game. I can’t even play Tony Hawk games anymore. I haven’t played a skate game since one asked me to knock over a security guard and I just felt sorry for him, I was an obnoxious jobless dick on wheels and he was trying to feed his family.
I’ve been in denial for too long, I’ve tried to convince myself that I like every one of these 8000 songs and that they deserve to stay on my hard drive, but they don’t serve any purpose (like Pitbull), they need to go because they’ve destroyed my faith in music (like Pitbull). I’ve become disillusioned, I thought I loved music, but it turns out that I hate it*.
*Not all of it:
When I was sixteen I owned about five albums, South Park: Chef Aid being one of them. At twenty four I have over 8000 songs on my hard drive and I cannot like more than a thousand of them. The South Park album isn’t even on there, nor are several other albums I regrettably own. Not so long ago I tried to make a CD of all my favourite songs, songs that I love, songs that I never get bored of, songs that get better with every listen, and I couldn’t fill the 120 minute CD, not even close. Out of 8000 songs I own there were only eight that met my criteria. If I press the shuffle button on iTunes there’s a 0.1% chance that I’m going to love the song that comes on. I don’t like those odds.
Since my ipod broke I put some music on my iPhone (last time I mention an Apple product), I couldn’t put my entire collection on it, so I put 300 songs I knew I liked onto it. This didn’t cure my obsessive shuffling disorder though. Despite having only 300 songs which I knew I liked, I still shuffled through most of them because apparently I didn’t like them as much as I thought I did.
The problem is that my collection of over 8000 songs mostly reflects my adolescence and early adulthood when I thought music was supposed to be loud and brash or Snow Patrol. Half of my collection must consist of pop punk and hip hop, and I don’t really like pop punk or hip hop these days. It would be embarrassing to admit that I own three All-American Rejects albums, and if I listen to any of them I can only think of how embarrassing it would be if people found out. “HA HA HA, you’re listening to shit that girls listen to, what next? Avril Lavigne? HA HA HA”.
So even if I like a song it comes with baggage, heavy embarrassing baggage. You might say that you shouldn’t be embarrassed, that it’s your right to listen to anything you want, but to that I say to you that you don’t own two Limp Biscuit albums, you don’t know what it’s like to own two Limp Biscuit albums. To have Fred Durst shout at you all of his vacuous lyrics like “fuck you” and “fuck this”, and not just listen to him but to be fine with it all. I didn’t care, and I carry that around with me, like a cross on my shoulder. Two fucking Limp Biscuit albums. I have two 50 Cent albums, you don’t know what it’s like to own two 50 Cent albums. To have “Fiddy” shout at you all of his vacuous lyrics like “fuck you” and “fuck this”, and not just listen to him but to be fine with it all. I didn’t care, and I carry that around with me, like a cross on my shoulder. You don’t know what it’s like to own two Pitbull albums…and neither do I.
I look back and what was I thinking? Why did I buy this album and how did I ever think this was good? So what happens to the music that I didn’t buy? The music that I already dislike? What will come of Pitbull, Coldplay, and Cheryl Cole? Are they going to get worse with age? Or is this what good music sounds like? Maybe I’m doing this whole music thing wrong, after all I have a success rate of 0.1%, maybe the likes of Pitbull, Coldplay, and Cheryl Cole are brilliant, and I’ve been blinded to the fact by my seething hatred.
Obviously they’re not brilliant, but I can’t prove it. There is no way to criticise music, it’s impossible. Pitbull is an abomination, dressed like a high class rapist in his white suit and sunglasses, like a Puerto Rican Jay Gatsby, rhyming “picture that with a Kodak” with “take a picture of me with a Kodak” (THIS IS NOT HOW RHYMING FUCKING WORKS!), and he’s only ever in a club or on a boat. Pitbull is a moron for morons. And you Sean Paul. I think Pitbull is worse than Sean Paul but I’m not sure, how can you tell? What’s worse? Horseshit or cowshit? I have nightmares that they’ll combine like Station in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey and they’ll become the all powerful PitPaul.
I can’t prove that Pitbull’s music is bad though, to say so is essentially calling anyone who’s bought it an idiot, and I’m just not like that. All I can do is find people who share my opinion and get them to sign a petition. But they probably like Coldplay, or worse, metal. We might not be able to objectively critique an artist’s music, but what about their actions? I’m sure we can all agree that people like Chris Brown and Chris Brown sympathiser Dappy are complete cunts. We can’t stop them making music but perhaps we can put a warning sticker on front of the album, “WARNING: ARTIST IS A CUNT”.
I hear that music is supposed to bring people together, and it does in an all too literal sense, but all it really does is cause arguments. Yeah you might connect with someone because you like the same band, but it won’t end well. Yeah, you both like…Franz Ferdinand(?), and you’re talking and having fun and sharing memories of how you went to see them and you really wanted to hear that song and they went off stage and you were disappointed that they didn’t play it and suddenly they came back on and they played it and it was the best night of your life until you saw them again where the exact same thing happened, and then they say, “but they’re not as good as The Kooks”. You hate The Kooks, you’re fucking livid, how can this person like The Kooks? That naïve song is fucking shit, I don’t want to talk to this person! And meanwhile they’re thinking how can this person not like The Kooks? That naïve song is fucking brilliant, I don’t want to talk to this person! And not only do you not want to talk to each other, you resent each other.
I’ve had people call my favourite bands “shit” and I’ve taken it personally. I don’t think it’s irrational, if you introduced me to you partner and I came out with “Him? He’s shit!” you’d be offended, and it’s the same with anything, if someone insults something you like, you’re going to be somewhat hurt, and if everyone knows this then they know that when they call your favourite band shit, they’re going to offend you. Music does bring us together, but to fight and squabble about it.
As I’ve grown up I’ve acquired this bitter outlook on pretty much everything and it’s probably why I have so much disdain for my 8000 songs. I don’t share the same fervour for pop punk as my younger self, I can’t go on living with a soundtrack that’s come straight out of a Tony Hawk game. I can’t even play Tony Hawk games anymore. I haven’t played a skate game since one asked me to knock over a security guard and I just felt sorry for him, I was an obnoxious jobless dick on wheels and he was trying to feed his family.
I’ve been in denial for too long, I’ve tried to convince myself that I like every one of these 8000 songs and that they deserve to stay on my hard drive, but they don’t serve any purpose (like Pitbull), they need to go because they’ve destroyed my faith in music (like Pitbull). I’ve become disillusioned, I thought I loved music, but it turns out that I hate it*.
*Not all of it:
Thursday 3 November 2011
Grand Theft Pandemonium
If you’ve stumbled upon any games website this week you’d be forgiven for thinking that Grand Theft Auto V is the only game in existence, all other games have been taken round the back and shot. Not only is GTA V not out yet, it hasn’t even got a release date, but what it has got is a whole load of pandemonium over a trailer.
A trailer? People love trailers these days, they can’t get enough of them, more excitement is generated over a trailer than the final product it’s promoting. Perhaps people are too busy to watch a film or play a game and watching a trailer is not only a viable substitute but a more preferable one, who wants to sit down and watch a film for two hours anyway? A trailer can be anything from twenty seconds to four minutes and that’s enough time to formulate some deep opinions without stopping what you’re doing (masturbating probably).
Film trailers are undoubtedly useful, if a trailer can bore you in sixty seconds then chances are you’re not going to want to see the film. You are able to produce a list of suitable reasons to why it‘s not for you, I don‘t like the actors, the plot is ludicrous, the “jokes” aren’t funny, Robert Pattinson is in it.
Game trailers however are far from useful, in recent times we’ve seen totally distorted depictions of games in their trailers, promising something that can never be delivered. Far more interested in achieving a cinematic appeal, very little of the game is shown, we’re treated to a pretty looking sequence which while impressive tells us nothing about the game. We can’t make any judgements like we can with a film trailer because we haven’t seen what the game really looks like.
So why all the hysteria over GTA V? It may have revealed a few details about the game (none of them revelatory), but it hasn’t showed what playing the game will be like. It’s admittedly quite exciting to see glimpses of the city but is this really enough to warrant multiple articles on one website? Have we been shown enough to be able to concoct accurate judgements? Looking at the comments section of said articles, apparently so. If we are to take these comments as gospel then GTA V will either be TOTALLY GNARLY! Or a sleight against god and all humanity.
It’s fine to speculate (in moderation) what GTA V might be like but to make such dogmatic judgements after seeing just over a minute of footage is moronic, as is criticising the trailer. Apparently looking at a screen for a minute is too much for some people as one commenter shared his anger of having to watch an advert before watching the trailer, seemingly failing to see the irony behind his stupidity. If you can’t spend a minute of your time keeping your eyes open then how are you supposed to play the damn game? Do you have a tantrum whenever you come across a loading screen? Do you throw the controller whenever there’s some more reading to do in Final Fantasy? What happened when he sat through the credits of Iron Man? “I WAITED TEN MINUTES FOR THAT? ARGH!”.
…Anyway, GTA V isn’t out for a long time, let’s just be content that we know where it’s set and PATIENTLY wait for Rockstar to reveal more details or, and I’m just putting this out there, just wait until the game is released. While you wait, read the #grandtheftautomemories hash tag on twitter and be thankful you’re not one of those people.
A trailer? People love trailers these days, they can’t get enough of them, more excitement is generated over a trailer than the final product it’s promoting. Perhaps people are too busy to watch a film or play a game and watching a trailer is not only a viable substitute but a more preferable one, who wants to sit down and watch a film for two hours anyway? A trailer can be anything from twenty seconds to four minutes and that’s enough time to formulate some deep opinions without stopping what you’re doing (masturbating probably).
Film trailers are undoubtedly useful, if a trailer can bore you in sixty seconds then chances are you’re not going to want to see the film. You are able to produce a list of suitable reasons to why it‘s not for you, I don‘t like the actors, the plot is ludicrous, the “jokes” aren’t funny, Robert Pattinson is in it.
Game trailers however are far from useful, in recent times we’ve seen totally distorted depictions of games in their trailers, promising something that can never be delivered. Far more interested in achieving a cinematic appeal, very little of the game is shown, we’re treated to a pretty looking sequence which while impressive tells us nothing about the game. We can’t make any judgements like we can with a film trailer because we haven’t seen what the game really looks like.
So why all the hysteria over GTA V? It may have revealed a few details about the game (none of them revelatory), but it hasn’t showed what playing the game will be like. It’s admittedly quite exciting to see glimpses of the city but is this really enough to warrant multiple articles on one website? Have we been shown enough to be able to concoct accurate judgements? Looking at the comments section of said articles, apparently so. If we are to take these comments as gospel then GTA V will either be TOTALLY GNARLY! Or a sleight against god and all humanity.
It’s fine to speculate (in moderation) what GTA V might be like but to make such dogmatic judgements after seeing just over a minute of footage is moronic, as is criticising the trailer. Apparently looking at a screen for a minute is too much for some people as one commenter shared his anger of having to watch an advert before watching the trailer, seemingly failing to see the irony behind his stupidity. If you can’t spend a minute of your time keeping your eyes open then how are you supposed to play the damn game? Do you have a tantrum whenever you come across a loading screen? Do you throw the controller whenever there’s some more reading to do in Final Fantasy? What happened when he sat through the credits of Iron Man? “I WAITED TEN MINUTES FOR THAT? ARGH!”.
…Anyway, GTA V isn’t out for a long time, let’s just be content that we know where it’s set and PATIENTLY wait for Rockstar to reveal more details or, and I’m just putting this out there, just wait until the game is released. While you wait, read the #grandtheftautomemories hash tag on twitter and be thankful you’re not one of those people.
Sunday 30 October 2011
Batshit
I’ve always liked Batman, my affinity for the Dark Knight is probably similar to how Christians feel about Jesus, he’s A-OK. But doesn’t everyone like Batman? The success of his last cinema outing suggests that his appeal is universal, much like birthday cake and trying on someone’s glasses. Not everyone will have a Batman section on their bookshelf but most people will have seen The Dark Knight and concede that “yeah it was alright”. Most Batgeeks however can’t get enough of Batman and will currently be going Batshit over Batman: Arkham City, myself included.
Two years ago Batman: Arkham Asylum was released on those consoles that turn kids into murdering rapists and not many games have bettered it. If I was writing this blog two years ago I would have definitely written about Arkham Asylum and it would have probably read like this:
“I’ve cum in my pants!”
Arkham Asylum is one of those rare moments of gaming perfection, like Donkey Kong Country or Ico. Set over the course of one night in Arkham Asylum, as Batman you must beat the shit out of the Joker and pretty much anything else that moves. It captured the tone of the comics perfectly and the gameplay was pretty much flawless. It had moments that surprised and shocked you and that just doesn’t happen enough in games.
So it’s been two years I’ve been waiting to play its sequel Arkham City, was it worth the wait? The short answer is yes. The set up is typically textbook comic book, Arkham Asylum has been relocated to a vast section of Gotham City (think District 13, that brilliant French parkour film), shit is going down, and it’s up to Batman to stop it.
As it’s Batman the storyline and scripting is vital to the game’s success, and to an extent it works very well. There are countless twists and turns that drive the story forward and while some are predictable they will at least make you want to play on. The dialogue is what really makes the game come to life, as you glide over Arkham City you can hear its inmates’ conversations, often discussing the events of the game. The Joker (expertly voiced by Mark Hamill) has some excellent dialogue which will have you genuinely laughing out loud (or LOLing as the kids say), while characters such as Catwoman are somewhat cringe worthy in their crusade on breaking the world record of puns per minute.
While the mechanics of the game have been refined and work even better than its predecessor, there is something about Arkham City which isn’t quite right. Unlike Arkham Asylum there is a strong emphasis on freedom, if you don’t want to continue the story you can glide about the city and complete some side missions. Oh, it’s a bit Grand Theft Autoy, or Assassin’s Creedy then? Well sort of. The side missions aren’t much of a challenge and only take as long as they do because the objectives are quite well hidden, and when you realise you’ve just been aimlessly searching for a corpse for ten minutes it’s not really that much fun.
The freedom aspect of the game is something of a lie however, you are in a prison after all. As open worlds go, Arkham City isn’t much of a city. Of course it’s supposed to look run down and shit, but there’s nothing really interesting to look at. There are a few fairly large interior locations (and it feels like you’ll spend most of your time in these) but the city looks much bigger than it actually is. What makes things worse is there’s a big chunk of the map you can’t access.
Contrast this with the last two Assassin’s Creed games and you may feel somewhat short changed. What would you prefer to jump around in, a beautifully recreated renaissance Rome or a dank squalid slum? Unlike Assassin’s Creed, Arkham City wasn’t limited by history, it was free to create any kind of interesting city, instead it made a boring one, and you run out of things to do in it very quickly.
Arkham City is like a Crème Egg, amazing but disappointingly short lived. The few hours you play the game for may be cosmic (I‘m bringing it back), but they will only be a few. Games like Call of Duty and Battlefield can get away with this because of their multiplayer content but what does Arkham City have to offer? There are some moments in which you can play as Catwoman. Well there are four and they’ll take you less than an hour to complete. There are the aforementioned side missions but these also take relatively little time to complete. There are challenge maps but their longevity is dependant on your level of OCD. So too are the 400 Riddler trophies to collect, either little green question marks scattered across the map or various challenges, however there seems to be little or no reward in doing so.
This brings me to my next qualm with Arkham City. I’ve grown up playing games in which you unlock content by playing the damn thing, though in the case of Arkham City and many other games you can only unlock content by purchasing it. Some content can only be obtained by purchasing the game at a specific shop, or even by purchasing a different product altogether (by buying the Green Lantern blu-ray you can play as a special Lantern Batman or something). For most content you have to purchase it online, and in the case of Arkham City, this content is superficial, largely consisting of different costumes for Batman.
This should be available to the poor soul who spent £40 on the game, especially when there is very little content in the first place. Collecting the 400 Riddler trophies would be a very long and very boring exercise and the player should be rewarded for their efforts, and not in the form of concept art. Why do I have to pay to dress up in a different costume when other games give me the privilege for free? It’s not going to radically change your gaming experience by wearing a different cape but it’s incredibly cynical to charge you for it.
This cynicism taints Arkham City. It has a great main story, but as a complete package it’s pretty awful. It has a mode called new game plus and this sums up everything wrong with Arkham City. In any other game, new game plus would be known as “playing the game again”, but Arkham City has put fucking bells on it, as if in an attempt to convince us that it’s not as threadbare as it actually is. It’s not that the game is short, it’s the lazy attempt to cover up the fact that makes Arkham City disappointing. The developers are laughing, and we’re left wanting justice, sound familiar?
Two years ago Batman: Arkham Asylum was released on those consoles that turn kids into murdering rapists and not many games have bettered it. If I was writing this blog two years ago I would have definitely written about Arkham Asylum and it would have probably read like this:
“I’ve cum in my pants!”
Arkham Asylum is one of those rare moments of gaming perfection, like Donkey Kong Country or Ico. Set over the course of one night in Arkham Asylum, as Batman you must beat the shit out of the Joker and pretty much anything else that moves. It captured the tone of the comics perfectly and the gameplay was pretty much flawless. It had moments that surprised and shocked you and that just doesn’t happen enough in games.
So it’s been two years I’ve been waiting to play its sequel Arkham City, was it worth the wait? The short answer is yes. The set up is typically textbook comic book, Arkham Asylum has been relocated to a vast section of Gotham City (think District 13, that brilliant French parkour film), shit is going down, and it’s up to Batman to stop it.
As it’s Batman the storyline and scripting is vital to the game’s success, and to an extent it works very well. There are countless twists and turns that drive the story forward and while some are predictable they will at least make you want to play on. The dialogue is what really makes the game come to life, as you glide over Arkham City you can hear its inmates’ conversations, often discussing the events of the game. The Joker (expertly voiced by Mark Hamill) has some excellent dialogue which will have you genuinely laughing out loud (or LOLing as the kids say), while characters such as Catwoman are somewhat cringe worthy in their crusade on breaking the world record of puns per minute.
While the mechanics of the game have been refined and work even better than its predecessor, there is something about Arkham City which isn’t quite right. Unlike Arkham Asylum there is a strong emphasis on freedom, if you don’t want to continue the story you can glide about the city and complete some side missions. Oh, it’s a bit Grand Theft Autoy, or Assassin’s Creedy then? Well sort of. The side missions aren’t much of a challenge and only take as long as they do because the objectives are quite well hidden, and when you realise you’ve just been aimlessly searching for a corpse for ten minutes it’s not really that much fun.
The freedom aspect of the game is something of a lie however, you are in a prison after all. As open worlds go, Arkham City isn’t much of a city. Of course it’s supposed to look run down and shit, but there’s nothing really interesting to look at. There are a few fairly large interior locations (and it feels like you’ll spend most of your time in these) but the city looks much bigger than it actually is. What makes things worse is there’s a big chunk of the map you can’t access.
Contrast this with the last two Assassin’s Creed games and you may feel somewhat short changed. What would you prefer to jump around in, a beautifully recreated renaissance Rome or a dank squalid slum? Unlike Assassin’s Creed, Arkham City wasn’t limited by history, it was free to create any kind of interesting city, instead it made a boring one, and you run out of things to do in it very quickly.
Arkham City is like a Crème Egg, amazing but disappointingly short lived. The few hours you play the game for may be cosmic (I‘m bringing it back), but they will only be a few. Games like Call of Duty and Battlefield can get away with this because of their multiplayer content but what does Arkham City have to offer? There are some moments in which you can play as Catwoman. Well there are four and they’ll take you less than an hour to complete. There are the aforementioned side missions but these also take relatively little time to complete. There are challenge maps but their longevity is dependant on your level of OCD. So too are the 400 Riddler trophies to collect, either little green question marks scattered across the map or various challenges, however there seems to be little or no reward in doing so.
This brings me to my next qualm with Arkham City. I’ve grown up playing games in which you unlock content by playing the damn thing, though in the case of Arkham City and many other games you can only unlock content by purchasing it. Some content can only be obtained by purchasing the game at a specific shop, or even by purchasing a different product altogether (by buying the Green Lantern blu-ray you can play as a special Lantern Batman or something). For most content you have to purchase it online, and in the case of Arkham City, this content is superficial, largely consisting of different costumes for Batman.
This should be available to the poor soul who spent £40 on the game, especially when there is very little content in the first place. Collecting the 400 Riddler trophies would be a very long and very boring exercise and the player should be rewarded for their efforts, and not in the form of concept art. Why do I have to pay to dress up in a different costume when other games give me the privilege for free? It’s not going to radically change your gaming experience by wearing a different cape but it’s incredibly cynical to charge you for it.
This cynicism taints Arkham City. It has a great main story, but as a complete package it’s pretty awful. It has a mode called new game plus and this sums up everything wrong with Arkham City. In any other game, new game plus would be known as “playing the game again”, but Arkham City has put fucking bells on it, as if in an attempt to convince us that it’s not as threadbare as it actually is. It’s not that the game is short, it’s the lazy attempt to cover up the fact that makes Arkham City disappointing. The developers are laughing, and we’re left wanting justice, sound familiar?
Wednesday 12 October 2011
Terrable: A Tale of Dickheads and Dinosaurs
Before I even watched Terra Nova I thought of the title I would use for this post: Terrable. Not that I’m a pessimist. No, if I liked it I would have used Terrabrill, which is the better title. I wanted to like Terra Nova purely because of this, I’ll be proud of that title all week, like that time I came up with the best pun ever (you had to be there/I’m still smug about it) a few weeks ago.
You can see by the actual title that this is anything but Terrabrill. At first Terra Nova seems a bit confusing, there is so much clunky exposition during the first hour of the pilot that it’s pretty hard to follow. That is until you realise you’ve already seen it. At its simplest, it’s Stargate meets Jurassic Park, but it’s so much more than that. There’s echoes of Avatar what with the jungle and weird creatures, and they even have the crazy colonel from Avatar playing a crazy colonel. There’s a forbidden zone just like in Planet of the Apes, there are some strange hieroglyphics on some rocks just like in Smallville, there are “others” just like in Lost, there’s even a weird midget guy just like in Twin Peaks. Well not the midget…yet. There is hardly anything original about Terra Nova, you’ve seen everything already so what’s the point of it?
A spork is just two pre-existing things mashed together and that works fine so why can’t you mash several films and TV shows together? Well you can, and they have, but much like the spork it’s not a revelation. A spork doesn’t function better than a spoon or fork, and Terra Nova isn’t better than Stargate or Jurassic Park, it’s not even better than Avatar.
*This may be a good time to explain the premise of Terra Nova. It’s the future (2149), Earth is overly populated but luckily a rift in time and space enable the people to start a colony in the Cretaceous age where there are dinosaurs and shit.*
Its formula may be readymade for success - the money thrown at it means it probably will be a hit - but there’s something inherently shit about it. It looks nice and all but so did Avatar, and what’s a beautiful setting if it’s populated with dickheads? And boy are there some dickheads. We’re introduced to a family who have broken the law by having three children (in 2149 you are only allowed two) and their reason for having three children? We just felt like it really. We just felt like breaking the law for shits and giggles. Just so we’re even more sympathetic towards these rebels the dad punches a policeman and goes to prison. Oh the injustice. He then precedes to break out of prison and smuggle himself into Terra Nova with his family.
So they’re a flippantly lawless family but they’re not annoying, boring but not annoying. Well maybe the teenage son is annoying. Maybe he is like Tom Cruise’s son in War of the Worlds, fucking annoying. Carrying around a hatred for his dad like it’s nobody’s business. “Oh I hate you and it’s all your fault I turned out to be a total prick” and all that bollocks. It’s understandable because he left a girlfriend behind in 2149, and he wuvs her. It would be understandable if he wasn’t cavorting with some other broad a mere twenty minutes later.
I could probably live with this, so what if the characters aren’t interesting and one of them is irritating? If the concept is good then I’m in, I fell in love with Lost before I even noticed how dreamy Sawyer was. Terra Nova could have been brilliant, unoriginal, but brilliant all the same. It’s easy to think that Lost was bad because of the ending, but it was truly great at patiently giving you details and keeping you intrigued. Aversely Terra Nova sets out to explain everything as quickly as possible, and badly. To tell us what Terra Nova is, the sister of the family (didn’t catch her name) tells her annoying brother what it is, because he seems to be more clueless than us. She might as well have looked straight into the camera during her expository speech. She even told us about how it’s a parallel timeline and therefore we needn’t worry about the butterfly effect. She was very clear on that.
We’re given too much information too soon and with this there is no mystery or intrigue. The family are told they cannot leave the confines of the colony, ooo what’s out there? I’m interested, but ten minutes later we find out exactly what’s out there. The forbidden zone is no longer a mystery, it’s just Jurassic Park and shit. We learn that there are others out there, but we immediately learn who they are and how they came to be. Lost was able to keep their “others” shrouded in mystery for almost three seasons giving us little details here and there, Terra Nova managed about thirty minutes.
There might be more revelations to come but they have shown us too much too soon, Jack Bauer wouldn’t catch the terrorist in the first hour and then relax for the next twenty three. There’s not much you can do with dickheads and dinosaurs and you have to think that the show will only get more and more ludicrous as they run out of ideas. Why dinosaurs anyway? Are we that impressed with them? I wanted to like Terra Nova, I wanted it to be Terrabrill, but it’s Terrashit.
You can see by the actual title that this is anything but Terrabrill. At first Terra Nova seems a bit confusing, there is so much clunky exposition during the first hour of the pilot that it’s pretty hard to follow. That is until you realise you’ve already seen it. At its simplest, it’s Stargate meets Jurassic Park, but it’s so much more than that. There’s echoes of Avatar what with the jungle and weird creatures, and they even have the crazy colonel from Avatar playing a crazy colonel. There’s a forbidden zone just like in Planet of the Apes, there are some strange hieroglyphics on some rocks just like in Smallville, there are “others” just like in Lost, there’s even a weird midget guy just like in Twin Peaks. Well not the midget…yet. There is hardly anything original about Terra Nova, you’ve seen everything already so what’s the point of it?
A spork is just two pre-existing things mashed together and that works fine so why can’t you mash several films and TV shows together? Well you can, and they have, but much like the spork it’s not a revelation. A spork doesn’t function better than a spoon or fork, and Terra Nova isn’t better than Stargate or Jurassic Park, it’s not even better than Avatar.
*This may be a good time to explain the premise of Terra Nova. It’s the future (2149), Earth is overly populated but luckily a rift in time and space enable the people to start a colony in the Cretaceous age where there are dinosaurs and shit.*
Its formula may be readymade for success - the money thrown at it means it probably will be a hit - but there’s something inherently shit about it. It looks nice and all but so did Avatar, and what’s a beautiful setting if it’s populated with dickheads? And boy are there some dickheads. We’re introduced to a family who have broken the law by having three children (in 2149 you are only allowed two) and their reason for having three children? We just felt like it really. We just felt like breaking the law for shits and giggles. Just so we’re even more sympathetic towards these rebels the dad punches a policeman and goes to prison. Oh the injustice. He then precedes to break out of prison and smuggle himself into Terra Nova with his family.
So they’re a flippantly lawless family but they’re not annoying, boring but not annoying. Well maybe the teenage son is annoying. Maybe he is like Tom Cruise’s son in War of the Worlds, fucking annoying. Carrying around a hatred for his dad like it’s nobody’s business. “Oh I hate you and it’s all your fault I turned out to be a total prick” and all that bollocks. It’s understandable because he left a girlfriend behind in 2149, and he wuvs her. It would be understandable if he wasn’t cavorting with some other broad a mere twenty minutes later.
I could probably live with this, so what if the characters aren’t interesting and one of them is irritating? If the concept is good then I’m in, I fell in love with Lost before I even noticed how dreamy Sawyer was. Terra Nova could have been brilliant, unoriginal, but brilliant all the same. It’s easy to think that Lost was bad because of the ending, but it was truly great at patiently giving you details and keeping you intrigued. Aversely Terra Nova sets out to explain everything as quickly as possible, and badly. To tell us what Terra Nova is, the sister of the family (didn’t catch her name) tells her annoying brother what it is, because he seems to be more clueless than us. She might as well have looked straight into the camera during her expository speech. She even told us about how it’s a parallel timeline and therefore we needn’t worry about the butterfly effect. She was very clear on that.
We’re given too much information too soon and with this there is no mystery or intrigue. The family are told they cannot leave the confines of the colony, ooo what’s out there? I’m interested, but ten minutes later we find out exactly what’s out there. The forbidden zone is no longer a mystery, it’s just Jurassic Park and shit. We learn that there are others out there, but we immediately learn who they are and how they came to be. Lost was able to keep their “others” shrouded in mystery for almost three seasons giving us little details here and there, Terra Nova managed about thirty minutes.
There might be more revelations to come but they have shown us too much too soon, Jack Bauer wouldn’t catch the terrorist in the first hour and then relax for the next twenty three. There’s not much you can do with dickheads and dinosaurs and you have to think that the show will only get more and more ludicrous as they run out of ideas. Why dinosaurs anyway? Are we that impressed with them? I wanted to like Terra Nova, I wanted it to be Terrabrill, but it’s Terrashit.
Sunday 9 October 2011
Hate-Factor
It’s perhaps a little clichéd of myself to come out and say I despise the X-Factor, but hey what, of course I do, and I despise it more than I did last year. The reason for this is because I didn’t watch it last year, but like a serpent handing out free apples it was too hard to resist and I just had to watch it to see what’s going to happen to my country.
Every year it’s always the same, that’s what I’ve always said, but surprisingly this year it has evolved. No, not the new judges, they’re exactly the same as the last, but the contestants are different. We’ve had gimmicks in the past but with the ever increasing popularity of Twitter we now have trends, and that’s what the contestants are this year, sixteen trends. It doesn’t matter if they can’t sing, we just want to talk about them.
Take Essex girls 2 Shoes for example, or as I like to call them, Two Shoes, or Matt Lucas and David Walliams in drag. Everything about these girls is fucking awful, but they’re from Essex, and even as Tulisa spelled out for us all, Essex is very “current” right now. Yes, because TOWIE has become inexplicably popular so to has anyone from Essex. The stereotype is that everyone from Essex is a horrible human being, they’re stupid, they’re orange, they’re self obsessed, and watching them makes us feel good about ourselves, but it also aggrandises the act of being from Essex. If these were two stupid orange girls from Wiltshire we wouldn’t give a fuck, but because Essex is “current” we do give a fuck. Say something Essex! “This is so emosh” HAHAHA, do something Essex! “I’m so happy being pregs” HAHAHA, she’s pregnant, typical Essex. They’re singing a cheesy song in a pink car, and she’s smeared lipstick all over her face and she looks like one of the Joker’s henchmen, HAHAHA, typical Essex.
Apart from talking about people from Essex, we like to talk about people who are just total wankers, and that’s what Frankie “The Virgin” Cuntcozza is to his parents. For everyone else, he’s worse. I admire the X-Factor producers for their meticulous research and ability to find the smallest thing and fucking run with it. For Frankie they found out (without too much trouble I imagine) that he has some girl’s names tattooed on his arse. That’s dynamite! Let’s run with that, we’ll portray him as a lothario and girls will love him. Why? Why would they love him? He’s a prick who’s admitted he’s only in the competition to fuck girls, he’s going to use his fame to take advantage on vulnerable girls with low self esteem. He should be put on the register, but girls do apparently love him, shouting such inanity as “why r u so fit?” (that’s how she’d spell it). People who brag about having sex are the people who don’t have sex, and it won’t be a surprise that his sob story will be all about how he’s a virgin. For now, he’s just a cunt.
Cuntcozza will only cater for a relatively small hatred demographic, so they needed someone we can all hate and that’s why they’ve put the mentalist Kitty through. Anyone with the name Kitty who is not an actual cat is likely to be a mentalist. That’s the clue and the producers probably looked out for the name on applications. Ah Kitty! Get her in here right now! And fortunately for the producers, she is a mentalist and could potentially be the most hated contestant in the show’s history. Twitter went livid when she got through to the final sixteen, but they should be happy, they get to talk in anger about her for the next twelve weeks. People will vote for her just so they can carry on hating her.
At least Kitty sings though, the majority of this year’s contestants are intent on rapping their way through the “competition“, because Cher Lloyd was a hit wasn’t she? Urban music has become the most popular music so it kind of makes sense that the contestants are rapping, but really it doesn’t. They’re not saying anything political or profound, there is no wisdom or nous emanating from their mouths, they are just saying things, or just as Rhythmix (or shitmix) did this weekend, they’re just copying what someone else said. The talent is in what you say, not how you say it, covering someone else’s bars (I’m streets ahead) is redundant. Reciting Wordsworth does not make me a poet, reciting Niki Minaj does not make me a rapper.
The next twelve weeks are superfluous though because they’ve already found their winner. She can sing, she makes up her own raps, her surname is a single letter, yes, Misha B looks like she’s already won. They give her the most popular song of the year, they give her the most extravagant outfit, they give her the most dancers, and they even sit her in a fucking throne. They want you to vote for Misha B and they’ll manipulate you into it. There is no free will in The X-Factor and that’s why I hate it, it’s a totalitarian nightmare. If we don’t vote for Misha B then they’re going to put another contestant on a pedestal (literally) and manipulate us into voting for them. The only way out of this Orwellian torment is altruism, we all stop watching it and then they’ll just have to stop. But then what would we talk about?
Every year it’s always the same, that’s what I’ve always said, but surprisingly this year it has evolved. No, not the new judges, they’re exactly the same as the last, but the contestants are different. We’ve had gimmicks in the past but with the ever increasing popularity of Twitter we now have trends, and that’s what the contestants are this year, sixteen trends. It doesn’t matter if they can’t sing, we just want to talk about them.
Take Essex girls 2 Shoes for example, or as I like to call them, Two Shoes, or Matt Lucas and David Walliams in drag. Everything about these girls is fucking awful, but they’re from Essex, and even as Tulisa spelled out for us all, Essex is very “current” right now. Yes, because TOWIE has become inexplicably popular so to has anyone from Essex. The stereotype is that everyone from Essex is a horrible human being, they’re stupid, they’re orange, they’re self obsessed, and watching them makes us feel good about ourselves, but it also aggrandises the act of being from Essex. If these were two stupid orange girls from Wiltshire we wouldn’t give a fuck, but because Essex is “current” we do give a fuck. Say something Essex! “This is so emosh” HAHAHA, do something Essex! “I’m so happy being pregs” HAHAHA, she’s pregnant, typical Essex. They’re singing a cheesy song in a pink car, and she’s smeared lipstick all over her face and she looks like one of the Joker’s henchmen, HAHAHA, typical Essex.
Apart from talking about people from Essex, we like to talk about people who are just total wankers, and that’s what Frankie “The Virgin” Cuntcozza is to his parents. For everyone else, he’s worse. I admire the X-Factor producers for their meticulous research and ability to find the smallest thing and fucking run with it. For Frankie they found out (without too much trouble I imagine) that he has some girl’s names tattooed on his arse. That’s dynamite! Let’s run with that, we’ll portray him as a lothario and girls will love him. Why? Why would they love him? He’s a prick who’s admitted he’s only in the competition to fuck girls, he’s going to use his fame to take advantage on vulnerable girls with low self esteem. He should be put on the register, but girls do apparently love him, shouting such inanity as “why r u so fit?” (that’s how she’d spell it). People who brag about having sex are the people who don’t have sex, and it won’t be a surprise that his sob story will be all about how he’s a virgin. For now, he’s just a cunt.
Cuntcozza will only cater for a relatively small hatred demographic, so they needed someone we can all hate and that’s why they’ve put the mentalist Kitty through. Anyone with the name Kitty who is not an actual cat is likely to be a mentalist. That’s the clue and the producers probably looked out for the name on applications. Ah Kitty! Get her in here right now! And fortunately for the producers, she is a mentalist and could potentially be the most hated contestant in the show’s history. Twitter went livid when she got through to the final sixteen, but they should be happy, they get to talk in anger about her for the next twelve weeks. People will vote for her just so they can carry on hating her.
At least Kitty sings though, the majority of this year’s contestants are intent on rapping their way through the “competition“, because Cher Lloyd was a hit wasn’t she? Urban music has become the most popular music so it kind of makes sense that the contestants are rapping, but really it doesn’t. They’re not saying anything political or profound, there is no wisdom or nous emanating from their mouths, they are just saying things, or just as Rhythmix (or shitmix) did this weekend, they’re just copying what someone else said. The talent is in what you say, not how you say it, covering someone else’s bars (I’m streets ahead) is redundant. Reciting Wordsworth does not make me a poet, reciting Niki Minaj does not make me a rapper.
The next twelve weeks are superfluous though because they’ve already found their winner. She can sing, she makes up her own raps, her surname is a single letter, yes, Misha B looks like she’s already won. They give her the most popular song of the year, they give her the most extravagant outfit, they give her the most dancers, and they even sit her in a fucking throne. They want you to vote for Misha B and they’ll manipulate you into it. There is no free will in The X-Factor and that’s why I hate it, it’s a totalitarian nightmare. If we don’t vote for Misha B then they’re going to put another contestant on a pedestal (literally) and manipulate us into voting for them. The only way out of this Orwellian torment is altruism, we all stop watching it and then they’ll just have to stop. But then what would we talk about?
Wednesday 5 October 2011
Still Who
Back in May I started writing about Doctor Who, because after all, I’m a geek with a blog and that’s what we people do (it’s not like we’re going to go clubbing). Due to a reoccurrence of acute laziness I never finished the blog, I added to it in June, and then again in August and September but I never managed to write the final paragraph. It was a good blog too (probably), look, here is an example:
“The Doctor should be travelling to weird and wonderful locations, instead he’s doing a tour of dark and dingy corridors.”
Ok, so it wasn’t that good, and that’s partly why I’ve started from scratch, the other reason is that now the series has ended I can finally gain some perspective on the whole confusing thing.
Doctor Who has always been for kids, it’s why I avoided it for so long, I thought it was silly (unlike Star Wars) and therefore not worth my time. I only watched Matt Smith’s inaugural episode last year with the intention to write a blog about how silly it was. Instead I ended up loving it because while Doctor Who is primarily for kids, it’s really for adults as well, or at least nerdy ones. It’s definitely silly - no nerd can deny that - but it’s knowingly silly and that gives it a loveable charm that even I can appreciate. Yes, I appreciate things.
For whatever reason the latest series has been a little more adult than previous ones, I don’t mean in a dirty “I’m going to sonic screw you” kind of way, but more in a “the new Harry Potter book is a lot darker than the last” kind of way. With its new super serious and seriously dark tone it lost its silly charm. No longer was it just a silly space adventure, it was sci-fi, with overarching plots, twists and reveals.
The writers’ ambition is admirable but I kind of liked not having to concentrate too hard. There was time travel and aliens and shit but I didn’t have to think too much where with this series I had to pay attention, I didn’t have a clue what was going on in the first two episodes and after watching the final episode I still don’t really know what was going on.
The whole series was structured around a seemingly inevitable death of the Doctor and the mysteries of River Song and the Silence, who were always going to be intrinsically linked to the Doctor’s inevitable death. Of course it’s hardly a spoiler if I tell you that the Doctor inevitably didn’t die and in hindsight this makes the whole 13 episode series seem kind of pointless. If we’re told he is definitely going to die and then he doesn’t, then what was the point of the whole hoopla about his death?
The series was intriguing and mysterious but only because we were constantly told it was. It had that Lost-esque answer a question with another question thing going on but with questions that we were never asking. I didn’t really care about who River Song or the Silence was because in Doctor Who everything is just an alien. There’s vampires in Venice, oh wait, they’re aliens. It’s James Corden, oh wait, he’s an alien (probably).
There was so much emphasis placed upon the big plot that the whole series suffered as a result. In the past the tone of each episode has usually been quite unpredictable, you never know what kind of episode you’re going to get, but with this series it’s been the same dark tone for every episode. Quoting version one of this post, it did seem like the Doctor was doing a tour of dark and dingy corridors. No matter where he was in time and space, he was usually down a dark corridor.
For me the low point of the series was the “Let’s Kill Hitler” episode. LET’S KILL HITLER! Fuck yeah! Now that’s a title, they’re gonna get Hitler and F him in the A. No, no, no. We didn’t get any of that. Rory, or Scrappy Doo as he should be known, gently punches Hitler in the first few minutes, and that’s the last we see of the Fuhrer. After that there’s a few plot twists while the characters try and evade the evil clutches of the miniature space police. Let’s kill Hitler? Should have called it “Let’s softly punch Hitler in the face, run away and get embroiled with the mini space police for 40 fucking minutes”.
Bad episodes aren't anything new in Doctor Who, in fact I’ve geekily calculated that 1 in 5 episodes are either bad or downright awful. For every “Blink” is a pavement with a face that gives blowjobs (not even making that one up). There weren’t many truly bad episodes this series however, there just weren’t many good ones. They were too dark and too complicated, and any jokes or moments of silliness felt somewhat inappropriate amongst all the seriousness, why was Rory dressed as Roman when his wife was in danger? Surely the time spent finding and putting on a costume could have been better spent? Fortunately the series’ conclusion suggests that the show will be going back to basics next year, without anyone chasing the Doctor he should have time to feature in some good episodes. Let’s just hope there are no more pavements with faces that give blowjobs (seriously, it happened).
“The Doctor should be travelling to weird and wonderful locations, instead he’s doing a tour of dark and dingy corridors.”
Ok, so it wasn’t that good, and that’s partly why I’ve started from scratch, the other reason is that now the series has ended I can finally gain some perspective on the whole confusing thing.
Doctor Who has always been for kids, it’s why I avoided it for so long, I thought it was silly (unlike Star Wars) and therefore not worth my time. I only watched Matt Smith’s inaugural episode last year with the intention to write a blog about how silly it was. Instead I ended up loving it because while Doctor Who is primarily for kids, it’s really for adults as well, or at least nerdy ones. It’s definitely silly - no nerd can deny that - but it’s knowingly silly and that gives it a loveable charm that even I can appreciate. Yes, I appreciate things.
For whatever reason the latest series has been a little more adult than previous ones, I don’t mean in a dirty “I’m going to sonic screw you” kind of way, but more in a “the new Harry Potter book is a lot darker than the last” kind of way. With its new super serious and seriously dark tone it lost its silly charm. No longer was it just a silly space adventure, it was sci-fi, with overarching plots, twists and reveals.
The writers’ ambition is admirable but I kind of liked not having to concentrate too hard. There was time travel and aliens and shit but I didn’t have to think too much where with this series I had to pay attention, I didn’t have a clue what was going on in the first two episodes and after watching the final episode I still don’t really know what was going on.
The whole series was structured around a seemingly inevitable death of the Doctor and the mysteries of River Song and the Silence, who were always going to be intrinsically linked to the Doctor’s inevitable death. Of course it’s hardly a spoiler if I tell you that the Doctor inevitably didn’t die and in hindsight this makes the whole 13 episode series seem kind of pointless. If we’re told he is definitely going to die and then he doesn’t, then what was the point of the whole hoopla about his death?
The series was intriguing and mysterious but only because we were constantly told it was. It had that Lost-esque answer a question with another question thing going on but with questions that we were never asking. I didn’t really care about who River Song or the Silence was because in Doctor Who everything is just an alien. There’s vampires in Venice, oh wait, they’re aliens. It’s James Corden, oh wait, he’s an alien (probably).
There was so much emphasis placed upon the big plot that the whole series suffered as a result. In the past the tone of each episode has usually been quite unpredictable, you never know what kind of episode you’re going to get, but with this series it’s been the same dark tone for every episode. Quoting version one of this post, it did seem like the Doctor was doing a tour of dark and dingy corridors. No matter where he was in time and space, he was usually down a dark corridor.
For me the low point of the series was the “Let’s Kill Hitler” episode. LET’S KILL HITLER! Fuck yeah! Now that’s a title, they’re gonna get Hitler and F him in the A. No, no, no. We didn’t get any of that. Rory, or Scrappy Doo as he should be known, gently punches Hitler in the first few minutes, and that’s the last we see of the Fuhrer. After that there’s a few plot twists while the characters try and evade the evil clutches of the miniature space police. Let’s kill Hitler? Should have called it “Let’s softly punch Hitler in the face, run away and get embroiled with the mini space police for 40 fucking minutes”.
Bad episodes aren't anything new in Doctor Who, in fact I’ve geekily calculated that 1 in 5 episodes are either bad or downright awful. For every “Blink” is a pavement with a face that gives blowjobs (not even making that one up). There weren’t many truly bad episodes this series however, there just weren’t many good ones. They were too dark and too complicated, and any jokes or moments of silliness felt somewhat inappropriate amongst all the seriousness, why was Rory dressed as Roman when his wife was in danger? Surely the time spent finding and putting on a costume could have been better spent? Fortunately the series’ conclusion suggests that the show will be going back to basics next year, without anyone chasing the Doctor he should have time to feature in some good episodes. Let’s just hope there are no more pavements with faces that give blowjobs (seriously, it happened).
Saturday 24 September 2011
Trailer Trash 2
Earlier in June I wrote about how I saw some of those trailers people like to watch and how I didn’t like them. It turns out that they’ve made more of them and naturally I watched them and didn’t like them.
The Three Musketeers
If 1993’s adaptation of The Three Musketeers told us anything it was that Americans don’t make good Musketeers, which is perhaps why they are all British in 2011’s adaptation. All except for D’Artagnan who is a stupid pissy whiny American. It’s bad that a film set in France is largely made up of British accents, but the fact that the main protagonist not only has an American accent, but an irritating one, is unforgivable. I could get over Leonardo DiCaprio’s “French” accent in The Man in the Iron Mask, I’m not that much of a pedant to let an accent ruin a film for me, but this one is just ridiculous.
Even if the stupid pissy whiny accent didn’t irritate me it looks like the rest of the film would. It’s as if Pirates of the Caribbean crash landed in 17th century Paris, even Orlando shitting Bloom is in it, presumably playing a camp pirate, as is everyone else apparently. Everything looks textbook Pirates from the mild peril to the woeful dialogue to the wooden acting.
Even if the stupid pissy whiny accents, mild peril, woeful dialogue and wooden acting didn’t irritate me the historical inaccuracies would. It’s the 17th fucking century! Why are there airships? That didn’t happen did it? I’d remember reading something like fucking airships. Its Wikipedia page claims it’s a steam punk influenced reinterpretation of the novel. No! If you want to make a steam punk film make a fucking steam punk film, don’t mash it up with a classic novel. And why do the Musketeers only ever use swords? Oh wait, it’s in 3D? I’m on board!
Abduction
“Sometimes I feel different” says Taylor Lautner, riding into school on a motorbike, with sunglasses on and no helmet. Seriously, we’re supposed to relate to this guy? He has every Apple product ever made for fucks sake! What’s this fancy facey program? It’s bullshit! Where is he getting all this expensive shit? Oh, here’s where I keep my spare BMW and this is where I keep my endless supply of leather jackets. And why is there a kiss scene? People are trying to kill him! There’s no time for kissing, the train is about to blow up!
Of course it looks awful but it’s still going to be successful as Twilight fans will kill to see one of the men they‘re in love with. And that’s all what Twilight and Abduction is about, lusting over a man. Lautner could sit in a box for 90 minutes and they’d still pay to see it. This tweenage lust for Lautner has propelled him further than his talent deserves and he’s suddenly found himself as the lead in Jason Bourne Junior. Abduction looks as if it should be a comedy akin to Mr and Mrs Smith, but what’s laughable is that Taylor Lautner is probably the new go to action guy for Hollywood, no doubt along with that D’Artagnan prick.
Battleship
I decided to include this before the trailer even started. Never judge a book by its cover. Never judge a film by its premise, unless that premise is based on the game Battleship. Having now seen the trailer to Battleship, Abduction is looking pretty good right now. I remember playing Battleship as a kid and my favourite thing about it was the bit where you wanted to marry a whore but her dad was Liam Neeson who was also your boss and you had to gain his respect by sinking ships. And Rihanna was there for some reason you couldn’t fathom.
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
Cumberbatch and Freeman shit all over Downey Jr. and Law.
Jack And Jill
A lot of people LOVE Adam Sandler, they think he’s just swell. While I would distance myself from these people I do own a few of his films on DVD. Adam Sandler isn’t unfunny, it’s just that he pretty much plays the same character in every film, a loud obnoxious guy. Going the Eddie Murphy route, Sandler has gone for playing two loud obnoxious guys. It doesn’t so much look as Adam Sandler playing brother and sister, but Adam Sandler playing Adam Sandler and Adam Sandler in a wig. It all seems a little too much like Meet the Parents, they’ve even got an old famous actor! Oh wait, it’s Al Pacino, never mind.
Ok, that’s all I can handle for one day.
The Three Musketeers
If 1993’s adaptation of The Three Musketeers told us anything it was that Americans don’t make good Musketeers, which is perhaps why they are all British in 2011’s adaptation. All except for D’Artagnan who is a stupid pissy whiny American. It’s bad that a film set in France is largely made up of British accents, but the fact that the main protagonist not only has an American accent, but an irritating one, is unforgivable. I could get over Leonardo DiCaprio’s “French” accent in The Man in the Iron Mask, I’m not that much of a pedant to let an accent ruin a film for me, but this one is just ridiculous.
Even if the stupid pissy whiny accent didn’t irritate me it looks like the rest of the film would. It’s as if Pirates of the Caribbean crash landed in 17th century Paris, even Orlando shitting Bloom is in it, presumably playing a camp pirate, as is everyone else apparently. Everything looks textbook Pirates from the mild peril to the woeful dialogue to the wooden acting.
Even if the stupid pissy whiny accents, mild peril, woeful dialogue and wooden acting didn’t irritate me the historical inaccuracies would. It’s the 17th fucking century! Why are there airships? That didn’t happen did it? I’d remember reading something like fucking airships. Its Wikipedia page claims it’s a steam punk influenced reinterpretation of the novel. No! If you want to make a steam punk film make a fucking steam punk film, don’t mash it up with a classic novel. And why do the Musketeers only ever use swords? Oh wait, it’s in 3D? I’m on board!
Abduction
“Sometimes I feel different” says Taylor Lautner, riding into school on a motorbike, with sunglasses on and no helmet. Seriously, we’re supposed to relate to this guy? He has every Apple product ever made for fucks sake! What’s this fancy facey program? It’s bullshit! Where is he getting all this expensive shit? Oh, here’s where I keep my spare BMW and this is where I keep my endless supply of leather jackets. And why is there a kiss scene? People are trying to kill him! There’s no time for kissing, the train is about to blow up!
Of course it looks awful but it’s still going to be successful as Twilight fans will kill to see one of the men they‘re in love with. And that’s all what Twilight and Abduction is about, lusting over a man. Lautner could sit in a box for 90 minutes and they’d still pay to see it. This tweenage lust for Lautner has propelled him further than his talent deserves and he’s suddenly found himself as the lead in Jason Bourne Junior. Abduction looks as if it should be a comedy akin to Mr and Mrs Smith, but what’s laughable is that Taylor Lautner is probably the new go to action guy for Hollywood, no doubt along with that D’Artagnan prick.
Battleship
I decided to include this before the trailer even started. Never judge a book by its cover. Never judge a film by its premise, unless that premise is based on the game Battleship. Having now seen the trailer to Battleship, Abduction is looking pretty good right now. I remember playing Battleship as a kid and my favourite thing about it was the bit where you wanted to marry a whore but her dad was Liam Neeson who was also your boss and you had to gain his respect by sinking ships. And Rihanna was there for some reason you couldn’t fathom.
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
Cumberbatch and Freeman shit all over Downey Jr. and Law.
Jack And Jill
A lot of people LOVE Adam Sandler, they think he’s just swell. While I would distance myself from these people I do own a few of his films on DVD. Adam Sandler isn’t unfunny, it’s just that he pretty much plays the same character in every film, a loud obnoxious guy. Going the Eddie Murphy route, Sandler has gone for playing two loud obnoxious guys. It doesn’t so much look as Adam Sandler playing brother and sister, but Adam Sandler playing Adam Sandler and Adam Sandler in a wig. It all seems a little too much like Meet the Parents, they’ve even got an old famous actor! Oh wait, it’s Al Pacino, never mind.
Ok, that’s all I can handle for one day.
Friday 23 September 2011
Fresh Meat
Hollyoaks, Skins, Misfits, The Inbetweeners*. Channel 4 loves a bit of the old young guys having fun shit, it’s probably the only thing they’re really appreciated for that doesn’t feature horribly disfigured human beings. So why stop with these programmes when they can make more? If they don’t, BBC Three will have a go and no one wants that to happen.
The Inbetweeners will likely be confined to cinemas for its remaining lifetime, and the next series of Misfits will likely be shit after the departure of Robert “the only good thing about Misfits” Sheehan, so Channel 4 need a new “young hip person” kind of show, because we’re never going to survive on Hollyoaks and fucking Skins are we? So what have Channel 4 given us? Fresh Meat, a new comedy about university students.
Hmm, a comedy about university students? That’s new. Well you’re wrong. BBC Three had their own university sitcom a while back called Off The Hook, which was exactly that, if “off the hook” meant fucking awful. In a blog way back last summer I called it the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and it probably still is. Hopefully the writers of Fresh Meat (Peep Show’s Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain) watched this crock of shit and made a meticulous list of notes of how not to write a university based sitcom.
Having watched the first episode of Fresh Meat, they probably didn’t. While avoiding Off The Hook is not only understandable but advised, Fresh Meat suffers from many of the same problems. The biggest being that it doesn’t feel like an actual university experience. Both shows depict a small group of “losers” living in a horrid squat far away from a campus and any other students. Are we supposed to believe that a university only has five or six students? Where are the all other dickheads? Where is the university? How did these esoteric creatures get an offer in the first place?
The answer to all these questions might be “we didn’t have the budget”, but if you don’t have the budget, don’t bother, make it something else, make it a comedy about some young twenty something flatmates, it’s not vital that they’re students unless the comedy is going to derive from that fact. When you’re at university you’re always surrounded by hundreds of people, not four. When you go out, you don’t go to a quiet pub populated by old people and Jack Whitehall. It’s about university students, but without seeing a university, how are we supposed believe this? Oh they have to write a personal statement, they’ve only just moved in (without any bags), they haven’t even started yet, but they have an assignment to complete. That’s baloney! (I’m trying it out).
The validity of the setting shouldn’t be such a concern but when the show is primarily about university students there should be at least some sense that they are students and that a university actually exists. The comedy should be about the troubles of being a student, and it’s hard to do this with only four or five characters living under one roof. Drying poultry with a hairdryer might be fine in The Mighty Boosh, but not in this. Fresh Meat seems like it’s accidentally surreal; Do girls sleep with someone they don’t really like on their first night because they just want sex? Why are they drinking a bottle of vodka in a pub toilet? It’s the little things that an OCD freak like me obsesses over. I’ve written three fucking paragraphs about it.
With the realism aside, it’s not actually terrible, but it’s not something that you should watch. The Inbetweeners’ Joe Thomas makes up part of the ensemble, playing another awkward teen as if he’s becoming Britain’s answer to Michael Cera, yet apart from being slightly awkward and slightly perverted, there’s not really much else to his character. This is the same for most of the characters, they’re all slightly something, slightly uptight or slightly hipster, but there’s nothing substantial to any character.
And yes, I mentioned Jack Whitehall earlier. That comedian who isn’t funny, acting? If he’s a bad comedian he must be a terrible actor. Which is why he’s playing himself, a posh coke head. Whitehall already has a posh accent yet exaggerates it so much it sounds hideously fake. It makes you wonder how he’s become so successful despite having so little talent. The only actual comedy comes from Greg McHugh (from Gary: Tank Commander) but there’s a sense that he’d be funny in anything and perhaps Armstrong and Bain (or Bain and Armstrong?) would have been better suited to writing a sitcom specifically for McHugh.
It’s slightly disappointing that the writers of Peep Show and Four Lions have given us Fresh Meat, they may be talented writers but this isn’t their magnum opus. I’d like to think that they weren’t involved in every aspect of the programme, that the producers specifically wanted this, and requested Jack Whitehall to be in it. Perhaps it’ll get better, but I don’t really want to find out. The fresh meat is already rotting.
*I forgot about Beaver Falls, but perhaps for a good reason.
The Inbetweeners will likely be confined to cinemas for its remaining lifetime, and the next series of Misfits will likely be shit after the departure of Robert “the only good thing about Misfits” Sheehan, so Channel 4 need a new “young hip person” kind of show, because we’re never going to survive on Hollyoaks and fucking Skins are we? So what have Channel 4 given us? Fresh Meat, a new comedy about university students.
Hmm, a comedy about university students? That’s new. Well you’re wrong. BBC Three had their own university sitcom a while back called Off The Hook, which was exactly that, if “off the hook” meant fucking awful. In a blog way back last summer I called it the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and it probably still is. Hopefully the writers of Fresh Meat (Peep Show’s Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain) watched this crock of shit and made a meticulous list of notes of how not to write a university based sitcom.
Having watched the first episode of Fresh Meat, they probably didn’t. While avoiding Off The Hook is not only understandable but advised, Fresh Meat suffers from many of the same problems. The biggest being that it doesn’t feel like an actual university experience. Both shows depict a small group of “losers” living in a horrid squat far away from a campus and any other students. Are we supposed to believe that a university only has five or six students? Where are the all other dickheads? Where is the university? How did these esoteric creatures get an offer in the first place?
The answer to all these questions might be “we didn’t have the budget”, but if you don’t have the budget, don’t bother, make it something else, make it a comedy about some young twenty something flatmates, it’s not vital that they’re students unless the comedy is going to derive from that fact. When you’re at university you’re always surrounded by hundreds of people, not four. When you go out, you don’t go to a quiet pub populated by old people and Jack Whitehall. It’s about university students, but without seeing a university, how are we supposed believe this? Oh they have to write a personal statement, they’ve only just moved in (without any bags), they haven’t even started yet, but they have an assignment to complete. That’s baloney! (I’m trying it out).
The validity of the setting shouldn’t be such a concern but when the show is primarily about university students there should be at least some sense that they are students and that a university actually exists. The comedy should be about the troubles of being a student, and it’s hard to do this with only four or five characters living under one roof. Drying poultry with a hairdryer might be fine in The Mighty Boosh, but not in this. Fresh Meat seems like it’s accidentally surreal; Do girls sleep with someone they don’t really like on their first night because they just want sex? Why are they drinking a bottle of vodka in a pub toilet? It’s the little things that an OCD freak like me obsesses over. I’ve written three fucking paragraphs about it.
With the realism aside, it’s not actually terrible, but it’s not something that you should watch. The Inbetweeners’ Joe Thomas makes up part of the ensemble, playing another awkward teen as if he’s becoming Britain’s answer to Michael Cera, yet apart from being slightly awkward and slightly perverted, there’s not really much else to his character. This is the same for most of the characters, they’re all slightly something, slightly uptight or slightly hipster, but there’s nothing substantial to any character.
And yes, I mentioned Jack Whitehall earlier. That comedian who isn’t funny, acting? If he’s a bad comedian he must be a terrible actor. Which is why he’s playing himself, a posh coke head. Whitehall already has a posh accent yet exaggerates it so much it sounds hideously fake. It makes you wonder how he’s become so successful despite having so little talent. The only actual comedy comes from Greg McHugh (from Gary: Tank Commander) but there’s a sense that he’d be funny in anything and perhaps Armstrong and Bain (or Bain and Armstrong?) would have been better suited to writing a sitcom specifically for McHugh.
It’s slightly disappointing that the writers of Peep Show and Four Lions have given us Fresh Meat, they may be talented writers but this isn’t their magnum opus. I’d like to think that they weren’t involved in every aspect of the programme, that the producers specifically wanted this, and requested Jack Whitehall to be in it. Perhaps it’ll get better, but I don’t really want to find out. The fresh meat is already rotting.
*I forgot about Beaver Falls, but perhaps for a good reason.
Friday 16 September 2011
Biebergeddon
That perfume smells fucking horrible. Let’s put a famous name on it and the masses will buy it! This is the general trail of thought of fragrance companies before they release the toxic gases that are celebrity fragrances into our atmosphere. It’s one thing having Charlize Theron or James Franco promoting a fragrance but would you really want their “scent” bottled for your home use? Well maybe, but would you want to smell like Jordan, Coleen Rooney, or Robert Mugabe? What about Justin Bieber?
Yes, Justin Bieber has brought out a fragrance, and why not? Surely every man would give his right arm to smell like Justin Bieber, a boy who is infamous for his masculine scent. Celebrity fragrances are for those people who idolise celebrities, they’re obviously not buying for the scent but for the name, as if owning that bottle with a name on it would bring them closer to their god. Not many men see Justin Bieber as a god, most men feel a surge of hatred run through their veins just hearing his name, they would die of shame before they’d smell like him.
It’s for this reason that Justin Bieber hasn’t brought out an aftershave, but a perfume. A boy so un-man like that it cannot possibly be conceived that he smells like anything but a girl, and a flowery girl at that, one who has a “fruity gourmand scent with top notes of mandarin, pear, and wildberries, heart notes of jasmine and creamy florals, and base notes including vanilla and soft musk”. I’m aware they’re not actually bottling his natural scent, but by affiliating himself with creamy florals, he is voiding himself of any masculinity (not that he should have top notes of blood and shit).
Who needs machismo though when you can have money? After all this (like all celebrity fragrances) is just a cynical cash cow, much like his range of nail polishes, music, film, and face. Bieber doesn’t care if a cunt with a keyboard and too much free time on his hands thinks he’s a disgrace to the male gender, he’s rich. And it’s not stopping him from getting any game, he’s Justin fucking Bieber, if he tweeted “I want sex” he could ejaculate within seconds, it’d be like fucking fish in a barrel, that’s the power he has over girls.
Why is he so popular? What makes Justin Bieber so appealing to girls? I can understand the likes of Justin Timberlake or…Matt Cardle, but this gaunt specimen? I’m inclined to call his music shit but I’m twenty four, of course I think it’s shit, but it’s not like he’s an amazing singer and dancer. It’s not like he has anything interesting to say, yet he causes riots everywhere he goes.
He has close to 13 million followers on Twitter, I have 32. I deserve 32 followers, but is Justin Bieber worthy of 13 million? Barack Obama has just over 10 million followers, this must mean that Justin Bieber is more influential than the President of the United States. This is worrying. If God was on Twitter, he’d have less followers. Merely knowing of Justin Bieber’s existence is like watching The Wicker Man, you just know there’s going to be a sacrifice at the end of it. The monster has started a cult, his “Beliebers” cause riots in his name, does anyone else find this odd? Or downright terrifying? If he asked his Beliebers to bring him the blood of every non-Belieber they would, and we’d all be dead unless we convert to Belieberologyism. “Kill the infidels” tweets Bieber as we lock our doors and pray for a military intervention.
This perfume is just another example of the power Bieber has over hiscult fans. Just look at this advert for his perfume “Someday”.
It’s not just a perfume, it’s a freaky conduit into his soul. Spray the magical scent and Justin will float into your bedroom like something out of Salem’s Lot or The Lost Boys, and then he’ll smell your neck, and probably do a lot more. He comes across as a creepy sexual predator, which is somewhat disturbing considering the average age of his fan base. Never let go is the tagline…never let go of your extremist devotion to this God like monstrosity, or he will smite thee down.
Yes, Justin Bieber has brought out a fragrance, and why not? Surely every man would give his right arm to smell like Justin Bieber, a boy who is infamous for his masculine scent. Celebrity fragrances are for those people who idolise celebrities, they’re obviously not buying for the scent but for the name, as if owning that bottle with a name on it would bring them closer to their god. Not many men see Justin Bieber as a god, most men feel a surge of hatred run through their veins just hearing his name, they would die of shame before they’d smell like him.
It’s for this reason that Justin Bieber hasn’t brought out an aftershave, but a perfume. A boy so un-man like that it cannot possibly be conceived that he smells like anything but a girl, and a flowery girl at that, one who has a “fruity gourmand scent with top notes of mandarin, pear, and wildberries, heart notes of jasmine and creamy florals, and base notes including vanilla and soft musk”. I’m aware they’re not actually bottling his natural scent, but by affiliating himself with creamy florals, he is voiding himself of any masculinity (not that he should have top notes of blood and shit).
Who needs machismo though when you can have money? After all this (like all celebrity fragrances) is just a cynical cash cow, much like his range of nail polishes, music, film, and face. Bieber doesn’t care if a cunt with a keyboard and too much free time on his hands thinks he’s a disgrace to the male gender, he’s rich. And it’s not stopping him from getting any game, he’s Justin fucking Bieber, if he tweeted “I want sex” he could ejaculate within seconds, it’d be like fucking fish in a barrel, that’s the power he has over girls.
Why is he so popular? What makes Justin Bieber so appealing to girls? I can understand the likes of Justin Timberlake or…Matt Cardle, but this gaunt specimen? I’m inclined to call his music shit but I’m twenty four, of course I think it’s shit, but it’s not like he’s an amazing singer and dancer. It’s not like he has anything interesting to say, yet he causes riots everywhere he goes.
He has close to 13 million followers on Twitter, I have 32. I deserve 32 followers, but is Justin Bieber worthy of 13 million? Barack Obama has just over 10 million followers, this must mean that Justin Bieber is more influential than the President of the United States. This is worrying. If God was on Twitter, he’d have less followers. Merely knowing of Justin Bieber’s existence is like watching The Wicker Man, you just know there’s going to be a sacrifice at the end of it. The monster has started a cult, his “Beliebers” cause riots in his name, does anyone else find this odd? Or downright terrifying? If he asked his Beliebers to bring him the blood of every non-Belieber they would, and we’d all be dead unless we convert to Belieberologyism. “Kill the infidels” tweets Bieber as we lock our doors and pray for a military intervention.
This perfume is just another example of the power Bieber has over his
It’s not just a perfume, it’s a freaky conduit into his soul. Spray the magical scent and Justin will float into your bedroom like something out of Salem’s Lot or The Lost Boys, and then he’ll smell your neck, and probably do a lot more. He comes across as a creepy sexual predator, which is somewhat disturbing considering the average age of his fan base. Never let go is the tagline…never let go of your extremist devotion to this God like monstrosity, or he will smite thee down.
Sunday 11 September 2011
Bazinga
A few years back I saw a crappy looking American sitcom on my television. It looked like something you’d see before Frasier at six in the morning on Channel 4; it looked shit. Before I could reach for the remote control I laughed, and then again, and before I knew it, I loved The Big Bang Theory.
TBBT shouldn’t be funny. It’s largely set in one apartment, it has a laughter track, its characters are poorly constructed stereotypes including a token ethnic minority, it has a gimmick, it has everything most other sitcoms have, and therefore shouldn’t be funny. Initially I was confused, I was laughing at a show which I believed wasn’t funny, so was I just losing my sense of humour? I had to ask people if they had seen it and if they found it funny as well. I wasn’t crazy.
Despite having all the hallmarks of a shitcom, TBBT was different from anything else because its gimmick (science) has been so rarely used in comedy. Prior to TBBT Ross Gellar was the pinnacle of scientific comedy, the joke being that because he likes science, he’s a nerd and that’s funny. TBBT took that concept and made a whole show out of it, one scientist is funny, so four scientists would be four times the funny! It could have been terrible but the writers (initially) used the gimmick very well, making references to scientific concepts and theories proved to be funny as well as slightly educational, at least compared to the usual dumbed down cavalcade of American sitcoms.
Assuming that being a scientist means you’re smart, and that being smart makes you a nerd, and being a nerd means you like comics and Star Trek, and liking Star Trek makes you socially awkward, our four scientist protagonists are also four nerdy, socially awkward, scientist protagonists. While being stereotypical, it sort of makes sense, and the nerdiness of the show has added to the funnys. After all, there are only so many scientist jokes they can make, they need something else to fall back on.
Sadly, four seasons in, they’ve run out of both science and nerd related jokes, and directions for all five of the main cast. The majority of episodes are Sheldon-centric escapades; Whatever will this socially retarded genius do next? In the fourth season you would have expected some kind of progression for his character, instead we’ve had to go through the same “kooky mishaps” week in week out, listening to the ever present catchphrase “bazinga”, like an obligatory Scrubs pratfall, getting more annoying with each repetition.
The introduction of a potential girlfriend for Sheldon should have been much funnier than it actually was, pairing him with a female carbon copy was like introducing the exact same character. It would have been far more interesting/entertaining/funny to pair Sheldon with a “normal” woman, seeing him out of his comfort zone and interacting with society. What we got was two “Sheldons” sharing the same punch lines.
Girlfriends have been something of a theme for this season, and in a sense cavorting has replaced science as the show’s main gimmick. After it became quickly apparent that the Sheldon-Sheldon relationship was going nowhere we’re left with the irritating Howard-Bernadette and Leonard-token Indian girl relationships. Putting these characters in relationships has ruined the whole dynamic of the show. It’s just like Yoko and the Beatles. Leonard plays the part of a straight man, facilitating Sheldon’s comedy, while also providing a compulsory Ross-Rachel thing with Penny. Meanwhile Howard provides the “humorous” latent homosexual bromance with Raj. Putting Leonard and Howard in relationships not only made their characters boring and redundant, but also Raj’s and Penny’s, leaving the comedy of the show dependant on Sheldon, who we established isn’t that funny anymore.
The other consequence of this is that we’ve been introduced to three new characters, who are all irritating. Leonard’s girlfriend Priya may have been written intentionally irritating in order to contrast her with Penny in a later episode, but she’s really irritating. I don’t want to be annoyed for several episodes just so they can do what they did with Ross, Rachel and that Chinese woman in Friends. These are supposed to be socially awkward scientists/nerds, they’re lucky to get one girlfriend, let alone a fucking pick of them.
This season just hasn’t jumped the shark, it’s fucked the shark. From Raj’s Bollywood dance dream sequence to his hook up with Penny, it’s been an absolute catastrophe. Oh what was that? Yes, Raj fucked Penny, in Leonard’s bed! The writers mustn’t have know what to do with them, so they just got them to fuck, that’ll spice things up. What are they thinking? Let’s throw all rationality out of the window! Let’s introduce an alien in the next season, that’ll be funny, Sheldon and an alien, and the alien is more human than Sheldon, HA HA FUCKING HA. The alien is smarter than Sheldon and Sheldon doesn’t like that, HA HA FUCKING HA. It’ll happen, they’ll do it, those crazy writers, they’ll put an alien in, and it’ll hook up with Penny, and that will be more rational and plausible than Raj fucking her! This season has been a text book example of how to ruin a good show. If this was the intention of the writers then they have succeed with aplomb. I will pretend that there were only ever three seasons of The Big Bang Theory, and that they were funny.
TBBT shouldn’t be funny. It’s largely set in one apartment, it has a laughter track, its characters are poorly constructed stereotypes including a token ethnic minority, it has a gimmick, it has everything most other sitcoms have, and therefore shouldn’t be funny. Initially I was confused, I was laughing at a show which I believed wasn’t funny, so was I just losing my sense of humour? I had to ask people if they had seen it and if they found it funny as well. I wasn’t crazy.
Despite having all the hallmarks of a shitcom, TBBT was different from anything else because its gimmick (science) has been so rarely used in comedy. Prior to TBBT Ross Gellar was the pinnacle of scientific comedy, the joke being that because he likes science, he’s a nerd and that’s funny. TBBT took that concept and made a whole show out of it, one scientist is funny, so four scientists would be four times the funny! It could have been terrible but the writers (initially) used the gimmick very well, making references to scientific concepts and theories proved to be funny as well as slightly educational, at least compared to the usual dumbed down cavalcade of American sitcoms.
Assuming that being a scientist means you’re smart, and that being smart makes you a nerd, and being a nerd means you like comics and Star Trek, and liking Star Trek makes you socially awkward, our four scientist protagonists are also four nerdy, socially awkward, scientist protagonists. While being stereotypical, it sort of makes sense, and the nerdiness of the show has added to the funnys. After all, there are only so many scientist jokes they can make, they need something else to fall back on.
Sadly, four seasons in, they’ve run out of both science and nerd related jokes, and directions for all five of the main cast. The majority of episodes are Sheldon-centric escapades; Whatever will this socially retarded genius do next? In the fourth season you would have expected some kind of progression for his character, instead we’ve had to go through the same “kooky mishaps” week in week out, listening to the ever present catchphrase “bazinga”, like an obligatory Scrubs pratfall, getting more annoying with each repetition.
The introduction of a potential girlfriend for Sheldon should have been much funnier than it actually was, pairing him with a female carbon copy was like introducing the exact same character. It would have been far more interesting/entertaining/funny to pair Sheldon with a “normal” woman, seeing him out of his comfort zone and interacting with society. What we got was two “Sheldons” sharing the same punch lines.
Girlfriends have been something of a theme for this season, and in a sense cavorting has replaced science as the show’s main gimmick. After it became quickly apparent that the Sheldon-Sheldon relationship was going nowhere we’re left with the irritating Howard-Bernadette and Leonard-token Indian girl relationships. Putting these characters in relationships has ruined the whole dynamic of the show. It’s just like Yoko and the Beatles. Leonard plays the part of a straight man, facilitating Sheldon’s comedy, while also providing a compulsory Ross-Rachel thing with Penny. Meanwhile Howard provides the “humorous” latent homosexual bromance with Raj. Putting Leonard and Howard in relationships not only made their characters boring and redundant, but also Raj’s and Penny’s, leaving the comedy of the show dependant on Sheldon, who we established isn’t that funny anymore.
The other consequence of this is that we’ve been introduced to three new characters, who are all irritating. Leonard’s girlfriend Priya may have been written intentionally irritating in order to contrast her with Penny in a later episode, but she’s really irritating. I don’t want to be annoyed for several episodes just so they can do what they did with Ross, Rachel and that Chinese woman in Friends. These are supposed to be socially awkward scientists/nerds, they’re lucky to get one girlfriend, let alone a fucking pick of them.
This season just hasn’t jumped the shark, it’s fucked the shark. From Raj’s Bollywood dance dream sequence to his hook up with Penny, it’s been an absolute catastrophe. Oh what was that? Yes, Raj fucked Penny, in Leonard’s bed! The writers mustn’t have know what to do with them, so they just got them to fuck, that’ll spice things up. What are they thinking? Let’s throw all rationality out of the window! Let’s introduce an alien in the next season, that’ll be funny, Sheldon and an alien, and the alien is more human than Sheldon, HA HA FUCKING HA. The alien is smarter than Sheldon and Sheldon doesn’t like that, HA HA FUCKING HA. It’ll happen, they’ll do it, those crazy writers, they’ll put an alien in, and it’ll hook up with Penny, and that will be more rational and plausible than Raj fucking her! This season has been a text book example of how to ruin a good show. If this was the intention of the writers then they have succeed with aplomb. I will pretend that there were only ever three seasons of The Big Bang Theory, and that they were funny.
Sunday 14 August 2011
Does the Pope fuck in the woods?
If like me you enjoy the process of buying a book more than the process of reading past the first chapter, you probably crave a much lighter method of obtaining knowledge. There’s Wikipedia, but that’s as reliable as…Wikipedia, and offers so many tangents that you’ll start reading about the Spanish civil war and end up reading about whatever happened to Matt Dillon or some other wayward subject. No, Wikipedia will not do, what we need is a box that just tells you stuff, wait a minute, that’s a TV! Yes, television should be a pixelated fountain of knowledge, but more often than not it’s Come Fucking Dine With Me.
If I want to watch something about history I usually have to either watch Tony Robinson dig for shit or Horrible Histories, a children’s show which could irritate Joe Pasquale. I’m sure kids might love it, but it’s not aimed for a cool and hip 20-something like myself, in fact not many history shows are. The few documentaries that do appear on TV are mostly presented by ageing professors who could make sex seem boring. I’ve always thought David Starkey was a bit of a dick and this week he proved that, what we need is a cool and hip 20-something to present a history documentary…Joe Swash?
This poor selection of history programmes has perhaps led me to watching historical dramas such as The Tudors and Camelot (it’s kind of historical). This week saw the start of The Borgias, which if it wasn’t clear by the title is all about the Borgias, you know, they’re kind of like the renaissance Italian Osbournes. Rodrigo Borgia, played by Jeremy Irons (just so you know he’s evil) becomes pope resulting in hilarious consequences.
Other than the setting it’s not much different to other historical dramas, it took a mere three minutes (including opening titles) for the first glimpse of gratuitous sex and nine minutes for needless swashbuckling. Every actor does their best Orlando Bloom thespian impression and it’d be near impossible to tell the difference from The Tudors if it weren’t for all the silly hats.
Much like The Tudors the show is filled with sex, corruption, and murder, though The Borgias isn’t as half as sexy. Most of the cast are cardinals, old men in silly hats, how the pope managed to bag so many mistresses dressed like that is a mystery. It’s peculiar that gratuitous sex is a cliché of historical drama, was it the only thing that went on back in those days or do the writers think it’s the only way to get us interested? If these shows were about when I was fourteen I’d be a professor by now.
That is if they’re historically accurate. The Tudors took creative licence and pissed all over history, I don’t know much about the Borgias so it’s difficult to tell what’s fact or fiction. Maybe Machiavelli will come in mid-series and fuck everyone. Then again, that might have actually happened, you can see the trouble I’m having here. It’s inevitable that the writers will take liberties but I’ll be too ignorant to know when, it would be useful if there was a trivia track to tell us what was true and what was made up.
I was a little less ignorant about the Borgias than I thought I was, and why? Because I played Assassin’s Creed II. I assumed that game was all lies but some of it is actually pretty accurate, or at least it has many of the same lies as The Borgias does. Maybe if The Borgias was told from the viewpoint of an assassin it might be more exciting, instead we’re left with cardinals and a weird ginger man who loves a bit of flagellation.
It might not be clear what I’m learning from this show apart from that chicks love a guy in a mitre, but as long as it’s entertaining, that’s all that matters. The problem is though, that so far it’s pretty damn boring. The sex isn’t sexy enough, the corruption isn’t corrupt enough, and the murders aren’t murdery(?) enough. Maybe it’ll pick up in a few episodes, but one thing’s for certain, they all die in the end.
Monday 8 August 2011
Swagger
A blogger living on the outskirts of London should be shitting themselves over the weekend’s events. I however lack any kind of political savvy. That’s not to say I’m an idiot, but I cannot honestly write a piece about the Tottenham riots without parading my ignorance all over the interweb. It’s easy to say “it’s a fucking disgrace!” and “something should be done about it!”, it’s easy to make bad jokes, but what isn’t easy is to write something factually sound which provides a new opinion, and one you can take seriously. I’m not a journalist, I’m a dickhead, and as such I won’t be having any ideas above my station.
Somewhere down my level and grinding my gears is the current state of music. As we all know, music is subjective and as such is very difficult to evaluate, whether it’s praise or criticism. The same is true for any form of art, but people seem to get a little more obstreperous when it comes to music. Saying you don’t like my favourite film is to an extent understandable, but if you diss my favourite band I’ll go ape shit, and so will you if I diss yours. Why are they good? It’s hard to analyse music and defend it, other than the statement “it’s good” there aren’t many other punches you can throw. If your “it’s good” is countered with a “it’s shit” it comes down to a majority opinion, and if there are more shits than there are goods then sadly you’re wrong, and your favourite band is shit. I’ll brazenly declare Coldplay and N-Dubz as excrement but how can I prove it? This cannot be done by one man alone, and in a world where half the population are below the average I.Q it’s impossible. I’m not saying that stupid people like N-Dubz, but if they knew better they wouldn’t.
So we can’t prove that music is good or bad, and in that sense it’s a bit like Schrodinger’s cat. Maybe we should put Dappy in a sealed box with a vial of poison. Why? Because he’s a cunt. That we can prove. Worryingly, we can’t prove that Cher Lloyd’s Swagger Jagger - which made it to number one yesterday - is a pile of shite. It’s my opinion that it’s the biggest piece of wank ever to be recorded, it offers nothing to the world, it’s an insult to everyone living, everyone that has lived, everyone who has yet to live, to animals, to plants, to atoms, to electrons, to neutrinos, it is offensive to everything, it’s a fucking disgrace and something should be done about it! I can’t prove it's shit though. Objectively it’s not and this is frustrating. If anything its success suggests that it is in fact good.
It’s likely that mostly kids bought the single, but it’s out there now, it’s on TV, it’s on the radio, and it’ll become increasingly difficult to avoid and the mere knowledge that it’s out there is enough to piss me off. There’ll even be a few adults who bought it. We don’t trust kids with a vote so why do these cunts get one as well?
Knowing that the song is pure terrible, why has it made it to number one? It sounds like a bad Alesha Dixon b-side (and they must all be bad) but she’s never got a number one, there must be another reason. Cher Lloyd was of course an X-Factor contestant, and being on TV for several weeks appears to be the X-Factor. It’s nothing to do with talent or image, it’s all about exposure, and the X-Factor is the perfect vehicle to sell an artist to kids and idiots. Mr Blobby, the Teletubbies, and Bob the Builder have all been massively popular TV characters who have had number ones, and Cher Lloyd is no different to them. She’s the same gimmick only sold to a slightly older demographic. I can’t objectively prove that Cher Lloyd is shit, but I can compare her to Mr cunting Blobby. I’ll take that.
Tuesday 2 August 2011
Trend of the World
Twitter has steadily become part of my life. Pre-Twitter I used to look at my phone to see how many text messages I didn’t have. These days Twitter gives me something to look at other than bitter disappointment. The majority of what I read might not be interesting, some of it might even offend me, but it always distracts me, Twitter passes the time, and because of that it’s an essential part of my life.
It’s more than something to look at when you’re waiting for someone to come back from the toilet though, it’s a fantastic resource for news and entertainment, as well as a great way to socialise with friends and even people you’ve never met. For someone like me who texts absolute shit without expecting a reply, Twitter is perfect, I don’t have to abuse an individual with my inane tomfoolery, I can share the shit with my followers. Not that many of them are real though.
Essentially Twitter is just a conduit to show the world how witty, funny, and caring you are, or more likely, how much of a dick you are. While I may think I’ve just tweeted the funniest tweet in the history of tweeting, only four people will read it and think “what a prick”. If they do like it then they might retweet it and for ten minutes I will feel like a king. The entire retweeting culture can be quite depressing at times though. If the link to one of these blog posts is retweeted then I know I’ve done a good job, though if it’s not then it’s the end of the fucking world! If no one retweets the link it must be shit! Twitter is messing with my emotions, making me feel good about myself and then taking it all away from me and kicking me face first into the dirt. You better fucking retweet this.
Twitter is a good thing then? Sort of. There are many good things about Twitter but if like me you find yourself looking at trending topics you might get very annoyed. Currently these are the topics trending on twitter:
#BornElectric
#1datmtv
#undateable
#arentyoutiredof
Dear Santa
Duncan Bannatyne
Mike Ashley
Joey Barton
Goodwillie
#iwantacopyofsavage
Trending topics might be a good idea in principal, but by the time a subject trends it holds no relevance. If you were to click on Dear Santa you could read every tweet which includes that phrase, but most of them will be “Why Dear Santa be trending? Huh? LOLZ”. What are we supposed to do with this information? Every single time a film is on TV, thousands will declare that they are watching it, it trends, and then thousands more tweet “Minority Report is trending! I love that film!”. Then you get the spambots, who mention every topic and a suspicious looking link.
This is irksome to say the least but what’s genuinely terrifying about Twitter is the ever increasing cult of One Direction fans. #1datmtv may look like gibberish but I’ve come to understand the language of one-speak, and it means One Direction at MTV. The most talked about topic in the UK is that a boy band who haven’t even released a single were on MTV. What the fuck is wrong with this country? It’s not just today, they’re constantly trending because their fans do nothing but tweet about them. Soon this evil cult will have more influence and power than the Royal family, they’ll be more of a threat to western civilization than Al-Qaeda. Imagine the pandemonium when One Direction do release a single, Twitter is going to crash, so will the stock markets, and every plane in the sky. The Mayans were right, the world is going to end in 2012 and it’ll all be the fault of this cult of fucking morons. Fucking morons devoting their lives (and sacrificing yours!) to cunts with smiley faces and an average amount of talent. THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH!
I think I’m just going to stop looking at the trending topics and get on with my life.
It’s more than something to look at when you’re waiting for someone to come back from the toilet though, it’s a fantastic resource for news and entertainment, as well as a great way to socialise with friends and even people you’ve never met. For someone like me who texts absolute shit without expecting a reply, Twitter is perfect, I don’t have to abuse an individual with my inane tomfoolery, I can share the shit with my followers. Not that many of them are real though.
Essentially Twitter is just a conduit to show the world how witty, funny, and caring you are, or more likely, how much of a dick you are. While I may think I’ve just tweeted the funniest tweet in the history of tweeting, only four people will read it and think “what a prick”. If they do like it then they might retweet it and for ten minutes I will feel like a king. The entire retweeting culture can be quite depressing at times though. If the link to one of these blog posts is retweeted then I know I’ve done a good job, though if it’s not then it’s the end of the fucking world! If no one retweets the link it must be shit! Twitter is messing with my emotions, making me feel good about myself and then taking it all away from me and kicking me face first into the dirt. You better fucking retweet this.
Twitter is a good thing then? Sort of. There are many good things about Twitter but if like me you find yourself looking at trending topics you might get very annoyed. Currently these are the topics trending on twitter:
#BornElectric
#1datmtv
#undateable
#arentyoutiredof
Dear Santa
Duncan Bannatyne
Mike Ashley
Joey Barton
Goodwillie
#iwantacopyofsavage
Trending topics might be a good idea in principal, but by the time a subject trends it holds no relevance. If you were to click on Dear Santa you could read every tweet which includes that phrase, but most of them will be “Why Dear Santa be trending? Huh? LOLZ”. What are we supposed to do with this information? Every single time a film is on TV, thousands will declare that they are watching it, it trends, and then thousands more tweet “Minority Report is trending! I love that film!”. Then you get the spambots, who mention every topic and a suspicious looking link.
This is irksome to say the least but what’s genuinely terrifying about Twitter is the ever increasing cult of One Direction fans. #1datmtv may look like gibberish but I’ve come to understand the language of one-speak, and it means One Direction at MTV. The most talked about topic in the UK is that a boy band who haven’t even released a single were on MTV. What the fuck is wrong with this country? It’s not just today, they’re constantly trending because their fans do nothing but tweet about them. Soon this evil cult will have more influence and power than the Royal family, they’ll be more of a threat to western civilization than Al-Qaeda. Imagine the pandemonium when One Direction do release a single, Twitter is going to crash, so will the stock markets, and every plane in the sky. The Mayans were right, the world is going to end in 2012 and it’ll all be the fault of this cult of fucking morons. Fucking morons devoting their lives (and sacrificing yours!) to cunts with smiley faces and an average amount of talent. THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH!
I think I’m just going to stop looking at the trending topics and get on with my life.
Monday 1 August 2011
Saving Captain America
I was only a kid when I saw the motion picture Captain America. My memory is hazy but there was a guy dressed in a blue suit who had a shield. That’s all I remember about 1990’s incarnation of the Cap but I doubt many people are even aware of the film’s existence. After all, it currently holds a rating of 2.9 on IMDB. Just to compare, The Phantom (you know, it had Billy Zane literally dressed as a bellend in it) has a rating of 4.9. Praise the lord for my hazy memory!
In 2000, X-Men kick started a golden age of comic book movies, and by golden age I mean a relentless barrage of the fuckers. We were given films like Elektra, Ghostrider, and The Spirit, hardly the most recognisable of heroes. Yet Captain America, one of the biggest Marvel heroes, had escaped another adaptation until this week. Why the long wait? Did they think that we didn’t need another Captain America and that the 2.9 pile of shite would fulfil us for eternity? That’s unfair, I can’t honestly judge that film with the limited memory I have, it might be a masterpiece. There were over 20 Marvel films between X-Men and Captain America: The First Avenger, did they forget about him? Or was it political? After all, it’s Captain AMERICA. You might as well call him Captain Prick outside the States.
Captain America: The First Avenger follows Thor as the second big Marvel film of the year, and manages to up the ante considerably. While Thor was a strange mix of Norse fantasy and California Man (Encino Man for the Americans), Captain America is a straight up WWII adventure romp. Directed by Joe Johnston of The Rocketeer fame, you would be forgiven for lowering your expectations, but Johnston has managed to make a film which should not only beat an IMDB score of 2.9, but also 4.9, making it officially better than The Phantom. Score!
Since Iron Man in 2008, there has been a steady string of films leading up to next year’s avengings, though what sets Captain America apart from the likes of Iron Man 2 and Thor is that for the most part, it completely forgets it’s an Avengers prequel. Set in WWII it’s free of restraints and can focus on being an actual film, Agent Coulson can’t appear every twenty minutes, and nor can a one eyed Samuel L. Jackson.
Steve Rodger’s journey to becoming Captain America is perfectly paced, and akin to the sort of heart warming overcoming the odds film Disney might make. We see Chris Evans’ puny Rodgers get beaten up and rejected from the army, and by the time he makes the transition to super-soldier it feels like the end of one of those Disney films, and in a good way. This is a man who has been bullied all his life, and he is finally able to defend himself. In this sense, Captain America is far more human than any other Avenger, and despite being a piece of American propaganda, we can relate to the guy standing up to bullies.
We’ve not just come for the sentiments though, we’ve come to see Captain America kick some Nazi ass! And he doesn’t just kick them, he kills them! I guess I’ve got so used to super heroes just slapping their enemies about a bit that seeing Cap shoot his is quite surprising. He just don’t give a fuck. It is WWII after all. This isn’t Saving Private Ryan however, Johnston directs the action in the style of a Sunday matinee adventure reminiscent of something like Indiana Jones (and even Star Wars), yet there are only so many ways you can see the Captain attacking a Nazi with a shield.
The action isn’t bad, it’s just not good as everything else, especially the acting, which for a comic book film is rather good indeed. Chris Evans has already proved he can handle action roles in Fantastic Four, Push, and The Losers and he is perfect in the role of Steve Rodgers. British actors Dominic Cooper, Toby Jones, and Hayley Atwell do an impressive job and while he’s not on screen for very long, Stanley Tucci shows why he makes everything better.
Who would have thought that the director of The Rocketeer could come up with something this good? Not me, and maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much, because I expected The Rocketeer. This should get us all excited for The Avengers but I still can’t see how it’s going to work. There are so many loose ends from four different films that it has to be at least five hours long just to tie them all together. It’s either going to be a horrible mess, or there’s going to be a horrible mess in every nerd’s pants. I’ll let you know next May if I come or not.
In 2000, X-Men kick started a golden age of comic book movies, and by golden age I mean a relentless barrage of the fuckers. We were given films like Elektra, Ghostrider, and The Spirit, hardly the most recognisable of heroes. Yet Captain America, one of the biggest Marvel heroes, had escaped another adaptation until this week. Why the long wait? Did they think that we didn’t need another Captain America and that the 2.9 pile of shite would fulfil us for eternity? That’s unfair, I can’t honestly judge that film with the limited memory I have, it might be a masterpiece. There were over 20 Marvel films between X-Men and Captain America: The First Avenger, did they forget about him? Or was it political? After all, it’s Captain AMERICA. You might as well call him Captain Prick outside the States.
Captain America: The First Avenger follows Thor as the second big Marvel film of the year, and manages to up the ante considerably. While Thor was a strange mix of Norse fantasy and California Man (Encino Man for the Americans), Captain America is a straight up WWII adventure romp. Directed by Joe Johnston of The Rocketeer fame, you would be forgiven for lowering your expectations, but Johnston has managed to make a film which should not only beat an IMDB score of 2.9, but also 4.9, making it officially better than The Phantom. Score!
Since Iron Man in 2008, there has been a steady string of films leading up to next year’s avengings, though what sets Captain America apart from the likes of Iron Man 2 and Thor is that for the most part, it completely forgets it’s an Avengers prequel. Set in WWII it’s free of restraints and can focus on being an actual film, Agent Coulson can’t appear every twenty minutes, and nor can a one eyed Samuel L. Jackson.
Steve Rodger’s journey to becoming Captain America is perfectly paced, and akin to the sort of heart warming overcoming the odds film Disney might make. We see Chris Evans’ puny Rodgers get beaten up and rejected from the army, and by the time he makes the transition to super-soldier it feels like the end of one of those Disney films, and in a good way. This is a man who has been bullied all his life, and he is finally able to defend himself. In this sense, Captain America is far more human than any other Avenger, and despite being a piece of American propaganda, we can relate to the guy standing up to bullies.
We’ve not just come for the sentiments though, we’ve come to see Captain America kick some Nazi ass! And he doesn’t just kick them, he kills them! I guess I’ve got so used to super heroes just slapping their enemies about a bit that seeing Cap shoot his is quite surprising. He just don’t give a fuck. It is WWII after all. This isn’t Saving Private Ryan however, Johnston directs the action in the style of a Sunday matinee adventure reminiscent of something like Indiana Jones (and even Star Wars), yet there are only so many ways you can see the Captain attacking a Nazi with a shield.
The action isn’t bad, it’s just not good as everything else, especially the acting, which for a comic book film is rather good indeed. Chris Evans has already proved he can handle action roles in Fantastic Four, Push, and The Losers and he is perfect in the role of Steve Rodgers. British actors Dominic Cooper, Toby Jones, and Hayley Atwell do an impressive job and while he’s not on screen for very long, Stanley Tucci shows why he makes everything better.
Who would have thought that the director of The Rocketeer could come up with something this good? Not me, and maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much, because I expected The Rocketeer. This should get us all excited for The Avengers but I still can’t see how it’s going to work. There are so many loose ends from four different films that it has to be at least five hours long just to tie them all together. It’s either going to be a horrible mess, or there’s going to be a horrible mess in every nerd’s pants. I’ll let you know next May if I come or not.
Friday 29 July 2011
The United States of Funny
When it comes to comedy we Brits like to think that we’re the best at it. We gave the world Monty Python! Or at least five sixths of it. It’s something of a cliché to comment on the good old British sense of humour, but we are funny people, or so we keep telling ourselves. There’s not much evidence these days of our hilarity, we appear to have stopped being funny.
Turn on your television and it’s just panel shows, we’ve stopped writing comedy and focused purely on commenting on stuff. How many times can we watch six comedians make jokes about a number? Comedians don’t even have to be funny anymore, they just have to look trendy. Put a pair of converse on and gel your hair and you’re a comedian! Jack Whitehall has somehow managed to forge a career in comedy without being funny.
Forget about panel shows and Michael “I’m so funny I can’t stop laughing when I point out stuff that happens” Mcintyre’s comedy road shows and what’s left on our screens? BBC One family sitcoms. Shows that aren’t offensive but also not funny. Even good sitcoms like How Not to Live your Life, Lead Balloon, and Him & Her aren’t hilariously funny. We can’t even claim the IT Crowd as our own because it’s written by an Irishman. Yeah we have Peep Show but we’re not getting a new series until next year. The Scottish have made some great sketch shows this year (Burnistoun and Limmy’s Show) but it’s not enough.
I might never tire of the IT Crowd (we‘re claiming it!) or Peep Show but this drought of British Comedy has prompted me on a perverse expedition across the Atlantic into the treacherous territory of…American comedy! America makes such a large quantity of programmes that it’s like throwing wet tissue at a wall, some of it has to stick.
American comedy can sometimes come across as brash, people will gleefully deconstruct it as mindless shouting and dancing, and while this may be true for some cases, American comedy is in many ways becoming superior to British comedy, and I think we should take the credit. The Office is one of the best comedies we’ve ever produced and has been incredibly influential in turning American comedy funny.
More and more comedies are moving away from canned laughter and live studio audiences and adopting a tone more akin to The Office, focusing on characterisation over a constant stream of one liners. Perhaps the most obvious example is the US version of The Office, and I assume the mere concept of remaking our beloved series has put many Brits off ever watching it. Barring the first episode, the two shows are completely different and comparing the two is redundant.
The US Office might be zanier than we’re used to, it’s inevitable that some people will be incapable of getting it (such are the woes of comedy‘s subjectiveness), but for the ones who do, they will love it. There is a perfect balance between comedy and tragedy for every character in the show, the more tragic the character’s life, the funnier they are. It’s amazing how many characters they’ve crammed into the show, and how detailed their idiosyncrasies are. We don’t usually get to see much character development in British comedies because they usually only last two or three six episode series‘. So far the US Office has made it to 152 episodes, and while there may be some weak episodes now and again, it’s rare that ten minutes will go by without a huge laugh. To put this into perspective, Two Pints of Lager ran for 80 episodes, and how many times did you laugh watching that?
Greg Daniels, the dude who adapted the US version of The Office, went on to create Parks and Recreation, another US comedy worth all of your time. Like The Office, P&R is filmed in the style of a documentary and focuses on an ensemble of idiots, this time based in the parks department of a small town in Indiana. It may be very similar to The Office (I could just copy any paste the previous paragraph) but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There are of course differences but if you like The Office, you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll like P&R. Just watch them both.
It’s likely that you haven’t seen these two shows, it’s almost certain that you haven’t seen Community. A quick look on Wikipedia tells me that Community started airing in the UK last October, on Viva. Viva! Isn’t it a music channel? It’s no place for comedy. This is one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in a long time, at least put it on FX, a channel one of us might happen to stumble upon. Community is all about an American community college, a place of education for the more unfortunate people of the world.
So far this has been one of the hardest blog posts to write, I like these shows, what more is there to say? I can’t express my affection in a witty manner, it just comes across as if I’m a teenage girl doting on N Sync (or whatever the kids are listening to these days). All this praise on one page is sickening, it’s hard to express how much I like Community. I love The Office and P&R, but I really love Community. It’s fuckrilliant. It’s so good I’ve made up a word to describe it. It’s intelligent and stupid in equal measures, the characters are flawed yet loveable, it has countless callbacks and makes endless film references. If ever a show was made for me, it would be Community. It’s totally bewildering that it isn’t being shown on a much more popular channel in the UK, Channel 4 likes to think it’s hot stuff when it comes to American comedy, so does Sky One, why haven’t they picked this up? I’ve only discovered it yet it’s been running since 2009.
Maybe it’s time we take a look at American comedies and see what we can take from them. Perhaps we should band together and write as a team rather than individually, have a go at writing more than six episodes, and work on characterisation as opposed to puns. Whatever the solution is, we need to up our game. The Americans are already more powerful than us, we can’t allow them to be funnier than us.
Turn on your television and it’s just panel shows, we’ve stopped writing comedy and focused purely on commenting on stuff. How many times can we watch six comedians make jokes about a number? Comedians don’t even have to be funny anymore, they just have to look trendy. Put a pair of converse on and gel your hair and you’re a comedian! Jack Whitehall has somehow managed to forge a career in comedy without being funny.
Forget about panel shows and Michael “I’m so funny I can’t stop laughing when I point out stuff that happens” Mcintyre’s comedy road shows and what’s left on our screens? BBC One family sitcoms. Shows that aren’t offensive but also not funny. Even good sitcoms like How Not to Live your Life, Lead Balloon, and Him & Her aren’t hilariously funny. We can’t even claim the IT Crowd as our own because it’s written by an Irishman. Yeah we have Peep Show but we’re not getting a new series until next year. The Scottish have made some great sketch shows this year (Burnistoun and Limmy’s Show) but it’s not enough.
I might never tire of the IT Crowd (we‘re claiming it!) or Peep Show but this drought of British Comedy has prompted me on a perverse expedition across the Atlantic into the treacherous territory of…American comedy! America makes such a large quantity of programmes that it’s like throwing wet tissue at a wall, some of it has to stick.
American comedy can sometimes come across as brash, people will gleefully deconstruct it as mindless shouting and dancing, and while this may be true for some cases, American comedy is in many ways becoming superior to British comedy, and I think we should take the credit. The Office is one of the best comedies we’ve ever produced and has been incredibly influential in turning American comedy funny.
More and more comedies are moving away from canned laughter and live studio audiences and adopting a tone more akin to The Office, focusing on characterisation over a constant stream of one liners. Perhaps the most obvious example is the US version of The Office, and I assume the mere concept of remaking our beloved series has put many Brits off ever watching it. Barring the first episode, the two shows are completely different and comparing the two is redundant.
The US Office might be zanier than we’re used to, it’s inevitable that some people will be incapable of getting it (such are the woes of comedy‘s subjectiveness), but for the ones who do, they will love it. There is a perfect balance between comedy and tragedy for every character in the show, the more tragic the character’s life, the funnier they are. It’s amazing how many characters they’ve crammed into the show, and how detailed their idiosyncrasies are. We don’t usually get to see much character development in British comedies because they usually only last two or three six episode series‘. So far the US Office has made it to 152 episodes, and while there may be some weak episodes now and again, it’s rare that ten minutes will go by without a huge laugh. To put this into perspective, Two Pints of Lager ran for 80 episodes, and how many times did you laugh watching that?
Greg Daniels, the dude who adapted the US version of The Office, went on to create Parks and Recreation, another US comedy worth all of your time. Like The Office, P&R is filmed in the style of a documentary and focuses on an ensemble of idiots, this time based in the parks department of a small town in Indiana. It may be very similar to The Office (I could just copy any paste the previous paragraph) but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There are of course differences but if you like The Office, you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll like P&R. Just watch them both.
It’s likely that you haven’t seen these two shows, it’s almost certain that you haven’t seen Community. A quick look on Wikipedia tells me that Community started airing in the UK last October, on Viva. Viva! Isn’t it a music channel? It’s no place for comedy. This is one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in a long time, at least put it on FX, a channel one of us might happen to stumble upon. Community is all about an American community college, a place of education for the more unfortunate people of the world.
So far this has been one of the hardest blog posts to write, I like these shows, what more is there to say? I can’t express my affection in a witty manner, it just comes across as if I’m a teenage girl doting on N Sync (or whatever the kids are listening to these days). All this praise on one page is sickening, it’s hard to express how much I like Community. I love The Office and P&R, but I really love Community. It’s fuckrilliant. It’s so good I’ve made up a word to describe it. It’s intelligent and stupid in equal measures, the characters are flawed yet loveable, it has countless callbacks and makes endless film references. If ever a show was made for me, it would be Community. It’s totally bewildering that it isn’t being shown on a much more popular channel in the UK, Channel 4 likes to think it’s hot stuff when it comes to American comedy, so does Sky One, why haven’t they picked this up? I’ve only discovered it yet it’s been running since 2009.
Maybe it’s time we take a look at American comedies and see what we can take from them. Perhaps we should band together and write as a team rather than individually, have a go at writing more than six episodes, and work on characterisation as opposed to puns. Whatever the solution is, we need to up our game. The Americans are already more powerful than us, we can’t allow them to be funnier than us.
Sunday 24 July 2011
Torch My Wood
I’ve always laughed at Torchwood. Probably in the same way “normal” people laugh at Doctor Who. I’ve always ignorantly declared it as shit without ever watching a whole episode. As with Doctor Who, every now and again I would catch a few minutes of Torchwood, and dismiss it as nerdy bollocks. These days my bollocks are considerably nerdy, now a fan of Doctor Who I wilfully turned on the new series of Torchwood. Or maybe I should say season.
The Americans have put a bit of money into Torchwood and in a sense have hijacked our British sci-fi series and made it their own. Bloody yanks, coming over here and taking our shows, increasing the budget and hiring better actors. While a sense of national pride may lament this Americanisation of the series, we have to admit that in general US TV shows are much better than ours.
A spin-off of Doctor Who with a terrible anagram as a title, set in Wales, and starring John Barrowman? This is what has kept me away from Torchwood for so long. How much shit can happen in Cardiff anyway? About three series worth apparently. The Americans probably realised this and subsequently have moved season 4 over to the good ol’ US of A.
This entire series/season is based on one story in which people stop dying. Sounds alright doesn’t it? Well it turns out it’s shit. With the prospect of the world becoming drastically over populated it’s up to Torchwood and some CIA guys to find out what the hell is going on. Obviously the Americans didn’t want the whole series/season set in Wales though. How can you convey this tragedy in Cardiff? A place where it already looks like the living dead roam the streets. Instead Barrowman's Captain Jack is swiftly relocated to his homeland.
As a result we get some good acting. The standard BBC procedure for casting Americans is to just use Brits who can only do awful New Jersey accents, but this time they’ve found some real Americans. Mekhi Phifer and Bill Pullman no less. Pullman was the President in Independence Day, here he’s a convicted paedophile and murderer. It’s all gone wrong for him.
If you’re going to be shaking your fists at anyone in Torchwood it’ll be Pullman. After surviving an execution for his crimes, he is freed on a technicality, and just walks about looking all evil. He’s not the main villain however, we’re only two episodes in but it’s going to be the American government isn’t it? It’s always the American government, and usually the vice president. We shouldn’t really trust Joe Biden should we?
So far Barrowman has had relatively little screen time, the focus being on the global implications of an ever increasing population. Issues such as food shortages, overcrowded hospitals and drug resistant diseases have taken precedence over Barrowman running down a street and twatting someone in the face. Whenever he is on screen I think he’s suddenly going to burst into a number from West Side Story. Then the Welsh bird speaks and the accent ruins the whole tension.
Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Christian Bale, all Welsh actors who don’t have Welsh accents. Would Batman have been as good if he had a Welsh accent? “Ooo this disbanded coal mine would make a good batcave mind. Anyone fancy some cheese on toast?”. A Welsh accent makes everything sound funnier, and as a result it makes Torchwood seem a bit comical at times. The breaches of health and safety in Fireman Sam were no laughing matter, but the accents made them funny. The comedy can be considered as a good thing though, after all there is a convicted paedophile walking about, you need to balance that shit with some comic relief. I’m sure Schindler’s List would have been easier to watch if it was set in the valleys.
The Americans have put a bit of money into Torchwood and in a sense have hijacked our British sci-fi series and made it their own. Bloody yanks, coming over here and taking our shows, increasing the budget and hiring better actors. While a sense of national pride may lament this Americanisation of the series, we have to admit that in general US TV shows are much better than ours.
A spin-off of Doctor Who with a terrible anagram as a title, set in Wales, and starring John Barrowman? This is what has kept me away from Torchwood for so long. How much shit can happen in Cardiff anyway? About three series worth apparently. The Americans probably realised this and subsequently have moved season 4 over to the good ol’ US of A.
This entire series/season is based on one story in which people stop dying. Sounds alright doesn’t it? Well it turns out it’s shit. With the prospect of the world becoming drastically over populated it’s up to Torchwood and some CIA guys to find out what the hell is going on. Obviously the Americans didn’t want the whole series/season set in Wales though. How can you convey this tragedy in Cardiff? A place where it already looks like the living dead roam the streets. Instead Barrowman's Captain Jack is swiftly relocated to his homeland.
As a result we get some good acting. The standard BBC procedure for casting Americans is to just use Brits who can only do awful New Jersey accents, but this time they’ve found some real Americans. Mekhi Phifer and Bill Pullman no less. Pullman was the President in Independence Day, here he’s a convicted paedophile and murderer. It’s all gone wrong for him.
If you’re going to be shaking your fists at anyone in Torchwood it’ll be Pullman. After surviving an execution for his crimes, he is freed on a technicality, and just walks about looking all evil. He’s not the main villain however, we’re only two episodes in but it’s going to be the American government isn’t it? It’s always the American government, and usually the vice president. We shouldn’t really trust Joe Biden should we?
So far Barrowman has had relatively little screen time, the focus being on the global implications of an ever increasing population. Issues such as food shortages, overcrowded hospitals and drug resistant diseases have taken precedence over Barrowman running down a street and twatting someone in the face. Whenever he is on screen I think he’s suddenly going to burst into a number from West Side Story. Then the Welsh bird speaks and the accent ruins the whole tension.
Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Christian Bale, all Welsh actors who don’t have Welsh accents. Would Batman have been as good if he had a Welsh accent? “Ooo this disbanded coal mine would make a good batcave mind. Anyone fancy some cheese on toast?”. A Welsh accent makes everything sound funnier, and as a result it makes Torchwood seem a bit comical at times. The breaches of health and safety in Fireman Sam were no laughing matter, but the accents made them funny. The comedy can be considered as a good thing though, after all there is a convicted paedophile walking about, you need to balance that shit with some comic relief. I’m sure Schindler’s List would have been easier to watch if it was set in the valleys.
Friday 22 July 2011
And I said what about...
I write about films a lot. At least I try to. If you do happen to read this drivel on a regular basis (god help you) then you would have noticed that I write about films I haven’t seen more often than I write about films I actually have seen. The reason for this is that I have a very short attention span.
Watching and dissecting a trailer is far quicker and easier than actually watching the whole film, and sometimes it’s all that’s necessary. I don’t exactly want to go to the cinema and pay to see something like Twilight, especially since I’d probably have to go by myself. Imagine the embarrassment of seeing Twilight on your own. “Oh it’s alright I’m writing a review.” “Who do you write for?” “The rascal with the tweezers in his pocket, you read it?” “No“.
I could just watch them online but there’s only so many torrents and buffering you can tolerate before you realise you’ve been waiting hours to watch Twilight or Green Lantern. And then you have to watch the damn thing, and I’ll get bored, or I’ll like it and then what? Writing a positive post is insanely difficult, there’s thousands of ways to describe shit but if you like something? Yeah it’s good, it’s really good, it’s great, it’s brilliant. It’s boring.
In January I wrote about all the films I wanted to see this year, and thus far I’ve only seen two of those, Paul and Thor. In total, I’ve seen four films at the cinema this year, and I’m typing across the interwebs about films like I’m some authority on the matter. I did go through a whole semester studying media at uni.
If I’m to continue my ignorant ramblings on the world of film then I must start watching things. I’ve never seen Citizen Kane, the Godfather Part II, or Flubber, and it’s about time that I start watching these so called classics. For lack of anything better to write about I will chronicle this treacherous journey of cinematic discovery.
I watched War of the Worlds the other night for the first time, but as it was only made in 2005 and was pretty terrible, I’ll skip it. First on the list (I’ve not got one) is Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which I’m told is a classic. I don’t think it’s really aimed at me. On the back of the DVD Holly Golightly is described as a madcap, carefree New York playgirl. She’s not, she’s a dick, who is probably mentally ill.
It’s essentially just a rom com, if it was filmed today it would probably have Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey in it, fucking things up for everyone. It’s obvious from the opening scene that this is not a film for men. It’s a fashion statement, and it’s purely for the ladies. I’m sure every girl wants to be like Holly, a girl with fancy clothes doing whatever the fuck she wants, I’d be happy with that life.
Holly Golightly might be an inspiration to some women but to me, she’s fucking annoying. She just goes on and on and on, it’s exhausting. She’s a hazard to society and this dude just thinks she’s swell, why? And what’s appealing about him? He’s just as much of a dick and appears to be a rent boy for much of the film. A rent boy!
The film has aged well in terms of style, but not so well in political correctness. Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of a Japanese man is so overtly racist it kind of overshadows everything else in the film. Imagine a Jim Davidson impression, and then imagine something worse.
Excluding this racism Breakfast at Tiffany’s isn’t a bad film, but it’s not as classic or great as some people might have you believe. Maybe I can’t truly appreciate it as I lack fallopian tubes but this is a film made infamous by its style above anything else. I also can’t help but feel that the ending is not a happy one. I bet after the credits she kills the cat and runs off to Brazil.
Watching and dissecting a trailer is far quicker and easier than actually watching the whole film, and sometimes it’s all that’s necessary. I don’t exactly want to go to the cinema and pay to see something like Twilight, especially since I’d probably have to go by myself. Imagine the embarrassment of seeing Twilight on your own. “Oh it’s alright I’m writing a review.” “Who do you write for?” “The rascal with the tweezers in his pocket, you read it?” “No“.
I could just watch them online but there’s only so many torrents and buffering you can tolerate before you realise you’ve been waiting hours to watch Twilight or Green Lantern. And then you have to watch the damn thing, and I’ll get bored, or I’ll like it and then what? Writing a positive post is insanely difficult, there’s thousands of ways to describe shit but if you like something? Yeah it’s good, it’s really good, it’s great, it’s brilliant. It’s boring.
In January I wrote about all the films I wanted to see this year, and thus far I’ve only seen two of those, Paul and Thor. In total, I’ve seen four films at the cinema this year, and I’m typing across the interwebs about films like I’m some authority on the matter. I did go through a whole semester studying media at uni.
If I’m to continue my ignorant ramblings on the world of film then I must start watching things. I’ve never seen Citizen Kane, the Godfather Part II, or Flubber, and it’s about time that I start watching these so called classics. For lack of anything better to write about I will chronicle this treacherous journey of cinematic discovery.
I watched War of the Worlds the other night for the first time, but as it was only made in 2005 and was pretty terrible, I’ll skip it. First on the list (I’ve not got one) is Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which I’m told is a classic. I don’t think it’s really aimed at me. On the back of the DVD Holly Golightly is described as a madcap, carefree New York playgirl. She’s not, she’s a dick, who is probably mentally ill.
It’s essentially just a rom com, if it was filmed today it would probably have Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey in it, fucking things up for everyone. It’s obvious from the opening scene that this is not a film for men. It’s a fashion statement, and it’s purely for the ladies. I’m sure every girl wants to be like Holly, a girl with fancy clothes doing whatever the fuck she wants, I’d be happy with that life.
Holly Golightly might be an inspiration to some women but to me, she’s fucking annoying. She just goes on and on and on, it’s exhausting. She’s a hazard to society and this dude just thinks she’s swell, why? And what’s appealing about him? He’s just as much of a dick and appears to be a rent boy for much of the film. A rent boy!
The film has aged well in terms of style, but not so well in political correctness. Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of a Japanese man is so overtly racist it kind of overshadows everything else in the film. Imagine a Jim Davidson impression, and then imagine something worse.
Excluding this racism Breakfast at Tiffany’s isn’t a bad film, but it’s not as classic or great as some people might have you believe. Maybe I can’t truly appreciate it as I lack fallopian tubes but this is a film made infamous by its style above anything else. I also can’t help but feel that the ending is not a happy one. I bet after the credits she kills the cat and runs off to Brazil.
Saturday 16 July 2011
Why you hate Fred Durst
It’s a Saturday night and you’re watching a film all cosied up on the sofa, you’re having a good time and suddenly in the corner of your eye you see a gigantic spider sprint across the room. HOLY FUCK! You leap out of your seat fearful for your life. After a five minute staring contest with said spider neither of you have moved. You decide to leap into action grabbing the closest thing to you that can be used as a weapon but by the time you are able to pounce the spider is gone. You stay weary of its return but it looks like it’s never coming back. Just as you start to get comfortable with life once more it strikes back!
The same thing has happened with Fred Durst. I thought we were done with him. Him and his stupid fucking red cap on backwards and his “fuck this, fuck that” attitude, a moron of the highest calibre. Barring a rather peculiar appearance in an episode of House, we hadn’t seen much of Fred Durst and his “band” Limp Bizkit, it looked as if they had finally called it a day, but I was horrified to discover that they’re back, and more pointless than ever.
My hatred for Limp Bizkit goes all the way back to school, where everyone seemed to love Limp Bizkit regardless of what clichéd social group they were part of. I didn’t. I didn’t get Limp Bizkit, or any music for that matter. At that time my CD collection consisted of the South Park compilation Chef Aid, and Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP. Now because my opinion differed from the norm I was deemed “sad and gay” for not liking Limp Bizkit (or any nu metal band). Read that again. I was “sad and gay” because I didn’t like Limp Bizkit. School was a cruel mistress.
Even with my poor musical knowledge back then I was spot on with Limp Bizkit, which makes it all the worse that a few years later I started to listen to them. Yep, I became a dick. I guess my teenage angst was more latent than others my age, and when it became active I suddenly liked Limp Bizkit. Perhaps it was years of being worn down by their exposure or the derision I received from my friends that turned me to Limp Bizkit, but whatever the reason, it’s not an excusable one.
Fast forward a couple of years and I once again harbour a hatred for Limp Bizkit, Fred Durst and the rest of that early 00’s nu metal scene. It feels like it’s too late though, while I have never listened to a Kid Rock or Nickelback song out of choice I have uploaded Limp Bizkit and even Papa Roach to my ipod. That shit doesn’t leave you, it’s on your permanent record. When I’m dead and at the pearly gates Saint Peter is going to judge me for it and send me to hell. I’m sorry God.
We all look back on our pubescent music taste and cringe at the majority of what we used to call music. As a whole, the nu metal scene is comparable to that awful auto-tune R&B phase we’ve just been through. Nu metal was a competition to see who could tune their guitar as low as possible and shout fuck the loudest. Thankfully it was only ever a phase, pogs lasted longer than nu metal.
Its tenure may have been short lived but Fred Durst has provided us with wisdom only Oscar Wilde could ever dream of:
“If I say fuck two more times that’s 46 fucks in this fucked up rhyme”
“Keep rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ rollin‘”
“I hope you know I pack a chainsaw, I’ll skin your ass raw”
“I’d eat you alive…I’m sorry, so sorry, damn you’re so hot”
“Keep rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ rollin’”
Fred Durst is 40 now though, he must have grown up, his red cap must be in the bin, his vocabulary must have improved and he must have some meaningful messages for the world, just like Bono does. We should give him another chance.
So he still looks like a cunt, perhaps even more as he’s wearing a vest. Let’s listen to what he has to say though.
“Holdin’ the gold, it’s so gold, it’s so golden y’all, the golden cobra”
“Douche bag I’m a fuck you up, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you up” (it repeats)
No, he’s even more of a cunt than he used to be. If we can all just tell Fred no he’ll have to stop. Mick Jagger is 67, that means we could have another 27 years of Fred Durst, I can’t live through that, can you? No you can’t, so let’s do the right thing and stop this cunt called Fred Durst.
The same thing has happened with Fred Durst. I thought we were done with him. Him and his stupid fucking red cap on backwards and his “fuck this, fuck that” attitude, a moron of the highest calibre. Barring a rather peculiar appearance in an episode of House, we hadn’t seen much of Fred Durst and his “band” Limp Bizkit, it looked as if they had finally called it a day, but I was horrified to discover that they’re back, and more pointless than ever.
My hatred for Limp Bizkit goes all the way back to school, where everyone seemed to love Limp Bizkit regardless of what clichéd social group they were part of. I didn’t. I didn’t get Limp Bizkit, or any music for that matter. At that time my CD collection consisted of the South Park compilation Chef Aid, and Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP. Now because my opinion differed from the norm I was deemed “sad and gay” for not liking Limp Bizkit (or any nu metal band). Read that again. I was “sad and gay” because I didn’t like Limp Bizkit. School was a cruel mistress.
Even with my poor musical knowledge back then I was spot on with Limp Bizkit, which makes it all the worse that a few years later I started to listen to them. Yep, I became a dick. I guess my teenage angst was more latent than others my age, and when it became active I suddenly liked Limp Bizkit. Perhaps it was years of being worn down by their exposure or the derision I received from my friends that turned me to Limp Bizkit, but whatever the reason, it’s not an excusable one.
Fast forward a couple of years and I once again harbour a hatred for Limp Bizkit, Fred Durst and the rest of that early 00’s nu metal scene. It feels like it’s too late though, while I have never listened to a Kid Rock or Nickelback song out of choice I have uploaded Limp Bizkit and even Papa Roach to my ipod. That shit doesn’t leave you, it’s on your permanent record. When I’m dead and at the pearly gates Saint Peter is going to judge me for it and send me to hell. I’m sorry God.
We all look back on our pubescent music taste and cringe at the majority of what we used to call music. As a whole, the nu metal scene is comparable to that awful auto-tune R&B phase we’ve just been through. Nu metal was a competition to see who could tune their guitar as low as possible and shout fuck the loudest. Thankfully it was only ever a phase, pogs lasted longer than nu metal.
Its tenure may have been short lived but Fred Durst has provided us with wisdom only Oscar Wilde could ever dream of:
“If I say fuck two more times that’s 46 fucks in this fucked up rhyme”
“Keep rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ rollin‘”
“I hope you know I pack a chainsaw, I’ll skin your ass raw”
“I’d eat you alive…I’m sorry, so sorry, damn you’re so hot”
“Keep rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ rollin’”
 |
| "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck" |
 |
| "Fuck, fuck, fuck. fuck" |
“Holdin’ the gold, it’s so gold, it’s so golden y’all, the golden cobra”
“Douche bag I’m a fuck you up, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you up” (it repeats)
No, he’s even more of a cunt than he used to be. If we can all just tell Fred no he’ll have to stop. Mick Jagger is 67, that means we could have another 27 years of Fred Durst, I can’t live through that, can you? No you can’t, so let’s do the right thing and stop this cunt called Fred Durst.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)