Toys Don't Cry

Men, by stereotype, are tough aren’t they? Yeah, they go round shouting and fighting, they’re derogatory towards women, boast about how they fucked that broad last night and she loved it (even if it never happened). This is the stereotypical man, he loves beer, football, tits and most of all being a hard bastard.
It would be wrong to say that all men are like this because after all I’m writing, I’m not outside fighting for the honour of a football team I have needlessly affiliated myself with and therefore become so emotionally attached that match results dictate my moods and feelings, no, I am writing, which in the world of men is considered sissy and gay (unless it’s about football or tits).
Nevertheless every man gets stuck with this tag and when it comes to movies the juxtaposition of this stereotype with “tearjerkers” is apparently hilarious. A woman can watch a sad or emotionally moving film and cry and that’s not a problem because she’s a woman and that’s expected. When a man cries in a film it’s an opportunity to point and laugh at him because of the stereotypical identity that’s been given to him.
This is a stigma that as a fairly sensitive and probably quite sissy man I despise. When will a man be able to cry at a cinema and it not be made into a big deal? When will a man watch a film with his wife and not have to hold the tears back for fear of embarrassment? It’s a moving film and he’s got to let it all out for fuck’s sake! Andy and Red are reunited on the beach and through fear of humiliation we cannot fully embrace this highly emotional homoerotic moment. The Cure famously told us that boys don’t cry, but it’s only because they would get laughed at.


GIFSoup

If only men cried more we wouldn’t have wars. When we’re sad instead of letting it all come out we bottle it up because of fear, and like Yoda said fear turns to anger and eventually the dark side, and we end up with a war all because some bastard couldn’t cry. You might think well hang on you’re exaggerating this but fuck you I’m not, I just watched Toy Story 3 and I cried and I’m fucking ashamed of myself. A film that has become famous for the volume of tears produced from men, not women or children, MEN. When I’m asked if I’ve seen Toy Story 3 in the future and I say yes, I will be asked did you cry? DID YOU CRY? DID YOU CRY? I’m a terrible liar, I will have to say yes, and they will laugh at me, ha ha, ha ha, HA HA HA, because a man crying is something to be laughed at.
It’s not my fault, Toy Story 3 was supposed to make you cry. It was relatable to just about every type of person, it makes you think about the loss of your youth and innocence, of being rejected, of lost friendships and your inevitable loneliness, your own endless futility, becoming old and useless, and if you are old and useless, how your children will abandon you if they haven‘t already. Every way you look at this film it addresses a fear, and what catches a tear in your eye is it telling you that everything is going to be fine.
All of this doesn’t matter, it’s primarily a kids movie and you shouldn’t cry, and if you do you’ll get laughed at, even by men who also cried. What scares me is that Hollywood has noted how effective Toy Story 3 was, how making men cry makes a hit and we have several hundred more tear inducing films to come in which everyone laughs at us. I’d like to say that I’m comfortable crying but in truth I’m not, it’s embarrassing but there’s no way to stop it, I can’t toughen up, men have tried to and failed. They started going to football matches but they just ended up crying there.

Dead Island

If you look at trending topics on twitter at any given moment you will be forgiven for stabbing yourself in the eye. A list of the most popular topics on twitter is actually an unholy inventory of rage inducing shittery that will make you question the very core of humanity and everything around it. Because what’s “hot” on twitter are fuckwitted inane phrases featuring the likes of Justin Bieber, the Jonas brothers and Lady Gaga. Basically if you’re on MTV 24/7 you’re on twitter 24/7. Twitter can be educational, a much quicker gateway to news and culture than any other means but millions of people aren’t interested in this, no, they just want to proclaim their love or hatred of popular Disney tweens. If you look further into these trending topics you see that most people aren’t actually talking about the topic at all, it’s a long list of morons tweeting “OMG why is Rasputin trending?” or just listing every topic so people will read their tweets and maybe just very maybe will end up following them.
To cut an infinite tangent short, there is one particular thing that is currently trending called Dead Island. I would be right to assume that it’s just another stupid topic, that Justin Bieber has been found dead washed up on an island, or Lady Gaga’s new outfit is of a dead island, but no, this is one of those rare occasions in which twitter has trended something that is worthy of your attention, the problem is that you won’t know that, you’ll assume it isn‘t.
Totally ignoring the trending, and even a few tweets from trusted sources, I eventually stumbled across the trailer for Dead Island this morning (not the show). Dead Island is a forthcoming PS3/Xbox 360 game about an island of zombies, and the trailer at least, is fudging brilliant. It’s pretty rare that a game will appear out of nowhere and get everyone excited, we usually know about them sometimes years before they are released, but like a sex offender lunging at you out of a bush, Dead Island has caught everyone by surprise.

More Dead Island Videos

A lot of recent games have been trying to look like movies, fancy cut scenes, big scores, bigger explosions and instead of adverts, they have classy trailers. It’s a concept that works, look at the sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and that looked like several movies! As the game industry is becoming ever more popular, marketing is becoming the most vital aspect of it. The popularity of the Nintendo Wii and DS is not because of the excellence of the games, it’s because of Ant and Dec, Helen Mirren and Sir Patrick fucking Stewart.
Dead Island will further change how games are marketed, it might turn out to be dreadful but publishers will have already arranged meetings to turn out a trailer that makes their game look like the dog’s bollocks and the bee’s knees. We might be given lots of pretty looking videos, but film trailers almost always fool us into thinking a film is better than it actually is. Iron Man 2 and Predators both included footage in their trailers that didn’t feature in the final film and who’s to say game trailers won’t do this? They already do.
Hardcore gamers will be dripping in their pants having seen the Dead Island trailer but if history tells us anything we should prepare for disappointment. If there’s two things I love it’s zombies and islands but we don’t know much about the game as of yet and it may prove to be Dead Rising on an island, which no one wants. Of course what we want is a great game and if the trailer could be considered as an indicator of its quality (which it can’t) then we could have something very special.
There are lots of if’s and but’s and by the time Dead Island is released we might have forgotten all about it. In true cynical fashion I am braced for an anti-climax and a barrage of over the top artsy trailers. All that matters for the publishers is that games look good, and like zombies we buy every single one.

Peggle Makes You Kill!

This article was brought to the attention of many a nerd this week and is another hyperbolic rant of fearful accusation that video games are a bad influence. This debate has existed as long as video games have and mainly comes from silly little people who have never played a game in their life before.
Their argument may seem sound, in a game a player is rewarded for acts of violence, and subsequently they will be conditioned to believe that this is the same in reality, with violence becoming the primary answer to a real life conflict. It makes sense if you word it like that and it may even be true in some cases, but some is the key word here. This won’t happen to EVERY gamer and it is close minded to label every gamer has a potential psycho rapist murderer and proclaim that Peggle makes you kill.
In this article, Carole Lieberman, apparently a psychiatrist (not a real science) and an author (anyone can write a book) said that “the increase of rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of sexual scenes in video games”. Carole Lieberman whoever the fuck she is has made the most idiotic thing argument I have ever heard within the video game debate. I’ve played games for as long as I can remember and not in one game have I controlled a character who has been able to rape someone. There have been very few occasions where a player has been able to have sex, and on these occasions it is always boring, and you never see anything. For example in GTA, you could take a prostitute into your car and the car would shake. Furthermore it was not vital to the progression of the game, nor did it reward you. Likewise in Fable (in which the screen blacks out) if you didn’t use a condom you would end up with an STD or a baby, which you would agree is far from a reward. Sex in video games has always been tedious, it will never be vital to the plot and this is why it has and always will appear so little in them, it’s not like Mario has been boning Princess Peach is it?
I’ve been a gamer all my life, I’ve not raped or murdered anyone, I’ve not been cruel to animals, I’ve never been in a fight in my life, I hate any kind of conflict, so can you really say that they have been a bad influence on me? I’m not the only one, I’m guessing that the majority of gamers are by modern standards, normal. The recent popularity of the industry proves this, otherwise the world would be overrun by vagrants raping and murdering each other, which it isn’t.
At a very young age I was constantly surrounded by “bad” influences, I played Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, I watched Schwarzenegger (wow, spelt that right first time) films all the time, I watched wrestling, there were naughty kids at school and out of school, and it was the same in my adolescence, I listened to Eminem, I watched Tarantino films, watched porn, politicians did bad things, footballers did bad things, everyone and thing around me was the epitome of immorality, and I have never stolen, raped or murdered. It is not always monkey see monkey do, in my experience bad influences are a deterrent. When I play something like GTA, and I’m shooting everyone who comes on screen, the police will come after me, and then SWAT teams, and the FBI, and the army, and eventually they will shoot and kill me, just as in real life games have consequences.
You could even argue that games are actually a good influence. Scientific research has shown that they can actually improve cognitive processing while in my experience playing the likes of Civilisation and Medieval: Total War has greatly improved my knowledge of history and geography. No longer is staying in your room all day anti-social, online gaming is a great way of socialising if used in the correct way, and playing games are one of the best ways to bond and cement a friendship. They are supposed to be fun and if the line between game and reality blurs, then you’re probably mental if you play games or not.

Beautiful Gypsies are Better Than You!

Gypsies have a hard time don’t they? If you ever see one on TV they’re usually putting a curse on someone and it’s this type of stereotyping that Big Fat Gypsy Weddings is trying to rid the world of. Because of course they don’t go round putting curses on vampires and such, you would be a dickhead to think that, in fact according to Big Fat Gypsy Weddings they’re just like you and me, but better.
BFGW has the honour of being the most watched Channel 4 programme since Big Brother back in 2008. A sentence that should read “8 million watch Peep Show again” actually reads “BFGW is the most watched programme since Big Brother”. I never understood Big Brother, what should have been an opportunity to judge those horrible desperate people became a platform to put them on a pedestal and praise their every breath and bowel movements. It remained partly popular not by judgers but by people who wanted to be just like them, they wanted to sit in a house and talk, and then not have to work for the rest of their lives. BFGW should be a stage for judgement, but instead it’s a stage for love, appreciation and envy, gosh they have a nice life, swoon!
The modern English preconception of a gypsy (or pikey) is of a horrible person who doesn’t pay taxes and leaves shit everywhere. While it would obviously be wrong to tarnish a whole community with the same shitty brush it is equally wrong to so fervently paint an eloquent picture of an idyllic wanderlust paradise, and that’s what Channel 4 have done. You would expect a documentary such as this to be judgemental, to point at the gypsies and go “ergh look at them! They smell, look at that boy riding a horse, what a prick, they make me sick”.
Instead it’s actually quite biased towards the gypsies, turning a blind eye towards things that a “normal” person would be judged for. Take the gypsy art of grabbing for example, where a man will “grab” a woman and do what they like. Not even the dictionary has a nice definition of the word grab, but the producers of BFGW cared not for what was probably just slang for rape and moved quickly on, ignoring a helpless girl in a car park.
With a tweaked narration the show could be very different, with all the grabbing and fighting and suspiciously expensive cars there should be at the very least a mention that the sun doesn’t shine out of all their arseholes. Why not ask them where they really get all their money from? One man hired a fucking helicopter! It’s as if the producers were afraid to make them look bad, perhaps they’ve seen Snatch and would rather not be shot.
Every girl and woman is portrayed as strong and beautiful, and every man is strong and masculine. There must be some scummy gypsies out there, the show may be highlighting that they’re good people, but if you take a random handful of people, at least one of them will be a cunt, (as it’s known in mathematics, the cunt coefficient). BFGW doesn’t know the meaning of the word and would have you believe that despite all the bad things we can clearly see them doing, they’re courteous, affable, honest, civilised people, and you’d be lucky to be half as good as they are.
The title, Big Fat Gypsy Weddings is misleading as the whole wedding thing takes a backseat and is a mere footnote, a more fitting title would be Beautiful Gypsies are Better Than You! Though that would be a lie because when you are presented with a wedding it just looks like Jordan’s, only slightly less/more tacky. It’s not just the bride who looks like Jordan though, it’s every woman, girl and even baby, and here is where the judging/admiring takes place depending on where you stand on morality, “Oh they’re beautiful!”, “They look like Jordan”.
If you’re an idiot and didn’t quite understand what was going on with all the moving pictures and narration, there’s some scouse woman to tell you everything about gypsies every five minutes, how do we know what she’s saying is true? She could be making this all up, “every Tuesday a gypsy eats a squirrel”. Her presence is bewildering and it makes you want to see a documentary called Big Fat Scouse Wedding Planners in which gypsies tell us all about her, “I wanted a traditional church wedding and she made me look like fucking Jordan!”
Perhaps I’ve misinterpreted the show, perhaps I’ve become too pessimistic of mankind and nothing can escape my ghastly cynicism, you could have a documentary about charity workers and I’d probably call them all cunts. Perhaps as a nation we have become a society where we need to judge others to feel good about ourselves. Am I naïve to think that this show could have been anything other than a device for judging? Are the majority of the viewers still judging gypsies despite the show’s spin? And has our opinion of gypsies changed in the slightest? Answers on a postcard.

Man of British Steel

There’s been an absolute clusterfuck of shit happening in the world of comic book movies, at least if you’re a geek, nerd or fanboy. To the “normal” person it’s awards season, all dresses, Colin Firth and shit, but for the geeks it’s jizz in your own mouth season. Aside from the slew of screenshots for the likes of Spider-Man, Captain America and the X-People (thanks Andy Gray) the big news for the socially awkward virgins is that Henry Cavill is Superman.
Holy jiminy fuck nuggets Batman! That guy from The Tudors (no, the other one) will be the first British Superman, who let us not forget is everything a symbol for America as Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presley and obesity. How the Americans will take this news I don’t know but for us Brits we can relax in the knowledge that at the very least there will be one good performance in the film.
It’s something of a continuing trend to cast a Brit as a superhero and why not? We’re fucking Great remember. Robert Pattinson aside we have some great young actors while the US only really have Jesse Eisenberg and Michael Cera, both are hardly super hero types. With the likes of Cage, Pitt, Damon, Depp and DiCaprio heading ever further away from their youth there aren’t any big stars for the action roles. Chris Evans and Ryan Reynolds have both had multiple super hero roles already, they can’t share all the roles so Hollywood has looked towards good ol’ Britain to fill the roles.
Back in the 90’s even Robin Hood was American, but everything has changed. With Christian Bale, James McAvoy, Aaron Johnson, Andrew Garfield (he counts), Tom Hardy, Idris Elba, Anthony Hopkins, Patrick Stewart, Michael Caine, Helen Mirren, Mark Strong and even Nicholas Hoult appearing in comic book movies (let’s not forget Andrew Lincoln in The Walking Dead) is it any surprise that Cavill has been cast as Superman?
So he might not be the biggest actor out there but neither were Christopher Reeve and Brandon Routh and they did better than alright. As long as he can awkwardly fumble as Clark Kent, walk with his pants on the outside and pretend to lift things he’ll be a success. The casting of Superman should be the least of the producers concern, with numerous interpretations of the hero already out there it will be incredibly difficult to make a film that is both exciting and original all while keeping to the traditional canon.
If rumours of the casting of Lois Lane are true and any of Kristen Stewart, Glee’s Diana Agron, Rachel McAdams and Jessica Biel are cast then we can all go home now and never speak of this fucking awful monstrosity ever again, but if Olivia Wilde turns out to be Lois Lane we can all jump and high five each other, though it would be in her contract to have at least one lesbian scene…More high fives!
There’s no doubt that Lex Luthor will be the villain because Superman hasn’t got many classic enemies, it’s not like Gus Gorman will be making a comeback (on skis!) so there will be much speculation to who will be perfect for Lex Luthor, though I’m sure there are forums awash with ideas (and demands) already.
If the trend of British actors wasn’t enough we’ve found ourselves getting excited and writing about films that won’t be released for well over a year, be it about the Avengers or Batman we have a live news feed of the smallest of details and the sad thing is I’m here as always typing away about all of it - get a life you loser. The announcement of Henry Cavill may seem premature but at least it will stop thousands of fanboys ejaculating cries of “NATHAN FILLION!” to the question of who should play Superman.

King Firth

My last post didn’t take long to write at all, after all it’s much easier to write about something you feel disdain for than something you genuinely like. This blog is redolent with negativity, it thrives on it like a pig in shit. So it’s somewhat difficult and perhaps uninteresting to say that The King’s Speech is actually very good.
Of course you probably already know that, there’s a horde of positive reviews and it’s expected that Colin Firth will take home just about every award there is this year, even Slovenian footballer of the year. Despite knowing all this prior to seeing the film I predicted I wouldn’t enjoy it a great deal, I tend to resent these kind of films, how can they possibly live up to their pretentious reviews? They can’t be that good I think to myself and usually they’re not, but The King’s Speech somehow lived up to its grandiose reviews.
I often find critics get carried away with hyperbole when describing a performance as “powerful” or “mesmerising” or “like finding a pound - will make your day”. Much to the dismay of my cynicism Colin Firth’s performance in The King’s Speech is powerful, and it is mesmerising, it’s full of heart and soul, of fear and bravery, it’s like finding a five pound note. Yet Firth isn’t the only one to stand out, Geoffrey Rush is as equally impressive and in his short screen time Michael Gambon nearly manages to steal the whole darn show. Never have I ever sat at the cinema and thought to myself “wow this is good acting”, I’m not the sort of wanker who does that I ended up saying to myself (in my head - I‘m not mental) “gee whiz this is great acting”. What have I become?
It’s been embarrassing watching the English portrayed in film and television recently. Anyone who has seen The Tudors will understand what I mean, not only was it not interesting it was historically inaccurate as well. I understand that Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character but he is such a quintessential staple of our culture that it’s offensive if you besmirch us with something like Guy Richie’s adaptation. The King’s Speech is unequivocally English however and it makes up for these embarrassments by being a true depiction of our nation and our culture and it’s somewhat bewildering that it was written by an American.
To call it a historical drama doesn’t do it justice, foreign audiences (and even English) may feel alienated from the subject matter but they will relate its deeply personal content and this is what makes it special. Most historical films are very rigid and offer little in terms of true emotion and sentiment but you can relate to The King’s Speech, it is about overcoming fear above anything else and this is what sets it apart from the rest of the crowd. Of course nothing says overcoming fear like facing giant robots, so I will wait for Transformers 3 before I declare this the film of the year.

BOND IS BACK!

BOND IS BACK! Or he will be back, sometime next year, schedule permitting. I’m going to throw it out into the wide open, I don’t like James Bond, and you may think you like James Bond but let me tell you that you don’t, you don’t you hear me! James Bond is for people who read Haynes manuals and do crosswords, Alan Partridge loves James Bond, I wouldn’t be surprised if every hardcore Bond fan owned a Castrol GTX jacket. 

My problem with Bond doesn’t stem from the average quality of the films, it’s with the character himself. James Bond should be the epitome of coolness, that’s what they want you to think, it’s what they’re aiming for, they may have succeeded back in the 60’s when womanising was cool but in this modern age, he’s a massive prick. If my job involved having a licence to kill and I used it, I wouldn’t be so chirpy all the time I’d be a fucking wreck, I certainly wouldn’t make quips about it! “How was work darling?” “I did another murder! I can’t go on!” Not that I’d have a wife is I was James Bond, because I’d be too fucking sexy for one woman, no I’d saunter around the world fucking everything I see with the worst chat up lines in the world inexplicably working every time, and not only that I’d wear a tuxedo 24/7! ARGH! 

So Bond is a murdering womanising unfunny prick in a tux, not only that he wears expensive watches which he MUST point out to you and drives expensive cars and smashes them up, tax payers probably paid for that Aston Martin as well as all your tuxes James, if that’s your real name! 

The films aren’t much better, they are not bad but for a franchise with such a high reputation there is not one film that is amazing, and there’s 22 of them! Furthermore there are some pretty dog shit ones as well, take Die Another Day for example. A North Korean man turns into an English man via a DNA transplant or some crazy shit, he creates some kind of artificial sun which he uses to chase Bond off a cliff, who somehow survives and kills the North Korean/English man, and to make matters worse Madonna is in it. If it wasn’t a Bond movie you’d spit your beverage in my face, but because it’s Bond they get away with it, people see it and they like it. If something is a classic you condition yourself to like it, to be receptive of it and that’s what we do with Bond, we think it’s great because we’re told it’s great, by middle aged men who still think womanising is the bees knees. 

With the news of a 23rd film many have come in their pants but I’ve not got so much as a semi, I hope I’m wrong and “Live and Let Quantum Diamonds Kill Forever in Russia Another Day Pussy Royale” is a great film. 

The not as big as it could have been 2011 film preview!

So 2010 was fun right? Ignoring those two posts about how it wasn’t it was just swell. There was Kick-Ass, Scott Pilgrim, Doctor Who, Sherlock, Peep Show, The Walking Dead, Wonders of the Solar System, it sure was crazy, so can 2011 kick it in the balls?

127 Hours

Everybody loves James Franco, everybody loves Danny Boyle, nobody likes seeing an arm being cut off. That’s not entirely true because the Saw franchise was made possible by the public’s love of severed limbs and those very people who flocked to see Cary Elwes saw his leg off will give their right arm to see James Franco cut his right arm off. At the tender age of 17 I braved Saw (underage, fuck yeah I’m a rebel!) at the cinema but a DIY amputation is not something that would entice me to see a film these days. Danny Boyle’s name would though so I cannot wait for another of his famous feel good films of the year.

Black Swan

It’s about ballet! It’s psychological! The Oscars are going to eat this shit up. Yes it’s got loads of good reviews already and yes it’s going to win loads of Oscars, but will anyone really care? More than likely it’s going to be one of those films where appreciation is exclusive to film students and actual critics, the same people who were able to enjoy Lost in Translation. As I’m just a twat with a keyboard I doubt Black Swan will appeal to me, I get the feeling that the trailer promises it to be a hundred times more exciting than it actually is. Anyone who thinks it sounds a bit gay with the ballet remember this, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis have sex in it, and if that’s gay I don’t know what to believe.

The Green Hornet

The first super hero film of the year looks to be a fairly low key affair. I was initially excited about this film when it was announced way back when, but when Stephen Chow dropped out I lost interest. Nevertheless Michel Gondry is directing and I haven’t seen Seth Rogen since Funny People, it looks silly and slightly camp and having not seen any super hero/comic book action since Scott Pilgrim it’s beginning to look like a great idea. It won’t be the biggest film of the year and possibly not even the biggest with Green in the title, it might be shit, it might be worse than shit but it’s the only film that looks remotely fun in January, and amongst all the Oscar wannabes what we really need is some good wholesome fun.

Paul

The first film of the year that I am truly excited about, Paul marks the return of everyone’s favourite onscreen duo, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. For me that’s good enough, but throw in an alien (voiced by Seth Rogen) and a host of SNL actors and this promises to be a hoot and a holler, if only for the geeks of the world.

Sucker Punch

Touted as “Alice in Wonderland with machine guns”, Sucker Punch at least promises to be one of the most original films of 2011. A group of girls attempt to escape an asylum through their dreams all while opening several cans of “whoop-ass”. Nerds dig chicks with guns so you can guarantee this will be a cult hit already, the question is whether a mainstream audience will be able to suspend their disbelief and enjoy a film that can only be described as “fucking mental”. This looks like this year’s Kick-Ass, if it’s half as good I’ll be happy.

Thor/X-Men: First Class/Green Lantern/Captain America

There’s no question that I will see all of these films but I very much doubt I will enjoy them as much as comic book films of yesteryear. The whole Avengers thing has been building up for a while now and I’m actually getting a bit sick of it. Iron Man 2 was a disappointment as it had one eye on progressing the Avengers plot and subsequently forgot it was a film in its own right. As we are fast approaching the super hero film to end all super hero films you would be a fool not to expect the plots of Thor and Captain America to focus heavily on all things Avengy.
DC’s effort Green Lantern looks like it could be an absolute mess judging by the trailer but if last year told us anything it’s that a film doesn’t have to be good to be successful, especially when you have the ever popular Ryan Reynolds as the lead.
Remember all those X-Men films you saw? Well we’re going to have another one, but this time they’re young! Normally I would shake my fist in the air but as Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman are involved it would be safe to assume this won’t be a total mess.

Rise of the Apes

Fanboys have only just got the taste of Tim Burton’s ape movie out of their mouths so apparently it’s time for another go. Featuring the man of 2011 himself James Franco and ape connoisseur Andy Serkis it certainly has credentials in the acting department, though it remains to be seen whether any life is left in this ageing franchise. The original remains a classic, more a philosophical tale than science fiction, but in this age of dumbed down blockbusters you would be safe to assume this will be more a “APE VS MAN WITH FUCKING BELLS!” kind of flick.

The Thing

Like Rise of the Apes this isn’t a remake but another entry to a pre-existing mythos, they made that clear in the title you idiot! The Thing will be a prequel to the original and though that has me assuming the end will be the beginning of John Carpenter’s film, I hope this predictability won’t ruin the fun of a shape shifting alien wreaking havoc in the snow. With a pretty much unheard of cast (Mary Elizabeth Winstead is the only recognisable face (but what a face)) and the original film only really attaining a cult status this is unlikely to be the biggest hit of the year, but aliens are in this year so perhaps we’ll go bat shit for this come October.

At the risk of writing into 2012 I won’t write about The Fighter, Blue Valentine, Never Let Me Go, True Grit, Source Code, Attack The Block, Your Highness, The Hangover 2, Cowboys and Aliens and Super 8, not yet anyway.

Come Fly With Me

It’s easy to forget that at one time Little Britain was the funniest thing on television because there is always the memory of Little Britain being the least funny thing on television. What started as nothing short of genius turned into a constant slew of catchphrases and shock value and quickly lost its credibility, and that was way before those not at all irritating Nationwide adverts (irritating doesn’t do it justice).
There’s no argument that Matt Lucas and David Walliams are talented but it’s hard to shake off the images of Andy and Lou, Vicky Pollard and Emily Howard whenever you think about them and at times I feel a bit of resentment towards them because of it. “I want that one”, “yeah but no but yeah but no” resonate in my head at the mere thought of either of them despite the fact that I know they’re funny. I loved Lucas as George Dawes and there is nothing I find more terrifying than Walliams’ turn as Vulva in Spaced, but this matters not now they’ve become synonymous with phrases such as “I’m a lady!”.
Perhaps the success of the show influenced its direction, after all these characters were the most popular with the audience and these were the catchphrases everyone was repeating, never mind Mr Man and his pirate memory games for ages 4-8, the public wanted “that one” and they got it, and a somewhat brilliantly creative show turned into a crappy BBC One “comedy”.
If I didn’t expect Come fly with me to be funny I wouldn’t have watched it, but watched it I did and to my complete non surprise it wasn’t that bad. Thinly veiled as a mocumentary based at an airport (much like the actual documentary Airport) it is essentially just another character based sketch show with every sketch set at an Airport. It looks very much like where Little Britain left off and it also looks like a crappy BBC One comedy so by those standards it really shouldn’t be funny.
It’s hit and miss but what’s important is that it does hit, against the odds it is actually funny. Where Little Britain’s characters quickly became surreal and unbelievable, Come fly with me’s are at least for the moment a bit truer to life, in some cases they are quite mean characters, while others are strangely tragic, in particular Tommy, a “Happy Burger” worker who is trying to work his way up to being a pilot.
It has had quite a few negative reviews and it’s possible that I’m appreciative towards it because I had low expectations, but it is still an enjoyable show and relative to the other shit the BBC pump out this could be considered a masterpiece (Rock and Chips anyone?). It’s not one of the best comedies ever made but at the very least it’s watchable and when BBC comedy can be as bad as My Family, watchable becomes TV magic.
Of course we’ll probably all hate it in two weeks time, it’s already been accused of racism (or as it's more commonly known: DAILY MAIL FRENZY!) which in turn has seen the show garner the support of Jim “I’m definitely not a racist” Davidson. This can’t be seen as anything other than a bad sign and I wouldn’t be surprised if Nick Griffin’s cameo ended in the show being cancelled. For now I will enjoy with great trepidation.

Reasons to hate 2010: Part Two

Alice In Wonderland

Much like Avatar, Alice in Wonderland was a financial success and another purveyor of that silly 3D thing. I didn’t have any expectations going into the cinema to see Alice but somehow I still left the cinema quite bitter that I had spent £10.50 on such a pile of shite.
Alice in Wonderland is a perfect argument to why 3D is the scourge of all that is holy in the world of cinema. 3D distracts the audience from the art on the screen (or lack of it), people have paid extra for the 3D effects so they want to be wowed by them, shock and awe! Many films have been more of technological demo of 3D than a well told story and the success of these films rests predominantly on the quality of the effects.
In Alice’s case the effects weren’t up to scratch. Before that fateful night I walked into the cinema I had only seen two films in 3D, the wonderful Up and of course Avatar, I thought this was what all 3D looked like, good, but I was wrong. This is a film that needed the 3D to distract us from everything else, it needed to wow but all it did was illicit groans. I haven’t watched a film in 3D since, if you wear glasses at the cinema you will now how irritating and uncomfortable it is to wear two pairs of glasses, the last thing you need is to go through a horrible ordeal like Alice in Wonderland again.
In a way the 3D has distracted us from the film because it made over a billion dollars at the box office despite being fuck awful. The dollars dictate that the film was a success but it should be seen as a failure. It was a sequel of sorts but re-treaded every little detail of the original story so much so that it was more a remake if anything. Every introduction of a new character felt forced, it was like one of those rides where you’re in a little car and you slowly meander through a fairy tale world seeing one thing after the other. Perhaps it’s what the executives wanted and it’s hard to tell them they were wrong when they’re a billion dollars richer.
The same goes for Johnny Depp, how do you tell him his films aren’t very good when they make so much money? Depp does the kooky shit better than anyone else in the business but when you play a weird kooky character in every film they all become quite normal because that’s what we‘ve come to expect. It’s hard to relate or connect with any of his characters because they are so cartoon like, and in a way he’s become as two dimensional as Vin Diesel. I’m not saying these two men share the same talents but it would be interesting to see Depp portray a normal guy every now and again.
You can hate Alice in Wonderland for being a terrible film and that’s fine, but you should really hate it along with Avatar for starting the 3D trend, and above all, for taking £10.50 out of my pocket.

The X-Factor

So I pretty much successfully avoided The X-Factor this year, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a go at it. Talent shows are like rapists and murderers, they’re out there, you can try to avoid them, but sometimes you just can’t. I certainly felt violated when I saw a young girl in a tracksuit rapping, and there’s not a word to describe how I felt when I saw an audience applauding what was clearly a paedophile.
It’s all about gimmicks in The X-Factor now, oh look at Jedward, they’re mentally ill and fun aren’t they? Let’s have more of that, two gay guys? Check! A fat Irish woman? Check! A paedophile? Let’s have two! But what about the kids? Yes! Let’s put some kids in there! The only thing that will increase the ratings than Usher shouting at us will be a live molestation of One Direction.
If you are offended by that then you are almost as offended as I am by this show. It’s not entertainment, it’s a business, and it’s certainly not music, it’s just a fancy karaoke. Yet it is still one of most popular shows on television, everyone talks about it and it’s undeniably shit. It’s like Simon Cowell is throwing the same piece of shit at you again and again and you’re just fine with it, actually no simile is needed that’s exactly what it is.
It’s the same thing over and over but that’s what the public likes, just how have Eastenders and Corrie remained so popular over the years? By being the same thing over and over and over, that’s how. They could repeat the first series of The X-Factor next year and no one would know. “Oh Cheryl looks amazing!” “That’s Sharon Osbourne.” “She can look however she wants she’s had a tough time with the divorce and the malaria“, OH FUCK OFF! If we can accept cunts like Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan, and Gordon Ramsey (I wish that was shit and not Gin being poured on him) then of course we’re going to idolise someone who’s only slightly a bit twatty.
It doesn’t end with the show because the charts are full of former winners and contestants and even judges, theatres are full of them, it all gets too much for you so you book a holiday, you go to Butlins and they’re fucking there as well! You’ve had enough of it but not to the point that you start listening to Rage Against the Machine. For a rage against the machine it was a very well organised campaign that actually required people to do what they’re told, take that consumerism! As predictable as the show itself, every December there will be hundreds of campaigns trying to debase The X-Factor and prevent it from having the Christmas number one. While we’re on this subject, who gives a fuck about the Christmas number one anyway? It’s not like there’s a prize of immortality for the winner. I agree that The X-Factor winner’s single is dreadful but the way I deal with that is that I don’t buy or listen to it, I don’t like Rage Against the Machine so I don’t buy or listen to their music, these campaigns are as dictatorial as The X-Factor is and buying something else because someone told you is worse. People will buy the single, and they’ll buy the Matt Cardle book (YES HE HAS A FUCKING BOOK!) and if you have a problem with that then it’s sort of like having a problem with idiots, and you’re no better than the Nazis.

I planned to write about other things that annoyed me in 2010 but looking back over the inaugural year of the rascal I’ve pretty much covered everything that could irritate a twat with too much time on his hands.