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.

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.

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 his cult 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.