You May Be Entertained

Comercially Viable - An Attempt at Topical Discussion Without Using Stupid Metaphors

2012-01-11T22:03:00.007Z

I'll start this post by saying I like David Cameron.

I was going through my old computer the other day and found a story I'd started writing when I was about 15. It was a weird mixture of The Hurt Locker, 2012 and The Bourne Identity focusing on a worldwide terrorist attack set in the future. In it, I'd made reference to Prime Minister David Cameron, thus second guessing the future of British Politics by about four years. And before you ask, I will be offering my Mystic Meg insight to the upcoming American Election in November, so get your betting slips at the ready.

Anyway, back to the matters at hand. Today, after a personal tour of Pinewood Studios, the Prime Minister announced he would like the British film industry to focus on more comercially successful films instead of low budget critical darlings that the UK is more famous for nowadays.

Remember that fire at Pinewood a couple of years ago? After comments like that I'd wished the inferno had held off for a few years and treated the PM like medieval folk treated witches.

This was the alternate poster for Kiss Ass- I MEAN Kick Ass. Satire.

First of all, commercially successful movies cost money. Avatar, the highest grossing film of all time, cost an estimated $240million to make. Titanic, the second highest grossing film ever, cost $200million to make back in 1997. The latest installment of Twilight, Breaking Dawn Part. 1 cost $110million to make, although I'm sure it'd rack up serious box office numbers even if the filmmakers scrapped the original shoot and just held some kind of puppet show using knitted characters made by Tayler Lautner's nan.

Before the government scrapped the UK Film Council last year, it had an annual budget of £15million to invest in different films all year round.

I'm not saying dosh automatically equals more dosh, but when given a choice between the idiot-fuelled cash juggernaut Transformers and the lower-budget more thought provoking Tyrannosaur, most punters this summer plumped for the money option.

Unfortunately, such is the way of modern politics that the electorate of UK will hardly be too pleased if a £200million government funded big screen production of Doctor Who all of a sudden popped up at the Odeon. You can imagine it now, a local news report with a batty old lady complaining they've spent all the money that'd been promised for a new streamlined Meals on Wheels service on enticing Brad Pitt to be the new Doctor and George Lucas to create the special effects.

So there's that to consider. Then there's the other problem, which goes back to my what-at-the-time-seemed-irrelevant story about my prediction of David Cameron becoming British Prime Minister:

How do you predict a commercially successful film?

There is a reasonable formula for working out a sure fire hit. Big actors + big explosions + news-worthy budget + story based on previously popular work/sequel = $$$

But who would've predicted things like Slumdog Millionaire or The Hangover would've become smash hits? Slumdog Millionaire is a good example because it's a British film that'd been financed by the UK Film Council. Its a Danny Boyle film that is remarkably un-Danny Boyle (mainly because it makes you smile) about a boy from the slums of Indian who manages to win Who Wants to be a Millionaire because all the answers relate to flashbacks that make up the film's narrative (what are the odds?). It was a massive hit, helped by the fact it generated a serious amount of pre-Oscars chatter.

Its the same with The Kings Speech. Most of it's success is down to the hype around Colin Firth's and Geoffrey Rush's performances and the whole 'Britishness' of it all. No one was that interested in the history lesson about a King who had a stutter, just the fact Firth could pull off a stutter without...stuttering.

Two of Britain's most successful films in recent times then have been Oscar successes revolving around the central theme of personal triumph. Most films that battle it out for Oscars are rarely commercial juggernauts, instead they're usually more obscure pictures that come to the forefront of public attention due to their critical acclaim. They aren't necessarily commercial nor mainstream, but they are bloody good.

Maybe it's the fact Cameron is currently seeing Margaret Thatcher's face on the side of every bus in London like a miner's nightmare that has driven a little bit loopy. Britain makes good films, regardless of whether they're commercial or not. I'm more excited about seeing The Kill List, a low budget obscure British horror/thriller when it comes out on BluRay than any other film coming out this month. When Britain tries to make commercial bigger budget pictures, they tend to be horrible gangster flicks starring Ray Winstone or Danny Dyer that are a) shit b) offensive to our intelligence.

Politicians should stay away from the film industry, especially when you take into consideration the fact David Cameron has Armageddon on his DVD shelf (I did not realise he had special needs). Investing in the production of films is incredibly risky when compared to the investment in other commodities. But few other commodities are as loved as films. It's art, and art should not be told how it should be produced, especially by those who have no real interest other than pound signs.

And yes, this is a topical post from yours truly, I hope you've enjoyed the ride.

2011 in Film - Highs and a Low

2011-12-30T14:39:00.014Z

2011 has been a vintage year for movies. Even though it seems every other release has contained a superhero of some kind, there have been some genuine classics that have blessed multiplexes over the past 12 months. For me personally, it's been the first year where I've seen most of the major releases what with my exposure to press screenings and red carpet premieres, somewhat falsely giving me a sense of entitlement that I can compose a best-of list. I've narrowed it down to four and put them in order. Agree/disagree/keep your views to yourself.

4. Super 8

Proof that virtually everything J.J Abrams touches turns to gold, this homage to Spielberg movies of old is a great science fiction film with a touching relationship between two young teenagers at its heart. Following a group of young teenagers who are filming their own Super 8 film in the late '70's, their mini-blockbuster leads them to a local station where they witness a huge train crash (one of the great spectacles this year), releasing a dangerous creature into the town.

Having teenagers at the centre of a plot means the child actors have to be good enough to carry the narrative. Fortunately, Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning give two mesmerising performances; Fanning's in particular exuding a maturity of someone far more experienced. Between them, Courtney and Fanning bring tenderness and affection to adolescent life giving Super 8 an emotional depth that many summer blockbusters think they can do without.

With Spielberg as producer, Super 8 always feels well paced, barely pausing even when the slower more heartfelt moments dominate the screen. The visual effects are outstanding, and the final act where the army decide enough is enough and begin their assault on the creature is an incredibly thrilling sequence.

If you think this all sounds quite like War of the Worlds, then you'd be half right. Especially when it comes to the ending, because like Spielberg's update of the H.G. Welles classic, you can't help but feel short changed by Super 8's ending. It's a shame, but I am prepared to forgive it's dismal outcome, purely for the fact that the proceeding 90 minutes are so strong.

3. Source Code

Those who thought Jake Gyllenhaal was merely a pretty face should really take a long hard look at Source Code, an action-packed-techno-thriller from Duncan Jones. The film tells the story of a army helicopter pilot who wakes up on a commuter train unaware of his surroundings. Suddenly the train explodes, but rather than waking up in front of the pearly gates, he wakes up on the train again, and works out he must repeat the same 8 minutes in order to find the bomber.

Jones, son of David Bowie handles a multi-layered and intricate story with aplomb, keeping the film hurtling along at the breakneck pace of the film's train. At only 90 minutes, it's a short sharp blast with no excess flab. There are plot twists in virtually every scene, and the narrative unravels in a manner that reminded me of Christopher Nolan's Memento, which in my eyes is one of this milennium's great masterpieces.

Which brings me on to Gyllenhaal. Whilst he was rather good in Brokeback Mountain, he was always in the shadow of Heath Ledger (which given the subject matter of the film is a poor choice of words on my part). Yet here he leads the line brilliantly, with a compelling yet haunting performance.

This has been a year of action films punching well above their critical weight. Fast Five, Thor and MI:4 have all had critics retracting thoughts about the quality of blockbusters. Source Code is the best one of the lot. For thought provoking story and explosions, you can't go far wrong.

2. Submarine

No end of year best-of list is complete without an obscure film that many people are unlikely to have seen yet you wish they had. Submarine is the debut feature film of The IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade and is based on the novel of the same name by Joe Dunthorne. It's a coming-of-age comedy-drama focusing on teen sex, but not quite in the same ballpark as films like Superbad. Instead this is wonderfully stylistic, with Tarantino-esque sections and self-aware narration.

It tells the story of Oliver Tate, who falls in love with the cheeky and straight talking Jordana Bevan. From there, Ayoade explores all the trials and tribulations of a teenage relationship, set in a fabulously bleak mid-eighties Wales.

But it never becomes a lesson in style, because like Super 8, there's a lovely little romance right at the centre of it. And once again, the performances of Craig Roberts and Yasmin Page are just fantastic and enormously likeable. Then there's the brilliant supporting cast with the likes of Noah Taylor and Paddy Consadine meaning we're not longing for the teenage couple when they're off-screen.

It says a lot about my partiality to a coming of age story that two of them grace my list. And when there's a style reminiscent of Wes Anderson holding it all together, it gains a direct line to my heart.

1. Drive

We've seen many things in the cinema this year, but it turns out what we really wanted was to see Ryan Gosling crush a man's skull into a bloody pulp with the sole of his boot.

This film ticks about just every box. Classy and stylist direction. Cars. OTT violence. A strong male lead. A stonking electro-pop soundtrack. Carey Mulligan. Evil Jewish gangsters. Retro '80's detailing. I'm nursing a semi just thinking about it. No, that's just Cliff Martinez's score thumping through the subwoofer into my abdominal area.

Drive tells the story of an unnamed Hollywood stunt driver - played on the limit of mannered and madness by Ryan Gosling - who moonlights as a wheelman for criminals, offering a five minute window before his skills become obsolete.

The first half is the Mulligan and Gosling show, with a charming chemistry that is played out through actions, with very little dialogue between the two. The subtle movement of Mulligan's lips and Gosling's deep blue eyes say so much more than reams of dialogue.

Then, Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn comes into his own. Proving adept at mastering the human elements, Refn sets about making Drive one of the most beautifully crafted films of the year. From the helicopter shots of a rarely seen side of Los Angeles to the car chase segments that are left to play out rather than horribly spliced together like most modern action sequences, it's a feast for your eyes.

There's a real nod to films like Bullitt and Pulp Fiction, both in it's styling and content. Never does Refn feel like he's struggling with bringing all these elements together; such confidence in a young director is rare.

There's so much to like about Drive that it's difficult to put a finger on any negatives. It's been criminally overlooked by the Golden Globes, but leads the line in nominations at the London Film Critics Awards. Here's hoping it gets the recognition it deserves, because Drive is, by a considerable margin, my favourite film of 2011.

...and the Biggest Disappointment of the Year - The Hangover 2

It was a sleeper hit when it came out in 2009, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who didn't find the original Hangover film a brilliant and original comedy. Featuring a cast of relative unknowns but in the capable hands of Todd Phillips, everything about it was funny. The set up was funny, each of the principal characters were funny and there were funny twists and turns. As this list suggests, the Hangover was funny.

The Hangover 2 took everything that was original (and funny) about the first installment and turned it spectacularly stale. It was like a bacteria that rapidly turns bread into mould. You can't just copy the plot of the first one, proclaim it's 'bigger in every way' and expect the audience to lap it up.

Unfortunately, the audience did lap it up. With over half a billion dollars at the worldwide box office, it guarantees there'll be a third installment of the drunken Sherlock Holmes-like series.

I had such high hopes for The Hangover 2. Especially as the principal cast and crew were all back in play, thinking they'd build on the original. Instead, they built next to it, but when stood next to the original, it paled into comparison. Wahh.

X Factor Final 2011 - LIVE BLOG

2011-12-10T19:46:00.028Z

21:57 And so that's it for tonight's X Factor, and indeed for this live blog. Thank you for those that have stuck through it, I hope it's been a worthwile side dish to your evening's entertainment. It has bled me dry of similies and analogies so I'm going to refuel with a sandwich and some more manly television. Ciao!

21:54 The country's population of dogs winces as Little Mix and Tulisa celebrate getting through. Everyone else just sits there wondering if the sound on their telly has broken.

A clip show reveals that Amelia spent most of the time with her mouth wide open. Like a basking shark. With a pink wig. Interesting.

In tomorrow's final final it'll be a straight fight between Little Mix and Marcus. And when I say straight, I don't actually mean it. A poor choice of words on my part.

21:48 Marcus was pretty bloody awful tonight. His singing was as good Sander Westerveld's goalkeeping. Wouldn't be too surprised if he went out even though he is the so-called favourite. Short back and sides my good man?

21:39 Dermot revealing that the lines are frozen. I know it's cold outside but surely BT could install freeze-tolerant phone lines? Poor joke I know, but I'm pining for some negativity. I'm British, I can't function in an all-happy environment.

Michael Bublé is someone who looks like he was made for Christmas. He's like those seasonal shops that pop up around the middle of October selling wrapping paper for 13p a roll and other random shit you feel you need to buy just because it's the holiday season. Totally irrelavent for the rest of the year, just like our festive-only performer.

21:35 Reflecting on Leona Lewis' persecution of an artist she shouldn't be going anywhere near, I'm wondering what other strange covers we'll see tonight. Marcus covering Rammstein? Amelia Lily performing a Bach classic? Little Mix doing a medley of the hits of The Wombles? Anything is possible when Simon Cowell is in the mood to crush the entire music industry with his giant face.

21:28 When Leona won, and then Leon won the year after, I was hoping for a contestant called Leo to storm it.

I heard this earlier. For those of you who don't know, this is a cover of Johnny Cash's cover of Nine Inch Nails' song called 'Hurt'. Which is all about a cocaine addiction. You know, family-fun entertainment.

And just to clarify, it's absolutely fucking horrendous. The people who put together the song clearly have disregarded what made the song so powerful in the first place. Which is subtelty. Not a big sodding drum kit and a huge vocal. I hope they're giving Trent Reznor a skip full of cash.

21:20 Struggling to work out who is the mentor and who is the contestant as Amelia makes Rowland look like a poor man's Beyonce. Oh wait...

Rowland also showcasing her apparently under-reported case of Tourettes, whereby she keeps shouting 'come on' at random intervals. I'd love to know how that started. No, no I don't.

I think we're all forgetting here that Kelly on week one, effectively said: 'The act I'm ditching first is Amelia'.

And nice to see the Essex contribution to the show: downing a cocktail because of peer pressure. Well done Olly, let's keep that reputation nice and high.

21:18 Apparently Real Madrid have taken 22 seconds to go a goal ahead against Barcelona. Why oh why am I not watching that?

21:10 Tulisa proving that she's wasted by being the cream part of the Oreo-band that is N-Dubz. I'm not ashamed to say I'm bloody loving every part of this performance, especially Tulisa's legs which have been criminally hidden behind that desk for far too long.

Dermot addresses Tulisa as T, suggesting that not only can he not open a show, but he's also unable to talk 'street'.

Olly and Caroline have found some interesting guests tonight, these two nutjobs being the highlight. The Mayor proclaiming that was their best song choice. Yes, because he looks so down with Jay-Z's back catalogue. And a woman who looks like she's been fed on a diet of baked beans for her entire life showcases her Little Mix tattoo. With their history of name changes, I'd have thought twice about doing that.

21:03 Quite clear this bit of the show has been sponsered by Kleenex, and not because teenage boys might be watching Little Mix alone in their room. Barlow and Marcus' duet sounds like it came from a particularly poignant scene in a Toy Story film. And how is this bit getting judged? I can just imagine Tulisa running around Wembley Arena proclaiming that she alone was 'sick blud'.

Barlow's biggest compliment to Marcus is that he listens. One, for a singing contest surely that's the opposite of what you wanted to be complimented for. And two, he's basically praising the fact he was born with ears. Well done Marcus, your fully formed anatomy will get you that record contract your features so deserve.

20:59 I'm still a bit lost for words after the world's first boyband science experiment unfolded in front of my eyes. Dermot informs us that after this commercial break the judges will sing with their acts. I assume the production team were confident that Louis Walsh wasn't getting an act through to the final, although I would've quite liked to have seen Walsh vs. Johnny Robinson emulating Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman singing 'Something Stupid'.

20:51 So after the first round of performances, I think Amelia Lily was top, Little Mix second and Marcus third. Marcus proving after all, that he is just a hairdresser and turning Wembley Arena into Heathrow Airport is unlikely to help your performance.

Jobless Lowlife Scum and One Dickerection (yes they both have been trademarked by yours truly) take to the stage to perform one of the more unoriginal duets. Singing each other's biggest hit and then mashing the two together as though it's some weird animal hybrid. JLS and One Direction now resembling a centaur.

20:46 I can't believe it's taken her this long to do Aguilera. She has the same voice box as her, just bloody sing an Aguilera song! It's like if I was blessed with the vocals of John Lennon, I wouldn't sod about trying to sing Cee-Lo Green, I'd stick to my strengths and knock out a few Beatles classics.

Kelly looking as though she's trying to imagine Amelia with darker skin, bigger teeth, a terrible fashion sense and a surname that consists solely of the letter 'B'.

20:42 Right, if I had come out in the press and said I was bullied at school, the one place I would not go back to is school. But not Amelia, with her rejuvinated blonde locks she's back there quicker than I can say 'non uniform day'.

This film has highlighted something quite interesting. Is it weird for a young girl to shout 'I love you' at a girl not many years older than them? Either Middlesborough is full of case studies or we have a entire generation of lesbians.

20:37 Going slightly off topic, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo looks amazing. Will be in the cinema for that one.

20:31 Little Mix start off their performance with a weird chant, hoping to indoctriante as many innocent minds as possible into their strange cult where everything is an R&B/pop mashup. Housemate points out this is reminiscent of The Simpson's episode where Bart, Millhouse, Ralph and Nelson form the boyband 'Party Posse' which is actually a front to sign up people for the Navy. I'm inclined to agree.

Louis seems unable to provide a critical response without some kind of anecdote, like your average old person who is a few years away from sitting in an old persons home being fed liquified Werther's Originals through a drip. The air of positivity from the judges tonight is unnerving; it's more terrifying than walking through Madam Tussauds in the dark, which I can only imagine is shit-your-pants scary.

20:27 Tulisa still hasn't grasped the name change, insisitng on calling them 'Leetle Moofins' in a very odd Northern accent at every opportunity. I like Little Mix. It's like the UK's version of the UN. If Kofi Annan and Ban-Ki Moon dressed in hip hop clothing and routinely covered Katy Perry.

Little Mix's first UK tour see's them stop off at Romford. Good luck getting back on the tour bus, it'll have no bloody wheels left.

Seriously, these 'short' films are in need of some serious editing.

20:21 Marcus' performance resembles Come Fly With Me meets Dale Winton's In It to Win It. The vocals are, as many people from Essex would put it, 'all over the bloody shop'. No doubt Barlow will run around Wembley Arena in attempt to drum up support.

As per usual, the judging panel are totally blind to the lack of vocal talent, instead their cream filled head's are just fixed on the giant aeroplane. Tulisa is convinced that is a giant metal bird and Kelly is too busy making up a new catchphrase.

20:16 'The last boy, Marcus Collins!' Something very wrong with that sentence. I can't believe that his old school, which I assume is located in Merseyside is still standing. Surely it's been burnt down by freckly ginger thugs who have tattoos of Steven Gerrard on their face.

The X Factor has got a lot more middle class since I last tuned in. Gary Barlow sitting in a front room drinking tea and talking to old people, what is this? Modern day Downton Abbey?

Quite frankly, this 'short' film is rivalling LoTR: Return of the King for running time. Hurry the fuck up.

20:10 I get the idea of Little Mix singing 'today this could be, the Greatest Day of our lives.' But for Amelia and Marcus to sing it just makes them sound like paranoid schizophrenics. I'd like to think Marus' alternative personality was a deeply homophobic roofer who listened to thrash metal and drew portraits of old churches. No? Just me then.

This ad break has given me inspiration to who I want to vote for. The owl in the Yeo Valley advert. A truly inspiring performance. What's it's number?!

20:07 The finalists take to the stage, being lowered down in a lift that could've easily come from a megalomaniac villain's secret lair for lowering enemies into a shark tank.

Have to say, fairly sure Marcus will triumph, with Little Mix in second and Amelia Lily in third. This has all been typed through gritted teeth, I'd much rather see Marcus lowered into a shark tank.

20:02 These Dermot O'Leary desctions are getting out of hand. Normally he just used to show up, pronounce the contestant's names right and go home. Now he has to have an entrance that reminds me of Kurt Angle's entrances at Wrestlemania.

O'Leary then informs us that the alumni of X Factor will be performing as 'special guests'. More and more does this show remind me of one of those invite-only clubs for the socially unstable.

And just incase we didn't know, Louis Walsh uses the final to put to bed the debate about his sexuality with a full velvet suit.

19:58 So prior to the X Factor final we were all treated to an hour with Justin Bieber. I must be an anomaly amongst the human race, because I can bare him. Although he did sing 'Santa Claus is coming to twon' with such conviction that it sounded like he might believe his own words.

Here we go! Cue black and white styling, claims of a new generation despite Barlow and Rowland being so far past it they're still trying to sell cassette tapes and general over exaggeration that would look out of place in a Michael Bay film.

With the vaguely successful live blog of this year's Eurovision song contest, it's time to turn our attention to another singing contest with questionable acts and tactical voting. Yes despite the lack of Simon Cowell and obvious talent, I like every other year, have sat through 21 episodes of absorbing television and find myself here, on a Saturday evening, in front of the telly. So, instead of me sending through a barrage of tweets and alienating half of my followers, I thought I'd repeat the what I did for the Eurovision song contest. So, sit back, grab a drink and a brick to throw at the telly and hit refresh to ensure you have the most fun watching the X Factor!

Bass Theory

2011-12-02T23:51:00.008Z

Times were much simpler back then.

In my alternative view of reality, I'd like to think that Thomas Edison came about the idea of a lightbulb with a lightbulb appearing above his head, like every other cartoon epiphany ever conceived.

In a similarly whimsical revalation, I too have come up with my own earth-shattering thesis by simply looking upwards towards the top of my head.

Or more specifically, what lay on top of my head.

I've had my Beats by Dre Studio headphones for nearly a year and they are by far the coolest piece of audio equipment I've ever owned, surpassing my previous favourite item which was a small plastic harmonica I got in a Happy Meal many years ago.

The Beats by Dre headphone range have done for 'cans' what the iPod did for portable music. There's the recognisable branding with the giant 'b' emblazoned on the side of the oversized drivers; the red wire that has to be a hint to Apple's own coloured wiring; and the extensive range of colours that echo the San Francisco technology giant's decoration of the first generation iPod Mini. The success of these headphones is represented in smartphone manufacturer HTC's decision to pay $500m to buy the Beats by Dre brand, and HMV's recent shift in their business model away from CDs to 'music technology' (i.e. every pair of headphones under the bloody sun).

Enough of a business lesson, lets get back to the story.

The Beats headphones have named this way because they smash your ear drums in with stupid amounts of bass at every opportunity. Whilst listening to Ed Sheeran's album '+' (which tops the Laziest Album Title of the Milennium league table by a mile), it was clear the headphones were becoming restless at the lack of ear-thumping bass being channelled along the bright red cord (yes I am aware I gave my headphones the characteristics of a family pet). So as the first note of 'Small Bump' began playing the headphones burst into life. As soon as that one thump kicked in, a relaxing acoustic album suddenly had the sound properties of Will.i.am's farts. It's just the nature of the Bea(s)ts.

Scrolling through my music library it occurred to me that in the time period I'd owned these nuclear warheadphones, my music had become, dare I say it, a little more black.

There are R&B and hip-hop artisits on there like Kanye, Jay-Z, Tinie Tempah (I know I'm not gonna be heading up DefJam Records anytime soon but for me this a dramatic departure). Dupstep and electronic/dance artists like Example, Skrillex, DJ Fresh and Afrojack. The sort of stuff that the Daniel of a few years ago who when asked to describe music would have probably just said 'BIG FUCKING GUITARS' and would denounce these new artists as 'shit'.

And that's when the lightbulb appeared.

As the one hit wonders Puretone once proclaimed, I'm totally addicted to bass.

Wahowahhho.

You only have to look at the current charts to see virtually every other song has got some kind of sledgehammer-like thump. And the rise of cartoony and over-the-top headphones only seems to vindicate the idea that we as a generation are bass addicts.

Are we really so easy that providing something goes thump thump thump to the point where the contents of our skull dribble out of our earlobes like diarrhea, we don't really care what else is on a track? I've already admitted that I can be suckered into a song with bass over something that hasn't, but has it really become a nationwide epidemic?

It used to be an exclusive domain for the Burberry-wearing neanderthal or the 'homies' who pretended that Dagenham was the Bronx. Now every Dick Tom and Calvin is under the spell of low frequencies. What is it about bass that makes it so addictive? It used to be because it was bloody annoying, but with the advancements in headphone tech you can no longer anger everyone on the 355 service to Brixton with your 'massiv choons'.

Is it that weird sensation of feeling like you're being beat up by sound? After a couple of songs at full volume with my headphones, it does feel like I've done a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson. Brain scrambled, ears ringing, the urge to dunk my head in a bucket of ice. It's easy listening to this type of music.

In 10 years time when technological advancments in bass production have become so great that we've started earthquakes with a couple of plays of Rihanna's latest album, leaving our biggest cities in a crumbled ruin, we'll all look back at this post knowing it could've changed the world. This is my Edison moment, and if you've already seen something on the internet along these lines, then keep it to yourself so I can fully bask in my self-imposed glory.

Mickey MouseTrap

2011-10-20T17:52:00.003+01:00

I'm scared, and you should be too.

As a kid I was very easy to parent (or so I've been told). Whenever my parents wanted to keep me out of trouble they plonked me in front of the telly, put on a proper old school VHS and then left the room, knowing that when they returned in a few hours or so, I'd still be sat in the same place, mouth wide open gazing blankly at the T.V.

Although this sounds like I was somewhat retarded as a toddler, little did I know that everything I watched ended up having a profound effect on the rest of my childhood. By about age nine or ten I'd seen the James Bond and Star Wars films countless times. And I mean all the James Bond films. Could even say I was a bit of an addict.

But it's the Disney films that have always held a special place in my heart. I was born around the time most film critics have called the 'Disney Renaissance'. This is a period between the late '80's and late '90's where some of Disney's most iconic movies were released. The likes of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and Aladdin all came out just as I was at the prime age to enjoy them.

But not to understand them.

Over the last few weeks I've found myself watching The Lion King and The Hunchback of Notre Dame for the first time in years. They're still just as enjoyable as they were when I was a kid but there's a side to the films I never knew existed.

Take Hunchback. It's arguably my favourite Disney Renaissance film and it's also probably one of the darkest films ever to have been released under the Disney brand. Dealing with kid-friendly themes like Hell, prejudice, social injustice and damnation, I can sum up the film in three words: Absolutely. Fucking. Terrifying.

Watching it back now I wonder how the hell I ever slept easy after having Count Frollo's evil face burned on the back of my retinas. I wonder how the hell I accepted Quasimodo as your bog-standard hero when he looks like battered liver. I wonder how the hell I didn't turn into a raging pyschopath after being brainwashed by all the evil undertones.

Frollo, who's face looks like the shrivelled skin around your elbow is a creepy old judge who spends most of the film lusting after the young gypsy Esmeralda.

Lusting.

In a Disney film.

Then there's the lengths Frollo goes to to hunt down Esmeralda. This eventually leads to burning down the houses of those suspected of 'housing enemies of the state'. Now as a bright-eyed and optimistic child I'd never have thought anything of it. Now that I've studied the Second World War and the tactics of the Nazis during their persecution of the Jews, I can't help but see a slight overlap.

In The Lion King during one of Disney's most underrated songs 'Be Prepared', the hyenas march in a way that's too similar to the marches of German soldiers in WW2 to be a mere coincidence. Then there's the way Scar stands upon an elevated rock and looks over his hyena army; as though he's about to order them all to attack France.

But Disney can get away with it, because all this Nazi propaganda is cleverly hidden under an assortment of cutesy characters and a host of upbeat musical numbers. As a result, you're bog standard toddler is too engrossed in the magic to notice.

So where the hell were my parents in all of this? I asked them about it the other day and their response was "Oh you're looking too hard at these things, you're trying to find something that isn't there."

And that ladies and gentlemen, confirms that my parents were more than happy to leave their eldest son in front of a set of terrifying movies that warped my fragile little mind. And that explains a lot.

Do all kids programmes have to have some kind of propaganda as though Josef Goebbels is the head of animation? Is Dora teaching us all Spanish because in 20 or so years we're all going to be enslaved by a man called Pablo? Are the Power Rangers trying to teach us to abandon our parents and go and fight crime? Is Spongebob Squarepants a marketing ploy by sponge manufacturers to make people go and buy more sponges?

These are all eminently possible, suggesting that the real war is not in the Middle East, but at the doorsteps of Nickelodeon, Disney and CBBC. So next time you find yourself watching entertainment designed for children, be on high mental alert because you could find yourself stabbing someone an hour later just because the fluffy little onscreen rabbit said so.

Yeah this got out of control pretty quickly.

Tinker Tailor Soldier...Journalist?

2011-09-20T15:17:00.012+01:00

Good evening...Commissioner

It was this time last week that I was stood on the red carpet for the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy UK premiere (at least it was when I started this post). Such an anniversary has prompted me to finally sort myself out and upload my thoughts and audio interviews from arguably the biggest British premiere of the year.

With the prospect of meeting the country's finest acting talent I stood in the designated press pen full of excitement. This was the first time I'd ever been to one of these events, let alone standing on the other side of the guard rail away from the general public. With the press pass around my neck it felt like I'd been given the key to the city.

Well, it did to start with. As I arrived at the British Film Institute headquaters at Southbank, I was ushered to the start of the red carpet. Feeling like a star in my own right, I strolled up to the bouncer waving my pass who then pointed me to the 'business side' of the guard rail. It was about quarter past three, around 90 minutes before any of the stars were scheduled to turn up, yet the crowds had already assembled. The fabled positions at the front had been taken by fanatics, holding homemade boards that wouldn't have looked out of place in the crowd for the TV show Gladiators.

Of course, I too was there about 90 minutes before anything happened which gave me a chance to observe my surroundings. If you've ever been to BFI Southbank you'll know the entrance to the building is underneath Waterloo Bridge directly on the riverbank, which created an interesting atmosphere for the premiere. Rigging and lights had been fitted to the underside of the bridge and Tinker Tailor motifs were adorned on any spare surface.

Thomas Alfredson interview (mp3)

The press pen for the national press (and moi) was at the far end of the red carpet. I was initially upbeat that we'd get all the stars as most of the photographers were positioned next to us, although slightly apprehensive that there was a row of TV cameras between us and where the talent was arriving. Setting myself up between a writer from Empire Magazine and a critic from the Evening Standard, I got my notepad out and started thinking up questions for Messrs Firth Oldman Hardy and others.

The first recognisable face to turn up was in fact Lizo Mzimba, the BBC's Entertainment Correspondent. Here was a man who whilst at Newsround, translated all the 'adult news' and made it understandable for world-curious children like me, essentially turning himself into an all-time hero in my eyes. He and the BBC team had set further down the red carpet, right next to recognisable face number 2. I'd worked with Steve Hargrave during my time at Sky News on what actually turned out to be one of his last stories before he became Daybreak's entertainment correspondent. Hargrave, Mzimba and the BBC and Daybreak teams were down one end of the red carpet, I was down the other end with my Edirol and notepad starting to think I was going to struggle.

John Hurt interview (mp3)

After getting a good few interviews with some of the cast and crew (which are dotted around the post) I was still worried I hadn't got anything with the big four (the acting talents that are Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch). Worst still, I had only seen Gary Oldman, who had spent about an hour chatting to Mzimba and Hargrave.

It wasn't until about 45 minutes before the screening was about to start that I spotted the hulking frame of Tom Hardy lumber down the carpet au rouge. Following closely behind was the more vertically built Colin Firth who was attached to his wife like they were siamese twins. And finally, the wispy-blonde hair of Benedict Cumberbatch came into view, with his piercing glare sending the riff-raff into a screaming frenzy.

Peter Straughan interview (mp3)

Like a set of starved hyenas, the photographers abandoned their position next to us and made their way towards the talent. And with that, my chance to interview any of these juggernauts of British cinema went up in a rather British puff of smoke. Mzimba and Hargrave held onto the four of them like they were parts of their soul and the several dozen PR people could only shrug their shoulders in response to our cries of 'WE WANT HARDY'.

Roger Lloyd-Pack interview (mp3)

Cries turned into groans as a set of nightclub bouncers appeared (by day ushering filmstars, by night fighting with Sambuca-fuelled scallywags) to point the stars still on the red carpet in the direction of the door, ending my first experience of a red carpet premiere on a rather bum note.

Stephen Graham interview (mp3)

As I made my way back home struggling to shift a feeling of disappointment, I had to keep reminding myself it was my first experience of a red carpet premiere and to be thankful for the opportunity. Most of the other journalists in the press pen were anything from late twenties to late forties, yet not even they had managed to get the amount of interviews I'd got. Even though they were all from national publications, I had jumped in front of them all with Edirol to get a few cracking little interviews.

Of course, these things are always about learning from the mistakes you've made. I've made a list, so take note.

1. Take a video camera. Those with a camera and a microphone were given preferential treatment in getting hold of the stars than those with old school equipment such as a pen and paper. It seems that if the stars make the effort to look good, they're going to want you to see it rather than describe it.

2. Don't expect to follow the talent into the cinema. Prior to the premiere I hadn't actually seen the film meaning coming up with questions was a challenge. But no matter, I thought I was going to see the film in the next few hours. Wrong. No journalists at the premiere are allowed into the cinema and if you want to watch the film you have to attend the press screening which can often be a week later. I did eventually get round to seeing the film and surprise surprise, it was magnificent.

3. Establish a good spot. One of the advantages of getting there a whole hour and a half before anything happened was that I was right up against the guard rail in a nice position. It did mean that as soon as someone famous walked past a whole host of dictaphones were thrust either side of my face, but that was a small price to pay for getting some good interviews.

I'm hoping to put these lessons into practice at the Happy Feet 2 European Premiere in November that I've been invited to where Hollywood A-Listers like Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt and the rest will come under fire from yours truly.

The Apprentice Final 2011 - A Look Back

2011-07-18T13:04:00.007+01:00

In a similar manner to discussing the best night's out, it seems appropriate to discuss the final episode of the seventh series of The Apprentice the morning after. For many of us, the last twelve weeks have been one long drunken night out, with a series of characters performing acts one only thought possible after racking up a bar tab that'd make Amy Winehouse go a bit pale.

Yesterday's final had me shacked up in front of the box armed with a child-hating Frenchman and a selection of Emergency Biscuits, with a manner of excitement that hasn't been seen since Vincent watched The Three Muskateers for the first time and realised he wasn't alone in this world.

So what happened? Well, in short, Tom won. All the business plans had about as much potential as News International selling pay-as-you-go phones. Suzie demonstrated a similar lack of judgement that plagues many deceased stuntmen. Deep down inside Helen is a party-mad alter-ego trying to escape through an armour of efficiency. And Jim is the scariest thing to come out of Ireland since the IRA.

Series over? Time for some Emergency Champagne.

In my post that ushered in the new series, I proclaimed Tom as my favourite candidate ever. But did I ever think he was gonna win? Not a chance! It would have been as optimistic as the parents of a paraplegic wanting their child to scoop a record haul of medals in the Summer Olympics. The man has the hindsight of Mystic Meg but the get-up-and-go attitude of Johnny Vegas. A combination I doubt Siralan had pinpointed as his 'ideal candidate'.

Yet somehow, in a manner that only a true mad scientist would know how to do, he stumbled his way through 12 weeks of intense scrutiny and somehow made it out the other end with his glasses intact and an ingenious idea. Siralan proclaimed Tom's idea of a chair that eliminates backache would need 'tweaking' but there is potential. I don't think Siralan hired Tom because of the chair. He hired Tom because somewhere, in that brain amongst all the misspelled words and ideas of traffic light apps, there is an amazing idea that could be massive. The same couldn't be said for any of the other three finalists.

One of whom, Jim, the tough-talking Ulsterman who could probably solve the Middle Eastern crisis with an umbrella, totally lost his mojo in yesterday's final.

The man revealed to us all, that he has a heart. It was just the wrong time to do so.

Watching Jim reel off his idea of taking e-learning into schools was very similar to the moment when I watched Luke Skywalker take off Darth Vader's helmet amidst the Death Star's destruction at the end of Return of the Jedi. Underneath all that power and mystical aura, there lies a human after all. Developing a heart and simultaneously trying to lick the faeces out of Siralan's bottom was ultimately Jim's downfall. But not to worry, he'll bounce back during the Clone Wars.

He probably thought he was applying to be Darth Sidious' Apprentice.

Then there was Helen, who has got progressively better looking as the weeks have tumbled. There's a strange attraction in the way she plays down talk of a social life and just seems to tease you with the fact she does nothing all day apart from work. Her idea of starting up a nationwide concierge service was in terms of stupidity, on par with News of the World inviting BT into their offices to check their phone bills. Such was the madness of it all that Siralan was forced to forget that Helen was arguably the strongest Apprentice candidate ever and threw her body onto the mass grave outside the boardroom marked 'rejects'.

There was a moment during last night's final where I thought Suzie had it. Siralan had ripped seven shits out of this woman, yet there she was, still sat at the table with that permanently confused face she wears, in with a chance of winning. Her childish attitude towards business mixed with last night's interviews was TV gold. Her interview technique is best visualised as her riding on an albino donkey, throwing marshmellows to fend off a group of Velociraptors. The verbal undressing she received from Apprentice veteran Claude Littner (who is so evil if you were to cut him he would bleed spiders) should have been censored by the BBFC. Yet she had survived it all, right up until the point where she turned into an Oriental Del Boy and announced she was going to make a million quid in year one. And with that, Siralan pointed her in the direction of the Early Learning Centre and that was the last we heard of Suzie.

So congratulations to Tom and I genuinely wish him a long and successful career, whether it's working with Lord Sugar or on his own (the proposed synergy between him and Suzie that was discussed on 'You're Hired' was quite frankly a disaster waiting to happen). It's nice to see someone who is so utterly charming and bought up with manners win a competition like this, where shouting and swearing are more often than not rewarded.

As Dara O'Briain yelled on You're Hired last night, 'it's a win for the nerds!' In a society that so-closely resembles a school playground's ethos of cliques, it's not often something you hear, so big Chewbacca thumbs-up from me on that front.

Wimbledone

2011-07-01T22:47:00.010+01:00

It's not often I write about sport. I spent most of my childhood and teenage years playing the thing and will happily slob in front of Sky Sports for hours yet when it comes to putting sport-based thoughts into words I've never really had an urge.

UNTIL NOW.

Like many other middle-class people, I have enjoyed the Wimbledon fortnight. Armed with pheasant sandwiches and tomato juice (just kidding) I've watched the British quest to emulate the success of Fred Perry disintegrate into anti-Scottish extremism for the umpteenth year in a row. It's great fun watching people's opinion of Andy Murray swing from being the best thing since Hawkeye to him then being as Scottish as Billy Connolly reciting the script of Braveheart eating a deep-fried Mars bar while simultaneously prancing along Hadrian's Wall in a tartan kilt.

But enough of Friday's disappointment, today saw the crowning of a new champion. Novak Djokovic out-Nadaled Nadal essentially. It was a fantastic display from the ice-cold Serb, as he made Nadal play every point, something Nadal probably doesn't expect when he whips his devilishly accurate cross-court forehand on every other point. The second set was a masterclass from Djokovic, racking up 13 winners on his way to putting one hand on the trophy. It's often not particularly pretty from Djokovic, who is usually quietly efficient in the way he dispatches his opponents, yet today he came up against someone in a similar mould and stepped up when it mattered. It was a fine display, and it is a rivalry I look forward to watching for many years to come.

Djokovic's bear hug was a particularly useful method of beating opponents.

Elsewhere we saw a new star in the women's game emerge. I'd be interested to know the last time we had two brand new Wimbledon champions, so if anyone could find that stat for me, then it'd be rewarded with a virtual pat on the back. Petra Kvitova is going to be a serious force to be reckoned with. The way she hits the ball is Williams-esque, and what with Williams brothers finally reaching the status of mortality, there is definitely a space to be filled at the top of the women's tennis. Wozniacki is lacking in mettle and some of the European players like Clijsters and Schiavone are about as consistent as an old person's bowel movements.

We saw a huge improvement from Maria Sharapova in this tournament, suggesting her best chance of emulating her early success lies on grass. I just wish she would shut up. You'd have thought any kind of screaming coming from Sharapova would be erotic at least. Wrong. It's a sound you wince at, like the sound of a bear crying when it gets shot. Which is anything but sexy. And as for Azarenka, I thought noises like that only occurred during Halloween, but the howling Belorussian made me question my belief that banshees and other mystical creatures were merely the stuff of fairytales. Get some gaffer tape love, tie it over your face and be quiet so we can enjoy the tennis with the sound on.

Searching for Sharapova on Google Images is an enjoyable experience.

And now we get to Murray. Who like the mints he shares his name with is just a disappointment.

I don't really have a problem with the man. Sure he's said a few jokey things about England's World Cup opponents, but then several centuries of heads on spikes will pay testament to the frosty relations between England and Scotland. If we want Chris Hoy, we're gonna get Andy Murray too. And lets face it, who else have we got? Britain's number 4 is probably just some tramp who found a tennis racquet and enjoys beating pigeons with it.

On Friday Murray got completely schooled. He got a lesson from Nadal. He wasn't the first to be taught a lesson by the magical Spaniard and he certainly won't be the last. During the French Open and Wimbledon, Nadal has not played to his absolute best, a factor that will make the defeat even more difficult to take for Murray as many believed Nadal was there for the taking.

All seemed to be going so well. The crowd was excited, it'd been about four days since a Murray tantrum and Andrew Castle was practically calling the Scotsman a Wimbledon finalist. All it took to turn it all back into usual British disappointment was a missed forehand. He was 2-1 up at 15-30, when the ball bounced for an inviting and easy forehand. Instead, Murray sent it a few inches long, leading to long sighs, some tutting and Harry Redknapp making claims his 'nan could've done better'.

After that, we saw why there is still a gulf between Murray and the top three of Djokovic, Nadal and Federer. When Djokovic lost the third set tie-break to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the first semi-final despite having two chances to get to his first Wimbledon final, did we see him miss a string of forehands? Like hell we did! The Serbian came out in the fourth set, tore Tsonga a new arsehole and wrapped everything up as though the third set was just a figment of people's imagination.

If tennis fails, Murray is going to start doing impressions of Professor X.

When Murray missed an opportunity, it haunted him like he'd been cursed by a court side witch. It is encouraging to see significant improvements in Murray's mental game, but he still doesn't possess the steely resilience needed to make that final step and fulfil his potential. If he can sort this out like he's sorted out the tantrums, then he has the shots in his arsenal to get that first Grand Slam.

Because there's no shame in losing to a player like Nadal, who is probably the finest human being to ever hold a tennis racquet. The combination of athleticism, never-say-die attitude and a selection of quite frankly, ridiculous shots mean that only Björn Borg is in the same league as the man from Mallorca. While his performance today was fragmented to say the least, this is probably the first time in a good few years at Wimbledon that Nadal has wobbled. And compared what us Brits have had to endure over the last few Wimbledons, we'd happily sacrifice Greg Rudseski to Imhotep if we could have some of what the Spanish were having.

Away from the actual tennis, we saw a flawless performance from the ball boys and line judges alike. Well, I say line judges, fortunately for them they have a pretty swanky computer system to help them out if they turn up to the courts after a few too many Pimms. I've never understood why they ask old people to be line judges at these tournaments. For one, if I am to go by what my nan is like, then old people can barely see who's playing, let alone work out if that 130mph serve clipped the line or not. And another point, I often find myself cringing when some Eastern European powerhouse sends a supersonic serve arrowed straight for the middle line judge's forehead, only for said 60 year-old man to have to dislocate a hip in order to dive out the way of the ball. Why not just get a more mobile, better sighted set of judges and let the oldies sit in the shade so they don't wind up like over-ripe prunes.

And finally, how long is it going to be before the roof on Centre Court stops being the 'engineering miracle of the 21st Century' and starts being a roof? Everytime rain is threatened, I swear Sue Barker and co. start nursing a semi in anticipation of the roof sliding over Wimbledon's flagship court. It's as though the roof (which is so ugly the design team might as well have drawn a moustache on the Mona Lisa to finish off their quest to ruin everything beautiful) turns the BBC team into cavemen. I'm waiting for the day Tim Henman steps out of the commentary box and starts bowing before it, proclaiming 'IT STOPS THE WRATH OF THE CLOUDS AND TURNS NIGHT INTO DAY!'

It's a roof guys, honestly I know it seems farfetched, but most of us have had them since the dawn of man.

Transformers 3 - Robots in Disgust

2011-06-30T13:59:00.004+01:00

This wasn't finished in time to be featured on Geeks so I thought I'd whack it on here. Enjoy!

Before I start reeling off my opinions of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, I just need to comment on Rosie Huntington-Whitely. If I don’t express how bad she is in this film at the top then I fear this review will just become one long rant about how this model-come-actress should really go back to doing what she does best, which is keeping her mouth shut and staring bleakly into a photographers lens. Her inclusion in the latest installment of the incredibly popular robot-deathmatch-athon was reportedly at executive producer Steven Spielberg’s request after previous eye candy Megan Fox decided to use her mouth for something other than pouting. But fuck it, Huntington-Whatever’s character (the love interest) could have been more effectively played by Spielberg or even Death himself. You can’t help but put your head in your hands every time she opens her mouth and says something completely stupid. But then from Michael Bay’s introduction to her character (panning the camera up her rather lovely legs) it’s clear we’re not meant to really be listening to anything she says. Where there is Huntington-Whitely, there is woe. And that is the last I shall speak of her.

She's like The Saturdays: great to look at but you'd wish she kept her mouth shut.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is an amazing spectacle. In the same way that watching a 9 year-old Asian kid play a flawless rendition of Beethoven’s symphony is an amazing spectacle. But other than showing off their technical proficiency, these Eastern musical prodigies are often dead behind the eyes offering very little else. And that is very true in Dark of the Moon, because behind the shiny 3D explosions, there isn’t much else to enjoy.

Obviously for those not expecting anything else but robots beating the chrome off of each other then you will love Dark of the Moon. And if you’re one of these people, then I suggest you stop reading, find the biggest loudest cinema you can and prepare to indulge in a special-effects orgy. Everyone else, read on.

The third Transformers film begins with a historical montage (along with some very dodgy CGI portraying JFK) that details the real reason for the 1969 Moon Landing was in fact to conduct a super-secret search operation on a Cybertronian ship that had crashed onto the moon. We’re reacquainted with Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf, who is still the best human aspect of these films) as he struggles to find a job after graduating from college. After that, the script basically reads “Improvise with action here”.

While the moon aspect is an interesting concept and the more human-focused first act is a nice change from the other films, all is quickly forgotten when the final battle In Chicago gets going. I use ‘final’ in the loosest terms because it feels like it runs for half of the already bum-numbing 155 minute running time. Just when you thought there wasn’t anymore of the Windy City Michael Bay and his army of robots could destroy, there’s another massive explosion and the whole place ends up like several toppled Jenga towers. As a result, the whole film is horribly imbalanced with a constant variation in pace as though Bay has no care in the world for his audience; just a desire to make the film his 7 year-old self dreamed of.

There are some talented actors on screen but all seem to wind up being horrible stereotypes. John Malkovich plays Sam’s new boss but ends up contributing very little in terms of important lines or performance. And the ever reliable Frances McDormand plays this film’s Secretary of Defence, which in the history of the Transformers film series is a poisoned chalice of a role, much like the Defence Against the Dark Arts teaching position at Hogwarts. Then for some reason Ken Jeong turns up (fan-favourite Leslie Chow from The Hangover series) as a character that I’m still unsure of what he actually was. Series veterans Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson are ever-present as your standard two-dimensional army grunts.

If in doubt, send in Optimus Prime and keep the camera rolling.

It’s as though Bay has forgotten where his alien robots end and his human characters begin, because he is clearly having a blast (no pun intended) directing his mechanical stars. There are some lovely sweeping camera shots that glide across the battlefield capturing some seriously impressive action set pieces. The excitement levels peak during a sequence where new Decepticon Shockwave sends his giant mechanical death worm spiraling through a skyscraper where all of the primary characters are conveniently placed. It’s an excellently choreographed scene that showcase all of Bay’s skills in directing lavish and flashy action sequences.

This is the first film in the Transformers series that can be viewed in three dimensions, a decision some feared considering the failure of recent VFX-heavy movies (The Last Airbender, Green Lantern). But fear not, because this is without doubt the best use of 3D technology in a live-action film since Avatar. The action sequences actually benefit for being that bit more immersive, and it doesn’t feel overbearing or nauseating, although I’m not sure the same can be said if you’re sitting in the first three rows.

You can’t help feel disappointed at what is rumoured to be both Bay and LaBeouf’s final Transformers film. The scene was set brilliantly by the first film, we had our action fantasies satisfied by the second film, leaving this third act to wrap up everything nicely. Instead we got more of the same: a bloated action extravanganza with minimal plot, wafer-thin characters and woeful dialogue. After three films of exactly the same thing over and over again, watching robots beating seven shits out of each other doesn’t have the same clout it did in movie one or two.

There’s no doubting Bay’s skills as an action director, but at some point in this series we were going to need something else other than explosions. It’s a film that’s dead behind the eyes, and after three films, you’d have hoped that Bay would have learnt. But he hasn’t. There are no robot balls in this film, but it still ends up being, well, robot balls.

2/5

Tomato Catchup

2011-06-10T16:39:00.003+01:00

Admit it, the title of this post is a stroke of fucking genius.

So as my condiment themed header suggests, this little post is designed to fill that big gap between my last post (the surprisingly successful live blog) and today. I'll be honest, not much has happened so this shouldn't be too tedious.

First up was those annoying inconveniences that are end of year exams. Doing a course in journalism often means you end up studying for things you never thought; it's sort of like a greatest hits album made up of different courses. Last year I was studying history and politics, this year's edition of Now That's What I Call A Degree was law, which is feckin' dull. It's a pompous over-complicated subject where lawyers and judges feel so aggrieved about anyone else taking up their profession that they seek to make all material as complex and unnecessarily over the top as possible.

Some bits were admittedly interesting, like finding out if you sing 'Happy Birthday' in a restaurant then technically you are in breach of copyright and can be sued by Warner Bros. (so remember that next time you think about bursting into song in Frankie & Benny's). But that was about it. Most of the time in law I set about rediscovering my artistic skills, and when I say 'artistic skills', I actually mean setting art-based challenges, like imagining the lecturer in Cubism form.

So after spending about two weeks holed up in the library and experiencing smells I didn't even know existed, my exams were over and naturally I rewarded my liver by beating it senseless.

Then began my summer holidays. I'm not sure how I ever coped with just a four week break for summer when I was at school. I've got a load of things to do over summer and even the three months given to us doesn't feel like enough time.

The big aim for this holiday is to find a job. I've never actually had a proper job as such, which is for two reasons. The first reason is refereeing was always a much more appealing proposition. When I was 14 and I was earning £60 a weekend for refereeing three matches I had more money than I knew what to do with. As I got older I couldn't really be bothered to get a 'proper' job that paid slightly better and like a dog with brain damage, I much preferred to be running around outside.

The second reason is that for some reason or another, there's always one big problem with the job I apply for. Whether it's applying for Christmas work at Uni only to find I'm then going home for Christmas, or then having the worst interview of my life, I always tend to hit a little snag that has meant my employment record resembles that of a Jeremy Kyle guest.

Yes, the 'worst interview of my life', I can tell you're intrigued. I'm good at interviews. I have huge bullshit reserves stored in the back of my throat and I can normally waffle my way through life. In the first few weeks of uni I had an interview at a nearby Odeon. I thought chatting about films all day would be my perfect job so I was optimistic about impressing during the interview, especially when I saw the other candidates were a 40 year-old Asian man and a woman who dressed like she'd been shot out of a cannon through a charity store.

I'm not quite sure what happened when I sat down in the chair, although I'm pretty sure my brain just closed the curtains and said 'goodnight'. Some of the answers I gave must've given the impression I had been beaten as a child, although my answer to the question 'What film character best represents your personality?' pretty much put the final nail in my already burning coffin. At that point all other films other than 'Gran Torino' vacated my head, leaving me to explain how I was like Clint Eastwood's character Walt. If you've seen the film, you'll know he's an senile old man who calls the Asian characters 'Gooks' and hates just about everyone else. Not even my bullshit reserves could rescue me from that. So naturally I wasn't surprised when I got a letter saying 'there are other people better suited to the position'.

Welcome to the Odeon, you sons of bitches.

Since then I've had virtually no luck with jobs. I'll apply two days after a vacancy disappears or because I've had no other job to speak of, employees will naturally assume I'm a criminal and so burn my application form. What is the point of having grades and the charm of George Clooney (haa!) when those looking for work naturally assume I've been on the dole/sponged off the rents for the last six or seven years?

And so my job hunt goes on. Like Sauron hunting down little Frodo to get back the ring, I'll probably find a job too late and then end up at the back of the queue at the Job Centre like all the other plebs in this country.

On that particularly uplifting note, I'm going to stop typing.

Eurovision 2011 - LIVE BLOG

2011-05-14T19:42:00.046+01:00

Magical things will happen when you hit refresh

23:21 AZERBAIJAN WIN. A fairly uninspiring result. They could be brother and sister, they could be lovers, either way, the fact there is a doubt in their relationship means anything they do is slightly weird and creepy.

The trophy resembles a glass dildo. But the man appears to be quite happy to receive some flowers, which suggests this relationship could just be friends.

So Blue will disappear into the mist, Jedward will eventually enslave the world and I'm going to Moldova on holiday. It's been an interesting evening and if you've stuck with it all night then thank you very much for reading. Good night.

23:17 The Moldovans are as bonkers as their act, which means I might have to schedule some kind of holiday there next year.

The amount of casual racism in the front room is growing in proportion to Blue's career is disintegrating.

23:13 You miserable Irish gits. Half of what we gave you. And vote for the Danes why don't you, just because the lead singer stole your acts hair. Can you tell I've turned back into my miserable old self?

And one point from the Israelis. Well I suppose thats what you get for giving them somewhere to live.

23:04 So this is turning into a four horse race. Essentially all the ones I thought that were shit are steaming ahead, what the fuck do I know eh? We're all sitting here discussing reasons why we won't have got points from countries. Either we should have had the Royal Wedding yesterday, or, we should have hijacked the American's plan to assassinate Bin Laden.

The Eastern European's version of Same Difference from XFactor seem to be pulling out a lead. Interesting to see the Eurovision gig roll out to Azerbaijan, might have to build some infrastructure first, or maybe even they might have to build a society? Who knows!

22:57 Starting to get bored of this now. We're just watching androids made by different countries. It's like having C3PO reading out the results. Political voting is predictable. The whole thing reeks of conspiracies inside the Galactic senate in Star Wars.

22:51 I'm loving the German audience in tonight. They're so aware of the politics of the Eurovision voting system they're booing like football hooligans.

22:45 The Polish gave us nothing. Next time the Germans come knocking we're staying at home and you can sort it out yourselves.

22:42 Alex Jones gives Jedward some points. Thats the only thing you Irish are getting from us, if you want a bailout look elsewhere.

We seem to be picking up small amount of points which is not helping. The dream fizzled out like Anthony Costa's solo career.

22:34 Cyprus give their 12 points to Greece. Whatever next? Maybe the Serbians will vote to Russia? Can I put bets on these.

22:30 '*Insert captial city* CALLING'. This is where every phone line in Europe goes down because entire cities are calling Germany.

A twelve points, fucking LOVE BULGARIA.

And a very tidy sum from Italy. Hmmmm, too early to dream?

22:23 We're introduced to the man dealing with the numbers. Basically his computer is receiving every single vote from around Europe and he has to sit there and fill in the voting cards with a tally chart done by hand. Fortunately he's Swiss so he does this on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, Stefan drags around his co-host to the point where he has to pick her up and carry around like a troll carrying a snack he found in a local village. He then picks up his guitar in a desperate attempt to get a recording contract.

And now for the voting.

22:19 Back and refuelled, apparently this song has been going on since the dawn of time. The singer looks like Dappy if he went shopping with Bugsy Mallone. And this whole jazz infusion from tonight is really starting to get on my nerves. Talk about blowing your own trumpet. And I wished he could just sing the odd lyric in English, we have after all given you Jedward.

22:08 Somebody stop these mindless montages! The Frankfurter man informs us there have been 3 billion songs since Eurovision's inception and knowing these crazy montage-loving Germans, we'll have to sit through all of them.

I'm going for a quick break, lemme know if I miss anymore clip catchups.

22:04 Stefan confirms one of the performers will win this contest. It's insight like this that make the Germans simply the greatest race on Earth. Coming up next, a load of terrible jokes, some cringeworthy interviews, and Lee Ryan trying to get all the female singers to go back the UK with him. Oh Lee, you loveable drunk.

21:53 And so we reach the end, with Georgia finishing off with a rousing rock number. Bit disappointed the Vatican City haven't got an entry this year, would have quite liked to have seen the Pope do an acoustic version of 'Hallelujah'. Anyway, the Georgians have opted for a female-based nu-metal track that'll have Lordi fans feeling at home. The lights were a bit much, Düsseldorf's energy bill must be off the chain with that performance.

So that's all the songs. Quite classy for a Eurovision Song Contest, not many songs that I can see becoming cult classics. As they blitz through all the songs, have to say my favourite was Moldova, but I have a sneaky suspicion Jedward might have this. In which case, who wants in on Dublin 2012?

21:49 What the fuck is going on?! I was so transfixed on the sand art I think I might have stepped into a time machine by accident. Cilla Black takes to the stage for Serbia with a song so horrible it makes a mockery of the Sixties. If John Lennon and George Harrison could see this now they'd be turning in their grave.

21:46 Ukraine's entry is so bad they've employed someone to do sand art on the big screen to stop everyone from leaving in disgust. Another woman has killed a bird and turned it into a dress, honestly the RSPB should really take a look at this whole thing. She also takes the award for the longest note held tonight, which has beaten the previous record holder was my housemate who did a particularly long fart. Cracking art, completely forgot that this was a singing contest.

21:41 The Spanish have won far too much recently. The World Cup, European Championships, Wimbledon. No more you greedy paella-eating gits. This whole thing looks like what was happening in the background of the 'Club Tropicana' video by Wham! Or an advert for some fizzy drink. I've been told by my lawyers to avoid mentioning brand names. So 'fizzy drink' it is.

21:38 From a country thats full of volcanos, this Jersey Boy's rip off isn't really setting the world on fire. But in this contest you only have to set Europe on fire, but even then, I don't think people will get this Beatles/Beach Boys knock-off nonsense. The tiny little drum kit is to stop the drummer doing a mad 30 minute solo because he's bored of the fat guy singing about going home. Go home.

21:32 Anyone in knee-high boots gets my attention. The Slovenians field some kind of bratty teenager who looks like she got the gig because her Dad 'knew an important bloke'. The dancing is, half-arsed to say the least. Arlene Phillips would be doing somersaults if someone entered a dancing competition by just moving their wrists as though they were warming up for a particularly nasty wank.

The host informs us you can vote for France. This was one of the conditions otherwise the French were going to go on strike next year.

21:28 Normally Azerbaijan give us something bonkers but this is actually quite inoffensive. The singers start as though they're superglued together and then prance around the stage singing a very nice little ballad. That was a let down, because it was far too good for some backwards nation that was also probably conceived in a mad scientists lab.

21:25 So the Austrians have rocked up with a hybrid of Whitney Huston and Beyonce, conceived in some dodgy lab in Vienna amongst a load of used test tubes. Occasional screaming provides this little hottie with a very solid entry.

21:20 I thought the Romanians would have entered a gypsy. Turns out they've hired a spastic to bash the crap out of the piano. I think Al Capone is going to be asking for his trousers after this performance. And there's a pattern forming here, trumpets. Every fucking country has someone playing a trumpet. Are we missing something here? Is Myles Davis judging or something? A neon-based light show from Tron does nothing to save this from the dungeon of mediocrity.

21:16 When humans eventually have to leave Earth and begin life in space stations, I'm imagining this would be part of the welcome concert. No wonder the Germans won with her last year, she is basically performing a mild striptease without the pole. My ears are complaining, but my eyes are loving life.

21:12 Moldova thank you! This is absolutely fantastic, they've basically put the nose cones from space shuttles and dressed up like garden gnomes and infused jazz and shouty pop-rock. There's a woman riding round on a unicycle with a trumpet. I'm speechless, this is like my favourite song ever. Despite the fact they look like they're in the Ku Klux Klan.

21:07 Oh god help us it's Blue, and it starts with a beat that sounds like the world is about to end, and with Lee Ryan on stage, that might not be as farfetched as it sounds. The song writers have clearly decided that Europe is full of monosyllabic morons and so the chorus just sounds like grunting of first person verbs. Compared to nonsense last year from a Southend resident (not our finest moment I'll add) that was pretty reasonable. But I'm not expecting much, probably a mid table finish. Like Stoke.

21:04 The Swiss have entered with 'In Love for a While', not 'forever' like most pop songs, just 'a while'. Typical Swiss not bloody committing to anything. And either that's a ukelele or they've employed the BFG to play guitar for them. A 'happy little song' says Norton, I'm quite happy just looking at her to be honest.

21:00 The Italians have bought with them a SEE THROUGH PIANO. Well thats me sold, this bloke could stop singing and just take a dump on stage and I'd still be impressed with them. While this is very technically impressive, it's far too classy for Eurovision and there are some really dodgy singing bits. Save it for the back streets of Milan guys.

20:55 Well apparently this French guy is meant to be the favourite, but he just sounds like my Dad attempting to impersonate Paul Potts. His voice is so powerful its making the weather change in the background, or it could just be several days passing by. And judging by the boredom I felt through that, I wouldn't be surprised if I missed a few days watching it.

20:51 The Russians have entered some kind of weird boyband dance troupe. The singer was the bad guy in Grease right? 'Can you feel my heartbeat Europe?!' screams Vladamir whatever-his-name-is, shameless audience interaction like a stand-up comedian. And the light up jackets are cool, right up until they all turn around and spell out LEXA or something stupid. Grow up you Russian muppets.

20:46 Our first grammatically incorrect song rears its head, with 'Watch My Dance'. It also gives us an insight as to why Greece has been protesting for so long; I'd break windows and start fires if I found out a poor man's Vanilla Ice was representing us in Eurovision. The operatic singing was instantly annoying and I wanted to throw myself in the fire that surrounded that stage. Wank, on so many levels.

20:42 There's a serious case of identity theft from the Estonians here. The singer (who looks like she has a mild case of Downs Syndrome) is singing in a very English accent and the Millennium Eye is also perched in the background. This is from the bargain basement of songs, like seriously, seriously bad.

20:39 The Swedes have stolen the set from The Cube and put a ridiculously good looking man in front of it. Jealously means he'll be getting no sympathy if Phillip Schofield interrupts and asks for his stage back. He's singing about being 'popular', something I can't imagine he struggled with at high school. And it's the first song of the night that employs that oh-so clichéd higher octave last chorus, one of many to come tonight me thinks.

20:34 Dressed like they're extras from Blade Runner, this is the most Swedish song since ABBA. Jedward are taking the piss and they're absolutely killing it. This is exactly the sort of thing that wins Eurovision. Don't think they're going to repeat their leg-breaking antics this time round, and even if they did Europe would go absolutely mad for it. Norton retorts 'the pride of Ireland', through gritted teeth after seeing his country savaged.

20:30 I'm Hungary for a bit of nonsensical Eurovision pop, and so far these crazy Magyars are doing well. As well as killing off every epileptic viewer with a mad lights display, they've got me hook line and sinker with a pounding techno beat. Despite being wildly out of tune, best song so far. Next up, Jedward. Hold on to your hair people, this could be interesting.

20:26 This isn't Eurovision, this is bloody West End musical stuff from the Lithuanians! Her hips (excuse the pun) hipnotising. So far she's spoken in every language going, including sign language to boost ratings. Despite her pretty good voice, I'm trying to find the perfect Dorito, but unfortunately I've reached the bottom of the pack so its all crumbs.

20:22 The Danes must've got wind of Jedward being pre-show favourites as the lead singer has turned out in a startlingly similar haircut. Needless to say this 'rock' anthem sounds very much like a Christmas song that was put together in a rush on Christmas Eve. We get a first glimpse of the sperm shaped stage as Jedward from Copenhagen runs down it like a hedgehog on speed. Forgettable stuff, apart from his hair.

20:18 Bosnia & Herzegovina start their song with some suspect Red-Indian based chanting and a bit of dodgy maths. And somebody is hoping to win this contest by playing the triangle, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? This is unbelievable, they've rounded up all the village idiots from the most backward villages and given them a part in the song. An advert for Capitalism my roommate argues.

20:15 Finland do what every teenage boy does to impress a girl on the first date: grab the acoustic guitar and sing a song you 'wrote from the heart'. They've even put out a guy who is essentially Scandinavia's answer to Patrick Kielty who's standing in front of a giant globe. He seems transfixed on the camera, pretty fecking scary if you ask me.

20:10 A quite incredible video showcasing the transformation from football stadium to Eurovision arena, basically showing off German efficiency at it's finest. One can only imagine the British would have tried to put the rigging up at Wembley while the FA Cup final was taking place at the same time.

The hosts inform us of the voting procedure, with a professional jury also contributing to the vote á la Strictly Come Dancing. First up, Finland.

20:04 In a break from tradition, it would appear the Germans have entered the hosts as their entry. The red button is sitting there teasing with me with it's offer to 'Sing Along'. Unfortunately Stefan is flying through this song so fast this contest could be done in the next 6 minutes.

20:00 So we're introduced to our three hosts, as well as Graham Norton. One of them has murdered a peacock and has turned it into a dress. The other looks like she's got parts of the Berlin Wall stuck on her outfit. And there's a man called Stefan, who is about as stereotypically German as a Frankfurter.

19:57 Right now we've got the National Lottery out of the way we can concentrate on more unlikely happenings. With the money from the lottery I'd buy a volcano and slow roast Jedward so they never influence me in a fancy dress idea again. I'm armed with Doritos, dips and beers, although I'm starting to think I should have bought cyanide, a .44 Magnum and a mile of rope.

Bob Dylan once sang 'times are a-changing'. While I'm not expecting anything to the quality of Bob Dylan, I thought I'd embrace live blogging for tonight's Eurovision Song Contest. It'll save me tweeting a billion things plus the noise of me tapping away on the keyboard should keep me sane while halfwits from across Europe do their best to savage their country's reputation. Get involved with comments and things, although I'm not expecting miracles. I'm coming at this from a very xenophobic angle so expect several hours of casual racism. Dan.

The Magnificent Seventh Series of The Apprentice

2011-05-12T00:49:00.002+01:00

When Charles Darwin returned from the Galapagos Islands with notes that would shape his theory of evolution, you can imagine he was quite a happy chap. Safe in the knowledge that his place in history was safe all thanks to his ability to put monkey and man in height order (find me a diagram of the theory of evolution where the human being at the end isn't taller than the monkey at the beginning and then I'll give Darwin the credit he deserves).

He also must have been fairly confident that good-for-nothing lay-abouts like myself would have neither the knowledge nor the sheer audacity to challenge his theory. Unless of course you are a God-fearing nut-job with Bibles for breasts, Darwin's theory of evolution is a fairly concrete segment if the history of humans.

But hold the phone dear Charles, because I believe there may be a flaw in his Darwinship's masterplan.

Because you see, before the monkeys there are little sea creatures. And before the little sea creatures, you have the droppings of the little sea creatures. And before the little sea creatures' droppings you have the amoebas.

And before the amoebas you have the candidates from The Apprentice.

The Three Muskateers movie reboot had suffered some casting issues.

Every year, the BBC treats us to exercises in 'how not to be a human being' in the form of 'business tasks'. The whole thing is run by Sir Alan 'Bloody' Sugar, who never seems to appear on his own without the aid of his two henchmen Nick Hewer and Karren Brady by his side, almost as though they are stopping the East End Slumdog Millionaire from falling over.

The show began it's seventh series this week, and so far its business as usual. A crackpot team of possibly the most stupid business people to walk the Earth competing this time to be Sugar's business partner. One can only imagine how long previous winner Lee McQueen could have annoyed Lord Sugar with his infamous pterodactyl impression for.

Out of the candidates this year there have already been a few establishing themselves as memorable characters. Fortunately, two of the more boring blokes have already been given the dreaded finger from Sugar, meaning we can concentrate on the rest of this special needs class.

Firstly there's perhaps my favourite Apprentice candidate ever in the guise of inventor Tom Pellereau who looks like Michael Sheen if he were playing the part of a mad scientist in a film about the world imploding on itself.

Then there's the swashbuckling Vincent Disneur, whose surname just sounds like the noise you make when you're sick. His look hasn't been seen since the days of King Louis XIII and his claims of 'being able to charm the ladies' was fully justified in episode one when he was able to flog some naff orange juice to a room of sex-deprived office women.

As for the girls, the disturbingly cold Edna Agbarha is one of the more sinister Apprentice candidates to grace the screen. It's like if you were to take all of her bones out of her body and lay them out on the floor, they'd move about until they spelt the word: 'EVIL'. She's the character in the horror film who's so awful you're convinced they're the bad guy until they wind up with an axe in their face. Let's hope Edna snuffs it fairly soon before I start having nightmares.

And finally there's Susan Ma (what the fuck is up with the surnames this year?) She is basically Wai Lin from Tomorrow Never Dies. Small, pathetic looking, but probably has enough kicks in her arsenal to make you think twice about putting her in a corner. Unless of course you're Edna, but she's so evil she wouldn't bat an eyelid about putting Stalin, Jafar and Darth Vader on the naughty step at the same time.

After seven series is the show getting tired? The answer in my opinion is no. The Apprentice is following the path set by Top Gear. Whereas it was once a TV safe haven for the car-loving man (myself included), over several years it became an all-encompassing entertainment show with cars featured in the show, but not to the point where the wife would leave the lounge to do the washing up because she 'didn't understand all this carburetter nonsense'.

And while The Apprentice was never as focused on business in the early days as Top Gear was on cars, there's no doubt it has become an entertainment show above and beyond it's business foundations. You forget there is a business element to it at all. You forget that Lord Sugar speaks about being the best despite being responsible for a home computer that was about as competent as the contestants on his show. Yet here he is, galavanting around London in his Rolls Royce, sitting in his fancy office setting tasks like he's the ringleader in an urban version of Fort Boyard.

To conclude I'd like to go back to my Darwin analogy if you will. You see, humans have always taken great pleasure in parading the very worst examples of the species. In the days of the Roman empire, thousands would flock to the Colosseum to witness great brutes hacking limbs off each other in order to gain freedom. In Medieval times, we'd have jesters to entertain us, playing the Lute and singing god-awful folk songs about men who caught rabbits. And today's generation has been held hostage by the oafs on Big Brother, who have somehow managed a) to live longer than 14 years old and b) forge viable careers for themselves. It seems the further we evolve as a species, the more morons we want in public view so as to point and laugh at.

And thank the Lord for The Apprentice, because I do point, and I sure as hell do laugh.

One Had Me At Hello

2011-04-27T22:44:00.008+01:00

Unless you have the cultural ignorance of a single mother from Canvey Island, you'll know that there is a little coming together on Friday. A wedding, and thank god, one that Hello Magazine hasn't been invited to.

...because thats all most of us are excited about right?

The wedding of Prince William and Kate (although it feels we are all contractually obliged to call her Catherine at the moment) Middleton is quite simply and in my opinion, fantastic. Who in Britain doesn't like a good wedding? One of our King's loved them so much, he had six of them. And tomorrow's groom is the son of someone who bumped off their own ex-wife just so he could have another wedding, therefore proving outright that the Monarchy loves a wedding.

Alright, maybe the evidence just presented does have a few holes in it, but still, in an age where weddings are about as fashionable as flare-ups and Nazism, its good to see the Royal Family showing us all how its done.

I know a lot of people who think marriage is dated and old hat. But as a particularly traditional soul, I see no problem with the art of getting married. Not only does it cement all those lovely values of love and happiness (debatable I digress) but it also means middle-aged women can go shopping for a lovely new hat that comes in a box bigger than Jupiter. And who am I to deny that?

But the Royal Wedding is a proper wedding. None of this half-arsed Camilla and Charles crap where the only smile you saw on Charles' face all day was when he was standing 3 inches away from Cam with a knife (bollocks it was to cut the cake, more like cut her face the scheming git).

The whole thing restores my faith in the British public as well. In a previous post, I had a bit of a rant about over-zealous patriots going bat-shit crazy over the national football team by displaying flags and painting everything down to their eyelids in the colours of St. George. But this is different. Whereas we're eternally hopeless at football, no one celebrates moments of national pride better than us Brits.

Take a look at the end of World War 2. How did we celebrate? Well, we had street parties, with tables longer than Jordan's dating record and the whole thing reeked of pride for our achievements. How did our allies celebrate? Well, the Russians raped and pillaged their way through east Germany, the Americans dropped armageddon on some Japanese and the Australians, ermmm....*realises personal knowledge of Australian history is limited so looks in the drawer marked 'stereotypes'* they probably had a barbecue on a beach.

But the point is, regardless of how much we criticise ourselves, British people are good at this stuff. While the cynicism instilled in us Brits wants there to be some kind of terrorist attack so we can all have a good moan about the police force and security, for once, there is an over-powering sense of being the centre of the world again, and as a result, should probably try and make sure it all goes down with minimal cock up.

Its going to be the same this time next year too, when the nations of Earth descend upon East London for the Olympics. Here again, we will see the people of Britain doing what the people do best. Which is pretend to be like the proud smug mum and dad of the cleverest kid in the class at parents evening, when really, you're still disappointed little Billy didn't get top marks.

There have been outcries of 'oooh Kate's far too common' and other protests of a similarly strange nature. 'Catherine' has parents who sit around all day in a £5million house. The only way she could be less common is if she slept on a bed of hippogriff feathers and was driven around by a steam-powered mechanical unicorn. Can you imagine the outcry if Harry got hitched to Chelsey? The Queen would probably think she was from The Only Way Is Essex (which we all know The Queen watches on a regular basis, or at leasts Sky+'s when she's out opening a museum or something).

And so as one sits here writing this totally unorganised assortment of words, you have to wonder if this is indeed it. Whether they'll live happily ever like Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty, or whether William will tell the Parisian taxi driver to go via a narrow tunnel when he's decided he's had enough of Kate being too poor. One's thing for sure, nobody is gonna give a rats arse about anything come Friday. As long as the dress is 'beyond stunning' and the camera shows the Beckhams smiling, us Brits would be quite happy for the world to end as soon as the happy couple disappear behind the doors of Buckingham Palace.

Which is refreshing to say the least.

Keeping Up With The Joneses

2011-04-20T20:47:00.004+01:00

It's taken me about a week and a half since the end of university spring term to get back into the swing of being at home. There are certain things I have to accept being at home: Dad running around the house like the clean up crew from Changing Rooms; Mum worrying constantly and asking if I still 'like being home' in a manner that would drive a parrot mad; and my little (I say little, the boy is basically the same size of me, if not taller) eyeing up any new clothes I buy to see if they match with any of his outfits in his own clothes emporium. You know, sorts of things I don't have to worry about when I'm at uni.

But there is one little tradition when I'm at home that I do enjoy. Dinner in the May household is normally served up at around 6.45/7ish, regardless of whats being served up. And if you are aware of the BBC1 schedule at this time, you'll know that come 7pm, The One Show starts. As Danny, mummy, daddy and brother May tuck into their evening meals, for most nights of the week our evening meal's atmosphere is provided by the BBC's flagship variety show.

During the Chiles and Bleakley years things were good. Say what you will about the Brummie frog-who-never-got-kissed-and-turned-into-a-handsome-prince, I think he's a fantastic presenter. He's got an eye for a joke and his laid-back style suited the programme perfectly. His relationship with Bleakley was one of the real draws of the programme, with conversation zipping back and forth, something that hasn't been replicated on Daybreak. Maybe they're still asleep, who knows.

Then the whole salary-gate saga went on and Chiles n' Bleakley must have had similar thoughts to those who give up their regular jobs to become postmen: 'why not start the day at 3am, finish at 9am and that way, we've got the rest of the day off!' Greedy semi-nocturnal bastards.

Great, she's got freckles too. Another thing she's ruined for me.

So then the producers cast comedian Jason Manford and relative unknown Alex Jones. Naturally the paps went berserk over the 'uncanny' resemblance between Jones and Bleakley, although as far as I was concerned the only similarity they had was they were both smiling in the pictures, meaning The Sun would probably be able to find a similarity between me and a half-eaten Jaffa Cake.

Unfortunately these two were more awkward than a high school first date when the rest of the football team is sat two rows back in the cinema. Such a lack of spark hasn't been seen in Britain since Guy Fawkes' gunpowder plot and the whole thing looked like it might end up in the BBC's waste bin alongside Top of the Pops and Richard Bacon's career. So, Manford hit the ejector seat in the plummeting plane, using every trouble maker's favourite toy Twitter to land himself in a smouldering pile of Daily Mail-loving sleaze and was probably quite relieved when he found himself booted off the show.

Leaving Alex Jones.

I've given her a chance. She started in September, it's now mid April, and still, she refuses to let loose. She's tighter than a nun's legs and probably about as funny as a pair too. She seems far more interested in the autocue than natural conversation, killing every joke stone dead just so the half-baked package on pigeon flying patterns goes out on schedule.

She's completely thick as well. Judging by the fact the BBC held 'rigorous auditions' to cast her, the competition must've consisted of a kid with Downs Syndrome and Abi Titmuss. Unfortunately my memory is a bit off so I can't remember some of the clangers she's dropped on air, but her lack of intelligence means The One Show's overall IQ is dropping to the dangerously low level set by The Only Way is Essex.

I'm aware that Christine Bleakley had a regional accent, but it was a bearable accent. Beneath all the IRA nonsense, you could understand what she was saying despite the hefty Northern Irish twinge. But Jones' accent is...well its pretty damn strong. I've had several P.E teachers who are so Welsh I'm surprised their bones aren't made out of the rocks that line the valleys, but their accent was barely audible in comparison to hers. I sit there wondering if the programme should be on that silly S4C channel (the one thats all in Welsh and it costs like £20million a day to run or something extortionate like that), because I cannot understand a bloody word the woman is saying.

For the love of God BBC, its time to draw the line on your diversity policy of hiring unknowns from towns where TV hasn't even been invented yet. Because, I cannot keep watching my beloved One Show while there is an unfunny, stupid incomprehensible Welsh muppet sat on the sofa rattling through the script without a care for presentation.

TV presenting is like shearing a sheep (I'm gonna try and make this work). Take your time and allow it to occur naturally and you get a tidy looking animal. Rush through it and you risk chopping the balls off. Please don't let this woman chop the balls off, my dinner times won't ever be the same.

(Yep, I think I got away with that one)

A Casual Ramble About Death

2011-04-06T18:51:00.005+01:00

I had a go at being unemployed the other day. I am fully aware that I am indeed terminally unemployed and was never destined for work or manual labour during my teenage years. But I decided to do it properly the other day and watch a bit of daytime TV; a collection of shows designed only to address the minds of those who are unable to provide a service for a wage. Jeremy Kyle, Bargain Hunt, This Morning, Lorraine. They're like 8p cider. It's piss poor, you know full well it's gonna be piss poor, but that still doesn't stop you whacking a crate of the stuff on the till.

So there I was, sat on the sofa allowing my hyperactive mind to sit still for once by watching the unflappable Mr. Kyle tell a man he was a moron on national TV. Then the adverts rolled, and as predicted, the usual suspects reared their head. Car insurance, car insurance comparison sites, accident helplines; the sort of things that are likely to draw money from people too stupid to get a job.

But then an advert about life insurance appeared. The biggest con of all. If Hustle did TV adverts. If Danny Ocean started a business. If Fred Goodwin wanted another job. All three would point to life insurance. 'Have you planned your life ahead?' muttered Billy Murray, erring on the side of his old Eastenders character Johnny Allen instead of polite friendly life insurance salesman. I thought no. Instantly. The thought hadn't even crossed my mind. I look so young, people assume I'm going to order a Happy Meal whenever I go to McDonalds. The last thing I'm going to be thinking at the moment is what colour do I want my coffin to be when I finally lose the last of my nine lives. And with that, I turned the TV off and came back to reality.

Today I found myself in a care home. Some places on Earth just give me the creeps. Care homes being one of them. The queue for the Tower of Terror in Disney World being another. They're so sterile and devoid of any life I was surprised to find a human behind reception and not the Grim Reaper, sharpening his sickle and filling out forms with the blood of the last inmate to try the food.

As I walked through this institute, I saw things. Just things I'd never want to replicate. Old men shouting nonsensical nonsense at staff. Old women looking beaten and defeated as they stared with glass eyes at the telly. The smell...

So then I thought back to Billy Murray, and his suddenly logical question: 'Have you planned your life ahead?' I realised today, I don't ever want to be like that. That is the plan. Avoid mental illness, avoid care homes, avoid doing an impression of a vegetable.

When I'm old and decrepit (which owing to my Peter Pan-like ageing ability shouldn't be for a fair few years) I want to go out on a high. None of this slobbering at the mouth business, just send me on my way while I'm in the best shape possible. As soon as there is a hint of a mental illness, I want to get on the phone to Billy Murray and his crack team of crooks, take out some life insurance, then find some way of dying quietly in my sleep. No relying on Polish nurses to wipe my arse. I just don't think I'd be able to live out my days in that sort of state. I'm a happy-go-lucky chap, not someone who looks forward to cabbage and 17p canned mince after a hard day of staring at butterflies. I'm not saying that the people in these places weren't happy-go-lucky before they got there, its just that I'd rather not spend my last days on Shutter Island looking like a drunk Quasimodo.

There's a reason I'm rabbiting on about death. I have an essay to do. It's all I can think about.

A Man and His Even Manlier Motor

2011-03-14T21:27:00.004Z

One of life's many proverbial stepping stones is the first car. That lump of metal and four rubber tyres opens up a whole new world of wonder and mischief and sets you on your way towards adulthood and independence...

...sorry did I just say that? What I meant to say is it's a really cool thing to show off to your mates.

Now I've had a lot of stick about my car. Like my surname, the car in question happens to rhyme with 'gay', providing my mentally challenged friends with hours of amusement.

My first car was a brand new car. I didn't plan for it to happen, nor did I throw a Super Sweet 16-style tantrum to ensure my first set of wheels was straight off the forecourt. My parents had been speaking for a long time about a second car, and as I was set to pass my test in a few weeks (the cockiness of it all), it just seemed like common sense.

The 'L' on that piece of paper stands for 'legendary'...

Me and Dad did the usual Father-Son bonding exercise of visiting secondhand car dealers, but seeing as we both know a lot about cars, he couldn't just fob me off with some Japanese washing machine and expect me not to notice when it didn't go above 43mph.

So I was blessed with a brand new Ford Ka. A Ford Ka Zetec Climate TwoTone to be precise, meaning the bumpers were a cool silver colour and it sat on a lovely set of 15' Minilite alloys. And it had a spoiler. It was about as Essex as a Ka could be, bar putting an exhaust the size of Jupiter on the back. I thought it was awesome; it had an iPod connector in the stereo which was my absolute favourite bit about it.

Alas, a Ka has a reputation somewhat of being a woman's car. Whereas people who drive Minis take great pride in being able to say 'hi' to other Mini drivers while pottering along, the only other people who seemed to drive Ka's are frumpy old women who've recently just been divorced. Needless to say I felt like I didn't want to associate with these people.

There's something fantastic about a little car though. That smug feeling when you're gunning it down the motorway in the outside lane; the little whine as the valves jump onto the bonnet and play you a tune when you rev it to the red line; the ability to park anywhere. It all adds up to a experience that means whenever you're driving along, the Cheshire Cat grin never leaves your face.

But like everything good in this world, it has to come to an end. Despite being three years old and having only 15,000 miles on the clock, the Ka is the longest we've ever had a car by some considerable distance. Such is my Dad's Rafa Benitez-like chop and change policy, they're normally swapped every nine months (it's a complicated system that I can't be bothered to divulge in an otherwise simple blog). And so this weekend, we're driving the little Ka up to Chelmsford to trade it in for a Fiesta; a bigger car but that does not necessarily mean a bigger smile.

I've had some cracking times in that little car, some I won't go into too much detail as the police might have an enjoyable time jotting all of it down and use it all to form a driving conviction George Michael would balk at.

It was always an idea of mine as a small child who invested too much time in Gran Turismo to take my first car, no matter whether it was an ice cream truck, a horse and cart or a disgustingly chav-tacular Citroen Saxo, I was going to take it round the Nubürgring. Alas, unless I can convince my rents to let me have the car for a 24hour jaunt to Germany and back, my dream is going to end in tears. Well, not quite, but you get the idea.

I don't know how I'm going to feel come Saturday; I don't know that I want to give up my first car. Will it be like what half of Africa feels like whenever Madonna comes over for a child-themed shopping trip? It's better that the Ka goes out this way than in a smouldering fireball after a race down a country lane with a Porsche...who am I kidding that's exactly how I would've wanted to get rid of it.

I'm going to stop rambling before this turns into some form of written car porn. I hope this pays a fitting tribute to the Ka, because like every other first in your life, it's the thing you remember the most. So long Ka, I've enjoyed you making me look like a menstrual middle-aged lady.

Oscar Predictions 2011

2011-02-27T16:18:00.004Z

Tonight is the big one. The award season comes to a close this evening with the one that everyone wants to win. Yes ladies and gentlemen, come 4am in fabulous British time, we will know the winners and losers of the Razzie Awards 2011...

Early April Fools!

It's the Oscars, and now that everyones favourite eight-legged psychic has gone to calamari heaven, the entire film industry has turned to yours-truly before they head down to BetFred for a pre-ceremony flutter.

This year is perhaps the most fascinating in recent years, most notably in the Best Film category. Despite every studio in Hollywood making one dimensional movies in three dimensions, there have been some outstanding films over the last year. Last year the Academy's decision to make the Best Film category a 10 horse race yielded a weak category, but this year, there are a few real contenders.

Alas, I will try my best to decipher the cock from the bull and bring you my predictions for the winners at the 83rd Academy Awards.

Best Film- The King's Speech

Best Director- David Fincher (The Social Network)

Best Actor- Colin Firth (The King's Speech)

Best Actress- Natalie Portman (Black Swan)

Best Supporting Actor- Christian Bale (The Fighter)

Best Supporting Actress- Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)

Best Original Screenplay- David Seidler (The King's Speech)

Best Adapted Screenplay- Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network)

Best Animated Feature- Toy Story 3

And just on a quick note, I really hope Trent Reznor wins the Oscar for the Original Score from The Social Network. It was an incredible score and I would love the Nine Inch Nails frontman to win a golden statue.

Agree? Disagree? Comment your own predictions!

Janiel

2011-02-13T00:53:00.004Z

I have inhabited Planet Earth for 20 years and 3 months. I've been here longer than terrorism, Justin Bieber, Facebook and the ASBO.

But while my Dad can recall these names without blinking (it was a surreal conversation about Bieber), he still struggles to put a name to his first child's face.

I don't know whether it's a sign of him getting old, losing his marbles or just being confused at my presence in general. What I do know is, sometimes, he calls me 'Janiel', a horrible hybrid of my name, and my brother's name James.

I'd expect him to perhaps lose track of days or god forbid, not remember my birthday. But my name? He bloody chose the thing, therefore you'd have thought the fairly simple, bio-syllabic utterance would be on the tip of the tongue. Not a chance. Perhaps he's forgotten who I am since I've gone to uni. Silly old man.

My worrying lack of identity is one of the pleasures of returning home to Essex on the odd occasion. Like an infantryman returning home from the slums of Iraq to civilisation back home in England, every so often I pop across the Dartford Crossing away from the squalors of Medway into the somehow-more-attractive county of Essex.

We've had it rough recently. The cigar-chomping fat blokes who run ITV decided it would be a laugh to get some cameras and follow round the rejects from the Jeremy Kyle show then call it 'The Only Way Is Essex'. Instead of getting someone grand to narrate it like Morgan Freeman they got Denise Van 'bleedin' Outen to do it, and instead of it being an advert for Essex, it ended being an advert for abortions, or culling humans in general. Naturally, this turned the good people of this fine county into a laughing stock, conjuring up unwanted stereotypes and undoing all the good work fine ambassadors like Jodie Marsh and Helen Mirren had done. And it was so very orange; such colour on someone's face could only be achieved by puking on it or Photoshopping it.

Look at her, she's a saint.

One of the reasons I come home is to have the ol' barnet trimmed. Judging by some of the hair styles that exist around Chatham it's fairly likely the only tools available for such a job is a chainsaw, weedhacker or a blow torch. Needless to say, Essex is the home of hairdressing. It's a profession so valued by teenagers that only the prospect of running a tanning salon exceeds the giddy career ambitions of potential hairdressers.

Unfortunately, potential hairdressers probably spend the entire school day daydreaming, thinking of a 'short back and sides' or a 'full colouring', leaving them with very little time to do any learning. This makes them...(trying to avoid a libellous word)...kooky (I think I got away with it). I had to explain to my substitute hairdresser all about the currency exchange system and how $1.6 to £1 is 'reasonable but not as good as it could have been'. It was like something out of a Lady GaGa video, but I was felt happy that my hairdresser could approach a Bureau de Change without breaking down in tears then disintegrating into dust. Plus the Fred had been tidied up, so it was all good.

Fred you ask? Fred Astaire? Hair?? I forget I'm not in Essex anymore and Cockney Rhyming Slang is seen as a disability.

Apart from not having a clue what name he gave to me, my Dad is also 'pretty Essex'. We spent half of the journey back to Kent discussing his last few weeks' driving escapades. The grin on his face when he was describing how he raced a Honda CR-V down the M4, managed to pull in front of him, braking sharply at the same time, was priceless. It's the sort of thing someone from Yorkshire would simply shake their head and tut at, but my Dad simply lapped up the scenario of sharing driving mishaps with his son. And he expects me to drive like a Nun, hypocrite.

I often go home of weekend but never feel compelled enough to write about them. They're not particularly interesting, nor does much happen. I basically eat food I couldn't even afford to look at on a student budget and get my washing done. Yet the abomination of 'Janiel' forced my hand. My Dad is a blogger's goldmine. Observing him in the everyday world is like watching a gorilla interact with trees in the wild. A few years ago he even had a banana binge, whereby he'd clear the planet's rainforests of their bananas within a week. Now he's back to his trusty orange and apple combination, which is a shame. He made an excellent Silverback gorilla.

Dream On

2011-02-05T17:17:00.004Z

A lot of my friends chose psychology at sixth form. I admit the study of the mind does sound interesting, but I wasn't interested in the slightest. Unless you're Professor X, the mind should be left alone. It's a chaotic and hopeless mess, something that couldn't possibly be understood with a few lessons at sixth form where you're wrestling hangovers, hormones and horrendous theories from a set of out-of-date crackpots.

But this post isn't about why psychology is good or bad; such a discussion should be reserved for only the boldest of internet nerds. After two weeks of solid dreaming, I found myself Googling everything related to the grey matter upstairs.

Let's put this into perspective first. I am a cynical old man, and there's no two ways about it. Karma, luck, horoscopes, mediums, as far as I'm concerned, all just one big pile of smouldering manure. I've watched Derren Brown's programs thinking I'd take this more seriously if it was staged in Middle Earth with Pokémon and Vanessa Feltz doing a hand-jive. Trying to understand the mind is like trying to fathom why Jennifer Anniston gets better looking with every passing year, why Carly from The Inbetweeners can't act, and why my Dad still manages to confuse me with my brother.

I've been back at Uni for 3 weeks. For the last 2 of those, I've had a vivid dream every night. Not ridiculous dreams where I can fly or where I actually grow up. But dreams with realistic situations, with family and friends popping up, with either a main part or a cameo appearances.

It's getting quite odd especially as I don't really dream that much. I can still remember some of my worst dreams as a child, like the one where an innocent little owl from a Disney film came and snatched me from my bed Maddie-style. That was the last time I watched that particular Disney cartoon with the blue owl, and even to this day I haven't watched it.

Unfortunately, one of my dreams wasn't of being Morpheus

This morning I woke up after an incredibly vivid dream wondering what the fuck was going on. I was half expecting Tyler Durden to walk into my room with breakfast in bed, such was my mental instability (those of you who haven't seen Fight Club and might have inferred I am gay, then shame on you). Cue about an hour of Googling various things from 'vivid dreams' to 'what causes dreaming'. Needless to say, I'd swallowed the red pill and fallen right down the rabbit hole on this whole mind thing.

Apparently. continuous vivid dreaming is caused by stress, emotional detachment and the longing of something. The fact this sounded so ridiculously gay led me to dismiss it immediately. But every website and every question had the same response. My face was looking like the smiley made up of a colon and a forward slash, with the word 'hmmm' after it.

Such crackpot old nonsense had no place to tell me who I am and what I'm feeling. But then I felt in denial, was I really longing for something more? I certainly didn't feel stressed and I didn't feel alone. So what in the name of all that's holy was going on?

After all of that, I put it down to dreams being dreams. Christopher Nolan tried to make dreams more complicated than they need to be in Inception last year. People's 'dreams' come true on Britain's Got Talent and XFactor, and people dream of a White Christmas - well, they used to until it actually happened. They are what they are. I'm not looking for a psychiatrist, I don't want a Professor Trelawney-type character to tell me my future from the leftovers of a beverage.

I might start looking for a new mattress though, or failing that, a new pillow at least.

Sun, Sex and One Very Annoying Parent

2011-01-26T23:33:00.005Z

In a move that has surprised even myself, I have found myself glued to BBC3 every Monday night. Well, not quite. Such is the unique way that a student house operates our TV signal is about as good as what you'd expect to find in the middle of the Sahara desert using a cardboard box and a coat hanger. Praise the Lord then for BBC's iPlayer, a service with such swagger even it's name suggests it's made by the self-proclaimed rulers of the free world at Apple.

So every Tuesday, I sit down at my computer with a hot chocolate and a pack of digestives like a woman who's been recently dumped and sit back and watch British teens making complete tits of themselves as they galavant and vomit all over European holiday destinations. Well I say 'holiday destinations', they're more like parallel universes where society is just a crazy idea and they're run by people like Lady GaGa and The Mad Hatter. Yes gentlemen and ladies, this is Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents.

The program plays out like an Essex-version of The Truman Show. British teens set out on their first holiday away from the parents, hoping for a week of exactly what the title suggests. However, mum and dad (or for some of the more broken families, mum and a 'family friend') get to watch the whole thing, either from a TV monitor or through a set of binoculars. Cue scenes of parents tutting, teens revealing they 'haven't seen Dad as much as they'd have liked' and then everyone learning more about each other and it all ends happily ever after. Nonsense, I'm waiting for the episode where the teen comes back with so many STIs that they have to quarantine him on the Isle of Man.

One of many drinking games, this one entitled 'are you fucking starting?'

If you've been on a holiday with your friends it's brilliant. As I sat there watching Mr. and Mrs. Daddy's Little Princess watch their little angel investigating what every guy in Malia's throat tastes like, it did make me think what my parents would have said when I decided some toilets in Zante could have done with a new lick of paint. Well not paint, more like sick. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen would have gushed at my efforts.

The episode I watched yesterday though had me shouting at the telly like a mental person playing along to You Say, We Pay. An 18 girl from Nottingham was the unfortunate offspring of a man named Chris.

Chris is a huge twat.

"I'm not strict," says Chris, as he trawls through a list of rules ranging from 'no boys' to 'no drinking'. That was it, first blood vessel had gone. The man is insane.

Such was the medieval view of life that this brain-dead Midlander had that he spent most of the time watching his daughter complaining about what she was wearing. "She's in for a bollocking!" he spluttered as he saw his daughter at a foam party in a bikini. Second blood vessel exploded. Thanks Chris, now I need an ambulance.

I get the idea of strict parents; I hardly have Pete Doherty for a Dad, but at least he lives in the real world. 'Chris' (whether that is his real name or if it's just code for 'Stalin') had his head so far up his own arse he could taste his own stomach acid. The poor girl wasn't even allowed to bring home a guy or have a boyfriend. Chris' big realisation at the end was that "she'll have to get a boyfriend at some point." Well done sir, unless you've raised your child to be a nun or a raving homosexual.

The man had Daily Mail written all over him, the sort of man that chortles rather than laughs, smirks rather than smiles, and writes a letter of complaint rather than manning the fuck up. I've got no qualms about a decent upbringing and a few rules, otherwise literally every corner of Britain would look like the Ayia Napa strip. A funny sounding idea yes, but you'd get tired of some Liverpudlian flogging you cocktails for 40p before you've even agreed to going into whatever piss-poorly named landfill-site of a bar. But, there's a limit. Chris, who I might name Britain's Worst Parent after Karen Matthews and Elton John, has taken this parenting thing a bit too far, like he's in command of a tank regiment, not an 18 year-old girl.

I'd like to think I could find the right balance between strict and liberal as a parent. I'm not about to turn this into a 'how to' guide, but I'd like to think watching Chris I could avoid turning myself into Colonel Twat and make a good hash of raising a child properly. But that's not for another few years yet, I should probably make sure I can look after myself before I think about a little sprog.

Bite Me

2011-01-07T01:10:00.005Z

In my quest for world domination, it is imperative that I am at one with the most popular things in life. Whether it be One Direction-like boots (apologies to those XFactor haters out there); saying the word 'procrastination' or knowing all the words to Mr. Brightside, if I am indeed to lead to human race, I have to be at one with these things. It was these thoughts that not only led me to download the current Twilight films, but also set aside an entire afternoon to watch them. With my vagina nicely placed on my lap, I hit the play button and let the mental torture begin.

Unless you've been living in a cave with Bin Laden n' co., you'll know that the books are about a teenage girl named Bella Swan falling in love with vampire Edward Cullen. From then on, creator Stephenie Meyer managed to stretch this excruciatingly-taxing romance across four books and so far, three films. I've never understood the fascination with these books. If you want teenage love, then there are plenty of other places you can go. If you want vampires battling werewolves, again there are so many better sources to satisfy your animalistic fetish (I'd start with the film 'Underworld'. Vampires against werewolves, but Kate Beckinsale as a vampire with semi-automatic pistols. Makes this Twilight nonsense look like Twishite).

So I sat there, concentrating as hard as possible, determined to know the ins and outs so I could partake in conversations about said topic. I admit, it's not often I find myself in a Team Edward vs. Team Jacob deathmatch, but it's nice to be prepared. Unfortunately, these films are absolutely rife with boredom. Honestly, the last time I sat through something this uneventful was when I watched Manchester City play away from home. The highlight of the first film was a baseball game. A baseball game, set to 'Supermassive Black Hole', which was totally out of place from the rest of the film. For about an hour you're subjected to more frowns than a bombing in Baghdad and music so poignant and gothic you'd be forgiven for locking yourself in a bathroom with a My Chemical Romance CD and a flick-knife. And then all of a sudden, BASEBALL AND HAPPY-GO-LUCKY MUSE SONGS! Talk about a shift in tone. No matter, things are back to bleak within a matter of minutes. Then nothing happens, apart from they burn a bad vampire. Oh the humanity...

I was on the verge of tears when the universally slated New Moon failed to play properly. The sound was up the shit and if I couldn't hear the dialogue then all I was left with was pale people frowning; something I experience every morning when I wake up and look in the mirror. So after hearing that the series continues in the same vein with the second film in the sense that absolutely nothing happens, I skipped onto the third film, Eclipse. According to critics and fans of this extravagant nonsense, this is meant to be the best of the series, so I approached it with an air of optimism, hoping there'd be some serious developments in Bella and Edward's relationship and maybe, just maybe, something worth watching. My optimism was completely shattered within the first few scenes. First of all, a totally random human is attacked by über-baddie Victoria and turned into a vampire. There's no explanation as to why this particular human is chosen, but in a recruitment diversity-policy that would put Abercrombie & Fitch to shame, this human is vaguely good looking, and so, some form of story is moulded around him. Then we see incessant love-birds Bella and Edward rolling around in a field of pretty flowers in what is meant to be the bleakest and most depressing town in America. The first film showcases the effects sunlight has on vampires like Edward. Do these effects appear in the third film? Are you nuts? There's a sickening romance to concentrate on! There's no time for such minor details. Anyway, the entire film is a combination of flashbacks explaining the backstory of this shitstorm of a series (which should have been in the first film to give us a chance to know what the fuck is going on) and 'romantic' scenes between Bells and Ed that are so devoid of any emotion it's like watching two mimes try and get it on.

After building up to an 'incredible' fight scene which is over in around two minutes after a combination of vampire and the biggest fecking dogs I've ever seen rip the living shit out of a rebel clan of vampires, I was beginning to see the pattern of these films. The fact the film ended with Bella and Edward rolling around in another field of pretty flowers just confirmed it. Absolutely nothing happens in these films. There's absolutely zero development in the way of characters and everyone is as lifeless as a vampire, regardless of whether they actually are mini-Draculas or not.

Phwoar Jacob...am I saying that right?

All Jacob does is wonder around with his top of lamenting about how he loves Bella so much. Seriously, you're a werewolf, just go and howl and eat something. I can see how the filmmakers of this series have tried to inject his character with a bit of life and humour, but Taylor Lautner struggles to portray even the most basic of human emotions, and such complicated tasks as smiling are way beyond his acting talents. And when he does smile, his teeth are so white they make Edward's skin look tanned (boom, a seriously in-depth joke right there).

All Bella does is look glumly into the camera, as though the crew behind the camera are holding a cute puppy at gunpoint. It's fortunate that her two love interests are very difficult to kill because her indecision is enough to drive anyone else to the point of putting a wooden stake through their own heart. It's a shame because Kristen Stewart is a genuinely talented actress but the only requirements she has in these films is sulk, sulk, and then sulk some more. Oh and both her Mum and Dad are played by villains from the TV show 24, and as a result, cannot be trusted to raise a child.

During the first film, I found myself shouting at the telly for Bella and Edward to fucking get on with it. It's like putting Romeo & Juliet together then throwing obstacles at their relationship; unless you're completely mentally retarded, you know they're still gonna be together at the end of it. Every scene in Eclipse highlights a different reason why she shouldn't marry Edward, yet still ends up rolling around in the daffodils with the blood-sucking moron come the credits, rendering the entire film a totally pointless exercise. Never have I ever seen such a more loved film that is so terrible. Not only is it bad, it's incredibly frustrating. For a film series that's meant to portray the angst of being different and finding love, it alienates itself from the crowd with it's lack of heart and general lack of anything.

Drunken rant over.

Buy 1 Blog Post, Get 2 Free!

2010-12-27T21:22:00.007Z

Pop legend Madonna once sang 'we are living in a material world and I am a material girl'. Whilst I wouldn't consider myself to be a girl, the fact the Christmas sales are one of my favourite parts of the Christmas holidays is perhaps indication of my secret 'material girl' persona.

However, after my two-day binge at two different shopping centres, I'm starting to think otherwise. All I've managed to do in the last couple of days is buy stuff not in the sales, have arguments with a series of ethnic minorities, get up earlier than most postmen and knacker myself to the point of tears. Now that I've finally sat down for the first time in about 48 hours, I think it's time to reflect on the wonderful British tradition that is the Christmas sales.

Here in the May household, we take this sales business pretty seriously. Bluewater opened at 11am on Boxing Day, so naturally, we left home at quarter to Ten. Once establishing a parking space those turning up in the afternoon could only dream of, we headed to Hollister to take advantage of their world-famous sale...(yeah it doesn't actually exist). Despite being there half hour before opening, a queue had formed outside already, leaving the pretty-faced employees of the Californian boutique completely dumbfounded as to how to deal with such crowds so early. It's absolutely crazy that a shop can be so cool and fashionable yet so bloody popular. I overheard the employees saying that some had been queuing since 10am. The only thing that would explain such bonkers queuing would be for Hollister to be selling a new Harry Potter book.

We went into several other shops but I wasn't really in the mood for anything else. Bluewater was packed tighter than an IKEA wardrobe. I honestly think disabled people and pushchairs should be banned from shopping centres on days like Boxing Day. In some shops which have aisles thinner than a submarine corridor, a pushchair can often be as obstructive as a jackknifed lorry. And then some of the kids are literally like the little shits you see on Supernanny. The amount of times I had to restrain myself from shouting 'control your children or control your vagina!' was in double figures. Even in the hustle and bustle of sales shopping, that might have just got a few dodgy stares.

For the May family, one entire day of sifting through cut-priced nonsense isn't enough so my parents woke me up at 7.30 this morning to do it all over again. Because Marks & Spencer have no regard for the mental health of their staff, they opened at 7am. By the time we'd arrived at Lakeside at 8.30, the place looked like a warzone. Ironically, the whole place was populated by Arabs/Indians/Middle-Easterners, a set of people that had been surprisingly absent from yesterday's excursion to Bluewater. Now in the past when I've been shopping, I've bought quite a lot of stuff, but the amounts I have previously purchased were put in the shade by the biblical amounts Dick, Tom and Sanjeev were buying. I don't get what the fascination is with people in burkhas buying entire shops, but it was almost as though they weren't going shopping for another year. I saw one till that had clocked up £1,200. And as for Next, it looked like the Next that had been hit by the IRA bomb in Manchester in 1996. It had opened at an absolutely ridiculous 5am and judging by the state of it when I went in there later in the morning, it looked like it had been open that long. Imagine the scene in The Mummy where the scarab beetles engulf the poor Arab guide and all that's left once the little beetles scurry off is the juicy flesh. Now swap the scarab beetles for the Arab shoppers and the dead Arab for the shelves in Next and you have an idea of what the place looked like.

Shoppers of an Eastern heritage closing in on the last sales item

But going shopping in shops with sales on is fairly amateur. Instead, me and my brother ended up in shops like Cult and All Saints; shops that are more likely to take off and relocate amongst the clouds than have a sale. I have to say that All Saints is one of the gloomiest and most depressing shops on Earth; it was like going shopping with a Dementor. The remainder of my money went on items that weren't in a sale (surprise surprise) and probably wouldn't ever be in a sale. My Mum picked up a few bits and pieces that outside of Christmas sales shopping would be described as 'cheap tat'. But come December 26th and 27th, my parents let their hair down more than a newly single Katie Price. And so for the second time in just over a week, my Dad was left to play a combination of Tetris and Jenga to get all our newly acquired swag in the back of the car.

So what have I learnt from my two day struggle to save a few quid? Firstly, it's unlikely I'm going to save any money seeing as I'm quite partial to stuff that could only be cheaper if I'd stolen it. Secondly, I hate whiney little Asian children, especially at Nine in the morning. Thirdly, I hate whiney little Asian women who couldn't control their bowels, let alone their own children. Then there's my new-found opinion that All Saints is actually Azkaban. And let's not forget my final lesson that we do indeed live in a 'material world', and to save myself the hell that is sales shopping, I should probably just stay at home and do it all online. But then, you don't get to see Abu Hamza and family walk out of shops with a country's worth of clothes. And where's the fun in missing that?

The Indian Job

2010-11-25T11:35:00.002Z

This is one of those posts that could go two ways. It could either be insightful and witty coverage of a recent news story that caught my attention. Or (and probably more likely) it could turn out to be a horrendously written piece with strong racial undertones and I could be shot at dawn by Gurkhas (I know they're not Indian but ignore some cultural ignorance and go along with the joke). I think my lawyer should be aware that I'm writing this before I start...

The Italian Job! Everyone's favourite British comedy crime caper set in a time where us plucky Brits felt like we could conquer the world. We'd just destroyed Germany at Wembley with Lieutenant Hurst and Corporal Moore, exported a little band called The Beatles to the world and were just generally awesome at life.

Now, the Indians want to have a crack at remaking this timeless classic in their own unique Bollywood style. Hollywood had a go a couple of years ago, and well sort of bombed it. It wasn't a bad film but to give it the same title as the 1969 masterpiece was slightly ambitious. One it wasn't set in Italy, so it should have just been called 'The Job'. And as its the Americans, they'd never do the job properly, so it should have just been called 'The'. If they'd have kept that name, much better film.

Apparently there's a sequel planned called 'The Brazilian Job'...sometimes I don't even have to try and write this.

Anyway, back to the East. I'm wondering quite how they're going to take something so quintessentially British and go all chicken korma on it. So, I'm going to try and second guess the producers and have come up with 'The Indian Job Required Factors to Make a Timeless Eastern Classic'.

1. Don't use the Minis. Please for the love of God, don't drive three Mini Coopers, new or old around some shitty slum town. It'd be like taking the Union Jack and dragging it through a load of elephant shit. Use something a bit more location friendly. I personally think a few pimped out Tuk-Tuks would be fantastic. Not sure about the luggage space for gold bullion (actually we'll come on to what they're gonna steal in a minute) but the scope for some close quarters driving is immense!

2. Location. Turin is a beautiful city with lots of awesome little features. Ideally, the Bollywood version would have to be set in Delhi. It's half posh (where they'd knick the swag from) and half shite (where they'd lose the insanely over the top Indian cops). Driving on the roofs of the slum parts might be a bit difficult as the roof would probably cave in and you'd end up with some malnourished child with a tuk-tuk on his head. And you'd be unlikely to recreate the scene where the Minis drive across the river. In Delhi you might either a) get stuck in sewage or b) drive into a dead body being sent downstream.

3. India's Culture. The local fixer/contact should definitely be a man who charms snakes. The police should definitely have swords. Somewhere in the climatic chase scene there should definiately be an elephant that gets in the way and sprays water at chasing policemen. There also maybe should be a political subplot about a tyrannical Sultan stealing from clever Indian children. The possibilities are endless.

4. A dance scene. Every Bollywood has to have a casual dance scene slap bang in the middle of the film involving every cast member and every single bloody extra. Hell, even the catering staff know the choreography. Doesn't matter if it's a film about rape or abortions, there's always room for a quick rumba or hand jive to explain the story in a more Indian way. Maybe they could steal...whatever they're going to steal in a dance routine. Would be absolutely fantastic. Throw in a bit of naan bread for a dashing of casual racism and you're onto a winner!

5. Don't steal gold. Stealing gold is not very Bollywood. Besides the tuk-tuks would have about as much chance getting up a set of stairs with a boot full of gold as a starved Indian boy dragging up an oversized bag of Bombay potatoes. If you're gonna make this film Indian style, fill it with jewels, or maybe a rare breed of snakes. Hell, make it super stylistic and have them stealing £4million worth of dreams from a sitar-playing guru. At least it's an original twist.

So there you have it folks. I've just written a very rough screenplay for what can only be described as the only casually racist Bollywood film to be nominated for an Oscar. Indian filmmakers are genuinely remaking The Italian Job, despite me not taking this at all seriously. Directors have claimed it is 'as good as the original'. Well I'm afraid unless they've incorporated all the ideas above, their claims may be a bit farfetched.

A Poultry Post

2010-11-12T18:52:00.005Z

It's been a while since I went on a full-on, no-holds-barred rant about something. I'd like to think like a sedated pensioner, I've been fairly calm and cool about life (well, on this blog at least) for the last couple of months. Now I'm angry, and Daniel needs a target to vent his anger and frustration at. Like a very stereotypical shooting game, my crosshairs have ended up pointed at chicken.

Not just any old chicken. Chicken served in a Portuguese 'restaurant' smothered in Peri-Peri sauce.

What's known as 'cheeky advertising'...

I remember the first time I went to Nandos. It wasn't exactly like the first time I heard The Beatles, but it came fairly close. The fact there were no sodding waiters you had to empty out the coppers in your wallet just to scramble together a meaningful tip for; unlimited amount of soft drinks so you had the sugar levels of a psychotic diabetic and very nice chicken-themed food.

In the same way I practically blew my load the first time I played on a Wii, I was in love with a new place to eat. However, the Wii has been sat in the corner of the room collecting dust for months now, and like Nintendo's shiny white exercise machine, I have fallen out of love with Nandos too. Why you may ask? Well, prepare for a barrage of unsupported reasons and a shit load of unnecessary metaphors.

As far as stereotypical American university-campus cliques go, the preppies have to be the worst. Flashing cash, wearing rugby shirts when all they know of hookers is what their mother does after she's finished making dinner out of a pheasant and gold-plated potatoes. They're just god awful people. I've never come face-to-face with a hardline extremist preppy, but I've seen enough Super Sweet 16 to know they're spoilt twats with far more money than sense.

And this is what Nando's feels like. It feels preppy. But accepting preppy. Not like the Bullingdon Club at Oxford where you have to be a Tory with a chequebook bigger than Margaret Thatcher's nose. Accepting of everyone. In other words, the worst type of the worst clique going.

It's fucking KFC for fucks sake. Its taken me a few goes at Nando's to realise, but it is just essentially posh fast food. The way the waiters and waitresses glare at you if you're sat around at your table longer than is necessary to finish your over-priced chicken, the way the menu comprises of three different items, the way you're sat so close to other people you feel like a battery hen. Oh look, more fucking chicken.

The first two times I was blinded by sheer wonder and didn't really notice the prices. I callously shoved my card in the machine and that was it. The other day I had a chicken wrap (it was the size of a 50 pence piece), some chips and corn on the cob. ELEVEN POUND. For the privilege of not having wrapped in a KFC wrapper. The day I have to reach into my wallet and get more money out because a Tenner is not enough for chicken, chips and bloody sweetcorn is the day I start buying shares in poultry. The word ludicrous doesn't even come close.

And now we have all these 'wannabe-preppy' food outlets popping up all over the shop. Gourmet Burger Kitchen, or as it's more commonly known, McDonalds without the wacky colours and creepy mascot. The only time I've ever been in there was earlier this year. I sat down, observed the menu, realised chips were not included in the biblical prices and so swiftly left before the waiter could steal my entire bank account asking what we'd like to drink.

I hate these stupid sorry excuses for food outlets. I refuse to call them restaurants because they aren't. They're just fast food outlets wrapped in fancy buildings. It's like taking a teen from a council estate and chucking him through a high-class fashion chain like, I dunno, Burberry. A once-well respected fashion outlet is now as chavvy and low-rent as the Ford Escort-driving scallywags who wear it. And with Nando's it's the same. Once a very nice chicken-themed place to eat. Now a food outlet where there is just as much grease on the customers as there is on the food. All in the name of profit margins. Well done chicken men, you've sold your soul to the devil and sealed the deal with a peri-peri chicken wing.

Despite all this, my god is the food bloody tasty.

Help Me Obi-Wan Kenobi...

2010-11-04T00:51:00.005Z

It's not just the fact that she's literally the only woman in Star Wars that Princess Leia is a sex symbol to thousands of people who live in their Mum's basement drinking Mountain Dew. Whilst there may be an Ewok who does the cooking and cleaning or the idea that Boba Fett might even be rocking fake eyelashes and foundation underneath the helmet, Leia is the sole piece of eye candy in the Star Wars films. And while some may find the 'croissant to each side of the head' hairstyle worthy of arming their own lightsaber, it's the fact that the girl from Alderaan can wield the odd bit of space-age tech that really sent geeks into outer space.

Whilst that first paragraph might have been an exercise in the use of Star Wars innuendos and knowledge, there is a serious point. Well, when I say serious, I meant I came up with an idea of how to start this post and now not sure if it's actually working. Lets struggle on in the same vein as Jabba the Hut getting strangled.

The point is that Leia was hot because she fired a laser and messed around with all sorts of funky technology. And while it's unlikely we're going to be able to have Leia adorned in that metal bikini in our households anytime soon, we may be seeing a bit of technology that Leia pioneered hit our lounges very soon.

People nowadays send out distress calls via a telephone, Twitter or maybe even a letter depending on whether they live in the Third World or not. But in Star Wars, Princess Leia has a little fiddle with R2-D2 and voíla, she's sent out the coolest mayday call ever. A fully formed three dimensional human being in the palm of Obi-Wan Kenobi's hand with an audio track. A hologram. And like the lightsaber or the force, something we believed was only possible in the imagination of George Lucas.

Admittedly this post is a tad biased towards though who have a slight obsession with Star Wars. I'm gonna try and bring this back to the real world.

Scientists at the Universrity of Arizona have come up with a system that enables a holographic image to display in another place and update it in real time. The image won't be the terrestrial TV-like quality of Princess Leia's message. These new realtime holographic images will be the full 1080P HD experience.

The point of this all? For starters it's seriously cool. Sod Skype, sod Facebook Chat, sod Facetime, if you could have full-on holographic conversations with someone across the other side of the world using something that resembles a handheld mirror, think of the possibilities! You could teach dancemoves, communicate while running etc. Alright so you can do all of this with technology at the moment, but you can watch TV programmes on a TV, but that doesn't stop you going out and buying a new shiny one every few years. Plus as well the scientists in Arizona think the holograms could help with 3D modelling and complex medical procedures where scientists all over the world could contribute with advice. The sort of stuff that pales into comparison of being able to teach your friend in San Francisco the Macarena in 3D...

The other reason why this is borderline the coolest thing ever is that we seem to be technologically proficient enough to start producing gadgets from film. While it'll be a while before we start travelling around in TIE Fighter, how long is it going to be before we have watch phones? Oh wait, we do. A time machine perhaps? Travel to where I live in Gillingham and you'll feel like you're in the 19th Century. The point is over the next few years we're in for some seriously cool tech and if you're dying to know what sort of stuff we're going to be getting, just head down to your local cinema. Now, where did I park my DeLorean...

Teenage Dirtbag Baby

2010-11-01T00:48:00.003Z

This was the second thing that came up when I typed 'teenagers' into Google Images. I don't think I've ever seen 5 teenagers jumping on a beach like that other than on Neighbours.

Today is my last 24 hours (23 now I've finished writing) of being a teenager. And that is a really, really scary thought.

When I think of where and who I was when I hit the terrible age of 13...yeah you're right, I've barely changed.

I spent my entire childhood waiting to grow up; wanting to hit 16 so I could buy a lottery ticket, hit 17 so I could drive and hit 18 so I could get a pint in a pub. I've never bought a lottery ticket, I've passed my test and crashed my car and got drunk too many times to remember. It's weird, and now I'm on the brink of losing my status as a teenager, I just want to go back and do it all over again.

Now I'm just getting all nostalgic and it's not healthy. But seeing as it's my last day before I might have to think about growing up, I think I'm allowed to have a little self-wallow in my own past.

Would I do things differently? Of course I would. Knowing all the wonderful stuff I know now, it'd be cool to start again with the cheat codes. On the other hand, if I didn't do all the stuff I did first time round, I'd be sitting here without a clue. Swings and roundabouts I suppose.

Anyway, this lamenting is all fairly pointless because the likelihood is I'll still act like the immature little shit I am until I'm getting served stale cabbage at an old people's home. The fact I can still get away with child bus fare pretty much says it all.

I don't know, I always thought hitting 20 was the start of 'adult-life', the point where you got sensible and traded in your Playstation for loft insulation. The time I was having these thoughts was around the same time I was convinced my day job would consist of performing car chases for Hollywood action films, so looking back I can see I was mildly disillusioned on both fronts.

But that's the weird thing. I had all these preconceptions about hitting 20 and now I'm here, it's sort of disappointing in a way. I'm halfway to my midlife crisis and yet I still look like I should be in a nativity play.

I probably didn't have the standard teenage life to be honest. I never sat in a park and drunk Strongbow till I needed my mum to come and pick my sorry drunken state up; was never in a band (particularly gutted about that one) and didn't spend my entire teenage years chasing after girls...

Take note of this. It's about as personal as I'm ever gonna get on here.

Quite frankly this is fairly silly. I doubt I'm going to start wearing suit and tie everyday after my birthday, I'm not going to go to bed at 9:13 every night and I sure as hell am not going to have an ounce of responsibility. When people ask my age, I might just lie through my teeth and say 16 just to see if they've got the bottle to question it. Or just say Twenteen and skip off into the sunset.

Either way, I'm going to stop this nonsense, put on 'Teenage Dirtbag' and have one more day of being hated by everyone who reads the Daily Mail. Then maybe find a park...

Straight Outta' Brompton

2010-10-11T21:59:00.005+01:00

I've not been tortured before. I didn't think it wise to get involved in international espionage and ask megalomaniac villains if I was 'expected to talk' while waiting for a space-age laser to cut me in two. So it's not often I've experienced pain as excruciating as the pain I'm feeling at the moment. Because out of the window of my new house, I can see the road that leads out of Medway.

When I went and visited Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco, a lot of people asked why they put a prison on an island. The obvious reason being that it's virtually impossible to escape (and so it proved despite a few urban legends), but the other reason was that so prisoners could see civilisation just through the bars in their windows, making Alcatraz not only escape proof, but also torture for the inmates.

Pretty much exactly how I feel.

This was meant to be a nice cheery little post about my new house and the first few weeks back at Uni. I've kinda started it in the most mellow and downbeat way possible. Some gratuitous swearing should get this train back on the rails.

So fuck me it's been a while. There's a lovely gap where September should have been. It wasn't even as though I was doing anything special. Just taking a break from writing totally irreverent and nonsensical shit on here to be honest. But now we're back with a brand new rap, in a new set of lodgings!

Whilst a number of people have moved into a fairly sensible house for their second year of university, we decided moving in above a kebab shop would be the best thing for our health for the next year. But I'm loving the new gaffe/crib/abode (delete appropriate depending on your social class). We've been here for 3 weeks and it's almost to the point of perfect student household. Large TV, Xbox with FIFA always in the disc tray, Sky Sports (albeit streamed through the Xbox), a freezer stocked with chicken nuggets and potato waffles and the ironing board still in it's original position. It's a far cry from Liberty Quays last year where I was awake more often during the early hours of the morning than a postman thanks to those wonderful fire alarms.

Whilst the first year of uni is all about moving away from home, being in an environment such as student halls still has you under the wrath of accommodation managers. Hell, I even wrote about the place on here (it was one of my earlier blog posts so it reads a bit like a small child moaning) and got called into the Liberty Quays office. Well, I say called, they actually stopped my key fob from working so I was forced to go down reception and meet Darth Vader himself. My point is that even during the first year at uni you're still subject to ruling by iron fist.

In a house? Not so much. Not so much at all. Answer a few questions for the landlord/landlady and Bob's your uncle. Wandering around the house half naked feels like a breath of fresh air after a year of wondering what security guard at Liberty might stumble into your room to tell you to 'turn the noise down'.

I love the house. It's got it's little faults like the mouse traps scattered all over the place and the tiniest most pathetic sink in the downstairs bathroom or the fact there's a set of stairs to climb everytime we want to come back home. It's like trying to conquer the travelator at the end of Gladiators after a night out. But I don't mind. The lounge was big enough to take my drum kit, and that my friends, is the most important thing.

N.B. While not strictly relevant to anything, I thought I'd share this with you all. It's a comment from my Sky blog and seeing as I've barely looked at it, didn't stumble upon this gem till the other day. A man/boy/invalid named Ryan decided he didn't agree with me and so published this. Enjoy!

'Enjoy making fun of the poor, do you?

I couldn’t help but notice your comment “It made me realise… how doing journalism is such a great excuse to be nosey and find out stories from the scum of the Earth without being beaten to death.”. Journalism needs intelligent, thoughtful people if it is to become a respected profession again, not cocky little gobshites like you.

If your team’s documentary – which was rubbish, by the way – had shown any insight into why Merthyr is so economically deprived and why a culture of hopelessness pervades the town then you might actually have learned something rather than pushing the same, tired “oh, aren’t those poor people rubbish” angle. Your tawdry documentary was one-sided and ignorant of the economic regeneration that is occurring in the town.

It appears that the money you are spending in fees learning journalism are not money well spent. Whether this is a reflection on you or the quality of the institution you are attending remains to be seen.'

Whole Lotta' Merde

2010-08-23T18:26:00.005+01:00

Mont Blanc!

I'd like to think that on the 7th day, God created holiday destinations. Whilst chilling with a Sunday Roast, it'd be nice to think that the big man upstairs dropped a bit of pixie dust on Disneyland and sprinkled a bit of magic on the Great Barrier Reef.

In the same swift set of actions, he probably took a shit all over France.

I admit this might be a tad controversial, but I've been on holiday to France every year for about 5 or 6 years. It's even a fairly touristy area of France; a little village just outside of the town of Cognac, where the alcoholic beverage of Cognac is made. And when I say little village, I actually mean a collection of about 3 houses. Which means the nearest bit of life as we know it, is feckin' miles away.

France is apparently the most popular holiday destination on Earth. One question. How? I don't get it. I don't get why more people on Earth would choose to come to this country than anywhere else. Have you ever heard of Las Vegas?!?

It's these next few reasons that leave me in utter disbelief. They're a mixture of my own experiences and sweeping generalisations.

The whole place looks like the Germans just left. Honestly, every village I've ever been too just looks bombed. Roof tiles are missing, hell, even some of the walls are missing. If it wasn't for the fact I had an iPhone in my pocket at the time, I could have sworn it was 1940 and Krauts were swarming the surrounding fields.
Everyone looks miserable and depressed. The last time I saw such a set of sombre faces, I was in Gillingham. Everytime we drive through a village of some kind, there is always an old man sitting outside the bakery with a baguette in one hand and the most glum expression on his face. It's almost as though they see the British number plate on the front of our car and think: 'Eeengleesh? Ze last time zey were 'ere, we were et war wiz ze Germanz'. And then of course, with that thought, they get very suspicious. And give you dodgy looks.
Everywhere shuts at lunchtime. Why? You're a business, you're meant to making money. If my old business teacher saw ol' Pierre and Christine (horribly stereotypical French names, no one in particular) shutting up shop for lunch at midday, he'd have a fit. It's almost like the French want to fail, no other set of people would close for an hour so they can spread Camambert over their perfectly made baguettes. Mind you, these are the same sort of people that would probably go on strike even if they were on the dole.
Style. I'll admit, I'm not in Paris at the moment. More like 600miles away. But still, the French dress like they're 600 years behind. The kick-ass combo of flip-flops and socks adorns every other French man, and the women look like they've been dropkicked through a charity shop specialising in antique curtains. I'm no Alexander McQueen (well no one is anymore...) but still, I know (roughly) what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately, Pierre and co. are in the 'doesn't' section.
Where are the kids? In the many times and thousands of miles I've been across Francais, I've only ever seen about 3 schools. That fact seems worrying, but when you can't even see any kids, you wonder how they might fill these 3 schools up. I'm no fan of 'yoofs' hanging around on the streets back in England, but at least that way you know a social demographic below the pension age exists. In France, the only kids you ever see are the ones riding around on dirt bikes or mopeds. But that's it. It's almost like the Child Catcher relocated to France and had a little bit more success than he did in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

So, a few reasons why I dislike France. The holidays are nice, so please don't mistake me for a spoilt child. But sacrebleu is this place miserable. I don't get why anyone would want to voluntarily come here unless you're over 95 and you like your peace and quiet up to the standards of a morgue. Plus I haven't seen a Starbucks outside Paris, a true measure of how little civilisation exists outside of the Champs Elysees. No wonder the Germans were so quick to leave in 1945.

Inceptional

2010-07-18T17:20:00.004+01:00

It’s been 10 years since writer/director Christopher Nolan burst onto the Hollywood scene with the superbly crafted Memento. Streamlining a short story written by his brother Jonathan, Nolan constructed a mentally satisfying film whilst always appearing in control of the film’s tricky plot. Whereas the Wachowski Brothers seemed to lose scope on the narrative of the Matrix trilogy and threw in a few fancy action sequences to keep the sci-fi trilogy from turning into a pile of cyber-shit, Nolan has always had the ability to weave popcorn-pleasing moments of cinema with a story that never leaves you wanting more. His second picture, Insomnia, perhaps proved the most tricky, with the interesting idea of living as an insomniac sidelined for a more straight-up detective narrative. But with Inception, Nolan has arguably made his best film, and certainly an early contender for film of the year .

Outlining the plot in a written review would not do it any justice whatsoever. In it’s most basic form, Inception is a heist movie. But replace the bank vault with a target’s dreams, the gold bullion with secrets, and a rag-tag band of crooks with an efficient team of modern day Al Capone’s led by a swaggering Leonardo DiCaprio. Like pulling off a bank heist, you can imagine that stealing secrets through a target’s subconscious is frowned upon by the relevant authorities, and in an effort to clear his name, Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) takes on one last job (yeah that ol’ cliché still applies here). But it’s no ordinary job, and rather than stealing secrets, Cobb is hired to plant an idea into the mind of an heir to a business empire (Cillian Murphy) by his rival (Ken Watanabe). Creating an organic idea within a person’s subconscious (known as an ‘inception’) proves to be slightly tricker than simply stealing an idea and Cobb and his team are forced to explore multiple layers of their target’s mind in order to complete their mission.

But there’s so much more to the story than that brief summary. There’s all the rules of entering a dream to be explained, the idea of dreams within dreams and the mental struggle Cobb has over the death of his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) who often materialises within Cobb’s subconscious. It’s a film full of ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ moments. Be fearful of loo breaks and distractions; missing the odd scene could result in losing a key plot element that you’ll never be able to recover from.

But Nolan also acknowledges that his audience does not want to be completely bombarded with a thesis about the behaviour of someone’s dreams. As a result, the pace of the first 90 minutes is absolutely breathless, with some stunning scenes of entire cities bending over each other, a chase sequence worthy of the Bourne trilogy through the streets of Mombassa, and a few very-pretty-but-oh-so-expensive shots of city scapes, where you sense Nolan would have loved to have plonked Batman on a few of the buildings. And none of the action feels out of place. Everything feels like it has a purpose. Even a freight train hurtling down a road in the middle of a city is explained. A fight in a hotel corridor that takes place in zero-gravity doesn’t feel like it was simply placed there as a way of spending film studio’s dollars. I could explain to you quite easily why both of these things happened in Inception, but I could never fully understand why there was a bloody-great freeway chase in the middle of The Matrix Reloaded. It once again demonstrates the grip Nolan holds his (forgive the pun) mind-boggling narrative and why he is one of the brightest talents in Hollywood.

The one problem with this however is Nolan is in danger of becoming a great showman more than a great director. While he has assembled one of the greatest casts in a movie this year, none of them ever really seem to get out of second gear. Don’t get me wrong, everyone in the film puts in a solid performance and you’d be hard pressed to fault the way in which they tackle their characters. It’s just they always seem to play second fiddle to the ideas in Nolan’s head. DiCaprio never reaches the giddy heights of his performances in The Aviator nor The Departed, and whilst his mental struggle with the death of his wife affects the plot’s narrative, you never really sense he’s mentally troubled man. Cobb is a very clinical thief, lamenting on simple mistakes, and this is mirrored in DiCaprio’s performance. Very clinical, hard to criticize, but nothing that makes you sit back on go ‘wow’. The supporting cast do a good job of moving the story along. Particularly impressive were Tom Hardy (Bronson) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (500 Days of Summer) who both stood out as functional yet interesting characters, adding a bit of much needed humour to the piece. Other than that, it’s a list of Nolan usual suspects, with Michael Caine offering a brief cameo and Ken Watanabe getting much more screen time to exude his unnaturally creepy persona than in Batman Begins.

When I say ‘play second fiddle to Nolan’s ideas’ that is by no means a bad thing. Nolan is one of the most imaginative filmmakers of his generation, and he has insured that his vision comes across absolutely perfectly on screen. It’s easy to forget in this day and age that CGI can be done badly (I’m looking at you Clash of the Titans). But the visuals in Inception are brilliant, adding a sense of awe when needed, and when a feeling of isolation is required, the visuals appear right on cue in all their pixelated glory. Following on from The Dark Knight, camerawork from Wally Pfister is nothing short of staggering. There are a great range of long steady shots to mad handheld shots to keep the film moving.

It’s just a shame Inception loses a bit of momentum towards the end. As Cobb and co. advance through dreams within dreams, we are told time is extended in proportion (10 seconds on the first level is 3 minutes on the second and 60 minutes on the third etc.). It just feels the end is prolonged just that bit too long in order to wrap up every loose end. Nevertheless, Nolan ends the film with his usual little twist, executed in with the panache other filmmakers could only dream of. Too often I’ve sat and watched a film and been totally underwhelmed. With Inception, Nolan has created a film clever enough to keep even the biggest cinema buff on their toes, whilst entertaining enough to draw in the punters; a balance he first got right with The Dark Knight. But Inception is so much better than Nolan’s second Batman. We don’t need heroic (excuse the pun once again) performances from the leads to drag us through a bog-standard plot. Here, Nolan uses all his craft and guile to lead us on an adventure that’s both original and utterly compelling. A must watch for all.

But Miss, I have an excuse this time!

2010-07-08T21:24:00.004+01:00

Sky Sports News building. I will venture in there one day when Georgie Thompson is on air.

'No excuses'. That's the same tried'n'tested bullshit all teachers pull out if your late to lesson, not done your homework, or tried to explain why you threw a pencil in their direction. But this time Miss Blog Maintenance, Daniel has a reason as to why this blog will particularly sparse over the next few weeks.

It's because I'm taking my keyboard tapping fingers somewhere else. To Wordpress. To document my four-week work placement at Sky.

If you're thinking, 'oh my word, no more Daniel for a month', then click that link and you'll be treated to me every day!

I'm trying to be a bit more professional with this blog. It won't be quite as irreverent and pointless as this blog, and dare I say it, I will actually be writing some quite serious shit.

So yeah, check it out. I'm shacked up in some B&B in Hounslow so I don't have much to do of evening, which means I should be able to update it pretty much every evening (providing I have a nice fruitful day).

Flaggots

2010-06-27T23:44:00.003+01:00

Warning: this post contains an unhealthy amount of metaphors.

It's difficult being English. I sat down today and watched the film Eurotrip for the first time. Like every other comedy I've been meaning to see, it was absolutely awful (when a comedy fails to make you laugh or give a monkeys what happens to the main characters you know you're in trouble). But, it did highlight a good ol' English trait: 'soccer hooligans'.

In the film, two American teens travelling from America wind up with a rag-tag bunch of East London thugs who, of course, like everyone else from England, support their local team Manchester United. The gang, led - in an Oscar worthy performance...- by Vinnie Jones, tear round Europe callously punching Frenchmen and even assaulting the Papal escorts in the Vatican City (yep, this film really is terrible).

So it explains how the rest of the world sees us. A bunch of beer-fuelled louts who are incredibly passionate about football, so much so that we're ready to assault random strangers in the name of a victory.

So what a fucking disgrace it is, to see 11 Englishman tip-toe off the pitch in Bloemfontein after being outclassed, outgunned, and out-committed by a battle-hardened set of Germans.

There's no point in analysing what went wrong. There's no point pondering why Lampard and Gerrard still refuse to work together as though they are water and electricity respectively. There's no point discussing if Fabio Capello wasn't to wear 3D glasses to every England game, maybe he'd realise they were shit and not 'geeveeng a guud pairformence'.

The fact of the matter is we were terrible from day one. 'Oooooh we played well in the qualifiers' cried most people, giving their reasons why England might win the tournament. Unfortunately, these very naïve, mentally retarded people forgot that we played Kazakhstan and Andorra, two nations who probably have more dodos in their country than proper footballers.

Then Capello decided he would pick his team based on form rather than general class. You forget the wise old proverb - like many such proverbs, probably originated from a Marvel comic somewhere - 'Form is temporary, class is permanent'. Take for example, two of the goalscorers from German team. Miroslav Klose has scored three times in the last Bundesliga season, yet has scored just one shy of that total on the big stage in South Africa. Same with Lukas Podolski, who has netted the same number of goals all season for FC Köln. So here we are, getting spanked by a team made up of 'out of form' players. Players, whom had Capello been managing, probably would have been left at home to tend to their frankfurter farms (surely one exists SOMEWHERE).

But oh no! Capello was not to pick from class, as he decided to bring Emile Heskey, who is just about as useful as a hitchhiker with no thumbs. Or a vampire who lives in a curtain-less house. Or Scooby Doo without Velma. The only reason we took Emile Heskey was to show the poor South African children who live on the outskirts of District 9 (it is real, honest) that 'hey, life could be worse'. The wise ol' prophet Alan Shearer has always maintained that 'Heskey makes players around him play better'. Correction. Emile Heskey is SO BAD, he makes the players around him LOOK better. Hell, he could happily slot into the Dog and Duck FC and make the 40-year old striker with a pacemaker and a wooden leg look like Pele.

But, lets not shoot the largest target. It's easy to blame Capello. This is the man after all, who has won everything wherever he has been. Unfortunately as England manager, he has been lumped with a team of individuals who get bigger stage fright than a 6-year old child playing Joseph at the Christmas nativity play. Bar David James and Ashley Cole, the 21 other England players have been nothing short of diabolical. These (as one woman from Essex described them) ''undred faasend paand supastarz' have been quite simply, outplayed. Whether it was by the Americans, who were confused by the concept of a ball game played with the feet; the Algerians, who now have to go back home and sell camels to make ends meet; or the Slovenians, who are still fighting some kind of race war with men with names like Milsoveic.

And to top England's big pile of shit of with a sparkler you see in a tacky cocktail, there are the idiots at home who go St. George crazy, or as I like to call them, Flaggots. These are the people that, would it not be health hazardous when eating their half-time kebab, would paint red crosses on their teeth. Houses adorned with tacky red paint, flags attached to cars like they are ambassadors on foreign soil. Don't get me wrong, there's being patriotic and that, but when it's so obvious we're terrible, the jingoistic attitude displayed by many mentally inept England fans was a little bit embarrassing. It's like turning up to a swimming gala with the tightest Speedos and the most orange goggles, and then getting beat in the breastroke by a man with one leg who got the bus to the pool. We shouted, we painted and we believed. All we did was waste our breath, paint and mental activity.

So there we are, why it's difficult to be English. Because when the chips are down, we only ever have ourselves to blame. Oh and maybe Sepp Blatter, whose refusal to adopt goaline technology is frighteningly similar to when my granddad thought adopting the internet in his home would be like letting Satan into his front door. Now the old man never leaves eBay. Call me a traitor, but I just didn't care about this World Cup as much as I did before. I tried to hope. But the thing was, I just didn't believe. And that's probably what the 11 players who walked out to face the Germans today thought. It would explain why they played like a team of Stevie Wonder's...

'How can I be lost, if I've got nowhere to go?'

2010-06-20T18:28:00.007+01:00

The little note I hid for next years resident :)

Warning: Daniel is away, Gay Daniel will be writing this post (hence why it's so emotional and down-right philosophical)

It is, in reality, a long way from Kent to Essex. It's taken me a good 6 hours to move back the contents of my uni shoebox to mi casa in lovely sunny Essex. While it may be my little uni shoebox, I'm gonna miss that little Alcatraz-like room.

It was the 20th September 2009 that I slapped my speakers (a sign I've moved anywhere) on the desk of room 412D in Liberty Quays. There was a chair, a mattress that Indian children in the slums of Delhi would have complained about, some shelves, a nicely finished en-suite and carpet made out of either tumbleweed or pubes. But, after whacking a few of my things in there, it became my little university retreat. A slice of independence away from sheltered life back in Essex.

Miss (I hope it's still 'Miss) Fox and the Metallica guys adorned the walls, Angus Young guarded the bathroom door, and pictures of friends stared back at me every time I sat on my computer. Then there was all the little random things on my pin board that I'd assembled from uni. Stupid little drawings and letters that when I took them down, really hit me that I'd finished my first year of Uni. Hell, once my walls were bare, I just wanted to give the keys back and be done with it, because 412D was no longer my little piece of heaven.

I wouldn't say my emotions were running high after I'd packed up and put the last stray bottle cap in the bin. Even if I was, the man-sized tissues were deep in the boot of my dad's car so there would have been no hope anyway.

I couldn't quite believe the amount of stuff that had come of the room. Watching my parents remove contents of drawers, shelves and stuff hidden under my bed was like watching a child play with a Russian doll. Then my dad proved his prowess at Tetris by somehow slotting it all into two cars. And then working out where it all fit back in my room. I don't believe in magic, but wondering how all the stuff fit in the shoebox and not my room at home had me questioning whether some form of witchcraft was at hand.

So it's Southend for the summer, highlighting why the location of my university lodgings is so shit. Even from my own window, I get to admire the 'shanty town' of Gillingham. And it wouldn't let me leave without giving it's own goodbye. 3am last night, two drunk guys across the road hugging, when all of a sudden one hits the guy round the face. Cue clichéd drunken conversation such as 'I thought you loved me man' and 'mi casa es mi casa' (the cultural ignorance there is nothing short of astounding).

It's only once I think back to all these little things that I realise I am going to miss that room. The little things that have made me laugh, cry, smile. It's been an awesome first year at Uni, and after all the shenanigans that went down, I knew I had a place to rest my head (unlike Jesus).

R.I.P 412D

For Arguments Sake

2010-06-09T16:00:00.003+01:00

I have a huge amount of respect for my colleagues at Uni. Especially the foreign ones. Not only have they had to learn the lingo, but also learn it to the point where they're pretty much better at English than me.

It was even one of the 'aliens' who inspired me to start this blog. Sara Malm's blog is a feminists dream and one that makes me laugh quite a bit.

BUT

I can't help but thoroughly disagree with the post on the Harry Potter themepark in Orlando Florida.

I get the argument. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is a new themed area in Universal's Islands of Adventure, a theme park that opened in 1999 and has since had absolutely nothing done to it. The same rides have sat there for a decade and there has been very little in updates or new rides.

So they went a bit mental, and decided to recreate JK Rowling's imagination into an area tucked away at the back of the park. Well, as tucked away as much as you can when you've got roller coasters, Hogwarts Castle and the village of Hogsmeade to accommodate.

Anyway, the argument is that Harry Potter is British. Quintessentially. In the same way as tea and scones is British. In the same way Churchill is British. And the same way football hooliganism is very British. So, why is this theme park 3,000 miles away from where many Brits think it should be?

The Americans know how to do a themepark. Look how many Brits, every year, escape the mundane nonsense of Britain and head to Disney World, Universal, SeaWorld and Busch Gardens in Florida and Disneyland, Universal and Six Flags in California. The Yanks take care with their parks. The scenery is beautifully done, parking is organised, and there is a real sense of occasion everytime you set foot in an American themepark. Parades, characters in suits, a clean environment. A British themepark has none of these things. Parades? Only the queue to get a refund on horribly overpriced tickets. Characters in suits? I suppose you could class the teenagers who are working for the summer as characters. A clean environment? I've walked round Thorpe Park before and was convinced I was actually in a landfill site.

The second thing the Americans have is imagination. Some of the rides at Universal are pioneers in ride technology. And the reports coming from Orlando about the 'top-secret' Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride have only reaffirmed this notion that the Yanks but far more grey matter into coming up with ride ideas. When we make a ride, we take the American idea, and make it slightly worse, simply because we can't be bothered to invest the same amount of money or effort into making these rides (compare the stats of Thorpe Park's 'Stealth' and the original design of Cedar Point's 'Top Thrill Dragster').

Now for a little history lesson for my final point. In the mid '80's, the Walt Disney Company were drawing up plans to bring their themepark to Europe and had a number of sites which could potentially locate 'EuroDisney'. One site was East London, more specifically, Barking and Dagenham. Yes, the old derelict crumbling Ford plant was put forward (more out of wild hope than expectation) as a potential site for Disney's park. Fortunately for the good of mankind, Disney realised that Disneyland Paris had a slightly better ring to it than 'Disneyland Dagenham' and placed their park at the heart of Europe in a picturesque setting of the Parisian outskirts.

And this all means what exactly? Essentially, having a Harry Potter themepark in Britain would be like building the worlds most powerful car and then attaching one wheel to it. We'd ruin it. We'd take it for granted, build a castle, fill it with a few portraits and then accountants would step in and we'd have to leave it at that. Who would come to it anyway? Britain's tourism is dire in comparison to that of American or France. No one would come and then Hogwarts really would look like ruins (small in-joke for die-hard Pottermaniacs). When I was in Orlando last year, they'd nearly finished building Hogwarts castle and it looked fantastic. The American's have taken our baby and treated it with care. The amount of money and research that has gone into it is nothing short of staggering. Both JK Rowling and Stuart Craig (production designer on all the Potter films) have both been heavily consulted every step of the way.

Like everything good on Earth, it's a British idea that's taken forward by the Americans. Lets not forget, the Potter films are all made by American companies. Can you imagine a Potter film made by the BBC? It'd be downright shit and you'd inevitably have Graham Norton as Dumbledore.

And besides, Orlando has sunshine. Who looks out of their window on a rainy day and thinks 'fucking prime themepark weather'?.

Case closed.

Losing My Revision, by R.E.M

2010-05-31T22:40:00.007+01:00

A scene in the film Jarhead if you will digress. Anthony Swofford played by Jake Gyllenhaal forces Fergus (played by...someone) to construct and deconstruct his rifle at gunpoint. To the point where Swofford cocks his rifle, points it at Fergus' head, resulting Fergus breaking down into tears at the fact meaningless repetition of this simple military task is going to get him killed.

I am, at this very moment in time, 'doing a Fergus'. Simple, meaningless, repetitive task.

Look at lecture notes.

Take pen.

Note down lecture notes.

Add colour to add emotional depth.

Attempt to learn.

Next set of lecture notes.

If Jake Gyllenhaal is indeed reading this and is free at the moment, please, feel free to stop by with your M16 rifle and point it at my head. That way, at least I'll be slightly motivated. Learn about the Crimean War, or a nice little bullet knocking on my cranium. Decisions...

In my ongoing and (at the moment successful) quest to categorically fail theses exams, I have embarked on a number of other ventures that are not very 'revision-based'. First off, my room has been tidied to the point of obsessive compulsive. Staring at my desk blankly made me realise how many stray biro marks had vandalised the natural wood finish (as natural and as wood as you can get from MFI). As a result, Lord Hawhaw and his Germanic propaganda was momentarily suspended in the name of cloth, water and a good scrubbin'.

Elsewhere, the entire Sky Movies schedule for the past two days has been covered. Gran Torino was a particular highlight, with Clint Eastwood's feelings towards 'gooks' and 'chinks' in the film mirroring that of my feelings towards generally working. 'Fucking gooks'.

Me and my brother have used pretty much every team in the 2010 Fifa World Cup game for the Xbox. Using the Japanese team against Brazil was a particular highlight, discovering that it is only for England that the team from the East decide to use kamikaze tactics and put the ball into their own net. Honestly, it didn't work in World War 2, and it won't work in the World Cup. Someone needs to remove Emperor Hirohito from his post as Japanese National Coach and turn him to something more useful, like attacking an American port.

As you can tell by the historic ramblings present in this nonchalant post, my brain has been fried more effectively than a death row prisoner on the electric chair. The only thing that has been absorbed by the pink mush upstairs is the lyrics of songs that have been going while trying to revise. So if I see the question 'Describe the censorship of the press in WW2' and I answer with 'Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me', I won't be at all surprised.

A depressed, Amaretto-fuelled blog post. Bought to you by Dan.

23:59:59

2010-05-27T22:50:00.005+01:00

It was the moment I'd been dreading since the year 2001. I was 11 years old and it was about 8.58pm when a programme on BBC2 had finished. All of a sudden, the screen crackled and hissed and a single number appeared:

'The following takes place between 12am and 1am. Events occur in real-time'. My 11 year old brain was thinking, 'how the fuck is this going to work?'

It is (I've got to start saying 'was', I'm living in denial that it's still going) a simple set up. Each episode is an hour long. 24 episodes in a season (or day). Voíla. TV. To be honest you could fill it with anything. A bunch of whiney, moaning American brats going on a 24 hour spending spree? A hospital drama showcasing a 24 hour brain transplant? All very good ideas, but no. The incredible team of writers came up with an action/thriller/drama/shockathon hybrid that gives (dammit 'GAVE') you a similar problem to one of Derren Brown's illusions i.e. being surgically stuck in your sofa.

When the final credits rolled on episode 192, the final episode in the last series, there was (I admit) a tear in my eye. Not because it was a sad ending (it was a great ending, I wasn't sitting there thinking I'd got lost in a Nuclear Fission lecture like many Lost viewers), it was just because it was the end of an era. I grew up with Jack Bauer like he was my TV dad (oh I wish). It's like the man who got me through dull days just so I could see him in the evening has passed on (yes I am aware this does sound a little rapey). 9 years of my life are over. My life, in the same way as Christ himself, has been segmented as B.B and A.J (Before Bauer & After Jack).

It was hard enough having to wait nearly 2 years when the Writers Strike postponed series 7 by 2 years. I now have an awful conundrum of not knowing what to watch. I tried Prison Break, which as massively addictive and amazing as it's 4 seasons were, it ran out of steam a bit after they'd broken out of prison, which unfortunately was season 1. I've been recommended other programmes like Dexter and House, but the problem is I don't feel like I can move on.

Think of it as a 9 year relationship. After 192 dates, she's finally moved on, leaving me alone in a room with damp eyes (which was exactly how it was, which is slightly sad). I've been told by friends to move on to others and let it go. The thing is I know that deep down this was 'the one' and nothing again will ever be as good. I'll always be comparing anything else to 24.

The fact I've managed to quite convincingly compare a TV programme to a serious relationship shows how dangerously addicted to this show I have been. Taking it away from me is like Josef Fritzl moving to a high-rise block of flats. I'll pretty much never be the same again.

If you haven't watched it, I'm not going to even try to convince you to watch it. I'm so bias it's not even funny. I literally stumbled across this show and I think it's the best way to watch something like this, rather than be force fed it like a sufragette. All I can say is, if you do start watching it, take your diary/calendar and rip it to pieces. Because for the months after you begin to watch 24, you won't want/physically be able to do anything else.

Shovel, Spade and a Hand Grenade

2010-05-08T17:53:00.006+01:00

Friday Nights on BBC1. 7.30pm was Top of the Pops. 8pm was Eastenders. And from 8.30 was Ground Force. 90 minutes of TV brilliance, topped off by Alan Titchmarsh sneaking into someones garden and letting Charlie Dimmock and Hagrid's older brother loose on the weeds. I'm sure it was meant to appeal to older people just settling into bed with a digestive and a brew, but I was hooked. God knows why. I think I was waiting for an episode where they built a rollercoaster in a pensioners garden. It never happened.

Today Daniel had to endure his own little episode of Ground Force, except this was no surprise. No old lady coming back to find her neglected pile of mud behind her house had been transformed into the gardens at Windsor Castle. Just me, Dad and a crack team of gardeners. Well, when I say crack, it was more like crackpot. There was no Tommy Walsh or that ginger lesbian. It was a 62 year old guy from Ireland and a lexically challenged teenage oaf.

Now I'm not one for manual labour. It's what slaves and criminals on community service do. I consider myself to be neither, therefore I refuse to pick up any kind of DIY item. However, this time was different. There was my Dad's sanity at stake. Mum guilt tripped me into helping Dad before 'he got tired, miserable, grumpy and probably topped himself'. At that point I was thinking how to spend the inevitable inheritance and decided my efforts would be better spent doing fuck all. But then a bottle of Disaronno was bought to the negotiating table, and that just made the deal, quite literally, a little bit sweeter.

So, donned in a pair of wellies and some old clothes that were clearly bought in my 'unfashionable phase', I rocked up onto the set of Ground Force to find the rest of my garden crew were stuttering to the point of collapse. They had after all been working since 8am and it was now 2 in the afternoon. The teenage oaf was callously shovelling dirt into a wheelbarrow (probably the most mentally taxing task he'd undertaken since trying to remove a lid from a can of spray paint). The Irish man was talking in totally inaudible mumbles. I thought for a moment he'd got a bit too into the Avatar spirit and had learnt Na'vi. Then I realised he just wanted a cup of tea and was speaking Irish. Some people... My poor old Dad was there as well, looking well and truly shattered. No matter, Daniel stepped in to help his poor old man...

...for about 3 and a half minutes, before I remembered I am in fact me, and cannot stand gardening or physical movement at weekends. I honestly don't know what the appeal is with a garden. My parents say 'ooooh you'll appreciate a nice garden with a few plants when you're older and greyer'. Fair enough, but this doesn't sound very much like me. There's not even a water feature in my garden, and you could tell it was going to be a good episode of Ground Force when the designers threw in a waterfall or fish pond for good measure. Unfortunately, the Irish man nor the teenage oaf had come to install water features, instead, they'd come to dig up the grass and relay some better grass.

At that point I gave up caring. The amount of mess everywhere (quite how Titchmarsh et ál manage to clear up in the 7 days too, which makes me seriously doubt the integrity of this pledge that they actually manage to finish in 7 days) for a simple replacement of grass. Honestly, I could have cleared the garden a damn sight quicker with a bottle of Smirnoff and a box of matches. Oh and what's the bane of any Ground Force episode? Rain. And boy did it rain today. It did the lovely topsoil no good whatsoever.

From today then, I've learnt several important lessons. The first is never ever attempt gardening. Just send a tape with a sob story to Alan Titchmarsh and pray. I know Ground Force isn't on anymore but I don't think Dimmock and Walsh are turning down work at the moment. The second rule is don't accept deals on the backing of free alcohol. No amount of Italian liqueur is going to make up for a day of chronic back ache and ruined hands.

And the final rule, never think you can emulate a TV programme. It's all witchcraft. Now, let's have a go at making my car a bit chavvier...

Daydream Believer

2010-05-06T00:04:00.003+01:00

I'm sitting here in a quiet house. Parents have got to that stage where they're in bed earlier than most newborn children. Brother has college. It's just me, Macbook, and MTV Classic.

I really just feel like writing something. I don't know whether it's the sound of the keys pattering up and down that's therapeutic. I don't know whether it's because I'm not vein enough to say 'I love the sound of my own voice', therefore, I just transfer everything I feel I want to say onto this little blog.

MTV Classic. Schedule from 11pm to 1am on Wednesday night is Top 20 Monsters of Rock. I'm sitting here thinking, 'I wish I had a time machine'. Number 11 on the list is a live version of The Who's 'Wont Get Fooled Again'. It's not fair. I'd give up everything just to go back to the '70's to see them live. Hell, anyone want a kidney? Liver? Just take it all, as long as I can watch Daltrey and co. smash shit up.

And then Kurt appeared. I can't quite remember how I was before I'd heard 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'. Obviously I was half the human being who'd heard Nirvana. It makes me wonder what'd it would have been like to have been an angry teen living in the Seattle area at the beginning of the Nineties. I make no bones about it, grunge music from that era is my all-time favourite type of music, I just wished I could have been around to see bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins etc. in their prime.

I do honestly believe I was born in the wrong country at the wrong time. Watching Britain go through an awful state of music. We're relying on one-hit grimey rappers, a woman named after a Queen song who'd think a plant pot would make a good dress, half-cocked Indie bands and a random singer '+ David Guetta' to fill up our charts. I've given up all hope. If only I'd been an American teen on the West Coast in the nineties. Then I wouldn't have to write this incredibly boring blog post with just me wallowing in self pity. About music. Powerful thing this MTV...

Oh, I've written most of this listening to the Glee Soundtrack. The word hypocrite comes to mind.

You Heard It Here First

2010-04-28T08:33:00.006+01:00

It's that time of the year again, where miscreants come from all over Britain to stand in front of Simon Cowell and be told 'you're a talentless idiot, but we're going to let you humiliate yourself in the name of ratings and a nice sponsorship deal with Dominoes Pizza.'

Yes Britain's Got Talent is back on the box. Its ITV's way of making people feel just that little bit better about themselves, by throwing goblins and all sorts of other creatures on stage while Ant & Dec prance around backstage like hyperactive children after a bag of Tangfastics. It's such shite telly. It's as predictable and clichéd as a romcom and in the end, no ones a winner, because all their money goes towards Amanda Holden's new nose (I swear she's got so many they must be interchangeable).

But not so fast. And the end of this gloriously shallow and hate-filled tunnel, there is a light at the end. Granted, it's just light coming through some cracks in the ceiling of the tunnel, but it's light nevertheless. I hate the fact the winners of this damn show have been singer, dancer, dance troupe. Piers Morgan constantly witters on about finding 'variety', and yet all the good acts never make it. In the first series, my favourite act was this guy. When he petered out in the semi-finals, I was devastated.

I love how everyone always says 'it's always been my dream to perform at the Royal Variety, since I was a kid...' I don't know about you, but I'd never heard of this magical show till I was about 13. What 6 year old didn't want to be a Power Ranger, and instead, wanted to run around on stage in front of Queen Lizzy? Exactly, no one.

Now I'll be honest, I've hardly watched the damn programme this year. I know shock horror, send me to the gallows. But, I did have a little gander last Saturday, and I'm sorry, but if this act doesn't make it to the final, I'll have lost all faith in humanity.

Fatherhood & Pitchforks

2010-04-27T16:30:00.008+01:00

I returned home on Saturday afternoon hoping for a nice relaxing two weeks of the Lord's finest 'sweet f.a.' Not much to ask seeing as how I haven't really had a break since Christmas; I'm starting to think this 'work' lark is getting too much for my lil' head to deal with.

Now I know what you're thinking, the word 'hoping' clearly signifies that Daniel's two weeks will NOT be relaxing. And you'd be one hundred percent correct. I returned home to find my Dad had become the middle-class freedom fighter equivalent of Joanna Lumley.

Quite a lot gets my Dad riled. Being bought up in the East End of London for starters can't have inspired much faith in humanity. I've lost count how many times he's told me about how he used to be 'the angel child' while his younger sister skipped school and his younger brother held lifelong ambitions to be 'a dustman, because you don't start work till the afternoon'.

He also has the most pessimistic job in the world. A risk assessor for an insurance firm. To you and me, all he does all day is sit and think 'what could go wrong'. And when you work for an insurance company that deals in everything from the British Airways fleet to mineshafts in America, that's a lot stuff to 'go wrong'.

It's not so much a 'glass half empty' philosophy that my Dad holds, more like a glass shattered into a million pieces with the contents all over the coffee table.

So, you can imagine he wasn't best pleased when the council (Rochford Council in Essex for all you aliens) decided to submit plans to build about 100 cheap houses in the lovely green belt land opposite our house. Our house which my Dad has spent about a year decorating and getting it to his worryingly high standards after we bought it. And the one condition we bought the house on? That no development would ever take place on that land...

In some ways it's a kind of laughable series of events, but then again it's also quite worrying. These plans are the first steps in an absolutely massive property development scheme to take place over the next 10/15 years in Rochford and Ashingdon. The likelihood is much of the green space that my Dad loves (and hence why we bought a house here) is going to be filled with shite low-rent housing. Essentially, it'll be like having legal travellers.

So. What does this have to do with my 2 week break? Well, my Dad (after owning a councillor at a recent planning meeting) has been 'elected' by the residents on my road (possibly the most casual elections ever) to lead this campaign against the council. Brilliant, now I have Nelson Mandela for a father, leading some middle class 'rebels' against the council to keep them from building on areas where pheasants congregate.

This morning then, I've had to deliver lots of lovely leaflets through people's letterboxes (because people are so happy to see strangers knocking at their door asking for support at the moment) and it reminded me why I never wanted to be a paperboy. People can't buy normal letterboxes anymore, where it's one flap and you just whack the paper in and walk off. Nope, people seem to be buying the shark equivalent of letterboxes. I had more scratches and cuts on my hand than a reclusive teenager. And then the dogs. One letterbox was on the floor practically, so their sorry excuse for a dog (it was basically a fluffy rat) could have a go at postman. Honestly, buy a real pet and use the shitty little dog as a toy or a doorstop.

No pitchforks, no burning torches, no effigies on fire. Just some middle class residents expressing their anger through leaflets and expressing displeasure across the trellised fences. But my god I hope the campaign works. The last thing I need when I come home from Medway in Kent is to find more kids attired in stuff from JD Sports' bargain bin on my driveway...

Braindead Insert Witty Title Here

2010-04-16T21:29:00.003+01:00

Guess who's back with a brand new rap?

Well, not really new. But just back, after what can only be described as the busiest most hectic few weeks of my life. Uni work, uni work, uni work, work experience, social life. I've been busier than a man using Photoshop charged with making the new Tory campaign posters look pretty.

So yeah work experience. I've been at the Kent Messenger newspaper for a week now and it has absolutely flown by. Took me a few days to get the hang of things (picking up the phone for the first time saying 'Kent Messenger, good morning' was a terrifying and surreal experience) and it doesn't help I've been spoilt by Uni. Nice new computers, decent camera equipment, reasonable deadlines...I'm not going to complain ever again. For a newspaper that covers the whole of Kent, I was a little surprised to find only 4 reporters, 2 news editors and an editor. The amount of work these people is unreasonable to say the least. I've gone through more press releases than a shredder, trying to get 200 words into 20. It's been chaos.

But fun. Very good fun. Day one was spent at an old people's home, where the smell followed me all day. We were doing a voxpop on the election, finding out which political party had amassed the 'grey vote' as the sub editors politely put in the headline. I was at my happiest when a dotty old lady told me 'the first person to kick out all the immigrants, I'll vote for'. It was like looking at a more cenial, older and feminine version of myself.

Tuesday was rather boring. Found out about a 16-year old yoof from Maidstone who'd uploaded a video showing how to kick a football which had attracted 1,000's of views (the internet is FULL of any old shit that people will watch). I think it's the first time a story has appeared in a Kent newspaper about a 16-year old that hasn't mentioned the words: 'sambuca', 'fire', 'rape' or 'Walther PPK', so it's a nice little bit of publicity for all.

Spent Wednesday morning at a sleepy little village just outside Maidstone. Gordon Brown was there the week before, Liam Fox (Shadow Defence Secretary) was there Tuesday to announce to Tory manifesto, and then lil' ol' me showed up the day after. I'd hoped to strut around the pubs, saying 'Daniel May, Kent Messenger' and return to the office with a notebook full of quotes and stun the editors with an article (the word 'twat' comes to mind...). Unfortunately, nobody told me they were shooting a sequel to '28 Days Later' in Aylesford (the little village). Because that's what it was. Empty. As fuck. No matter, got some quotes. Then in the afternoon, Maidstone had a powercut. So I ran around the town centre finding out what had happened (the response 'the lights have gone out' made my day) and managed to get a story on the website. Things were going well.

Thursday was a little more subdued. I logged onto Facebook for the first time that week in the office. Just to check I hadn't missed anything. In the afternoon I went to a fashion show (I know, 'bout time my area of expertise was recognised). It was once again full of old girls (I swear they're following me) and most of the models were shop employees (i.e. more old women). But it was great fun. I got free flapjack so I wasn't complaining.

So yeah, there's a little chronological report into my week. Hopefully next week I'll get to go to a car crash or house fire or something. I won't leave the office until I've had to give an eyewitness testimony to the police.

Leader's debate yesterday. I shuffled my rear into the perfectly formed ass-groove on my chair and stuffed my face with chicken as the leaders had a good ol' fashioned scuffle. Clegg did very well, but then no one's really paid much attention to him before. It's like a novelty at the moment. He out-Cameroned Cameron, in the sense he was big, confident and very well spoken. Gordon Brown just looked a creature from the cantina scene in Star Wars. His attempts at jokes were dire, the man has about as much comic timing as roadkill.It'll be interesting to see how Clegg stands up in the debate over foreign policy, seeing as his credentials in this area are way behind those possessed by Cameron and Brown. For these two, last night was a warmup. Get through debate numero uno without any hiccups and get a feel for how it's going to go down. It'll be an interesting few weeks.

And finally, quick update on my Créme Egg count. I started with 138, I've had a bloody good munch on them. I'll count them later. Don't expect there to be more than 60 left.

I 'Aint Gonna Work On Maggie's Farm No More

2010-03-25T17:39:00.007Z

I spend an unholy amount of time on Facebook. In someways I feel ashamed, but then I look out onto the streets of Gillingham and think: 'apart from mugging old women, there's not much else to do out there'. So I 'like' another set of stupid photos and waste away my evenings achieving nothing but turning my eyes slowly more square.

I suppose the other thing I could be doing (work doesn't count) is playing video games. And sorry for stating the obvio

us, but my they've changed. Not just graphically o

r how many different plastic instruments you can flog to the masses, but how we play video games. In some ways, I bet everyone thought we could get away with simply making games prettier and prettier and all would be well. Clearly not. I'm going to head back to Facebook to explain why.

If you replied to the question 'What did you do at the weekend?' with 'Instead of going out I watered some carrots and sheered some sheep', people would have thought you were some backwards inbred recluse. Unfortunately, around 80 million people worldwide give this same response, and they don't even have to break out the chequered wellies to have this riveting weekend.

Yes, FarmVille. God knows how Zynga (the publisher and developer of the game) thought that by letting people having their own 16x16 grid where they could plant fruit and veg, it'd turn a massive proportion of web users into something equivalent to a violent heroin addict.

The thing is though, this unbelievably simple game has got a bigger audience than Twitter. And most of the players are not just casual, half-interested folk. The nature of the way FarmVille is played means that people keep going back to it like a prostitute will keep going back to Soho. I (ashamedly) use to play FarmVille, way back in June last year when it was a fairly new and novel idea. Unfortunately, if you wanted to progress anywhere in the game, you had to structure your life around it. Crops would harvest and die in realtime, and as a result, if you were out when your lovely new pumpkins had grown, the likelihood was by the time you sat back down at your computer, they would have wilted and died. Because of this 'harvest or die' style, it led to conversations where a friend would say 'we have to leave by *insert time here* otherwise my wheat'll die and then I would have wasted 4 days growing them'.

I don't really know why I'm bothering to explain the concept of FarmVille because by the sounds of it, anyone with an internet connection has harvested some virtual crops. The thing that's interesting though, that whilst games developers pour millions of Pounds into creating super complex and pretty games for the home consoles, a game that looks like it was created in a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth is the one that has pulled in the most players. It's not clever, it's simple gameplay and it's graphically very poor. Yet somehow, it has caused my sodding Facebook 'news feed' to become full of FarmVille updates, and I'm not impressed.

It has also meant that I receive a ludicrous amount of gifts to accept on Facebook. I keep getting offered a free chicken for the farm I don't even have by some girl. I think it would be nicer if the girl got off Facebook, got a real chicken and cooked it, then offered to me. I'd be much happier then.

Do You Want Fries With That Qualification?

2010-03-11T22:09:00.004Z

Ladies and gentlemen. Tonight is a night to celebrate. Tonight, we honour the commitment and hard work that your sons and daughters have put in over the past two weeks. We've had nothing but praise for them, and I like them all to come up to the stage one by one to collect their awards. Without further or do, I'd like to present all of these wonderful boys and girls, their Level 2 BTEC in working at McDonalds.

In my head, this is roughly how I'd think an award ceremony would go at a particularly shit school where kids are awarded for not setting the teacher alight every term. Well, now these miscreants have the chance to leave with maybe the odd-qualification, as ol' Ronald McDonald has stepped into the British education system armed with a hamburger and a shit-load of easy qualifications.

You see, in exchange for working for 10 days at a McDonalds restaraunt, teenagers can now get a level 2 BTEC qualification in 'Work Skills'. Essentially, it's the equivalent of a B or C at GCSE, or what I used to call 'hard work'.

According to Edexcel (the exam board who run the qualification), the experience will help to build 'team working skills' and improve teenagers communication. N0w I don't know another generation who can chat quite as much as ours. The last thing a teenager who spends all day on their phone, Facebook and MSN is to be taught how to communicate at work. And what team working skills can you possibly hope to achieve from working behind the counter at McDonalds? The only thing I can possibly think of is which nationality of employee is on fries duty and which is on adding human fluids to the burgers.

I am not at all impressed by this. I worked bloody hard for my GCSEs and for exam boards to be handing them out like fucking Happy Meal toys is taking the piss. What happened to a bit of social elitism i.e. the people that work the hardest get the rewards. Lets face it, the kids who are going to be taking this qualification are going to be the ones flipping burgers anyway, so essentially these 2 weeks are just practice. I'm waiting for the day when AQA start giving out A-Levels to people who busk...

Oscar Predictions

2010-03-07T00:20:00.003Z

Everyone does them, so why not lil' ol' me? It'll be interesting to see how many of the big categories I get right.

Best Picture- The Hurt Locker

Best Director- James Cameron (Avatar)

Best Actor- Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)

Best Actress- Carey Mulligan (An Education)

Best Supporting Actor- Christoph Waltz (Inglorious Basterds)

Best Supporting Actress- Mo'Nique (Precious)

Best Original Screenplay- The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal)

Best Adapted Screenplay- Up in the Air (Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner)

Best Animated Feature- Up

I think The Hurt Locker will come away with the most awards, but for what Cameron has achieved with Avatar, I think he deserves to get the Best Director award and the Academy might recognise that. I'd love for Inglorious Basterds to win big, and if I were deciding with my heart I'd have said Tarantino should get the Director and Original Screenplay award. Unfortunately, I'm going with my head so we shall see...

How Do You Review A Film That's Not A Film?

2010-03-06T23:26:00.005Z

Warning: If you haven't seen Funny Games yet, this review contains spoilers.

Put a CD in a CD player and you expect sound. Put an orange in a blender and you expect juice. Put an Israeli in Palestine and you expect death. Put a movie on, and you expect to feel something.

Or so that's what I thought. Little things that you just expect to happen often leave you wide open to get a big smack of surprise in the face. So when I finished watching the remake of Michael Haneke's Funny Games, you can imagine the emptiness inside when I genuinely didn't know how to react.

At it's most basic, Funny Games is a thriller. A family made up of Tim Roth, Naomi Watts and their young son go to their vacation home on a quiet lake, only to find themselves hostage in their own home to Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet. The two men initiate a series of sadistic games including making the family members choose who dies first. Throughout the film Pitt's character Paul constantly breaks the 'fourth wall', communicating with the audience and teasing them how their expectations of the film will not match up to the events that occur.

Roth and Watts struggle somewhat with very little material. When trying to portray the same emotions for 110 minutes, their performances become very stale. Pitt and Corbet's performances are very difficult to comment upon. Draped in white like their saintly names suggest, these two drive the film. Whilst they are by far the most entertaining assets in the movie, everytime they are on screen the film becomes excruciating and agonising to watch. Thanks to their on screen actions of torture and sadism, the virtually soulless and emotionless portrayals of these characters induces the audience to hate everything about them, including their performances.

Funny Games is also a lesson as much it is entertainment. Haneke proves a point with the material, commenting on the Western world's love of violence as Peter (Corbet) and Paul nonchalantly dispatch of the family. Indeed, the films most entertaining moments are when Peter and Paul are on screen, toying with the family and making bets with them that they'll all be dead by a specific time. In the last act when Peter and Paul leave (in Paul's words to make the film more dramatic to give George (Roth) and Ann (Watts) a chance to escape), Haneke slows everything down dramatically, with hugely extended camera shots and long periods of little dialogue. During this time, I craved the return of the two antagonists just to inject a bit of entertainment back into the film.

And here lies my point. Haneke has made Funny Games in such a way to manipulate the viewer that you can't really pass judgement on it. It's difficult to have any kind of opinion of a film which channels your judgement into a narrow corridor. In Haneke's own words, 'if you don't walk out halfway through the film, then there's something wrong with you'. The thing is, if you don't walk out, your left with a very strange feeling inside of emptiness. Not whether it's good or bad. Not whether you feel utterly shocked at the splattering of a young child's insides over the walls of the house. Not whether you feel confused when Peter grabs the TV remote and rewinds the film to alter his actions. Just a hollow sensation as though you just missed out 2 hours of your life.

Watch Funny Games. Experience a completely different way of watching a film. But just don't to expect to be able to answer the question 'was it any good'? Because I've been sitting here for over an hour trying to answer the same question, and as you can tell by the complete lack of direction in this review, I'm still stumped.

Talk To My Agent

2010-03-04T17:58:00.003Z

Me and Mark Thomspon

As far as mad weeks go, this has been up there quite high. If I was in a relationship with Jordan it would have been less eventful and hectic. Writing speeches, cancelling speeches, new shirt, new tie, press releases left right and centre...I don't like being the centre of this almighty spotlight.

Last night was the Bob Friend Memorial Lecture, where I was formally presented with the Scholarship that I won a few weeks back. It was an incredibly glitzy and overwhelming event, not least because the guest lecturer was Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, who gave his first public speech since the decision was made to cut both 6Music and the Asian Network as the BBC attempts to cut it's 'bloated' service.

Firstly, Thompson. I think he provided a really interesting lecture, constantly defending the Fourth Estate theory to the hills and how the journalist should always serve the people. He seemed much more chilled and relaxed than anytime before this week, presumably because he didn't have Jeremy Paxman snarling in front of him. It was also nice for him to congratulate me several times, so hopefully if I want a job at the BBC I can just prompt his memory by saying 'the baby-faced guy who won that award that you gave me'. And as far as slip ups go, Thompson saying, AND I QUOTE '...the BBC has links with al-Qaed- I mean al-Jazeera' was pretty damn special.

But enough about Mr. MT. This is my blog so I'm going to talk about yours truly. I can see know why celebrities are all so bitter and lonely. I'm not for a moment suggesting I'm up there with Brad & Ange or Tom Cruise and the like, but being dragged around by a press officer and being told who to talk to and pose for certain photos was certainly an eye-opening experience. Obviously it was 'my night' (not being a twat for a second here) so it was nice to be the centre of attention. But it's difficult. You just want to go and celebrate with your friends, and posing for photos does get a bit annoying, especially when you're not used to smiling that much...

Of course I had a fantastic evening. I'm not going to lie, but having my picture plastered everywhere gives you this warm little feeling inside (no I did not piss myself or anything else...) To be that recognised is pretty amazing and the fact you can 'Google' yourself feels awesome. But this fame-lark, I'm gonna have a Susan Boyle-style breakdown if I'm not careful.

Swedish Scandal

2010-02-28T20:27:00.003Z

If Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA walked onto Dragon's Den today, Peter Jones would shoot him. His idea shouldn't work, not in the logical real world. "So we're going to have stores the size of small continents on the outskirts of major cities across the world. There is a one way system in place and anyone not following the stream will receive the evils from our employees. And we will fill our stores with so many items, people will spend all day travelling through the store just to find the plastic cups they wanted". Evan Davies would die.

Well, somehow this Swedish concoction, which is even more barmy than Sweden's only other decent export, the Koenigsegg (a mad hypercar which nearly killed The Stig on Top Gear) is one of the world's leading furniture brands. As I was getting lost in the stupid one way system, I wondered 'how'?

Last year they had a turnover of €22.7billion and employ around 120,000 people across the globe. It's a business on a massive scale.

But why and how does it work? I honestly have no idea. My auntie and uncle from Yorkshire swear by it. But they are from the North, and apart from Morrisons and Gregs it is the only other shop they trust.

So I thought ok, Northerners love it. But what about the goods it sells? Surely they must have something to with IKEA's success? Well I suppose they did virtually invent the entire idea of flatpack furniture. The fact you virtually buy an entire bedroom and have it so well packed you can carry it home on the back of your pushbike is quite a feat. But then it's too well packed. Honestly assembling some of the stuff would be like trying to assemble the International Space Station. In boxing gloves. In an asteroid field. It's such a perilous operation because it has to be so unbelievably perfect. And they always leave a damn nail or screw missing. The most important one too. And when that happens, you have to disassemble your beautiful new coffee table and try and get it back into the packaging so you can go back to IKEA, walk round the damn one-way system to get to customer services to exchange it. How your average Tobias or Benni back in Stockholm manages to get it into the cardboard box in the first place amazes me beyond belief.

And then everything's named! I couldn't believe it. No wonder they hire so many damn people, it's because they just all sit in a room coming up with Swedish-sounding gibberish. It's unbelievable how they've got the cheek to name everything from tape measures to plastic cups. And by the time I'd reached the end, it was obvious they'd exhausted the Swedish dictionary, because they'd given items people's names! I'm not kidding, there was a DVD cabinet called 'Billy'. And if you wanted the same DVD cabinet but with glass? Well of course, it's called 'Billy Myhom' or something like that (my Swedish is a bit rusty I apologise). Then there was a chair called 'Herman' and a desk called 'Markus'. I was at the point of breaking down in hysterics in the middle of the 'MarketPlace'.

So I left. Armed with a shit load of free pencils and tape measures that people can steal from the pencil and tape measure dispenser, I escaped. Not before being offered Swedish meatballs as the last insult to my intelligence. The words 'no deal' came to mind before Noel Edmunds put the phone down to the Swedish meatball-shaped Banker.

But I was still none the wiser. How can a store which virtually keeps you prisoner for several hours succeed? How can a store which hides the one item you're looking for in an obscure corner succeed? How can a store which has SHORTCUTS like fecking Mario Kart possibly be taken seriously. Well it clearly does, because after getting lost in 'bedrooms' and 'kitchen', I finally found the photo frames my parents needed, only to find that the tills were gridlocked. Honestly they couldn't have been more tightly packed if our friend Tobias from Stockholm had put them in an IKEA branded box himself...

Therapist Required

2010-02-21T17:26:00.004Z

Paparazzi. 3. Fight For This Love. Fireflies. She Wolf. If We Ever Meet Again.

No this is not a code. The more bright-eyed readers may have gathered that these are song titles. But they're a bit too 'pop' to appear on MY blog surely?

That's exactly what I thought. For a self-proclaimed 'rock dude', I was mortified to find myself, out of choice, hunting down these songs on Spotify and playing them instead of my usual audible treats. I'm starting to think I might have hit my head over the last week. There's no other explanation for this sudden turn towards homosexuality.

I hate pop music. It feels like a toy that was made in China. Cheap. Manufactured. Lots of different variations that all sound the same. Take this years BRIT Awards. Best male went to Dizzee Rascal, a man who can only make a hit when he performs with someone else. But to be honest, when he was up against has-beens like Robbie Williams and chipmunks like MIKA, it's no surprise the BRIT judges chose the lesser of all evils. And why was the audience of GMTV allowed to make the decision on the best BRIT performance of the last 30 years? These are the people who are offered prizes like holidays in exchange for identifying David Beckham's first name. It would have been more sensible to let the KKK host the MOBO Awards...

So yeah, if you're a therapist and you're reading this, can you please prescribe something to stop me listening to this nonsense before, god forbid, this stuff makes it's way onto my iTunes. It'd be a dark day in my music history if I were to have my music on Shuffle only to hear the whinings of Lady Gaga after a Metallica song. Lord have mercy.

Oh and a quick note on the BAFTAs tonight. I'm fully expecting 'An Education' to do rather well. We don't like to admit it, but we are generally quite biased towards our own films at these things.

How DARE You Try And Fight Crime.

2010-02-16T14:35:00.002Z

I'll be honest, when I was 6 I wanted to be a policeman (or police officer according to the rules and regulations - thank you Hot Fuzz). I don't know why, maybe it was the fact my granddad was in the Fuzz for countless years before he died. Or maybe it was the fact I could carry around various weapons like bats and pepper spray (American kids who want to be cops have so much more to look forward to) or maybe it was the fact you got to run around town fighting crime with an Alsatian. Who knows?

But if I'd have known you could have piloted an unmanned drone with a remote control to fight the crims of England, I would have bailed on primary school painting lessons and headed straight down to the police station to start work there and then.

Well now the kids of today who dream of being a police officer have this to look forward to. Because the Merseyside Police now have the opportunity to fly around small drones with thermal imaging and cameras and all sorts of other things which would make Q go all cross eyed and cross legged. And to be honest, all it needs is some machine guns and the invisibility trick from Bond's Aston Martin Vanquish from Die Another Day and it's my own little crime-fighting wet dream. Admittedly, you do have to be a police officer in Liverpool to operate the thing, which lets be honest, doesn't have quite the same 'pazzazz' as Crockett & Tubbs or Starsky & Hutch. But still, this little drone thing sounds awesome. It can fly up to 400ft and reach speeds of 30mph, perfect for keeping up with a Ford Escort full of Scousers. Officers say they used the thermal imaging to find a criminal hiding in some undergrowth without wasting valuable man hours or sniffer dogs. How amazing is that? Although if a man from Liverpool is in some undergrowth it usually means he's doing his grocery shopping...

Ok. All well and good. So why is the title of this post what it is? Well, the evil minions who run this country have put a stop to all this good work. Yes that's right, another blog post that talks about how this country's gone to dogs, surprise surprise.

I just want to move. Honest.

The Civil Aviation Authority has decided that this £40,000 bit of tech needs a license. They also need the CAA's permission to fly within a certain distance of buildings and people. And finally, Merseyside Police have invited the CAA to see how they use the drone. It all sounds as though the CAA are surprised that this drone actually fights crime. Surely these wazzocks have seen James Bond to realise that the man in the tux is totally useless and it's the fancy tech stuff that ALWAYS beats the bad guys. And what with the crims of today getting quite tech savvy and everything (maybe not from Liverpool), the Fuzz are gonna need more than a truncheon and the nose of a Spaniel to fight them. And denying them the use of a £40,000 because it needs some bureaucratic piece of paper to say it works (when the damn things been in service since November) is a waste of time.

As long as the remote doesn't end up in the hands of some Scouse kid, then life is good. Mind you, he'd probably have more of an idea than the brain-dead oafs at the CAA.

If this Blog wanted to sue me....

2010-02-14T20:49:00.001Z

....for gross negligence then it would have a right to. Especially seeing how it's been criminally underfed for about a month. But no matter! Because Daddy's home and I'm going to striaghten things out.

It's been a pretty busy month I'll be honest. Back in my little shoebox at Uni, the workload has been steady but not brutal, we found ourselves a house for next year (albeit above a kebab shop), and I won a scholarship. Yes, young Daniel went and won himself 4 weeks paid work experience at Sky News in the summer. Plus first year tuition fees paid for. Plus travel and hotel expenses. As far as prizes go, it's obviously not as good as the Daewoo estate you can win on Wheel of Fortune, but I'm not exactly moaning about winning it. I was in a state of trance for about 10 minutes after they'd told me I'd won, and then after an afternoon of drinking it still hadn't settled in that I'd won. It was a mad day. And now I get my own little award ceremony where Mark Thompson, the Director General of the BBC will be in attendance. I'm making sure I stay well clear of the alcohol beverages that evening before I tell him 'I fookin laave youuu'...

So yeah I think I'm going to leave it at that to be honest. This post is going to act as a little stopgap just to assure you all I am actually alive, but after a weekend vegetating, my mind is a big green mush and it's unlikely anything decent is going to come from it. That's all folks!

Come on Pig, didn't the hedgehog teach you ANYTHING?

2010-01-15T17:07:00.003Z

Let's be honest. Animals and road safety don't really mix. It seems very hypocritical for a hedgehog to tell kids about crossing the road safely when they're often the first piece of roadkill you see on a morning commute. Foxes aren't exactly the cleverest either. Sure they may be a bit shrewd when it comes to looting from the bins, but the bastards can't cross a road without causing at least 3 cars to swerve out of their way just so we don't end up with Basil Brush's cousin flattened on the grass verge.

But now it seems that pigs have ignored the most basic rules of road safety. Well, when I say pigs, I actually only mean one pig. One very troublesome little pig.

Toddlers call her...Peppa Pig.

Yes that's right, that little poorly animated, poorly drawn cartoon pig that appears on Nickelodeon Jr. and Channel Five has been in breach of safety laws. You see, in several scenes of the TV show, Peppa Pig gets into a car and fails to do her seatbelt up. Now, whilst this unbelievably serious crime (which should be punished by death by firing squad) has been enforced for many decades, the producers of this show have....

...I'm not even going to bother with this sarcastic approach anymore. Honestly. The makers of the show are now reanimating previous episodes to show a seatbelt because ONE parent complained when her toddler refused to wear a seatbelt because the TV Pig wouldn't.

ONE.

When are these TV shows/production companies going to grow a backbone and tell these people to be better parents? They're not. Instead they're grovelling to these (well actually "this") parent(s) saying things like 'If we could turn back the clock we would' and 'we were very naive when we started making Peppa'. Ok, so you have to be quite sensitive when making TV shows for toddlers I admit. If Peppa had a gun, fair enough. If Peppa was explaining how she got turned into sausages and bacon, again fair enough there are probably Jewish kids watching. But no, she was sitting in some poorly animated box car thing, and the animators forgot to draw a line across the character to emphasise she was wearing a seatbelt. I've had enough of over-sensitive muppets having OFCOM on speed-dial and ruining television for everyone else. I guarantee the episode where Peppa gets flung through the windscreen after a 20 car pile up will have the highest ratings for the show, ever.

No seriously this has to stop. We're going to end up with emotionless TV pretty soon. And when that happens, these fuckwits will have something to complain about.

A Political Post About Animals.

2010-01-08T17:05:00.003Z

The African Savannah. A vast stretch of land that is home to some of the world's most beautiful creatures. The image at the beginning of The Lion King whereby the huge orange sun rises over incredibly flat land is an image that's always conjured up in my mind when I think of one of Earth's most beautiful landscapes.

Now think of the creatures that call this land home. Imagine a group of fast moving buffalo and a herd of slow, lumbering elephants migrating to a new watering hole. The buffalo have a clear leader to take them towards their goal, a fresh face in a world usually only reserved for the oldest and experienced. Whilst some of the buffalo's decisions have been called into question recently and he may have struggled to make firm commitments on particular issues, he had the support of the rest of his herd (to an extent on particular issues but nevertheless, his leadership credentials were never threatened), and as a result, the buffalo move on at a quick pace towards the watering hole.

Now the elephants. Their leader, a bumbling old elephant who's every move and decision seem to implode around him, forcing the rest of the elephants to question whether he's the right one to lead them towards the watering hole. When the watering hole is in sight and when it's more important than ever to have unity amongst the herd, senior elephants attempt a sneaky coup in order to unseat the head elephant. Whilst they may claim to have been trying to establish the right leader, it is totally obvious to everyone around they're not happy with being led by this particular elephant. Other senior elephants take their time to commit, but eventually defend their leader as they seem to be catching up to the buffalo, and despite the two scheming elephants admitting their coup has failed, the damage on the elephant herd is far-reaching. Instead of concentrating their efforts on reaching the water hole, they're fussing over a problem that isn't going to change and their internal disagreements look set to plague the herd all the way to the water hole. All it's doing is allowing the buffalos to get a bigger lead.

If by now you're thinking I've gone all Doctor Doolittle and a turned a bit bonkers, that was one big analogy in describing the current 'shituation' the Labour Party is in at the moment. While Cameron stuttered and stumbled through Monday when talking about married couples, instead of seizing the opportunity to fight back, Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt thought they could bring up that now centuries (well it certainly feels like it) old debate as to whether Gordon Brown could actually lead the Labour Party to election victory. Their proposed secret ballot was about to close to stabbing Brown in the back as possible, and their "amateurish" plot failed. Miserably.

Miserably for everyone except the Tories. Their 'uncatchable' lead in the Polls has been eaten away at over the last few weeks, and with Cameron's lack of commitment to tax breaks for married couples, it's not hard to see why. But now Brown's back in the firing line for the wrong reasons and the continued flogging of the dead horse about his leadership credentials looks set to haunt him for the next 5 or 6 months. Nice knowing you Gordon, or should I say, leader of the elephants.

Talking 'Bout My Generation

2010-01-06T14:40:00.003Z

All you have to do is sit on a bus at 11am on any weekday of your choice. This is the socially acceptable time for the elderly to escape from their houses and venture to the shops in search of a new headscarf or even a few vegetables. Sitting at the back of the bus, you only have to take your headphones out of your ears and listen to what these miscreants are saying about the 'yoof' today. "They're rude", "they don't know anything", "they sit on their computers all day". A chorus of approval will often follow these remarks and the number 7 bus to Southend turns more preachy than Antony Gormley's plinth in London.

So I sit at the back of the bus in disbelief. As a generation, are we really that disrespected? Yes these old folk may have won the war. But give us a totalitarian dictator for our generation and we'll use our strategy skills that we've learned from years on Football Manager to decimate them in minutes.

(attempts to get back on track)

O.K so with this experience fresh at the back of my mind, I did what any teenager does and spent countless and pointless hours on Facebook. To my horror, the wrinklies are right. Our generation is full of total and utter bimbos. I know Facebook Groups are pretty flimsy evidence as to judge the intellect of the 'yoof' today, but I was amazed at a) the naivety of some people and b) how out of touch the 'yoof' is.

For example, a group entitled 'No school days on Friday, need 5 million students to join' had me shaking my head. An American child thought that Facebook was now the place to overthrow Government legislation (I suppose after dethroning dictators like Simon Cowell people thought anything was possible) and was convincing children everywhere to join. Just join the group. Nothing else, click a button and watch the protest get a head of steam. On the 'Info' tab of the group, it states 'Facebook contacted us and stated we really do have a chance'. Oh hallelujah! Now that invaluable political tool Facebook is on board, we really do have a chance of. . . . what total and utter horse shit. I'm sorry I thought we were better than that. I thought with everything a teenager has at their disposal we could make better decisions and be slightly more rational. Not this. Not for one moment can a child seriously think a House of Commons debate will begin with: 'Mr Speaker, I have been scouring Facebook (that might get some MP's in trouble for different reasons) and children want Friday's off school. If we don't act now, they could set up another Facebook group to appeal. It could get out of hand quickly..." Yeah you get the idea, ludicrous (as one of my more mentally challenged Uni friends would say).

I'm sorry this has descended into a rant. I will actually start blogging proper news stuff soon. But while I'm at home with nothing better to do than sit on Facebook all day and watch our generation commit social suicide, I'm going to get angry about it.

Heartshaped Blog

2010-01-04T12:00:00.004Z

Last few weeks I've been pretty shit. I never realised how therapeutic music could be, and as well as listening to Radiohead to make myself feel even worse (bad choice), I was listening out for any lyrics that related to moi and my shituation (an epic combination of shit and situation, I'll think I'll trademark that thank you very much).

I found this awesome little song by a band called Eagles of Death Metal. No they have absolutely nothing to do with the genre of death metal, in fact the song in question, Wannabe in LA, is a very melodic rock song. The chorus however struck a chord.

I came to LA to be rock and roll

Along the way I had to sell my soul

I made some good friends that made me say

I really wannabe in LA

Now I imagine you're reading that wondering what the HELL is the point of reading on. To me, this is personal, and I don't normally do sentimental and personal posts, but you know, New Year, new ideas.

To me, the lyrics of the chorus represent what has happened to me over the last few weeks. Wanting something so badly ('wannabe in LA') that it changed completely who and what I was ('had to sell my soul'). I did indeed make 'some really good friends', well not really 'make', more like enhance already good friendships. And yet despite everything, I still really 'wannabe in LA'.

There we go, a musically themed blog about nothing really. Just a rambling insight into the mind of Daniel.

Oh and if you're a Nirvana fan, I would at least expect a chuckle from the title of this blog post. It works on so many levels.

2009 in Film

2010-01-02T13:46:00.006Z

So the final year of the first decade of the new millennium has passed us by, and whilst many industries have been crippled by the economic downturn, the movie industry has been the beacon of light for many people wanting a couple hours of escapism from financial woe. How do you sum up such a varied and wonderful year of cinema? With a cliched and standard chronological report of course...

January bought with it the usual buzz of Award season, as Slumdog Millionaire threw its weight around by cleaning out the Golden Globes. The Dark Knight was re-released in order to stand it in the best stead possible for the upcoming Oscars, not that anyone doubted Heath Ledger's credibility in winning Best Supporting Actor. January also gave us My Bloody Valentine in 3-D and whilst the film itself was just an excuse to throw axes at the audience with very little substance, it did usher in a year where anything and everything was done with little plastic glasses.

The BAFTAs and the Oscars took over February, with Slumdog taking Hollywood by storm. Danny Boyle's heartwarming tale of love and poverty clearly won the hearts of the Academy as it scooped 8 Oscars. 2009 was also the year for Kate Winslet as she finally won her Oscar for The Reader and Wall.E rightfully took the Best Animated Film to take Pixar's Oscar tally to 21.

The first big blockbuster movie of 2009 came in March. The 'unfilmable' Watchmen was released to mixed reviews. The box-office return was fairly low which could have been down to it's bum-numbing running time of nearly 3 hours. For me, it was one of the highlights of the year. Director Zack Snyder gave it the visual panache to go with the excellently crafted characters and along with the Dark Knight, is one the finest comic-book movies to have been released.

April came and went with little fuss. Many of Hollywood's big studios held back their films till May in order to take advantage of the 'summer blockbuster' season. Nevertheless, the reunion of the original Fast & Furious cast didn't harm its box-office figures, with the fourth film in the franchise raking in over $350million worldwide. Indeed its first weekend take was more than that of Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift's entire box-office run.

Things began to get serious in May. Whilst Watchmen was clever, thought provoking and full of great performances, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a horrible mess. There's only so much your lead actor can do and whilst Hugh Jackman's performance was impressive, the film fell in the same trap as the third X-Men film: it tried to introduce too many characters without telling the audience anything about them. May also saw the return of Star Trek with J.J Abrams injecting a new lease of life into another seemingly dead franchise (Mission Impossible 3 was head and shoulders over MI2). Unfortunately, Ron Howard couldn't rescue Dan Brown's books with Angels and Demons. Whilst it was better than The Da Vinci Code (mind you, so is herpes), the film still changed too many of the better things about the book, and the character of Robert Langdon is still providing problems for the usually consistent Tom Hanks.

The first weekend in June produced one of the surprise hits of the year. The Hangover was well written, consistently funny and served up several excellent performances from its relatively unknown cast. As a result, it went on to make nearly half a billion Dollars worldwide, despite its relatively modest budget. A film that didn't have a modest budget was Transformers Revenge of the Fallen. On all levels it was a rubbish film. Naff plot, naff acting, too long. Yet for some reason, it was the most fun I had at the cinema all year. Despite it's universal slating from critics, Optimus and co. managed to earn $800million, meaning Michael Bay will surely get another chance to blow up the kitchen sink in an inevitable sequel.

The two biggest films of the year, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Harry Potter 6 came out in July and to be honest, they were both hopeless. Don't get me wrong, I love animated films, but Ice Age was pretty flat. The story was nothing special and the voice acting was questionable. However it was a commendable effort when compared to Potter 6. The Half-Blood Prince film tore up one of the best books in the series and doused it with a load of hormones, forgetting entirely that there's a dark wizard out there who wants to kill everyone. Did the film care? No. It wanted you to focus entirely on Ron Weasley and the most annoying female character (Lavender Brown) since Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin. No matter, Bruno provided serious laughs and gross-outs in July. It made Borat look like it was meant for CBeebies.

Fully into the swing of summer, audiences were reunited with Mr. Tarantino in August as Inglorious Basterds turned the WW2 genre on its head. Sublime performances from the entire cast and a script as sharp as the knife used to carve Swastikas on Nazi prisoners in the film resulted in Basterds being one of the standout films of the year. Peter Jackson wove his magic on a relatively unknown film and turned it into an excellent motion picture. District 9's unique spin on the alien genre was a breath of fresh air and earned almost unanimous praise. On the other hand, The Final Destination was an insult to audience's intelligences worldwide. Whilst the first two films were a original and fun slasher films, the latest instalment was a petty excuse to throw severed limbs at the bemused audience (think My Bloody Valentine but worse. My Bloody Easter perhaps).

As summer came and went, so did many of the triple-A titles for 2009. The theatrical trailer for Avatar was released, giving many internet nerds and CGI-nuts a collective hard-on. Megan Fox was having a similar effect in Jennifer's Body, although writer Diablo Cody couldn't turn her brilliantly sharp and pop-culture writing style which worked so beautifully in Juno to this car-crash of a film. The last weekend of September saw the release of Paranormal Activity. Steven Spielberg thought the pilot DVD was haunted, and many Americans had to leave the cinema early because it was so scary. I ruined my trousers when I watched it, but to be fair, it was 1am and I was alone in my room with the lights out. My fault I suppose.

Ricky Gervais' Hollywood luck ran out with The Invention of Lying as the limp-wristed effort from the British funny-man didn't have quite the same effect as Ghost Town did a year earlier. The release of Toy Story 1 and 2 in 3-D only proved how brilliant these films are, putting today's efforts such as Planet 51 to shame. And then Michael Jackson's swan-song This Is It was released at the end of October for '2 weeks only' (as we were warned time and time again). I haven't seen it, but everyone who has says it's amazing. I think they were all brainwashed by the inevitable Jackson-bashing that went on in the film.

November saw Robert Zemeckis try his motion-capture performance technique again with A Christmas Carol. Whilst it was stunning to look at, the film had about as much emotional depth as Paris Hilton. And that's pretty bad when you're making a film which has one of the strongest emotional messages in novels and films alike. The same conclusion could have been made about 2012, although I was never really expecting much depth to come from a Roland Emmerich film. This is the guy who made the President of the U.S.A fly a fighter plane against aliens in Independence Day. And then the entire female population of the world mysteriously all turned single the night before the new Twilight film was released. Honestly, if there was as much female nudity in a film as there was male nudity in New Moon, I'd have to go to a special shop to purchase it. No matter, it got universally panned, but made a killing in the process. Just shows how shallow women really are (I'm expecting a hell of a backlash).

There was only one film worth worrying about in December. 15 years and $300million later, the world finally got to see James Cameron's Avatar. And boy was I not disappointed. Other films which have generated as much hype as this (Cloverfield, Snakes on a Plane) have been some what of a disappointment. However, Avatar was just a total assault on the senses. My eyes were blown clean out of their sockets by the groundbreaking effects. My heartstrings were tugged upon by the (albeit tried and tested) story and I came out of the cinema thinking I had seen a proper movie. And far too often lately have I walked out of a cinema feeling short-changed. Mr Cameron, it's nice to have you back.

So 2010? My picks? Iron Man 2 has to be worth a look. Anything with Robert Downey Jr. at the moment is gold dust. It will be interesting to see how the mad mind of Tim Burton fits with the madder world of Alice in Wonderland; I'm thinking quite well. Now I don't normally get excited by Rom-coms, but the ensemble cast of Valentine's Day (seriously it's one of the best casts I've ever seen, check it out) alone may be worth an admission ticket. But to be honest, if Toy Story 3 is not the best film of 2010 then I'll be either hugely disappointed by it, or astounded at the quality of another film to beat it. Either way, it could be a great year for films.