Vito

Pitch Black is awesome and The Chronicles Of Riddick really only suffered from a lack of imagination.

I saw Inglourious Basterds at the cinema the other day, it was the first showing at eleven in the morning and I was one of ten people watching, just the way I like it. If you haven't seen it yet then the first thing you should know it that it's long, I got into the cinema at quarter to eleven and left as soon as the credits started rolling at ten to two in the afternoon, a lot of people around me seemed to get restless by the end and in all honest I was starting to feel a little uncomfortable in my seat too. Secondly, about 75% of the movie is subtitled in French and German, so if you're an illiterate cunt like the girl two rows in front of me who constantly had to ask her boyfriend to tell her what was happening because the subtitles that everyone else in the room had no problems reading were "too fast" for her I strongly suggest you avoid this so that people like me don't spend most of the movie praying for your sudden death.

If you can sit still and you can read at an adult level then you'll probably enjoy Inglourious Basterds, there are a lot of great set pieces, gags and dialog but because of the reasons I listed above the quality of your viewing experience rests entirely on on the heads of those who decide to watch the film at the same time as you. I strongly recommend an early screening when it'll be empty, watch this on a friday or saturday evening at your peril!

No voting required.

I'm about a third of the way through William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch. It's not an easy book to explain because there doesn't appear to be any narrative or any kind of plot that I can comprehend, it's essentially a series of gruesome, disgusting and disturbing events observed by the author as he journeys through a world similar to our own except everybody is completely insane. Imagine Requiem For A Dream, Saw and the "ships log" sequence from Event Horizon and you're pretty much there. This is probably the most offensive and vile piece of literature ever published and yet I'm completely hooked on it.

There's a new Lonely Island song,

Today my cousin lent me a copied DVD of a Channel 4 show which aired back in 2000 called Disinformation. It's basically a counter-culture program featuring the usual nutjobs claiming to have traveled through time or were supposedly brainwashed by government agencies and forced to do strange experiments along with interesting features on art, pornography, cults and conspiracies. A lot of the really off the wall stories were somewhat unconvincing and everyone involved in the Satanic Cult segment came off looking like total imbeciles but there's a really fascinating interview with Genesis P-Orridge (of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV fame) where he talks about his highly controversial performance art pieces, the 1970's Industrial music scene and how he was referred to in Parliament as a "wrecker of civilisation".

The real gem was on disc two which was a collection of footage from DisinfoCon 2000 which featured an inspiring forty-odd minute lecture from Scottish comic book writer and artist Grant Morrison. I wasn't familiar with Morrison or his work before this but his lecture was a real spectacle, I love it when someone I've never even heard of stands up on a stage in front of a crowd of people and talks about the kind of shit I've had floating around in my brain tank for ages. You can watch the whole lot on YouTube (part one here), he talks about Aliens and stuff in part one but don't be put off.

I think Robin Williams is great, but today I had the misfortune of watching Robin Williams: Live On Broadway which was essentially two hours of Williams rambling about current affairs (in 2002) in various 'funny' voices accents. Naturally the predominantly American audience pissed themselves laughing throughout while I just sat there with a blank look on my face wondering where the jokes were. I finally snapped after an hour and a bit and switched it off to do something else.

Dud.

Terminator Salvation puts the numb in numskull.

Or not.

I can't comment on the comparisons (Not seen much Firefly, just Serenity, havent got round to BSG yet and not a fan of Star Wars) but to me they have just injected fresh energy in a group that we remember as being old and bloated.

Well for starters the humour, specifically the one-liners, in Star Trek were very similar to the kind of humour you'd seen in an average episode of Firefly. BSG used a lot of external shots filed in almost total silence (vacuum, no sound) to emphasise damage sustained to the ships during battles and suchlike. The scene right at the beginning where the crew member gets sucked out of the hull breach and into space, that's the kind of thing you might see in BSG. Star Wars, well, that's pretty much the sword fight, the two predators on that arctic outpost and Scotty's little friend.

Oh.. and the line in the blacked out spoiler - great delivery and although this Scotty was a bit different I thought Pegg did a nice job in the role. Some Scots have been iffy about his accent but it still sounds more genuine than mine.

Scotty undoubtedly got a lot of the best lines, but the "Cupcake" parts were just excellent.

Did anyone else think that this newly revamped Star Trek was clearly comprised of the better aspects of Firefly, Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars and injected into the Star Trek Universe?

 

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In terms of the Firefly aspect, I was very slightly disappointed; the one thing Trek never had was cool martial arts sequences, and I was hoping that Sulu's fight scene would provide that. Still, I loved the Futurama reference about his martial arts training, and I also loved the fact that they've given him a wakizashi. The only thing missing from John Cho's performance is the classic George Takei voice, but we can't have everything.

 

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I'm not sure what went wrong here but I couldn't read what you wrote in the spoiler tags until I quoted it and it appeared in the message window. Odd.

 

Anyway.

 

SPOILER - Highlight the black box to read

I was a little confused when Sulu revealed that he'd taken the advanced hand to hand combat training only to later admit that he'd trained in fencing, which isn't hand to hand combat at all. Still, how ridiculous did his forward flip look during the swordfight scene? I actually laughed at that because it looked so out of place. In fact that entire scene is exactly why I mentioned Star Wars, if those swords had been glowing it could have been a scene from any of the Star Wars films.

 

A lot of the comedy reminded me of Firefly. Spock's "get out of the chair" line was priceless as was Simon Pegg's entire performance, I'm sure a lot of people will bitch about Pegg but I thought he was fantastic.

 

The link that Evolution posted actually addressed all of the complaints I had about the film in a way that I was unable to articulate, as I said previously I did really enjoy the film and would urge everyone to see it but as a longtime fan of the franchise some of the errors stood out like sore thumbs. Fortunately the action and the comedy were so good that I can overlook even the most heinous of mistakes.

Did anyone else think that this newly revamped Star Trek was clearly comprised of the better aspects of Firefly, Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars and injected into the Star Trek Universe?

At least when Kirk and pals traveled back in time in Star Trek IV they technobabbled their way through the time travel process...

 

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in this one they just had lolblackholesurprise. This was, I might add, the same black hole that threatened to tear the Enterprise apart at the end of this film. I don't have a problem with time travel in science fiction and I didn't mind the concept being used again in Star Trek '09, but the way they went about it in this movie just felt really lazy.

 

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The previous black holes were created using just a drop of the red matter whereas the one at the end involved the ship ramming into the Romulan ship while carrying all of the remaining supply so you could argue that the black hole at the end is more fierce that the one at the start of the movie that sends Nero/Spock back in time. Also Nero and Spock were caught in the event horizon rather than the hole itself.

 

Clutching at straws is fun.

 

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Strictly speaking you have drawn conclusions that I too had considered but it's irritating forcing the fans to cover plotholes because the writers apparently couldn't be bothered to do it themselves. Putting the time travel aside for a moment I wish they'd also elaborated on that little "supernova that threatened the entire galaxy" thing too. Also, where was the Federation fleet and Earth's defenses when Earth was being drilled? It took approximately three minutes to get from Earth to Vulcan yet for some reason nobody was anywhere near Earth to help when it was under attack? Isn't your home base where most intelligent strategists keep their strongest defenses?

 

Mind you, the Enterprise rising from the rings of Saturn was very fucking cool.

 

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At least when Kirk and pals traveled back in time in Star Trek IV they technobabbled their way through the time travel process...

Just got back from seeing Star Trek and while the plot was kinda iffy it's a faithful reboot of a franchise which has had its fair share of mismanagement over the years. It's a great, yet slightly flawed, film in the same sort of way the The Dark Knight was and as such I'll definitely be going to see it again.

Meet The Spy

The much anticipated Spy introduction from Valve's Team Fortress 2.

Here's the rest of the collection:

I don't really like the first one, it wasn't as funny as the second.

 

The Arctic Ice part is simply brilliant.

 

Sorry, your a few weeks too late, see the top of the previous page.

In that case, take

The Arctic Ice part is simply brilliant.

It's great to see

SPOILER - Highlight the black box to read

finally getting some decent matches.

Why/How have so many people here met Karl Kennedy?

He's in a band.

I brought the Bruce Campbell collection yesterday so seeing as woke up a little earlier than usual this afternoon I thought I'd watch My Name Is Bruce. I didn't know what to expect from this as the last Campbell film I saw was Army Of Darkness and the only Campbell films I've seen are from the Evil Dead Trilogy (box set fucking where?!?) but luckily this was an entertaining flick with some great one liners, the overall plot was rubbish but seeing as it was a parody anyway it's alright. Next on the agenda was Bubba Ho-Tep which despite having an absolutely outrageous plot and cast of characters came across as a genuinely thought-provoking film, if the agenda here was to raise awareness about the unforgivable way we as a society treat our elderly then it's a very effective one, it's a shame this film couldn't have had a happier ending but perhaps sad endings force the audience to consider the message more deeply.

He does! The one in the middle looks like Jay Sherman from The Critic.

Haha, uncanny.

I believe he did.

I just finished watching episode one of the HDNet show and I can't help but feel disappointed.

The Good: There were a lot of little things I liked about the show, the camera work in particular was very good (aside from the colossal chair blunder during the Black/Aries match) as they seemed to use a lot of unorthodox shots and camera positions that you rarely ever see on wrestling shows these days. The entrance and ringside area despite being relatively basic looked professional and gave the impression that this is a promotion which forgoes the flashy bullshit and just lets the wrestling do the talking. I also liked that the backstage interviewer had a tattoo sleeve on at least one of his arms, I've certainly never seen that before.

All of those little things made me feel as though this was going to be a very different type of show and that the promotion had invested a lot of time and thought into making the show which really stands out.

The Bad: Aside from Titus everyone (regardless of size, shape or style) had exactly the same Metalcore entrance music, themes are supposed to be about establishing character but what's the point if everyone sounds the same? The pre-match introductions were an okay tool for introducing newcomers to the audience but most of them were cringeworthy, I'd only seen three of the guys on the card before and was familiar with one or two others by name but I firmly believe that people who can't talk should never be forced to. The matches themselves were really nothing special, I wasn't bored by anything but at the same time I wasn't entertained either, everything came across as being very sterile and I never once got the impression that anyone was really trying hard to win the match, it was also obvious that the crowd wasn't particularly absorbed in the action either as they rarely came alive for anything.

I've read a lot about the problems backstage in ROH but I can't really find much wrong here which can be attributed to 'bad booking', I was led to believe that Black and Jacobs were bitter enemies who wanted to kill each other yet their match barely reflected that at all, unless the pair were explicitly told to play it safe I can't understand why their encounter was so devoid of passion. I can't for the life of me figure out exactly who this shows audience is supposed to be, I don't think that an existing fan would be impressed by this at all and a newcomer, based on this first episode, would probably dismiss it as 'boring'.

The Wrestler

Is this the movie that everyone believed Rourke was entitled to an Oscar for? Seriously? Aside from the disturbingly polite Necro Butcher I thought that this movie was an absolute disaster and I came away thinking that Rouke's 'real life' was more unrealistic than his part-time existance as a wrestler. By the time the movie ended I knew as little about 'The Ram' as when the movie started.

I don't know how Randy went from selling out Madison Square Garden to living in a trailer, did he blow all of his money on peroxide, tanning booths and sixty dollar lapdances?

I don't know why Randy was such a failure as a parent, was he on the road and afraid of asking for time off for fear of losing his spot, or was he just a selfish prick who got what he deserved?

I don't know why Randy would agree to work a deathmatch in CZW when he clearly had absolutely no idea what he was getting himself involved in.

I don't know any of these things because apparently the guy who wrote this travesty didn't believe that things like humanisation of characters and establishing a believable backstory are important traits for a movie. Are we supposed to pity Randy? Are we supposed to sympathise with him? Or are we supposed to laugh at him for being a clueless relic of a bygone age? As a viewer I felt nothing but apathy for the characters because I was never given a reason to care about anyone in it, you were quite literally given nothing to base an opinion on. I'll admit that the wrestling segments were pretty decent but I believe that a lot of wrestling fans have been duped into believing that this is a good movie merely because it doesn't make a total mockery of wrestling. It did a very good job of exposing the seedy underbelly of Pro-Wrestling that people don't like to talk about but it infuriated me by not explaining to the audience why these people smash themselves to pieces every night in front of a crowd. The entire deathmatch sequence served no purpose (just like the extended strip club routines) than to add a bit of blood and guts to the movie, it didn't establish any kind of context so to a lot of people it would have come across as completely unbelievable and unrealistic.

I've heard the The Wrestler described as being "to Pro-Wrestling what Rocky was to Boxing". Pure nonsense. Even if you take the Boxing segments out of Rocky you're still left with a tale about a guy who wanted to succeed or die trying, we follow him through the highs and lows and most importantly we're given real reasons to root for him and will him to succeed - I can't say the same about The Wrestler because we're never given any reason to believe in Randy or even care about him. I was disappointed with this movie because, like Pro-Wrestling in general nowadays, it promised so much yet delivered so little, it could have opened the sport up to a new generation by finally explaining why these people do it, what it means to them and the inevitable sacrifices that come from it.