Playlist

Fast Fuse - Kasabian




Flowers On The Wall - The Statler Brothers




How's It Gonna End - Tom Waits

Game Reviews

Sonic Heroes

Blah. A tornado-twirling blue hedgehog running around acid-trip landscapes? Thanks, but no thanks.

If you like this you might also like: Cbeebies and repeat viewings of Yo Gabba Gabba.

Fatal Frame/Project Zero

Plot: A ghostbusting camera-exorcist Japanese chick tries to find her brother in a spirit-laden haunted house.

Overall Opinion: As soon as the controllers started vibrating spasmadically and the hot and bothered spooks started molesting the screen, I got the chronic heebie-jeebies.

Book Reviews

I've decided to stir the intellectual pot and bash out some dim-witted book reviews. Don't expect anything remotely insightful though...I'm a test-tube minded science student.

Crime and Punishment - Dostoevysky

I have to say, I had sub-terrain low expectations for this one. I was expecting a page-wasting eye-dulling mind-numbing bore-fest of a book.

But 'twas a pretty enjoyable 'woman-hacking nihilist' bedtime read.

The Shining - Stephen King

I'm on the fence on matters Stephen King related. Ever since I popped my first King novel cherry, I've always held the opinion that his teeth-wrenchingly mediocre writing ability doesn't fill squat of his idea-spurting shoes. And his anti-bardism is full blown in 'The Shining'. It's. Just. So. Plain.

Favourite Russian Films: White Sun Of The Desert

As soon as the bombshell topic that is Soviet cinema drops onto the laps of westerners, most have a knee-jerk reaction of cringing their faces, upturning their noses and blurting out that films dishing out thickly-clad, pro-Stalinist red propaganda is not their priority viewing.

So, to remedy your staunch-anti-soviet act, I've decided to unleash a series of articles upon your unbewildering arses to prove that Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Eisenstein are not the only slices of Russian cinema worth chewing on.

White Sun Of The Desert

A cult Borscht Western that chucks the prototype reluctant gunslinging hero onto the coast of the Caspian Sea and opens the history books on the Russian Civil War pages.

Plot:

Suchov, the demobbed red army soldier is trudging his way home when he earns himself the duty of protecting a harem of wives from Black Abdullah and his band of turbaned horse-trodders. He gets himself into a pickle of a situation and is cornered into a showdown lead-guzzling action shoot out with the bandits.
The fastest gun in the East if you will.



Why I love it: It's a low budget cult flick that checks every box....It churns out action scenes that aren't overly stylised a la Hollywood, it has an engrossing hats-off-to-history plot, it doesn't bow down to sappy endings and its goddarn mother-effin' funny. And it's ritually watched by cosmonauts before every space launched. Case closed.

Game Review

Metal Slug 3

A mind warping side-strolling game that blows your grey matter to smitherens.

It involves huge phallic water creatures, spewing zombies and genuinenly traumatising rotating alien abominations (see below).

The dime arcade graphics may put some of you off, but oity-toity developed graphics wouldn't gel well with the shear brain-scratching anarchy unleashed on screen.

Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas

Would it be too emotionally traumatising to declare that after an initial shoot-em-up rampage involving tanks, rocket launches, flame throwers, ladies of the night and industrial strength explosions, I spent most of the time clocking in cab fares to the sweet tunes of mother lovin' southern state rock.

Overall opinion: Addicting as crack cocaine.

Why I stopped playing: Developed a vague outline of a social life. And more importantly, I used the gimp suit cheat.
It turns out there's only so much of a man strolling around in a gimp suit, semi automatic in hand, you can take.

The Crapness of Judd Apatow

On the matter of the king-of-crude, Judd Apatow, I've always felt like a staunch, upper-lipped, bible-bashing, hell-and-brimstone-preaching puritan.

Whilst all the critics and audiences seem to be swooning over backwards for the nerd herd's outing in la-la-land, I'm the lone wolf clenching my teeth through their run-of-the-mill genetalia and five-dollar-hooker-filth shows that seem to be churned out every other week.

Whilst I'm not demanding a victorian-level repression, ankle-length-skirts and crimson cheeked damsels to shoot one out for comedy - I sure would set the bucks rolling if I wasn't harpooned from every direction by the formualic celluloid of geeks trying to get laid and drowning in ethanol.

General Reviews

The Great Silence ****

If you missed it thinly written between the lines, I have a mild school-girl obsession with the Spaghetti Western genre. And having been weaned on the Sergio Leone poncho-and-cigarillo flicks from a young age, I was slightly hesitant about watching this snow-dome critic's-little-darling.
But my doubts flew south for the winter when the disc started spinning. Bleak as the British weather, with a chill-down-your-spine Morricone track and an ending that raises a few eyebrows, it's a big thumbs up from me.


Where Eagles Dare ****

A thinking man's action war film that doesn't aim to punch the harrowing, realistic, tear-jerking 'war-is-hell' ticket. With busty bar-wenches and blondes, Clint Eastwood snarling alongside Richard Burton, ze germans, a head-scratching plot laid on thick at the end, explosions and some age-old cable car jumping and thumping...this may damn well be one of the best darn war action films I've laid my eyes on.

Also on the running is Robert Enrico's cesar-winning 'Le Vieux Fusil' where Philip Noiret unleashes his inner Rambo to avenge for his family's death. Although it's slightly heavy-handed on the flashbacks, it does churn out some horrifyingly-disturbing scenes that makes the film slightly more than a bish-bosh gun wielding action film.

General Reviews

Django ***

Cult western celluoid pulp that worked on a shallow-pocket-budget and that spawned off so many sequels that even the most hardcore hollywood remake enthusiast would blush.

Plot: Django frumps his way through the mud with his death box. Rescues whipped-like-an-ice-cream Maria. Maria stuck between a rock and a hard place. The rock being the crimson faced fascists and the hard place being the Mexicans. Django and Maria arrive in a deserted town drenched in the brown stuff (er, mud). Django and the boa-and-feather clad 'ladies working in the horizontal position' make conversation. Insert painful english dubbing. Django gets trigger happy. Mexicans. Gold. Whore-mud-fight. Ear chopping. Steep body count. Shoot out. Theme tune blaring out.

Verdict: Entertaining as they come but trampled on by the cheese-curdling accent. Pay special attention to his uttering of 'I'm glad I made you feel like a real woman - very glad'. It makes Franco Nero sound like the neighbourhood pervert.


Barbie and the The Musketeers *

The pinkalicious 'plastic one' dropped her oopsy-dipsy, wandering princess act and decided to toot on the 'girl power' horn instead. There's a subtle heads up to Alexande Dumas but nothing to brandish this as educational viewing.

Barbie rocks out with a sword...her fellow budding-musketeers play around with ribbon and fans. They solve the world's least complex ploy to kill the dazed-and-confused metrosexual prince who's preoccupied with circular, inflatable things (ahem, hot air balloons that is). One of the ass-wooping musketeers shrieks with excitement at sequins and dress-making. They twirl and sigh to teenage bubblegum-pop. Your soul dies.

The moral of the story: if you're plastic, have polymer knockers on your chest and a 'Made in China' label imprinted on your ass - you'll make it.

Music Album Reviews

Jacques Brel – Olympia 1964 ****

There's nothing quite as gut-wrenchingly emotional as a sweat-drenched, so-poetic-it-hurts Belgian knocking one back, song wise.



Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA ****
Moving swiftly on from flailing Belgians to patriotic american sleeze stadium rock. The Boss draped his jeans-baring tootsie-pop behind onto the cover and unleashed this anthem-fuelled corker of an album.


Green Day - Dookie **
Pop-punk, fringe-and-eyeliner outcasts crying into their electric guitars. Blah.

Remake Vs Original

The Taking of Pelham 123

2009

• John Travolta rocking out the European gigogo face fuzz, middle aged anti-crooner leather and a newt amount of thespian ability. He can be summarised as the nose-flaring, chip-on-his-shoulder flake who plays out like a cross between a low grade neighbourhood thug and a nightclub residing pimp.
• Merry-go-round camera action from the MTV-esque director Tony Scott. It was like watching google 360 in tune to conversations scripted by a writer who probably cites urban dictionary as his sole literary reference.
• Filled to the brim with pointless backstories. Denzel Washington tries to itch the oscar bid by dishing out the 'hard-working-chump-just-trying-to-send-his-tiny-tots-to-college' act with orchestrated 'cue audience emotion' music playing in the background. Denzel's wife gets dairy cravings. And local guns-and leather hood John regurgitates some 'ass model and sledge dog dung story' to break the silence. For real.
• A watered down ending that just slams the 'pointless remake' onto its chest.

1974

This subway action caper is the big cheese of the genre. With a scrip busting at its seams with wise cracks and wispy humour, a lack of computer-dolloped special effects, Robert Shaw playing the subtemperature cold criminal, rainbow gang names later borrowed by a certain Quentin Tarantino and an anti-hollywood ending, this blows the lumpy frumpy remake out of the water.
So what if the subway passengers seem to be a dishing of stereotypes?