Archive for the 'Television' Category

The Trouble With Terminators

Right. We’ve had The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machine, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and now Terminator: Salvation. So, what have we learnt about Terminators from all these films?

Well, they’re practically indestructible aren’t they? Well, except in Terminator: Salvation where it seems like they could be taken out with a pea shooter.

The entirely inconsistent nature of damage sustained by Terminators is – ironically – the only consistent thread between all the movies and the TV series! (more…)

Hirrarious!

The new Big Brother is shaping up to be quite good actually.

I know I might rail against television a lot of the time, but I do like Big Brother, it’s a study in human relations. The only thing I have a problem with is the fact that the producers do seem to be a little bit Machiavellian when it comes to picking the mentally ill.

My favourite to win probably has to be Dennis, although Mario and Lisa seem like a very nice couple and probably deserve to win.

The rest of them are a mixed bunch. Alexandra strikes me as a queen bitch, with a chip on her shoulder the size of a small family saloon, her default attitude is opposition which when combined with her natural aggression becomes a volatile combo.

Stephanie may only be nineteen, but she really has to learn to stop pouting quite so much. The world doesn’t revolve around you love.

God I need to stop watching this sort of thing, it’s rotting my brain!

George Lucas: Super Whore!

After my recent dismay at Jackie Chan advertising for Woolworths it has come to my attention that they have a new sponsor. It’s safe to say that Woolworths have now well and truly jumped the advertising shark.

As if Jackie Chan wasn’t inappropriate enough they’re now using Darth Vader to hawk toasters. Darth Vader. The Darth Vader, the one from Star Wars.

The most evil man in the universe can now be seen on television preparing beans on toast. Watch and cringe.

Has George Lucas not got enough money already? Does he really need to let the only decent thing he ever created be seen on television toasting bread with a lightsaber? Does his description of Darth Vader’s path through life fit with selling toasters?

This first trilogy is really about the father, the struggles of a father, or a man, basically, to find himself, and at the same time fall into a trap of wanting certain powers, making a pact with the devil and basically spending the rest of his life regretting it.

No. No it does not.

Simon Smith Is A God. All Hail Simon!

Simon Smith of The Apprentice fame has been the subject of the worst hatchet job in the history of the series, after just four weeks, the only candidate I would even consider holding a conversation with, has been fired.

It stinks. He’d better not go back to installing Sky TV, that’s all I can say.

The guy has clearly got the correct attitude, he’s a doer, perhaps a little too direct at times perhaps even bullish but for Christ’s sake the people he was working along side were fucking morons. Petty, juvenile fuckwads, Sir Alan knew it and his advisors knew it but yet he still got fired. Bloody shame.

Then again I guess that’s the problem with shows like this, they’re not really intended to allow Sir Alan Sugar to find a new apprentice, they’re designed to provide ghoulish entertainment.

You have to be thick but egotistical to win The Apprentice. It’s that simple.

Oh yes, it also helps if you’re a true mangler of metaphors. Let’s here it for such gems as ‘I’ve had to breast feed you all along’, ‘throw your dummy out of the pram’, ‘stand up to the plate’ and the best yet ‘a missile that’s about to go into outer space and spontaneously combust‘. Fucking idiots.

What Do You Most Associate With Woolworths?

Well I know for me that whenever I think of Woolworths the two things that immediately spring to mind are Pic ‘N’ Mix and Hong Kong action movies.

That’s why it was so nice to finally see an advert for Woolworths that features Hong Kong legend Jackie Chan. I’ve often thought that Woolworths ought to exploit its obvious links to the Hong Kong martial arts scene.

Actually if you think I’m jesting in some way, why not watch it!

How fucked up is that? What were they thinking?

Who Does Steve Wilkos Think He Is?

Well that’s easy! He thinks he’s Vic Mackey let’s take a look at them shall we? On the left we have TV tough man Vic Mackey and on the right TV tough man Steve Wilkos. Oh, hang on, did I get that right?

Steve Wilkos & Vic Mackey

Vic Mackey (left) and Steve Wilkos (right) yesterday.

Maybe I didn’t but you’d have to be fucking psychic to tell them apart, let’s look at some quotes from them shall we.

Excuse me while I get a Kleenex for the rest of this sob story.

And this beauty.

Shut up!

Well actually they’ve both probably said those things at some point but if I’m honest the first is Vic Mackey and the second is Steve Wilkos. Hell, does it even matter though?

The fact is Vic Mackey is a fictitious character played by an award winning actor, Steve Wilkos is a real person, an ex-marine, ex-cop but nonetheless a real human being who isn’t reading from a script.

After years spent mute as a security guard on the Jerry Springer Show, in 2007 young Steve managed to wangle himself a show of his own. On this show he lets loose with all the things he wanted to say during his years of enforced silence and good lord does he!

Admittedly he’s dealing with some pretty scummy people but come on, his take on it all is to shout and throw chairs! I can’t imagine that this is a modern way of dealing with wife beaters and paedophiles (his ‘guest’ of choice) surely there are better ways to do it? Perhaps get evidence and have them arrested?

Then again people quietly going to jail doesn’t make for explosive television. A massive hulk of a man throwing a chair across a stage while shouting down some inadequate in front of an audience does.

At least Vic Mackey has the grace to go after men that could quite easily have him killed.

Coronation Street, The Filth And The Fury!

So, there I was watching Corrie (don’t ask why, it’s not pretty) when all of a sudden I heard an expletive!

No shit, a straight up, honest to goodness swear word. What’s more it was the number two rude swear word. That’s right it was ‘fuck’!

It happened at the end of a scene with Carla Connor and Sean Tully. Amy Winehouse was playing in the background, the song was Tears Dry On Their Own and you could quite clearly hear the following two lines albeit with a lot of reverb:

I should just be my own best friend
Not fuck myself in the head with stupid men

Holy shit!

What’s more this isn’t the first time they’ve craftily snuck in a choice phrase or two. Before now I’ve heard ‘clown’s pocket‘ and ‘half rice, half chips‘ used with straight faces, and they’re both pretty colourful euphemisms as any Viz reader will know!

The script writers on that show are a right crafty bunch of dodge pots! Keep your eyes open, they can’t be trusted.

Lily Allen And Friends

I wonder why Lily Allen is famous? As I see it it’s one of two things, it’s either her ability to convey the every day struggle of London twenty-somethings through the medium of song or, and I’m going out on a limb here, her dad.

Whatever it was it’s managed to ger her a TV show on BBC Three and what a show it is. If you like stilted interview technique you should check it out, if you don’t I’ll fill you in on the myriad reasons to avoid it.

For a starter somebody needs to tell the audience that whooping like Klan members at a lynching is not cool, especially since a pair of cats fucking gets outrageous amounts of laughter and clapping, yet Cuba Gooding Jr proclaiming Ridley Scott as an amazing director is received with stony silence.

The format itself is appalling, it’s all over the shop, everything feels shoehorned in. Internet clips, bands, celebrity interviews, embarrassing audience revelations all wrapped up in badly edited video. Of course the inclusion of audience participation by means of voting on the (now ubiquitous) show’s website just makes the whole affair feel even more low rent.

As an individual she’s absolutely loathful, she doesn’t appear able to keep her fucking mouth shut. Recent outbursts include:

  • Discussing her love of anal sex on The Great Big Quiz of the year.
  • Criticising Radiohead for their marketing of In Rainbows, claiming that it will make it more difficult for bands to break into the industry.
  • Saying that if her single Smile got to number one she’d celebrate with ‘gak’.

On the plus side she made us aware of the fact that she could put her fist in her mouth. Astounding. It’s also worth noting that it’s made by Princess Productions, hmmm, wonder who’s company that is?

Brian Sewell Is Amazing

Actually I think the whole Brian Sewell thing is genius. He’s just ripped apart pretentious conceptual art student bint Amy by asking her to explain conceptual art. Needless to say she floundered.

I’m confused.

Brian Sewell Is A Whore

Fuck me Brian Sewell is a celebrity hijacker on Big Brother.

I give up.

Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack

I don’t really like watching Big Brother these days, it’s a great premise ruined by the production companies’ insistence on filling the house full of fame hungry idiots and the mentally ill. I’m sure if they put well balanced, ordinary run of the mill people in there it would be entertaining, as it is it just feels dirty.

Of course the annual ‘celebrity’ edition has had to be changed this year lest they put Eugene Terreblanche, Nick Griffin and the reanimated corpse of Adolf Hitler in the house with Miss J from America’s Next Top Model.

So their amazing new ‘twist’ on the tired old formula is that they put ordinary (see the first paragraph) members of the public in and let the ‘celebrities’ run it. ‘Mazin!

Anyway, whilst flicking up the channels tonight I happened upon E4 and have been mesmerised for the past fifteen minutes by the sight of this twat, hitting vegetables with an aluminium pole. Look at him.

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Just watching him standing there giggling and wheezing like some weird, asthmatic, ginger child makes me want to puke. As if it could be much worse, it is he’s actually Chairman of the Scottish Youth Parliament. What?! Really?! Yes! This is his ‘biog’ from Channel 4′s website.

John is the Chairman of the Scottish Youth Parliament and was the first teenager ever to be appointed to this position. Although he is only 20, he manages a team of staff, most of whom are in their 30s and 40s. John hopes to run for office next year and is studying for a Politics and Sociology degree. John says one of his main aims in life is to tackle child poverty in the UK. John says he’d like to see a revival and attitude change towards red-haired people in the world and he would also like to show the world that being intelligent and politically active doesn’t mean you have to be boring or geeky.

He manages a team of staff! The overweight, peching, knob who’s just spent the best part of fifteen minutes hitting things with a stick has staff? How!

Of course as it says he’s not just satisfied with tackling child poverty (though how exactly hitting food with a pole brings that about I’m not certain, but let’s just assume he has a plan), he wants a change in the public attitude towards red-haired people too? John if you’re reading I’ll let you into a secret, I don’t have a problem with red-haired people, I do however have a problem with overweight dickwads who rate hitting a tomato with a stick, worthy of ten points.

Here’s a tip, perhaps it’s not your red hair that people have a problem with, maybe, just maybe, it’s your personality?

Breaking news! He’s just made up a new rule! If you don’t make every shot you get squirted with chocolate sauce! What a prick.

More news! John gets a rash if he gets in the hot tub, although he can sit beside it. So to be clear, he gets a rash if he gets in the hot tub, so that’s why he doesn’t get in. It’s definitely not his tits, ok? Not his tits.

Doctor Who: Voyage Of The Damned

Who told Russell T Davies he could write? Voyage Of The Damned is the worst piece of science fiction I have ever seen.

It is uniformly appalling. One of the reasons for this is that it’s trying too hard to do too many things, as a result any messages it may being trying to convey about prejudice or culture, or whatever, come out as heavy handed and obvious.

Davies needs to understand that exposition is not cool, too often in this (and in Doctor Who in general) characters come out with huge slugs of expositional dialogue. There never seems to be any attempt at subtlety, any attempt to just let the audience work out what’s going on for themselves.

It would appear he’d rather just dump massive bits of plot left, right and centre. It’s as if he’s shouting ‘Hey audience! Pay attention! I’m showing you a plot device, it’ll explain something that’s coming up in a bit.‘. As a result you know that nothing is revealed in Voyage Of The Damned without it becoming an incredibly useful part of the plot shortly after.

I’ll be writing more about this later. Trust me…

BBC One Is Wank

Yawn, fucking yawn. Why do the BBC bother? BBC One has become a never ending stream of gardeners, period drama, dancing shows, cooks and unfunny comedians.

£11.29 a month in licence fees and this is all I get? Imagine if SKY demand that by law everyone in the country had to subscribe or face a criminal fucking record. Outrageous and outdated.

Have you seen Last Of The Summer Wine? Expletives fail me in my attempt to vilify this program, this so called comedy, aimed squarely at the middle class, Laura Ashley wearing, lazy minded inbred arses who’s TV only has BBC One, BBC Two and OFF , with their piano playing children and their four by four Jeeps used exclusively for driving said precious sad eyed children back and forth from school.

Only pausing occasionally to mount the pavement with their hazard warning lights flashing so they can get some more money from the cash point in order to fund their next sojourn to Sainsbury’s, to buy whatever shite it was Jamie Olivier was cooking on the TV the night previously, so they can claim to their overblown arrogant fuck wit friends that Jamies recipe’s are divine, as if that buy proclaiming the fat tongued wanker ‘King of Cookery’ they somehow know him and spend weekends in Italy with him stuffing their stupid faces with buffalo fucking mozzarella and olives

In actual fact they lead exceptionally under fulfilled lives with nothing but chintzy furniture, the occasional sweet sherry and the prospect of early retirement stopping them from killing themselves and their family in an orgy of knives, blood and piercing screams. Where the only lull would occur in order to give them time to grin manically as they carve up their children, repeating the phrase ‘Daddy loves you’ over and over again before collapsing into a blood soaked pile of dismemberd family members, sobbing and all the time wishing they’d done more with their lives than spend Sunday evenings watching turgid shite like this.

Fawlty Towers was good though.

The Mighty Boosh Is Back!

Fucking A! The Mighty Boosh is set to return to your telly screens next week! After I said it was unlikely to be back for a third series and all that. Tchoh!

For the hard of understanding let’s make this clear, The Mighty Boosh is back on Thursday 15th of November at 22:30 on BBC Three.

This is very exciting news, let me tell thee. Huzzah to the BBC!

Has The World Gone Mad?

Coronation Street is far and away the best of the soaps. I know that’s like saying Hitler was the nicest supremacist but stick with it, ok?

I’m now forced in to watching it five times a week so have decided to let it invade my mind with its ridiculously contrived storylines about murder, teacher/pupil relationships and car crashes with prostitutes locked in boots.

In this time I have become intimately aware of the numerous storylines. The one that intrigues me the most is the one involving the twisted mind of David Platt. Remember, the guy I think is a total cunt? Cool.

Well, up until Wednesday I was under the impression that everyone else in the Corrieverse was of the same opinion. However, on Wednesday at the same time that Sarah and Jason were getting married David drove his Fiesta into the canal. To cut an unnecessarily long story short the police gate crashed the wedding and all of Sarah’s family left fearing David had died.

Of course being a cunt David had merely done this to get back at Sarah. A gamble I’m sure you’ll agree but nevertheless that was the reason he did it and it worked. I’ll get to my point shall I?

It now would appear absolutely everybody is feeling sorry for David! Are you all fucking blind? He’s a shit, through and through. A shit without one single redeeming quality. If I was Sarah I would sit in the house playing with my tits all day have dragged him down to the canal and held him under until he stopped breathing.

David Platt

I can’t believe I’m actually getting myself embroiled in something this fucking trivial but, well, and it pains me to say this. But, well here goes…

David Platt from Coronation Street is a complete cunt.

I know he’s not real and that he’s just doing the acting, but even so he’s a fantastic little actor if he can make me hate him. Blimey.

I Blame Jayne Middlemiss

Was watching Orange Playlist the other night, Jake Shears from Scissor Sisters was on and it was great! That is if you can bear to watch a hugely talented individual being interviewed by a thick geordie.

While I was watching Mr Shears (not his real name one suspects) mentioned his love for David Bowie, this lead to a quick montage of Bowie moments, one of which bore the following subtitle.

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Compass? Interesting concept, what happened there then? Was he concentrating on traveling North and ended up walking into something? Perhaps the magnetic field of the compass caused some kind of mutation? Or could it be that they’re just really fucking stupid and actually meant pair of compasses?

While we’re at it the phrase ‘enhanced by an unfortunate school accident’ makes no sense, for three reasons. Firstly it should read ‘unfortunate accident at school’ and secondly how can something be unfortunately enhanced, an enhancement suggests good fortune to me.

Finally the whole wonky eye business has been the basis of his look for his entire career, so it wasn’t that unfortunate anyway was it?

Former ‘glamour model’ Middlemiss clearly had a hand in this.

Davina McCall

Davina McCall is shit. It really is that simple.

I used to love her when she did MTV with that Spanish bloke. Now though she’s just a complete arse. Not only that but sadly she thinks the world’s most amusing woman. She’s not though is she? The last amazing thing she did was a Garnier Nutrisse Creme advert. A quote from which follows.

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‘Mother!’

Fucking comedy gold that.
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Big Fucking Brother

Christ. Another year, another three months of attention hungry, vapid fuckwits parading their neurosis live on telly for the nation. Ace!

As much as I pretend that I can’t stand it, yet again here I am watching it. Bollocks.

In an amazing twist (not really, but I’ve got a quota to fulfill) it’s all women that have opened the show and what a bunch they are.
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Filthy Rich And Homeless

Caught this on BBC Three the other night and it’s a fairly interesting concept. You take five relatively well to do people, strip them of everything they own and chuck them onto the streets of London. Boy did they choose some stunners.

The five volunteers are Clementine, Darren, Thomas, Charles and Ravi. All of them are worth a bob or two and have agreed to take part in the show to get a feel for what life is like on the other side of the coin. Very brave if you ask me, I don’t know if I could do it. Then again after watching the show I’m not sure they can.

The two people over seeing this experiment are Craig a homeless worker whose pretty sound and Rebecca, who’s sound too, and American and hard as nails. They’re proper boring though, so join me now for a journey through time and space in to the world of the filthy rich and homeless!
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House Vs. Doogie Howser

How cool would it be to get Neil Patrick Harris (aka Doogie Howser, more recently Barnie in How I Met Your Mother) into House as a consulting doctor, or whatever?

It’d be really cool wouldn’t it? Come on it’d be ace!

I can envision the storyline now, House gets off with the big drug storyline they’ve got going on in season three, and Cuddy decides they need some more specialist doctors in the hospital so gets in Dr Howser!

I think it would be awesome. Vote!

The Comedy Nightmare That Is BBC One

Yawn, fucking yawn. Why do the BBC bother. Gardeners, cooks and unfunny comedians. Ten pound a month in licence fee, imagine if Sky demand that, by law, everyone in the country had to subscribe or face a criminal fucking record. Outrageous and outdated.

Did you see First of the Summer Wine, expletives fail me in my raging attempt to vilify this program, so called comedy aimed squarely at the middle class, Laura Ashley wearing, lazy minded inbred arses who’s TV only has BBC1, 2 and OFF buttons, with their piano playing children and their four by four Jeeps.
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Battlestar Galactica

Forget Dirk Benedict poncing around in a beige anorak, this is the bollocks.

Filmed almost entirely straight this starts from a bit of a weird point of view that confused me a little at first, but hey, I’m easily confused! Commander Adama, played brilliantly by Edward James Olmos, is in control of the soon to be retired Battlestar Galactica which has been partially turned in to a museum (complete with a converted docking bay gift shop). Adama’s reluctance to network his ships computers certainly pays off in the later stages of the series, but at the start provides a bit of anchorage for fans of the old series.
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