I know what I can talk about here - films! The second trailer for Iron Man just hit the web a few days ago. And it looks brilliant. They've really nailed the look of the armour - no embarrassing Batman & Robin style plastic nipples here. And Robert Downey Jr. looks to have perfected the dry, sardonic wit of Tony Stark. May can't roll around quick enough.

As for my recent sightings, here's some short impressions;

Diary of the Dead - Fun enough to watch, but it doesn't have the sense that the whole world's gone to hell. There never seems to be any more than ten zombies on screen at any one time (and interestingly enough, they're never actually referred to with the Z-word). Luckily, Romero's dark humour is still sharp, and there's some inventive ways to dispatch the shambling undead displayed within.

[REC] - More or less the same idea as Diary of the Dead, but confined to one building. It's a lot more visceral than the above film, with a slightly more supernatural flavouring towards the end. Very creepy, and worth checking out when it hits the UK next month.

A L'Interieur - a French horror film about a pregnant woman being stalked on the night before she gives birth. This isn't a film with cheap scares that you watch with someone on a date. This is pure, straight-up graphic violence which will disturb you and leave you feeling horrified, nauseous, or some combination of the two. Stuff like Saw and Hostel is nothing compared to this. If you're a fan of the genre and want to be tested by a film which isn't afraid to push you beyond your limits, definitely check it out.

Meet The Spartans - Alright, I haven't seen it, but I was subjected to the five-minute trailer for this, and if you're willing to hand over money to watch this, you should instead spend the money on a large quantity of downers and take them with some cheap wine. It'll be a much better artistic endeavour than this piece of vapid junk, and it'll smell better too.

I went to see Cloverfield the other day. I thought it was excellent. I'm really pleased that new ideas and techniques are being used in blockbuster films, it restores my faith in big budget cinema. I like how the characters don't have any majorly likable personality traits, they're just people. And most of all, I really liked how some things weren't explicitly explained, and actually required you to think. When the credits came up at the screening I was at, I heard a few people going "Eh? What was it then? Did they survive?" Makes it easy to see who was actually watching the film, and who just came to be entertained by a series of flashing lights for ninety minutes.

It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Maddy World
My favourite kind of hysteria is the kind involving children. Apparently the nation loses all control of sanity and logic when something happens to an under-twelve. The only thing more baffling than why the public has spent half a year gibbering and wailing over one missing child when dozens disappear every day is why no-one suspected her killers parents from the off.

al-Qaeda's Amateur Hour
Not one, but two failed terrorist attacks, and the only casualties were the terrorists themselves. If I didn't know better, I'd think the whole thing was rigged by Rupert Murdoch for a new line of reality shows on Sky - sort of post-modern version of You've Been Framed, only instead of sending in home video of grandparents falling over, you get footage of terrorists burning to death in their own cars, taken on a camera phone.

The Year's Finest Trailer
Ohohohohoho yes. I've been waiting for over ten years for this to happen.

Happy New Year, you disgusting monsters.

When asked by the RIAA's lead counsel whether it was wrong for consumers to make copies of CDs they have purchased, Jennifer Pariser replied in the negative. "When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song," said Pariser. Making "a copy" of a song you own is just "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'," according to Pariser.

So, according to the RIAA, it's actually possible to steal your own property. That's some deep zen shit right there.

Re: What would you do if you thought you saw maddy? Posted by: daisy cutter on 10/11/07 at 05:07 AM

Grab her, look in her eyes, if its her, shout my head off for other Europeans and just Dont Let GO!

Conveniently forgetting that the three suspects the police have named are all European, which doesn't do much good for the continent's appearance as a whole.

Re: HOW DARE THEY SUGGEST THE BRITISH PEOPLE TONE DOWN XMAS TO HELP WITH RACE RELATIONS !!! Posted by: rymanskid on 01/11/07 at 10:21 AM

This is to be expected of this bunch of left wing loonitics that now run the country, Whats next on the hit list banning white snow because it upsets black people .

I'd like to hear rymanskid's suggestion on how to ban snow. Possibly some massively convoluted plan involving firing anti-perspirant into the clouds.

IS IT TIME FOR A VOTE ON THE DEATH PENALTY WHAT DO YOU THINK Posted by: 129 STEVE on 23/08/07 at 10:09 AM

where are young people on our streets getting guns and bullets to fire from .
is it not time for a vote on the death penalty for these crimes

i firmly believe if you are old enough to carry a gun and pull the trigger killing another person then you are old enough
to pay the penalty.

I don't think age has anything to do with the ability to fire a gun, Steve - I think the only pre-requisite is opposable digits. We'd best cull any apes that are around, in case they pick up a Magnum and get any ideas.

Also, point and laugh at the loser who doesn't understand basic mathematics, and actually wants people to know about it.

Exhibit A: Courtesy of the The Sun:

Around 180,000 people were members of the private www.oink.co.uk website and paid to upload and download music - many of it not even released yet by record companies.

Members joined the www.oink.co.uk website by invitation only and paid a ’donation’ via a debit or credit card to be able to share music with others.

You didn't have to pay to be a member. Donations were entirely optional, and were used to fund the server bandwidth.

Exhibit B: Lord Triesman:

"If creative artists can't earn a living as a result of the work they produce, then we will kill off creative artists and that would be a tragedy."

Because as we all know, throughout the entirety of history, no-one has ever produced art when there was no direct financial incentive involved.

Exhibit C: The Sun again:

Police and music industry investigators were targeting one man who was believed to have been running the website and making hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.

In a low key operation, the home of a 24-year-old IT worker was raided in, Middlesbrough.

If you're making that much money, why live in fucking Middlesbrough?

Thankfully, some people get it. The thing that made Oink such a good site was that you could obtain lossless quality copies of stuff which has been unavailable for ages, whether it be live recordings, or out of print. This is the kind of thing that record companies should be trying to replicate, not snuff out.

Once an album goes out of print, it will only become more and more difficult to get a copy of it. I'd like to see an easy to use website which offers lossless quality copies of records, and gives a fair cut of the proceeds to the artists who produced that music, but it's more likely that we'll see yet another DRM-crippled low-bitrate effort, because most record companies aren't bothered about promoting art and culture, and are more concerned with squeezing every last penny out of a fundamentally broken and dying business model.