TV Characters = Horrible People Number 2

So yeah I did say that people wouldn’t have to wait for long for the next in this little series of blogs I was doing, but I had work this week and simply could not be arsed to do it when I got home. Still I doubt people are reeeeeally that bothered are they? I mean the majority of people who see this are those that search for the picture of the homophobic seal which I put in one of my entries, which to be honest says a lot about the human race.[1]

Anywho lets just get on with it shall we. As you all know I am writing about TV characters who in real life would be pretty awful people, once again I realise that they are characters and that they are supposed to be over the top but just shut up.

For numero 2 in this little series I have decided to pick one of the most popular American sitcoms ever Friends!!!!

Ok so in the last entry I only really focused on two characters because Peep Show really does focus primarily on two people, but when it comes to Friends there are far more main characters, I say far more there are 6 altogether, so 4 more, but fuck it that is a lot so again shut up. So what I am essentially saying is that it won’t be the same as the last one, I know I know but don’t panic it will be fine, let’s just all get on the blog bus next stop bullshit.

Let’s start with the boys shall we

I will start off with the least intolerable character of friends, Mr Chandler Bing. Now Chandler can be irritating, for instance it’s a little annoying when someone replies sarcastically to everything you say[2] and so it seems that Chandler can rarely take anything seriously, though most of the time he is funny. However other times Chandler can come across as extremely arrogant in terms of how he responds to his best friends. There are a lot of times where Joey is the victim of Chandler’s quite vicious wit. There was even an episode where a bet was made between the group whereupon Chandler was not allowed to make fun of them and he simply could not bear to just be nice to them for a change, eventually giving in and laying into all of them. Despite all of this however I find Chandler to be the most identifiable character for me and most of the time he really is trying to make people laugh, perhaps trying a little too hard some of the time.

Then of course we have Ross Gellar, the smart Jewish one who is a bit of a nerd, did I hear someone say stereotype? Anyway, Ross again isn’t too bad but of course he has his flaws. Much like Chandler he is extremely arrogant about his intelligence. I remember an early episode in which Phoebe points out that she doesn’t believe in evolution, this drives Ross nuts and he spends the rest of the episode hounding her attempting to show her she is wrong. Ross much like his sister Monica has an irritating competitive streak and he can never ever be wrong. Now I don’t know about you but that is an extremely irritating character trait in people, being competitive is fine, but being so competitive that you annoy the other person into submission is more annoying than having Piers Morgan over for dinner, every night for a week whilst he has taken pills to emphasise his monumental dickery. Then of course there is the whole ‘we were on a break’ situation, I suppose I should take the guys side in that instance, but I am sorry, sleeping with someone hours after you thought you broke up with someone is not cool bro, especially if that woman is someone you have loved since you were a kid.

And finally in terms of the primary male characters we have Joey Tribbiani. Joey is regularly portrayed as something as a lovable oaf with limited intelligence. There are essentially two Joey’s. You have early friends Joey who is dumb but can function properly, and then you have later seasons Joey who is borderline retarded.[3]Now one of the worst things about Joey has to be his womanising; now obviously there are guys who sleep with lots of women and hey its fine I guess. However Joey literally sleeps with seemingly everyone and apparently he never ceases to dump them after each one night stand. We have a word for people like that and it’s a whore. I’m sorry but sleeping with hundreds of women to the point where you can’t actually remember who you have been with is the sign of a pretty shitty human being. He also scrounges of Chandler an incredible amount, Chandler pays for acting lessons, headshots, rent as well as all the bills so there is that. Also he has quite the sense of entitlement, seemingly thinking he is the best actor in the world when really he is pretty bog standard, so yeah in real life Joey would be just the sort of douche bag you see on Jersey Shore or a show to that degree and I fucking hate those people like a lot.

Ok so on to the women, remember this isn’t in order, meaning that I don’t think the women are worse than the men and I am not a sexist or anything like that, so calm down ladies don’t get on your period about it and maybe we can go shoe shopping or something as a treat.

Right well first off there is Rachel, the spoiled rich brat. Yep straight into it here, Rachel at first takes a while to realise that she isn’t rich anymore and that she can’t just have things handed to her. To be fair she does eventually settle into life as a poor person probably thanks to living with Monica. To be honest Rachel isn’t that bad, there are a couple of occasions where she is kinda slutty, like when she meets Paulo who despite speaking absolutely no English manages to have a fairly long relationship with her. I mean a woman who sleeps with a guy just because he is Italian is pretty bad especially considering Ross was head over heels in love with her at the time, she didn’t know this, but in real life it would have been extremely obvious. Nevertheless Rachel I am putting you as my favourite female character of the show which will be a great conversation topic if I ever meet Jennifer Aniston.

You remember when I talked about how competitiveness can be irritating, you should do I said it about 500 words ago. Well that brings us nicely on to Monica, if you thought Ross was overly competitive then boy howdy is Monica a piece of work. Rarely is she wrong, and rarely does she lose, however when this does happen her reaction is that of a grade A bitch, she constantly demands to have another try and she refuses to accept that she isn’t the best at everything. There is of course the episode where she finds out that she isn’t very good at giving massages and ends up in tears unable to believe that she can’t do something. The only way to placate her is for Chandler to say that she gives the best bad massages. Now this is a tactic that is normally saved for crying children, when they are upset you tell them a lie to make them feel better like the dog didn’t die, he just went to live on a farm, or no of course mummy and daddies divorce wasn’t your fault, it’s not like your birth ruined our lives, and so on. Then of course there is the episode where Phoebe tells her she is high maintenance and Monica’s reaction is to demand an explanation and harass her, eventually tricking Chandler into giving a speech about how easy going she is, essentially proving that she is so high maintenance that it would take several well trained engineers just to get her to shut the fuck up. So yeah that’s Monica.

Dum dum dum, its time for the last character and of course that is Phoebe Buffay, who even in the show is kind of a bitch. That’s right, whilst each character is accentuated for comic effect in the show, Phoebe is just flat out a bad person. She is pretty stupid, but having been left homeless at a young age she can’t be blamed for that. However her arrogance and contempt shown for her friends is one of the worst things, most of this is reserved for Chandler though. There is one episode where she apparently finds Monica’s soul mate and attempts to set her up with him, now that would be a pretty nice thing to do for a friend but only if your friend wasn’t engaged to another of your very close friends. Seriously she deems it just fine to try and break up a happy relationship for absolutely no reason I mean what the hell you dumb hippy. Then there was the time where Chandler had to move to Tulsa and whilst saying his goodbyes she pushes him out of the door, she consistently insults Chandler[4] and undermines Rachel and Monica. Oh yeah she thinks she is a musical genius as well, completely oblivious to the fact that she is tone deaf and can’t actually play the guitar.

Well well, that was fun wasn’t it? We had some laughs[5] and we learned a few things.[6] I will now do my standard defence of the subject matter, yes I am aware these aren’t real people and yes I am aware that they are exaggerated for comic effect, Friends is one of my favourite shows and I still watch it now. Nevertheless if these people were real they would mostly suck, especially Phoebe, and if Joey was real I might go mad at his stupidity and just end up repeatedly slapping him upside the head and calling him a stupid boy. Anyways, I am sure you are all pissing yourself with anticipation to find out which show will be my number 1, well you won’t have long to find out[7] and I promise it will be more shocking than that time Prince Harry skull fucked the corpse of a dead Taliban soldier whilst dressed up as Darth Vader.[8]

Goodbye and may the odds be ever in your favour[9]

---

[1] Myself Included

[2] Believe me, I do this all the time...

[3] Watch the episode where he tries to learn French if you don’t believe me, but don’t say I didn’t warn you when you want to punch yourself just so you can punch something

[4] Though he does return the favour periodically

[5] Nope that’s not true at all

[6] Also not true

[7] That’s a hattrick of lies for you

[8] I am assuming this will happen in the interim of me proof reading this and posting it, the dirty boy!

[9] I watched The Hunger Games again today.

TV Characters = Horrible People

I realised that it has been a while since I wrote any sort of list blog, in fact I don’t think I have ever done that in this blog, to be honest I can’t be asked to scroll through all the old ones to double check. Anyways, seeing as I spend a lot of time on www.cracked.com  I thought I would basically steal the format of their website and write a themed list.

In the process of writing this blog I realised that if I were to do the list all in one go it would amount to around 4000 words, which is simply too long and so I will instead do one a day.  The topic for this particular list shall be TV shows in which the characters are genuinely horrible people. Now the shows I have chosen all happen to be comedies and as such the characters are exaggerated for comic effect, but I am going to plead with you dear reader to ignore that fact. The list will be ranty, and you may be thinking I am being fussy and feel the need to constantly remind me that they are TV shows, but you must realise that I am totally aware of these facts. I am simply writing as if these are real people and not fictional characters This list contains 3 different shows, so my eager fans will not have to wait very long to find out number one, that is if I don’t forget to write the next two of course

NUMBER 3 – PEEP SHOW

First up I have gone with what is perhaps one of the greatest British comedies ever made, Peep Show. Written by Jess Armstrong and Sam Bain, with additional material from the shows stars David Mitchell and Robert Webb Peep Show is one of the most innovative shows on television. It has managed to repopularise the use of point of view camera shots as well as frequently using the internal monologues of the shows two main characters Mark Corrigan (Mitchell) and Jeremy ‘Jez’ Osbourne (Webb).

It would appear then that I am quite a big fan of the show and would seemingly have no reason to criticise it. Well that is half right, I love the show and have no problem with the way it’s written etc., but the fact remains that a large number of the characters really are quite horrible people.

Let’s start with Mark shall we. A large portion of the series centres around Mark’s on/off relationship with co-worker Sophie Chapman (Olivia Coleman) despite spending the first 3 series or so chasing after her and going to ridiculous lengths to impress her, one of which included reading her personal emails, Mark soon grows tired of her and goes to quite absurd lengths to sabotage the relationship he once so craved. These attempts include planning a move to India without informing her, attempting to start an affair with an old school crush (though to his credit he does back out of this), as well as numerous attempts to avoid spending time with her.

It is one of these attempts that really does show Mark up to be a person with questionable morals. In season 4 Mark and Sophie are engaged to be wed. Now obviously marriage is a big step and Mark is understandably apprehensive, however rather than simply talk to his fiancé he instead joins a local gym so that he can avoid spending time with her on the pretence that he is instead working out. During one of his sessions with his personal trainer Mark lets on that he is unsure about the wedding and is thinking about backing out. Said personal trainer then advises him to end the relationship rather than enter an unhappy marriage, perfectly sage advice there. However when Sophie intimates that she would like to spend more time with Mark and may join his gym to achieve this, Mark realises that he has dug himself into a particularly large hole and comes up with a plan. Encouraged by his best friend and flat mate Jeremy (more on him later) Mark decides to get his personal trainer sacked by telling the gym’s manager that he took a dump in the pool (actually performed by Jeremy). However when this plan does not quite work, Mark is encouraged to say that in fact the personal trainer sexually assaulted him during a sports massage, resulting in his termination from the job.

Now, whilst Mark never initially planned for this to happen and it was largely with Jeremy’s encouragement, it would still have been much easier to simply talk to Sophie, rather than ruin an innocent man’s life. To top it off, Mark isn’t exactly ravaged with guilt about what he does, he instead is glad that he has gotten away with it and the only time he actually expresses remorse is when he runs into his former trainer at a karate class who happens to be a black belt intent on kicking the shit out of him, and even then he uses Sophie as a human shield.

The fact is that had this happened in real life, Mark could very easily have gone to prison for lying about such a serious issue. What he did was cowardly and could so easily have been avoided if he had actually had the courage to talk to the woman he at least pretends to love. However as this is TV nothing more is made of it and Mark gets away with it Scott free.

Speaking of Scott free, it is about time we talked about Mark’s best friend Jeremy. Yes whilst Mark is a person who has done horrible things, he is pretty hard to hate because he is one of life’s unlucky ones. Whereas Jeremy lives a life where very few of his actions appear to have serious consequences. Despite his lack of charm and intelligence he has remarkable luck with women and not just ordinary women, some of them are so remarkably beautiful its offensive, I am thinking in particular of Nancy (Rachel Blanchard) and Big Suze (Sophie Winkleman).  Jeremy could be described as a dreamer, describing himself as a musician he very rarely has a sustainable job, however when he has managed to find work throughout the series, it has more often than not involved good sums of money for very little work, though one of these jobs did involve wanking off a famous DJ, but still £500 a week!

A particular point of contention between Jez and Mark is the fact that Jeremy very rarely pays his way and basically scrounges off Mark as he is simply more weak willed an unwilling to chuck his friend out for any bearable amount of time. Jeremy however feels absolutely now guilt about this and openly exploits Mark in order to live his life to the fullest often at Mark’s expense.  The best way to describe him would be a total free loader.

Now many of Jeremy’s worst incidents revolve around women, including the time he tried to get Big Suze to have sex with Mark’s boss for a large sum of money. However one of the worst aspects of his character as I have already mentioned is the fact that he is constantly handed the easy option. In season 5, a wealthy relative of Jeremy’s dies and he inherits £20,000 much to his understandable delight. However things soon go awry when his mother cuts this amount to £10,000 so that she can use the money to buy herself and her new boyfriend a villa abroad. Now ten thousand pounds is a lot to lose, but it is also a lot to gain, but Jeremy makes one hell of a fuss when the money that he has in no way earned is cut by his own mother. Even when she comes to visit and reason with him, Jeremy treats his mother like a complete piece of shit as well as her new boyfriend who doesn’t approve of his layabout lifestyle. When it is decided that Jez’s mum will in fact keep all of the money he decides to take drastic measures. Whilst cleaning out the belongings of his now deceased aunt, Jeremy finds an old World War Two pistol (or as Super Hans(Matt King) describes it ‘a war gun’), that he decides to keep as a souvenir. Upon deciding that he really does deserve some of the inheritance he devises a plan to slip the gun into his mum’s boyfriend’s luggage before the go away on holiday. Fortunately Mark discovers the plot and puts a stop to it. Upon realising that he really has blown any chance of getting the money, Jez then reveals to the boyfriend that his daughter sexually assaulted Mark (they both got drunk one night and Mark awoke to her screwing him). This causes Mark to lose the opportunity to write the boyfriends memoirs, something which he was extremely excited about, it also means he has completely alienated his mother and her new boyfriend in one fell swoop.

So not only did Jeremy attempt to have his mother and her boyfriend arrested for weapon smuggling, but when his best friend, the man is basically responsible for him being alive tries to help, he ruins his life as well. Jeremy reveals himself to be spiteful, spoiled an immature in this instance and comes across as really quite a nasty person.

There are of course other characters in the show, all of whom have their moments of being nasty, in particular Jeff (Neil Fitzmaurice) who is easily the most unlikable character on the show. There is also Mark’s boss Allan Johnson (Paterson Johnson) who is extremely arrogant and borderline crazy.

So there we have it, my first entry to this list. I will reiterate what I said at the start about thinking of these characters as real people for the purpose of this blog and to remember that I am really not that judgemental of TV characters because I am fully aware that they have been written like that to be funny, and they are extremely funny. Also even though Mark and Jeremy have done some horrible things, I still like them and the show wouldn’t be half as good without them the way they are.

Nanananananana Batmaaaaaan, sorry that’s the best I can do as a title to this one… Oh actually The Dark Knight Rises could totally be the name for the porno spoof of the film, get it?

Here we go then! It has arrived, perhaps the biggest superhero movie ever. You have to feel sorry for the new Spiderman movie which will be totally eclipsed by the Dark Knight Rises. I managed to get tickets to see it after staying up until 3 am and constantly refreshing the IMAX website which basically didn’t work for about 6 hours or so. However, my patience paid off and I was able to see it on the day it came out, making it slightly easier to avoid spoilers. Speaking of which, there will be things in this entry that I would not wanted to have known before I saw it. I won’t reveal the ending, or who lives/dies etc., but there will be spoilers, so avoid unless you want to know some of what happens before you see it, but why would you? That would be a strange thing to do you goddam hippy!

Anyway, moving on.

The hype around this movie is perhaps one of the most vigorous that I have ever experienced, so much so that Rotten Tomatoes had to stop taking reviews because the negative reviewers were receiving threats. With that in mind I am not going to give this a negative review, because I do not wish to be murdered by angry fan boys, but to be honest that’s not necessary as this movie was pretty freaking good. The box office and overall critical reception speak for themselves. In fact this movie franchise has made so much money a person could probably legitimately become Batman themselves, now there is a thought…

*(Let the spoilers begin!)*

The film itself essentially has for main characters each with their own story arc. You of course have Batman/Bruce Wayne who at first struggles with the decision of whether to come back as the caped crusader and then the struggle of actually doing it.

Then there is our villain Bane, played by Tom Hardy who looks like he has probably been lifting several train carriages a day to get in shape for the movie. Bane is essentially a professional bastard who plans on terrorising Gotham City simply because he can and he may or may not be working for someone.

Then there is of course Selina Kyle/Catwoman played by the sextacular Anne Hathaway. A professional jewel thief who manages to get herself in involved in all sorts of shenanigans and you are never quite sure whose side she is on until much later in the movie.

Finally we have Officer John Blake, played by the guy with a hard name to type, Joseph Gordon Levitt. Officer Blake is what I would call Officer Gordon’s replacement seeing as he is hospitalised fairly early on.

So what of the plot? Well the movie itself starts 8 years after the conclusion of its predecessor The Dark Knight. Harvey Dent is dead of course, but is hailed as a hero after Batman took responsibility for the number of murders that Dent committed. This has also resulted in the Dent Act, which is never fully explained, but it has resulted in numerous criminals being put behind bars and as a result Gotham City is now a much safer place. Batman is of course seen as a villain and has disappeared along with Bruce Wayne who has not been seen publicly since around the same time that Batman went AWOL. Apparently nobody in Gotham thought to put two and two together.

Despite the relative safety however, Bane figures out that a clean energy project headed by Miranda Tate (Marion Cotilllllllllllllllllllllllllard,the extra l’s emphasise the Frenchness of her name, and also the fact that she is terribly boneriffic) can be used as a nuclear weapon, which to be honest is a pretty big problem for any project that doesn’t involve creating nuclear weapons. The rest you can probably predict for yourselves. Bane threatens Gotham with this weapon. Batman tries to stop him, but fails at first because Bane literally breaks him, but then comes back having learnt a lesson about the little Bat who wouldn’t give up. There are plenty of twists and turns and a couple of moments of ‘oooooooooh, I didn’t see that coming’, this unless you happen to be one of those people who can figure stuff out *cough* Tash *cough*.

So then, is the movie actually any good? Well yes, I already said that, come on pay attention! I have previously written about whether this movie could stand up to the hype that surrounded it. I also wanted it to be more character driven unlike the Dark Knight and more like Batman Begins. I was happy therefore to see that Nolan seemed to find a good balance between the two for the final instalment. There is plenty of actiony stuff to satisfy, but there is also a lot more character development than the Dark Knight, particularly of Selina Kyle and Officer Blake, which is what I look for in a movie. Also despite being 2 hours and 40 minutes long, I didn’t feel like the movie was too long, the more I think about it, the more I become to realise that the plot on the whole fit together nicely.

As for the acting that is as good as ever. Tom Hardy as Bane is a pretty terrifying villain. There were times when his speech was incomprehensible due the mask he wore which was a shame, but most of the time it was fine. Other standouts are definitely Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle. A lot of critics said that she was the best thing about the movie and while I don’t think that is fair on the movie itself I agree with the sentiment. The character adds a new depth to the story and despite betraying Batman you are able to remain on her side for most of the film. Along with these two the rest of the cast are pretty brilliant as well, as always Christian Bale does well playing his dual role. Marion Cottilard and Joseph Gordon Levitt are strong as well and of course Michael Caine does a wonderful job as Alfred in what is his most emotionally charged role of the series.

Like any movie though this does have its faults, though for me they are minor. A few of the films critics claimed that it was overblown and poorly put together. Well firstly it’s no way near as overblown as The Dark Knight was and it’s only really the first 50 mins to an hour that suffers from a slightly disjointed plot. However with a plot as big as this, I think that is to be expected. Another criticism would have to be the use of exposition, which seems to have become a weakness for Nolan, at points the audience may as well just read the plot off a cue card on the screen, but these points are few and far between and again I think sometimes in story telling it is permissible. I would also like to have seen more Alfred who disappears fairly early on and only returns at the end, but then again there probably wasn’t enough room for him in the story and his character isn’t exactly wasted anyway. Other than these minor things it is hard to find fault with The Dark Knight Rises and it has to be said that it is a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to the saga.

Hopefully then Chris Nolan can do a good job of rebooting the Superman movie franchise, though he isn’t directing so I am still sceptical. Also they have cast Henry Cavill and well he is just not very good is he?

See you later then.

Spider – man, not quite amazing, but not so bad either

It’s a movie review, I don’t really seem to do them that often considering how many movies I actually watch but I saw this today and I felt compelled by the spirits of blogdom to write this for you the reader, are you there? This might contain what may be considered spoilers, but to be honest if you don’t know the basic premise of Spider – Man then you have probably never paid attention to popular culture, because even the aliens on Mars know that Uncle Ben dies...oops

Aaaaaanyway, as you will all know the popular franchise has been the subject of a reboot, in my opinion this was done in the shadow of Christopher Nolan’s Batman series which has seen the comic book movie enter a completely different stratosphere.Marvel are clearly keen to get on that particular gravy train, which I suppose is fair enough, they certainly aren’t doing it purely for the money given the fact that The Avengers made a gajillion pounds this year.

Now, as has been seen many times before, the origin story of any superhero/masked vigilante type can be notoriously difficult to transfer to film. Nobody really wants to see the difficult journey from normal guy to person with super abilities and these films run the risk of being boring in the first half. Thankfully for Spider – Man though the origin of how Peter Parker becomes spandex laden hero is kept tight and constantly moving forward, from the bite from the genetically engineered spider it doesn’t take long before he gets his suit made and starts taking down various street thugs.

Rather than give primary focus to Parker’s transformation, more time is instead given to the background of his family life. It turns out that Parker’s father was involved in some straight up evil scientist stuff in which he and his partner Dr Connors, played by Rhys Ifans set about mixing the genes of various creatures with others to try and create species without any sort of weakness. Connors who is missing an arm hopes to cross human DNA with that of lizards who can regenerate limbs if need be. Inevitably, Parker comes up with the missing link of the scientific equation and Connors thinks he can now grow back his arm. However upon injecting himself with the formula he instead turns into a giant murderous lizard and chaos later ensues with only Spider – Man capable of stopping him.

Overall the film holds its own and fans of Spider – Man probably won’t be too disappointed with the reboot. I feel that Parker is a bit more identifiable than the Tobey Maguire incarnation of before. Andrew Garfield offers up a much cooler and quick witted Spider –Man. Sure Peter Parker is still beaten up at school by a bully whose stereotypical tough guy act is only matched by his equally stereotypical nickname ‘Flash’,but he isn’t quite the total dork of the previous movies, I mean he rides a skateboard and everything and wears a hoody. Those expecting drastic changes though will be slightly disappointed, the biggest difference I can see is the fact that the classic Mary Jane character is replaced by Gwen Stacy played by Emma Stone, and thankfully we aren’t forced to endure her getting captured over and over again with Spiderman forced to save her, she is in fact much stronger and strong willed. I say replaced, I have been reliably informed that Gwen Stacy actually comes first in the comic books, so the movie is actually truer to the comics in that sense.The most interesting difference I feel is the fact that Spider – Man doesn’t actually shoot webs from his wrists, instead Parker creates a device that can shoot a web like substance that his dad had been working on. This means that should these devices break he cannot jump of buildings and swing all over the place (HINT HINT) and so the character is slightly more vulnerable than before. It is these subtle differences that I liked about the film, had they completely changed everything it would probably run the risk of alienating some fans, which this should not do.

I wasn’t really blown away by the movie, but then again I have never been the biggest Spider - Man fan, as I said before it is thoroughly in the shadow of Batman and I just feel it lacks something, but the inevitable sequel might offer up something a bit more exciting. We shall see dear reader, we shall see...

Still I would recommend this movie; you don’t need to be a huge Spider – Man or Marvel fan to enjoy it, though those who are will enjoy the obligatory Stan Lee cameo, which is probably the most amusing one I have seen yet. Nevertheless, this movie was enjoyable at least and I think you should see it, don’t make me turn this car around and take you now!

First one in a while, but this one is extra long and for once it's not me ranting about something!

So, seeing as Prometheus has just hit the screens, I thought I would take a little look back at the previous 3 films in the Alien franchise, i.e. Alien, Aliens and Alien 3. I am essentially reviewing 3 movies in one all of which happen to be over 20 years old. Say what you like about this blog, but you can’t say that I don’t keep up with current trends. Also it will contain spoilers, but come on Alien came out in 1979 and is one of the biggest sci – fi films ever made, if you haven’t seen it by now, you would probably know the story as it is part of popular culture. But anyway, I digress, pay attention now class.

Ok so the first film in the franchise is the Ridley Scott vehicle Alien. The film follows the exploits of the crew of the commercial towing spaceship Nostromo. They have basically been mining space gold and are returning to earth when the ship’s crew is awakened from their hyper sleep as the ship has detected a rogue signal from an unknown planet. From then on chaos ensues, one crew member Kane, played by John Hurt discovers a large room full of eggs, one of which hatches sending an alien onto his face, which then proceeds to impregnate him in the mouth (don’t worry ladies, this sort of thing can’t happen to humans, so please keep up the good work ;)). Anywho, with the alien baby sweetly nuzzling in his chest Kane awakens from his coma only to have the bloody thing burst out of him at the dinner table in one of the most famous instances of bad etiquette ever recorded on film, it also happens to be one of the most iconic film scenes ever made, but that doesn’t matter. Moving swiftly on, this alien grows like a motherfucker and begins to pick off the crew in various ways, helped along the way by the ships android with the extra bastard implant, played by Ian Holm, until our heroine Ripley is the last remaining crew member who successfully manages to beat the alien in the end, YAY!!

Alien is consistently ranked as not just one of the best sci – fi movies ever made, but one of the best movies ever made, a reputation which I think is entirely justified. Alien is quite simply brilliant. I read Roger Ebert’s review in which he made an interesting point that each cast member is considerably older than your average horror movie cast, with Sigourney Weaver being the youngest at 30, this adds a level of maturity to the film and at no point do you see a teenage girl screaming helplessly. There are of course moments of terror for the ship’s crew, but they come across as totally genuine. The cast therefore play their parts extremely well, Sigourney Weaver is obviously a stand out and in many ways this film catapulted her career. However I reserve special praise for Ian Holm who plays the android Ash. The thing is, he is secretly an android, and so his performance is significantly understated and delightfully evil when it counts.

It would also be remiss of me not to mention the special effects of the film; considering this was 1979 they are way above the standard I would expect from a film of that era. But they stand the test of time and even watching it in 2012 you could easily mistake it for a more modern film. There is no CGI here thank god.

Speaking of CGI that moves me nicely on to the sequel Aliens. I only mention CGI in this context because the second film in the franchise is directed by CGI’s biggest fan, Mr James Cameron. However thankfully, Aliens represents one of the rare occasions where Mr Cameron doesn’t completely fuck up his film and viciously beat his audience over the head with it.

The film once again follows the exploits of Ripley, who after drifting in space for 57 years is rescued by the company she originally worked for Weyland – Yutani, who completely refute her story of the aliens and basically tell her she is well mental. The film doesn’t end there of course, but did you expect it to, come on then it would have only been like 40 minutes long. Anyway, remember that planet from the first one where Kane found all the alien eggs? Well it’s only been bloody colonised by humans with around 200 of them living there! I know, that can only end badly, which it inevitably does. The alien race is able to make its comeback when a couple out doing whatever work they do comes across an alien egg and the man is impregnated by the face hugger. Of course he is brought back to the human colony and the alien manages to kill pretty much everyone, aside from one plucky child known as Newt. We are spared seeing everyone get killed as the plot mainly revolves around a group of marines sent in to investigate. Joining them is Ripley, who misses her opportunity to say ‘see, I fucking told you so!’ but instead goes along with the marines as a consultant. Turns out that they don’t just have one alien to deal with, like in the first film, but an entire swarm of the bastards. Much like the first though, the team of marines is slowly thinned  out by the creature and Ripley is again left to be all heroic and stuff, whilst at the same time protecting Newt whom she forms a motherly bond with. Ripley isn’t completely alone, along the way she is aided by several of the marines, such as Private Hudson, played by James Cameron’s favourite actor Bill Paxton, as well as Corporal Hicks played by Michael Biehn, the non-terminator one from Terminator, also, despite her initial mistrust of yet another android Ripley is aided by Bishop played by Lance Henrikksen. Eventually Ripley is able to once again defeat the alien and escape the forsaken planet before it is destroyed and everyone is happy again.

It is notoriously difficult to create a sequel to something that had such widespread success, The Matrix Reloaded being a painful example. Therefore Aliens had only one choice, it had to go bigger and more extravagant that its predecessor, which is does to an extremely awesome degree. Sigourney Weaver is once again brilliant as Ripley and even Bill Paxton puts in a good performance, once you get over how annoying his character is initially. In my opinion Aliens would have been the perfect place to end the franchise, Ripley ends up with a sort of replacement daughter (her real daughter dies whilst she was asleep for 57 years) and the aliens have seemingly been eradicated, but alas clearly some greedy movie execs spent most of what was made from the film on cocaine and hookers and decided to make the threequal, sigh…

I don’t want to dwell much on the third film, because it’s simply not worth it, but anyway here we go!

Having once again been left in special space sleep at the end of Aliens the movie opens with the crash landing of the ship, which results in the deaths of Hicks and Newt, who had both managed to survive at the end of the second film. Ripley is understandably a little upset with this and wonders exactly why the ship crashed. I won’t beat around the bush, the ship crashed because there was an alien on board and it started a fire. The planet she crashes on happens to be a high security prison planet, full of the worst kinds of prisoners available, including murderers, rapists and child molesters. So immediately you lose any sympathy for potential victims of the monster. Nevertheless, the alien proceeds to cause havoc throughout the prison, killing people etc etc. Somewhere along the way, Ripley also realises that she has a chest burster inside her, which makes her go all emo and decide that she has to die to avoid the alien from ever getting back to earth, right after she destroys the alien on the planet first.

That’s about it really, Alien 3 has all the mainstays of a bad horror sequel including numerous instances of individuals breaking away from the group so that the monster can pick them off a bit easier, and lots more fucks, not the sexy kind, the sweary kind. Then there is the extra gore, which has become a staple of horror sequels, in this case it just isn’t necessary. In the first two films there is surprisingly little blood and guts, as the aliens were simply intent on using the humans to breed, in Alien 3 however our space villain appears to be intent on turning this into saw in space and eating everyone’s brains like some kind of terrifying zombie vampire. Also is that CGI I see, because it certainly looked like it and James Cameron didn’t even direct this one!

Another thing that bothered me was the fact that the image of Ripley from is one of a very strong woman, and historically she has become a symbol for the female hero in film. However this reputation is significantly diminished not long after landing on the planet when Ripley randomly shags the dishy British doctor, played by Charles Dance, also known as the bad guy from Last Action Hero. This I found very surprising, I mean I know she had been without a man for what was like over 60 years, but it was kind of unnecessary for the film.

So basically if you want the storyline to be rounded off then watch Alien 3 it does have a pretty definitive ending, although Alien Resurrection kind of starts it all up again, but I am not including that because I don’t think it counts. Otherwise though, just stick to the first two films, they are so much better and if you want you can use the ending of Aliens as the real ending, which is what I do because I am a bit of a loser.

GOODNIGHT EVERYBODY

My review of Derek

Wow this one really is hot off the presses, this time I thought I would write about a TV show, I haven’t specifically reviewed an episode of something before, so this is all new and strange to me, like going to Guantanamo Bay, but without the human rights violations. Anyway, I thought I’d let you know what I thought about Ricky Gervais’s latest television project Derek.

I first saw this Gervais character in a short film that he made a while back. The character was a little different back then, he was religious and had ambitions of being a stand up comedian, he also lived at home with his mother. But with this new show, Gervais has branched out slightly and now Derek is an employee in a retirement home. First things first then, I know he will receive a lot of flack for this show due to the fact that Derek appears to be slightly mentally challenged. However having watched the first episode it is never explicitly said that there is anything wrong with him, and instead I just got the impression that he is slightly socially inept and just a little strange, but he still has a brain and he is still able to interact with people properly.

So what of the people he interacts with? Well firstly there are the numerous residents of the old people’s home that Derek works in, who he seems to genuinely care for. Then there is Hannah played by Kerry Goldiman who Derek clearly harbours feelings for, but doesn’t quite seem to understand them. Then of course there is the character of Douglass played by Karl Pilkington, who basically doesn’t have to act, as the character is essentially Karl. Whilst this really isn’t as funny as Gervais’s other work by quite a long shot, I did enjoy it. Numerous times in his career Gervais has shown that he knows how to evoke sympathy in his characters, he at times makes them annoying to add to the comedy element, but they always seem to have a good heart, such as David Brent, who was just misguided and a bit of a prat, but still a nice guy. That’s what I felt with Derek, forget the fact that he may be mentally disabled, he is a sweet man, and I was genuinely touched by his reaction to the death of one of the old people in the home.

Again I will say this isn’t his best work, for me that’s The Office, but to be fair that’s very hard to top. It really does bug me the amount of criticism Gervais gets, people really do seem to get very jealous of his success. I have read so many reviews of his work with people saying, I wanted to find this funny, or Gervais isn’t funny anymore and should stop doing the same jokes. Will you just go away, it’s so bloody easy to criticise and people really seem to enjoy doing it. Gervais hasn’t changed, he was always slightly smug, but that’s part of the act, and as for using the same jokes, well if it aint broke don’t fix it. Actually I bet you are the same twats who criticised Extra’s for being different aren’t you, make up your minds!

Never mind that anyway, I enjoyed Derek, I thought it was a good attempt from Gervais and I don’t think he was having a go at the disabled in the slightest. He has done some stupid stuff, like using the word mong, but this show doesn’t equate to that, it had thought and it had heart. I don’t think it will be a series, but I look forward to the next episode at least and I think you should too, if you want to stay friends.

The Hunger Games Review!

Ok, I am going to actually try and write something proper here, so all aboard the movie review ship, next stop, fame, bitches and some green!

In what must already be one of the biggest movie successes of the year The Hunger Games is currently topping all of the box offices and has gained several good reviews from fans and critics alike. As I write this it currently has a 7.7/10 rating on IMDB and 85% on Rottentomatoes, not too shabby eh and my first impressions after having seen the film would leave me inclined to agree with these lofty ratings.

I will start by saying that I haven’t as yet read the book series, and so I went into this movie completely unaware of the storyline and any of the characters, bar what I had guessed from seeing the trailers and reading about the actors etc. At first this seemed to be a problem as I couldn’t quite grasp why the children were picked to be part of the Hunger Games, but I gathered that it was a way for the government to exert their power over the peasant classes, something which as a history student reminds me of so very many dull lectures. Other than that little side note the story isn’t difficult to grasp and you are unlikely to get lost as to what is going on.

The basic premise (of the film that is, I am sure a lot more is explained in the book) is that in a post - apocalyptic world you have one capital city populated by a plethora of extremely odd and extravagant people.  Then you have twelve separate districts populated by a lower class who are regularly forced to throw their names into the hat for the Hunger Games, which is an annual event that see’s 24 children between 12 and 18 fight to the death. The more these starving people are in need of food, the bigger the chance they are picked. The story itself follows Katniss Everdeen, who is played by the stupidly hot Jennifer Lawrence, who after seeing her 12 year old sister get picked for the Hunger Games volunteers to take her place in order to save her. There you go; I won’t reveal much more of the plot because that kind of defeats the point.

So what about the film? Well, as I said the film is pretty solid, I was on the edge of my seat for most of it and I genuinely wanted to know what was going to happen next. I found it engaging and exciting. However you can sense a but coming here cant you?

The problem with this movie is that it’s just too damn compressed. I am aware that it must be really difficult to transfer a book to a movie, cutting stuff out and making the story shorter cannot be an easy task. I just felt that had the movie execs allowed maybe half an hour extra onto the film it would have made it so much better. At 2 hours 20 the movie is pretty long, but it still felt like a lot of aspects of the story were left underdeveloped. For instance the character of Woody Harrelson, who when he is first introduced appears to be a surly heavy drinking misanthrope. However as the story progresses that aspect of his character seems to be simply forgotten and he changes completely. It’s not necessarily a bad thing because his character is likeable, but this I imagine is something that is explored in the book a bit more and therefore the movie struggles to take on the responsibility. Still there is good character development in other areas such as the main character Katniss.

Jennifer Lawrence in my opinion does a really good job in this movie, and I am not just biased because she is so damn fine! I thought she embodied the character really well and was able to carry the film considering she was the main focus of the narrative. Other notable performances come from the films male lead Josh Hutcherson as well as Woody Harrelson, despite his lack of character development.

Overall then I would say that this movie has earned the substantial amount of praise that has been thrown its way. I was left wanting more and with another 3 films potentially in the offing I should get what I want. I do also plan to read the books because I am pretty hooked to the story. So yeah, go and watch it, it is worth it, but don’t expect a film that has a definitive conclusion otherwise you will be disappointed.

P.S

I have to say it again, Jennifer Lawrence... damn!