Article Archive for December 2006
By all accounts, 2006 has been the year of the disappointing computer-animated movie. Between Barnyard, Hoodwinked and Everyone's Hero's inept cheapo lameness, the computer-animated movie world has taken a critical knocking.
Critical, but not fatal - as Happy Feet has shown. Happy Feet, a movie about tap-dancing environmental penguins, is enjoying its third week sitting proudly at the top of the US weekend box office. Happy Feet has already seen off US weekend box office challenges from James Bond and a long film about a tree in a bubble floating across space, but now Happy Feet has defeated its biggest opponent yet - the actual birth of Jesus Christ himself.
If there's one thing that our grandparents taught us it's that when little tiny bald men appear drunk on daytime TV and start describing the graphic details of their sex life in between burping up sick, it's a thing to be cherished forever.
And that isn't just what we think - it's what the whole world thinks. So when Danny DeVito started lurching about on The View last week still twatted on booze from the night before, the world made sure to grab that moment and hold it close to its heart, knowing that it might be decades before a weeny little fat bloke does monkey impressions during a rambling anecdote about The White House to the obvious disdain of Barbara Walters again. Up until now, Danny DeVito's drinking buddy George Clooney had been keeping schtum about what happened the night before Danny's appearance on The View, but now George Clooney has given his side of the story and he says he's willing to "take the heat" for Danny DeVito's twatted gooning around. Having said that, we'd take the heat for Danny DeVito rather than talk about the rubbish-looking black and white film we'd just made if we were George Clooney too.
Now, we know what you're thinking. You're judging Lazer Trap by the screenshot already, aren't you? You saw a grid and a few lines on a black background, thought "ugh, maths" and looked away, didn't you?We're guessing that's what you did because that's exactly what we did the first time we saw Lazer Trap too, but then we played ...
Ever since Madonna took her child-catching cart to Malawi to tempt its children into moving in with her with a variety of brightly-coloured lollipops, her husband Guy Ritchie has managed to studiously avoid any kind of limelight whatsoever.
Not that anybody was especially upset about not hearing Guy Ritchie's side of the story - it is Guy Ritchie after all - and it was mostly assumed that he was too busy shooting ramblers or writing another turd-brained gangster movie that nobody will go and see to comment on Madonna's adoption of little David Banda. However, there might be something more serious going on between Madonna and Guy Ritchie; reports are suggesting that Madonna and Guy Ritchie have hired a marriage counsellor to try and fix up their knackered marriage.
Oh stop kidding yourself Scotland, it had to happen at some point. X Factor now has to continue without the well-hidden talents of everyone's favourite dull-as-boxes creepy Scottish brother-and-brother singing duo, The MacDonald Brothers.
But, and this is something we'd never thought we'd find ourselves writing, The MacDonald Brothers didn't go down without a fight. Well, as much fight as two weedy-looking wedding singers are capable of, which really isn't a lot. Their version of Can't Smile Without You would have sounded exactly like the sort of performance that cub scouts give at nursing homes to get their Making Senile Old People Happy Via The Power Of Bland Music badges were it not for the giant terrifying off-key note at the end, which our scientists have proved is the exact same note that is played in old films to signify that a character has become mentally unstable. Not even a Jive Bunny-sounding version of Shang-A-Lang by The Bay City Rollers that was backed by flapping tartan and literally couldn't have been more Scottish if they'd have sung it drunk on Tennents Super under a railway arch could save them.
But now that The MacDonald Brothers are done for, who'll win X Factor? Here are the X Factor betting odds for Ray Quinn...
Folded for this week’s good shit, Creased for the bad.
Folded:
Voting (for me, The Heckler, at the Empire Thunderdome! Click on Chris and receive much telepathic thanks from myself) Bruno (Sacha Baron Cohen’s ultra-gay Austrian TV reporter is set for the big movie treatment in 2008. Expect belly laughs) CSS in The Guardian Guide (means it is officially okay to hate them now. ...
It's almost Christmas. If you can't buy a loved one a T-shirt with "You're nothing but a whore! You're a slut!" written all over it, then - really - when can you?
That's right - it's time for this week's Dumb Celebrity T-Shirt Of The Week, where we take the dumbest thing a celebrity has said over the last seven days, bung
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You know how when one band gets popular, a wave of inferior bands copying the first band floods the market, like The Monkees copying The Beatles, Northern Uproar copying Oasis or The Fratellis copying The Libertines?
Well, on first appearance The Grates are an inevitable facsimile of Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It's all laid out for everyone to see - they're a three-piece new wavey-type band with a pretty girl singer who dresses a bit odd. As such, we expected Gravity Won't Get You High by The Grates to be a rush-job of Fever To Tell knock-offs and nothing more. How wrong we were - Gravity Won't Get You High by The Grates is a multicolour splurge of songs so strong they'll knock you into the gutter.
