Posts from June, 2007

It’s all good - and bad.

Folded:

• Keith Allen Will Burn In Hell on Channel 4 (too late for last week’s deadline, this very funny documentary by a very funny man was very funny indeed)

• The Guardian (not the newspaper, the Kevin Costner coastguard drama. A great movie for people who don’t watch movies very much, as it has every cliché imaginable crammed into its generous two-hour running time. Of course, they are not clichés to the people who don’t watch movies very much, so that’s all right then)

• Gordon Brown as the new Prime Minister (far be it from us to get too political, but, with fingers crossed and buttocks clenched, we remain hopeful)

• Wimbledon (good tennis at the moment, when it’s not raining)

• “It turns out you’re just fat.” and “If you can’t afford a car, you can’t afford a baby” – two great pay offs from Karen Taylor (you’ll have to watch her BBC Three show Touch Me, I’m Karen Taylor, or more specifically a repeat, for these gags to make sense, but that wouldn’t be such a bad thing)

Creased:

• Rain  (once again half of Britain collapses under the weight of sustained downpours. Too hot? Fine, we know the tarmac might melt, we’re not used to it. Snow? Yes, it probably will block all the roads for a bit, we’re not Sweden. But Rain?! That’s all it ever does here, yet people still have to die because of it?!)

• Runaway    on E4 (yet another ‘new 24’ that is both crap and cancelled)

• Nectarines (the world’s most useless fruit. Taste nice, but bruise if you breathe on them)

• Queueing on those postal DVD rental thingies (never put too many choices on your list, they’ll always send you the oldest one first.)

• Counterfeit Simpsons greetings cards (the faces look all wrong and Moe has jet black hair again)

You know, we always thought that Herbie: Fully Loaded got its title because of Herbie's incredible physics-defying antics, but maybe it got the Fully Loaded suffix because Lindsay Lohan was spazzed up to her tits on cocaine all the time.

Yesterday news started emerging that police had found traces of cocaine in Lindsay Lohan's blood following her car crash last month. As yet these reports have yet to be officially confirmed - and Lindsay Lohan is yet to be charged with possession - but if it is eventually revealed that Lindsay Lohan did have traces of cocaine in her system when she ran her car off the road after a night out, then it'll easily be the most shocking news to come out of Hollywood since it was rumoured that the sun came up this morning and that the sky had taken on some sort of blueish colour.

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The three albums that Nick Drake produced in his short lifetime are all near-perfect, haunting gems of beauty and brevity - but haven't Nick Drake fans long craved an over-long album of hissy demos where Nick Drake's Mum gets to sing?

Because, make no mistake, that's what Family Tree is - a 23-track slog of home-recorded demos that Nick Drake doodled out before the release of his first album. Family Tree could almost be the dictionary definition of hit and miss, but for anyone who wants to listen to the gradual solidification of a rare songwriting talent, Family Tree is a fascinating, damn near essential album.

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There's little over a week to go until the Live Earth concerts take place - where Snow Patrol will play Chasing Cars over and over again until the Sun vomits down itself, thus cooling the Earth's climate by up to five degrees Celsius.

But some cynics are suggesting that Madonna singing a song about climate change in an energy-gobbling sports stadium full of people who shat out tons of carbon getting there while being broadcast to billions of environment-slaughtering television sets might not be the best way to stop the world from perishing in a whirlwind of fiery terror. And that's why Al Gore has beefed-up Live Earth's credibility by asking everyone to sign a special climate change pledge that will save the planet via the power of woolly-worded vague promises about making the governments of the world do stuff and stuff.

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We’re trying to guess what the exact moment was that Britney Spears’ mom, Lynne Spears, appeared to go from overzealous, perfectionist stage mom to arguably an interfering, traitor of a grandmother.

Was it the first time Britney promised a change of image only to return to her cut-off jean shorts with the front pocket lining hanging out below the shorts? Was it when Britney’s reality show with her now ex-husband Kevin Federline came out, and thus shattered all of Lynne’s years of shaping and moulding her into an A-list princess into a million pieces? Or, was it when Britney flashed the world, and all those years of Lynne urging her daughter to wear clean underwear in case she gets in an accident became horrifically obsolete? Hmmm… it’s a toughy.

Regardless, Britney’s relationship with her mom appears to be rapidly crashing from the unstable, dysfunctional foundation upon which it was built. What would prompt us to make such a shocking statement, you ask? Well, mostly it’s because of recent footage of Britney delivering her mother legal-looking papers, and Mrs. Spears Sr. does not react jubilantly to the documents. Whatever the papers are we're sure that the incident will provide lots of writing material for Britney's next album. Although, by the time that comes out we'll all be driving flying cars and taking weekend trips to the moon.

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Depending on your social status, you will be able to afford different goods and services. While hecklerspray badly wants to join the Sunday Times top 100 rich list, we are sadly a few million quid short of doing so.

However, when you do have more bloody money than sense, the temptation to buy overpriced tacky crap becomes too strong to skip. Most celebrities will not buy stuff unless it's been made by wanky fashion houses like D&G, Louis Vuitton and Fred Perry. And it looks like this train of thought has happened to David and Victoria Beckham as they have reportedly blown £250,000 on a hi-tech wardrobe. We shit you not. Honestly! No word of a lie, we weren’t pissed when we scribbled this article together. Well maybe a little, but our alcoholism is not to be discussed in public.

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So that it, it's decided. Phil Spector couldn't have possibly shot Lana Clarkson in the mouth and killed her because he's so old and weak and frail that Lana Clarkson would have body-slammed him through a brick wall if he'd even tried.

That's the claim made yesterday by Dr Vincent DiMaio during his third day on the stand at the Phil Spector murder trial. The Phil Spector-employed forensics expert has stated that since Lana Clarkson was younger, taller and fitter than Phil Spector she'd have been able to beat Spector back as he tried to place the gun in her mouth. Vincent DiMaio hasn't yet testified that Lana Clarkson was also so strong that she was able to use her teeth to crush any bullets being fired into her mouth by anyone else but her, but it's though that Phil Spector was keen for that to be the grand finale.

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Wherever you go in the world, it's a given that you'll never go more than three days without seeing a Japanese kid spazzing out on a Dance Dance Revolution arcade game with a cooing crowd surrounding him.

Of course, you could never do that well at Dance Dance Revolution because you're lousy at dancing and you'd probably kick one of the bystanders' teeth in, so here's Up Beat - a sort of Dance Dance Revolution game that you can play in the safety of your workplace or home. Up Beat is fairly self-explanatory - you hear some music and have to tap keys along with it, but be warned - Up Beat gets pretty tricky, so chances are you'll still end up inadvertently kicking a bystanders' teeth in while you attempt to play it.

Play Up Beat Now

Mark Ronson. We liked him before you did, and now you like him we don't like him as much. And now comes what should be seen as Mark Ronson's lowest point - a cover version of a Kaiser Chiefs song that Lily Allen sings.

Oh My God, Mark Ronson's new single, is a cover of the once-ubiquitous Kaiser Chiefs tune with vocal duties performed by Lily Allen of one good song and being mean to Girls Aloud on the internet fame. Now, just by the sum of its parts, Oh My God by Mark Ronson should be terrible - but somehow, and we really aren't sure how - Mark Ronson manages to pull Oh My God up by its bootstraps until it's very slightly better than you expect it to be. And the video to Oh My God isn't too shoddy either; it reimagines Lily Allen as a sort of Jessica Rabbit figure. And it's sexy too, right up until Lily Allen cackles like a man at the end.

The Spice Girls are something of an anachronism - after all, if anyone wants to be entertained by five not especially pretty women clumping around a stage like a gang of age-worn hookers now, they can just go and see The Pussycat Dolls.

But that didn't stop the Spice Girls from confirming the one thing that the whole world already knew yesterday - the Spice Girls have reunited. At the end of the year all five of the Spice Girls - Lardy Spice, Stupidly Fake-Breasted Spice, Annoying Spice, Annoying Spice and Baby Spice - will get together for world tour that will last just over a month, take in 11 cities in eight different countries, see a Christmas-friendly Spice Girls Greatest Hits album released to accompany it and earn the Spice Girls a reported £10 million each. With that sort of money in their pockets, the Spice Girls could then be able to retire forever. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking on our part.

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The 1980s, eh?

They were a strange old time. So strange, in fact, that we're imagining Stuart Maconie's retrospective face right now, waffling away about how BMX Choppers were "mental" and how the opening sequence to Knightmare "always made me hide behind the sofa! Honest!!! No, really, it did!!! Can I have my money now?"

You know what else the 1980s were good for? Films that you can now see repeated every Bank Holiday on ITV, that's what - from The Goonies to The Princess Bride to, erm, that one with Corey Feldman where he has to learn to drive but isn't very good at it. Platoon, we think it's called.

King of all these mid-afternoon public holiday TV treats, however, is Short Circuit - the story of an amusing robot called Johnny Five who gets into all sorts of government-annoying scrapes. Well we say amusing. By the point - about five minutes in - you've seen Johnny whizz-read through another book for the millionth time, and then yabber about what he's learned in his silly robot voice, you'll want to douse the bastard in soapy water and watch his circuits really short.

Short Circuit, then - not the sort of movie you devote your life to. Okay, not all of us, anyway. The chaps over at this Johnny Five internet shrine would evidently seem to disagree. Best bit: check out the 'scrapbook' section for a full-on descent into one woman's madness.

Someone really should call social services, shouldn't they?

Johnny Five Obsessives 

After the Big Brother week of excitement that saw a man wet himself, a failed sleep deprivation task, a slop-only diet and - oh, let's say it again - a man wetting himself, the climax comes tonight with another Big Brother eviction.

Oh, one more exciting thing happened this week - Jonathan left the Big Brother house. Well, alright Jonathan didn't leave the Big Brother house, but he certainly told Big Brother that he was leaving and then he told all the other housemates that he was leaving… and then he changed his mind and decided to stay in the Big Brother house. It's this sort of mind-blistering excitement that just keeps us coming back to Big Brother again and again. And a professional obligation. But mainly the excitement thing.

Tonight, either Carole, Tracey or Billi will be evicted from the Big Brother house. So, since we looked at Carole and Tracey yesterday, here are the Big Brother betting odds for the eviction of Billi, with help from Paddy Power…

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