Posts from July, 2007

Think 'Disney' and you'll quickly think 'smoking' - whether it's Cruella Deville with her cigarette holder, Pinocchio chewing on a giant cigar or the industrial weapons-grade Jamaican skunk preferred by Basil The Great Mouse Detective.

But that's all in the past, because Disney has announced that it's banning scenes of smoking from all its family-orientated movies, and heavily reducing them from more grown-up fare produced by its Touchstone and Miramax divisions. While Disney's no-smoking decision is an undoubtedly good idea - it's a little-known fact that 82% of lung cancer victims started smoking because they saw the 1928 cigarette-friendly Mickey Mouse cartoon The Gallpoin' Gaucho and thought it looked fun - it comes at a cost. For example, now that they're no longer allowed to smoke, Chip 'N' Dale Rescue Rangers are resigned to losing their rugged macho appeal with the ladies forever.

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Life is sometimes down to an individual’s choice about what they like and don’t like. Consequently, of course, stuff that you have a preference for may not go down too well with your 70-year-old next day neighbour.

The easiest example we can think of to use here would be the good old Marmite debate. For years the product has gone with the slogan 'love it or hate it'. Personally, we hate the stuff; it should never be sold again to anyone - not even the starving. This week, we present to you an act that has been splitting musical opinion since the 1980s. Usually, however, the response to their output has usually been somewhat sour. Probably the most extreme act we are ever likely to feature on this page, we give you Whitehouse. 

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Since it began, the prosecution in the Phil Spector murder trial has done a tip-top job of painting Phil Spector to be a woman-hating, gun-loving, murder-confessing nut - but not tip-top enough to stop Phil Spector trying to get the case dismissed.

Phil Spector's defence team has been attempting to get the charges against Phil Spector either reduced or dropped completely following the resting of the prosecution. According to the defence, the prosecution had not done a good enough job at proving that Phil Spector had 'implied malice', the mark of a murder charge in California. However, the judge in charge of the Phil Spector murder trial chose to continue with the trial, not because of the implied malice of Phil Spector keeping a number of loaded guns in his house - or the implied malice of Phil Spector's history of angry gunplay around women - but the implied malice of Phil Spector's new wig, which the judge claims has been giving him funny looks for a fortnight.

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Many theorists theorise that in theory the mark of true beauty is the ability to fall down some stairs while musically performing, possibly shattering your collar bone and/or splitting your face open, and then get right back up displaying incredible elegance and grace as you transform your dripping blood into a crimson fountain of wonder.

According to the same theorists, said elegance can be described as begging your audience to please not post your huge fall-down blunder on YouTube. If that’s true, then Beyonce Knowles has the mark of true beauty and whatever. That’s right - she just biffed hard on her face, and we just might have some video for you to see.

Better watch fast - looks like some of the footage is getting wiped from the net.

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When Lindsay Lohan was arrested a week after leaving rehab for driving like a drunken idiot with a load of cocaine in her pocket, you probably presumed that Lindsay Lohan was a little bit on the guilty side, admit it.

Well think again, suckers. Even though Lindsay Lohan was arrested on Tuesday morning for driving erratically, failing a police sobriety test and having a load of cocaine in her pocket, Lindsay Lohan is innocent. We know that Lindsay Lohan is innocent because Lindsay Lohan said that Lindsay Lohan is innocent in a badly-punctuated Blackberry email to someone who works for Access Hollywood. And, even though there's overwhelming evidence to the contrary, look at Lindsay Lohan's face. How could you not trust that cute iddle-biddle face? Admittedly Lindsay Lohan has lied in the past, about everything from the nature of her addictions to the quality of any of her films, but still. Look at her cutesy-wutesy iddle-biddle face.

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Wait, wait - we know as well as you do that you steer clear games that deal with sound because of your spectacular lack of rhythm and grace, but stick with Sound Energy, because it's not really like that at all. You might even like it.

The title Sound Energy is a bit of a misnomer anyway, because really all you have to do is navigate your ball around the screen, picking up shapes the same colour as you and avoiding shapes that aren't the same colour as you, all the while clicking your mouse to change colour yourself. But where Sound Energy gets clever is that your score, combo-count and position of the cursor all affects the Sound Energy soundtrack. Or something. Anyway, it's good.

Play Sound Energy now

Experts have determined that there's only one thing more annoying than Chris Martin from Coldplay, and that's Chris Martin from Coldplay dancing the flamenco in a giant sombrero while bibbling about on a zambomba.

And guess what - that's exactly what Chris Martin from Coldplay plans to do in the horrifyingly near future. Despite making his usual promises that Coldplay would split up after X&Y was released, it seems that Coldplay have been secretly putting a new album together; and according to Chris Martin the new album is going to be 'Hispanic'. But the bad news - that Coldplay are probably going to start releasing songs called things like Bullfighting? Ole! and Vieja Prostitute Melenuda (Of My Heart) - is balanced out by two pieces of good news: 1) By the sound of things, even Coldplay don't like their Hispanic new direction and 2) the Coldplay Hispanic album isn't released until next year, so you've still got plenty of time to hide.

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Gary Lineker - big-eared sportsman and one-time panellist on 'comedy' show They Think Its All Over - has had his latest Walkers Crisps commercial briefly pulled off the air.

Quick bit of exposition for any non-Britons reading this: Lineker is an ex-footballer who now makes a living by presenting sports programmes and - whenever he gets a spare moment - advertising packets of crisps to bewildered audiences. Many have argued that using a sporting type like Lineker to flog junk food might be a bit hypocritical, but they need to lighten up - the whole shebang has been pretty much commonplace ever since Muhammed Ali advertised Doritos, yelling to camera: "You know, when I'm not reflecting on my epic career, I like nothing more than to shovel handfuls of additive-coated corn snacks into my eager boxer's mouth."

He did need someone else to open the bags, mind.

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Big news from the Big Brother house - tomorrow night six new housemates will enter the Big Brother house next door, where some of them will become genuine Big Brother housemates and others will go home before we've learnt to dislike them.

Big Brother has been promising that the new housemates will 'stir up' the existing Big Brother set-up like nothing before, whatever that means. Let's hope it stirs up the housemates more than yesterday's surprise announcement, anyway - when Big Brother informed everyone that the prize money, which they assumed had been handed to Liam a few weeks ago in the most useless Big Brother twist ever, was still up for grabs. For all the housemates' enthusiasm you'd have thought that Big Brother had been discussing various envelope design specifics.

But enough of that claptrap - Tracey and Charley are up for Big Brother eviction tomorrow, so with that in mind here are the Big Brother betting odds for the eviction of Tracey, with help from Paddy Power…

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Whatever you're doing on Friday, cancel it and buy OK! magazine instead so you can stare at the career-ending photos of Britney Spears divving around in clownish make-up on dresses covered in chicken-grease and dog-turds.

After Britney Spears apparently decided to use a high-profile comeback-announcing OK! photo shoot to act like a shrieking harpy who uses Chanel dresses to wipe up dog mess, stumbles around with her eyes rolled back like a zombie and absent-mindedly paws at her breasts and genitals constantly in full view of everyone, OK! magazine has decided to do the unthinkable. It's printing the Britney Spears photo shoot and accompanying paranoid interview in full! But however exciting the prospect of seeing the OK! Britney Spears meltdown photo shoot is, we know exactly what the poor girl must be going through - after all, we did pretty much the exact same thing in our infant school class photo.

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