Posts from February, 2008

Harry Potter has made JK Rowling richer than her wildest dreams - but if you try to make money out of Harry Potter, JK Rowling will crush you in her mighty fist.

Harry Potter fan Steven Vander Ark is slowly coming to realise this, because he's trying to publish a third-party Harry Potter reference book, Harry Potter Lexicon, and JK Rowling is doing her best to sue his balls off about it.

It just goes to show that JK Rowling won't allow any unauthorised Harry Potter merchandise to hit the shops. But, hey, that doesn't mean you have to tell her about that container of shoddy Far-Eastern lead-painted Dobby The House Elf choking aids that we've just had shipped into the country, OK?

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Our hero Prince Harry is to return home! The move follows the collapse of the news blackout deal that had been silently agreed between the MoD and newspapers and broadcasters in the UK and abroad.

Was it a British news source that broke the deal? No, sir, of course not - how dare you ask? - it was a foreign one. And which foreigners do we blame? That’s right: Australia; Those bloody foreigners. It was apparently leaked there in January, fortunately though, what with it being in Australia, nobody noticed, and it wasn’t until influential US website The Drudge Report got hold of the story that Harry was asked home. So we’ve been let down by two countries that we basically created.

But still, Harry’s home - Yay!

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Aside from the chronic signs of drug addiction, self-harm and mental instability, Amy Winehouse has probably been most worried about perverting the course of justice lately.

But now she needs to worry no more, because the police have officially decided to take no further action with Amy Winehouse over her supposed role in her husband's GBH/ perverting the course of justice trial.

Finally Amy Winehouse can relax - and this means she can now hoof down as much crack as she likes without fear of being sent to jail and experiencing any upsetting periods of cold turkey in there. That Amy Winehouse, eh? What a bloody hero.

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What we are raving about and what we are crying over.

Folded:

• Rambo 4 (I see dead people)

• James (imagine if you had all this lot in one room, put them all on chairs then invited your mates round for a beer. It’ll certainly get you out of any further Best Man duties)

• Jennifer Rafferty (find this talented lady a more interesting/less commercial sound)

• Mother’s Day (got one? Buy her something nice. She’s dead? Buy her some flowers)

• Vintage ‘Nostalgia Collection’ Action Man (why don’t you grow up? No, we’re fine, thanks)

Creased:

• Russell Brand nude (nobody needs it and, as far as we are aware, nobody has asked for it either)

• Tesco garlic and herb ready-cooked chicken (smells nice in the shop. Get one home and it tastes like stomach lining)

• Delicate universal remotes (ok, unless you breathe on them - then they reset for the tenth time and you explode)

• Juno original soundtrack (worse than a student union poetry reading)

• Oscar 2008 (No Country For Old Men is a great movie, but an Academy Award for adapting the screenplay to be almost exactly the same as the book? No, it should have gone to The Diving Bell And The Butterfly)

After a week away the infamous Movies From Beyond returns. We'd have been here last time but we were busy exploring graveyards, slaughter houses and all manner of spooky Scooby-Doo destinations.

Fire up the mystery machine and crack open the Scooby snacks!  We have had a bit of a zombie orgy this week. Not the dirty kind, though, get your mind out of the gutter. We were very pleased to finally get Day Of The Dead and the hardcore violence that is Eastern Promises on Blu-ray as well as repeatedly watching the trailer for George A Romero’s Diary Of The Dead which looks almost good enough to forgive George for the shocking Land Of The Dead. 

This week: House Of The Dead and 20 Million Miles To Earth.

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One oft-neglected side-effect of giving birth is the overwhelming desire to star in overtly showy prohibition-era Broadway musicals.

Just look at Nicole Richie, for example. For some logic-defying reason, she's currently weighing up an offer to star as Roxie Hart in the Broadway version of Chicago.

It'd be awfully presumptuous of us to try and second-guess what issues Nicole Richie is weighing up exactly, but we're willing to bet that they include rehearsal schedules, being able to spend time with her new baby and the fact that if she was any less talented at anything other than forgetting to eat she'd be legally reclassified as vegetation.

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You've seen Lindsay Lohan's tits, now she wants you see her soul - but it's OK, because it's less alarmingly freckly.

That's right, Lindsay Lohan has done a magazine interview all about the impossible darkness of her last 12 months.

It's an important interview because it marks the first time that Lindsay Lohan has publicly prattled on about herself in, ooh, roughly about six or seven minutes. Plus she's kept her clothes on for this one, so your retinas aren't as likely to snap off and run for freedom this time.

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Normally when Paris Hilton needs a new friend, she goes to a puppy mill and buys one that she can stuff in her hand bag.

Since the world-wide puppy shortage, however, that has become impossible. She's tried filling that void with other animals, we heard, but the goldfish died in her mascara case and her squirrel kept trying to store nuts deep inside her. Picture yourself at a million-dollar luncheon, and acorns keep dropping out of your pant-suit. Untolerable.

Paris Hilton has given up her solo friend-search now, and is letting MTV find the yin to her yang, the Japan to her Germany, and the mindless cult to her Charles Manson. Via reality TV.

And if you don't feel enticed enough to apply yet, keep in mind we're pretty sure one of her eyes is a Johnny Depp piece of eight. Certainly that is worth your consideration.

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The mystery behind the untimely death of Heath Ledger has now been cleaned up, but there's still just one loose end left.

As everyone knows, Heath Ledger died because of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs - and now an investigation has been launched into the doctors who prescribed those drugs to Heath Ledger.

Needless to say, this investigation won't bring Heath Ledger back, but it might get a couple of doctors struck off, which is the next best thing. Stupid doctors with their 'cures' for all these so-called 'illnesses'. Idiots.

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There seems to be too many awards ceremonies. And they all have loads in common,like being uninspiring, dull and rigged. Allegedly.

This last month alone has seen the Brit awards reward all the people from its academy, the Grammys bore us to death with so many categories that we were amazed we didn’t win one, and the NME awards, which attempt to booze up young indie boys and the odd indie girl into doing something rock and roll, like leaving the toilet seat up and not replacing the loo roll. 

Award shows, it seems, only benefit the people who are never off the cover of Q or who are relentlessly played on local radio. Maybe one day hecklerspray will launch its own awards ceremony. But don’t expect decent trophies. Instead we’ll take some glue, foil and glitter and make a pretty figurine. In the mean time, we fight on to find undiscovered talent for your benefit. Like TV Off. 

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It has often been said that movie sequels are never as good as their predecessor, and sadly this epidemic has spread to videogames as well.

Some games do manage to improve on their predecessor, but the majority fail to recapture the original magic or end up being crushingly disappointing.

Here's the top 5…

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A basic fact of life is that if you put too much effort into anything - work, hair-styling, befriending people - it gets rubbish. So on that basis, Shooot 2 should be the best game ever invented.

Just about zero effort has gone into Shooot 2, you see. You're a square and you have to blow up circles. By shooting them. But you don't choose when to shoot, it does it automatically. You just move the square around. And the Shooot 2 music sounds like a jammed fax machine. So is Shooot 2 the best game ever invented?

No.

Play Shooot 2 now