Posts from October, 2008

Bruce Springsteen really loves Halloween - he loves it more than songs with the word ‘born’ in the title and he loves it more than muttering about AIDS.

In fact, Bruce Springsteen loves Halloween so much that he’s decided to dress up as the devil and release a brand new vaguely spooky song entitled A Night With The Jersey Devil on his website for free, just because today happens to be Halloween.

It’s a clever move. And it’s prompted other old rockers to follow - next week Rod Stewart will release a song called Bonfire Night (Of My Heart) on his website, followed by Huey Lewis posting a song called I Give Thanks To You, Baby on November 27 and then Elton John releasing Woo, It’s The International Year Of Astronomy! on January 15, just because he couldn’t wait an extra month and do one for Valentine’s Day, the impatient sod.

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Fact: Spider-Man 3 was stupid - so stupid that if you put a hot iron in its hand and made a telephone noise it’d burn its own ear off.

But don’t think that Sam Raimi hasn’t learnt his lesson. He’s decided to make Spider-Man 4 intimidatingly cerebral in its complex exploration of themes like Oedipal desire, quantum immortality and the ethical ambiguity of human interpretations of good and evil.

Well, that’s what we assume, anyway. It’s been announced that the script for Spider-Man 4 will be penned by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire. Great! We loved his play Rabbit Hole - especially the scene where, after wrestling with grief following the accidental death of her four-year-old son, the lead character dances the Twist with Kirsten Dunst, cooks some eggs and then pulls a funny face.

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Five up, five down.

Folded:

• The Sweeney on ITV4 in the day sometime (if you’re bored, ill or skiving)
• British Style Genius (good set of programmes on BBC2. Good if you like clothes, of course, bit of a waste of time if you don’t)
• Spiralling by Keane (officially we hate the song, but it would still work better as the new Bond theme than Another Way To Shat)
• Gran Torino trailer (Clint Eastwood’s upcoming film proves why he is still the rock hardest, baddest muddy funster in all the movies)
• Want to know which watch Sly Stallone wears in Cobra? (hell yes!)

Creased:

• Craig in Creep (a down on his luck Luke Goss impersonator hides in the London Underground killing people. Worst horror villain ever? We feel another Top Ten coming on)
• No downloadable GTA IV content for PS3 owners (at least not for a while. That’s quite annoying for some of us)
• The Diesel ‘Fuel For Life’ TV advert (that dirgey piano bit near the end should be played at Guantanamo Bay)
• Candy Skulls (didn’t these used to have some gooey pink fondant crap inside? Or is it just us and we’re that old?)
• Cheap spooky movies at HMV (don’t bother – just watch The X Factor on Saturday, that’s scary enough)

After a brief stint away to contemplate life and the existence of X Factor, this typically patchy feature returns to guide you towards music you might not know.

Whilst away in foreign shores, we found the lack of music amazing. Each night we were treated to tribute acts that varied from laughable to ghastly. A personal highlight included the P Diddy and Usher rappers who kept on forgetting the words. Never a good start.

But getting away from all things, er, gangster we thought we’d direct you towards the funktastic Mr Scruff.

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Everyone, at some point or another, has been targeted by emails from spurious Nigerian princes who need your money to retrieve vast stolen fortunes.

And everyone, when they’ve received these emails, deletes them instantly because they’re not hopelessly naive. Except some don’t. Some reply to the emails, offer to help out and end up losing everything. And that’s what 419: The Nigerian Scam is all about.

Directed by Sorin Mihailovici on a budget of just $180, 419: The Nigerian Scam is a movie that’s making waves on the independent circuit, not only getting screened at festivals but winning them too. We caught up with Mihailovici for a chat about the scam and the movie itself…

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We’ve missed Phil Spector. Like many people we see him as the lesbian-haired wobbly old uncle who nobody trusts around women that we never had.

And that’s why we should all be greeting the retrial of Phil Spector over the alleged murder of Lana Clarkson like the celebration it is. For the next few months we get to go over all of Phil Spector’s greatest hits - the funny hair, the driver who he apparently confessed the murder to, the endless scientific discussions about bullet trajectory, the funny hair. The funny hair. And that all starts right now.

Well, OK, not right now. The second crack at the Phil Spector murder trial was set to begin yesterday, but it couldn’t because a juror fell over in the car park and broke his foot, forcing a postponement. Remember that if Phil Spector is found guilty of murder he’ll be given life in jail. So probably about a fortnight at this rate.

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Nicole Kidman isn’t a traditional Hollywood star - for instance, rather than make one film that everyone loves, she’ll make ten films that everyone hates.

And this fierce sense of anti-establishment also includes the way she raises her daughter. When most moviestars have children, for example, they’ll sell pictures of the baby to a magazine for millions of dollars. But not that’s not how Nicole Kidman rolls.

Similarly when most moviestars have children, they’ll give interviews about how great it feels to be a mother and how wonderful their child is. But, again, Nicole Kidman doesn’t roll that way - which is why in her first big interview since the birth of her child, Nicole Kidman didn’t seem to do much except for shriek about how she doesn’t want to die and how she can’t stop crying. Attagirl, Nicole.

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Since zombies are so cool these days, we’ve decided to give you a game with some zombies in it. Look at us riding this fancy old bandwagon!

Anyway, this is Grave Shift - an isometric zombie game. Kind of. Grave Shift is a bit Zelda-y and only slightly zombie-ish, so the extent that actually we’re not all that sure how you actually play it. But, hey, if you like walking around chased by evil dogs who never deviate from their set paths, Grave Shift is the game for you. Probably.

Play Grave Shift now

When Joaquin Phoenix announced his retirement from acting, we have a hunch that he expected wailing, anguish and possibly a national day of mourning.

That’s not exactly what happened, though. Instead, what Joaquin Phoenix got was one slightly incredulous man in a suit who quickly collapsed into slightly unprofessional fits of helpless giggles upon hearing the news. And, as we all know, since Joaquin Phoenix has never done a single humorous thing in his entire life, the news didn’t go down particularly well.

We’ve got the incredible video footage of Joaquin Phoenix announcing his retirement from acting to the world’s least caring man after the jump. It’s funny, but be warned - if the apathetic reaction causes Joaquin Phoenix to reverse his decision and sign up for a sequel to The Village, we’re going to hunt that giggling man down like a dog.

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10 - Woo, dress as any of these spooky things today and you’ll get beaten up - Cracked

9 - Spooky food! SPOOKY! - Designmom

8 - Gifts to deliberately annoy trick or treaters! Spookywoo! - Divinecaroline

7 - Spooky rap songs! Woooo! - About

6 - Make your own werewolf head! WooooOOoo! Spookyyy! - Instructables

5 - Woo, Bruce Springsteen isn’t decorating his house today. Um, spooky? - Huffingtonpost

4 - Saw School Musical. Wooo! Spooky - I Am Bored

3 - Woo, bloodsucking moths! Spoooky! - Nationalgeographic

2 - Woooooo! Sex scene or murder scene quiz! Spoooooooooooky! - Liquidgeneration

1 - And finally, the woo spookiest thing you’ll see all day. May God have mercy on your blackened souls…