HecklerSpray

Grown Up Gossip & Internet Villainy

The X Factor Review; Week 16: Louis Walsh’s Wikipedia Search History, A Love Story

By Sophie Hall

We have two more weeks of The X Factor left, and then we can go and do something else in our brains. We know. It’s amazing. Amazing how it’s all gone so marrow-achingly slow isn't it? Amazing how time can absolutely not shift for three months in the slightest sometimes.

Amazing. A bit like how 2001: A Space Odyssey covered thousands of years scoping from the dawn of men to beyond the infinite. Or a bit like how The Curious Case of Benjamin Button lasted infinity-hundred?hours long and achieved absolute zippo.?A bit like that, a BIT like that?

And hey! Talking of clutching at straws?

Continue reading...

X Factor Week 9 Review: You Can’t Hurry Love-Themed 2 Hour X Factor Programmes

By Sophie Hall

Hey guys. The X Factor?s still on. But that's totally cool because the 100 Year War ran over a couple of decades too, and that was just as important, so not to worry. Those House of the Plantagenet dudes probably had issues connecting their own personal stresses in life to Lighthouse Family lyrics too. Oh, life.

But as Virginia Woolf once said, ?When Frankie Cocozza had those girl?s names cauterized into his sigmoid colon, he was probably just a bit tipsy.?

The theme for this week was of course LOVE AND HARMONY. So, in celebration of that, we're going to get off our ivory towers, and ride our high horses back down to Planet Earth and be nice about The X Factor for a change. Because All You Need is Love, as The Beatles once said, which is true. But they also said ?We all live in a yellow submarine?, which isn't technically accurate, and that ?Happiness is a warm gun?, when in fact ? quite hilariously ? happiness is actually an abstract concept brought on by endogenous opioid peptides that adopt temporary feelings of exhilaration! Haha! God, those guys and their heroin, eh?

Continue reading...

X Factor Week 7 Review, Part 2, 120 Days of Sodom

By Sophie Hall

Right, you lot ? no messing about. We know that we all like to have a bit of ?fun? every now and then on here, and have a bit of a harmless chuckle at the expense of these poor hard-working musicians, but Sunday?s episode of the X Factor was the most emotionally draining and traumatic piece of television we've ever seen, and now we feel all vulnerable and weird, so let's just get on with it shall we?

Because we don't want to talk about it.

Yes, this is the penultimate show before we hit the lives next week where we find out who’s going to be putting the hip in rohypnol in the fight for that incredibly?irrelevant?record contract, and who is not.

Continue reading...

X Factor Review, Week 4 – Part 2 Fast, 2 Furious

By Sophie Hall

Right. RIGHT. So, the X Factor is still on.

Here are the opening titles. Here?s Dermot O Leary?s voice hurriedly aired in from Skype. It's time to face the music. No, not time to face the music and dance. You are mistaken. Just time to face the music.? Just maintain eye contact with the music until you start feeling uncomfortable and?embarrassed?and just want to go home.

Look, there’s an X Factor helicopter.?Okay, so let’s talk about X Factor helicopters.

Continue reading...

X Factor Review, Week 4: The Deathly Hallows Part 1

By Sophie Hall

So, ITV1 have given all their money away to wife beaters and rapists. This is the new way. As such, this essentially means you have to watch X Factor twice, because they can't afford to make any new TV programmes. Thank god Kelly Rowland agreed to work overtime due to how much she believes in music. (Cocaine.)

Talk Talk have given stop-frame animation a go and simultaneously ired the entire board of the Academy Awards as a result.

This week we are visiting MANCHESTER. Although the show isn't in chronological order or anything, so basically we're just looking? at the bits they filmed in Manchester. Or at least ITV1?s edited version of Manchester, which involves a lot of day-glo and mystical interchangeable skies, apparently. Or Hogwarts, if you will. Due to the fact that ITV1 are not culturally familiar with the ’80s ‘Madchester’ scene, we must settle for gratuitous tracking shots of Selfridges over and over to fully understand where we are. Come to think of it, the true meaning of Manchester probably is ?18 lip gloss.

Continue reading...

X Factor Week 3 Review: More People Insist On Wearing Denim And Making Loud Noises

By Sophie Hall

It's week three, and we're all still clinging on, like a shivering, frostbitten Leonardo Di Caprio desperately grasping hold of Kate Winslet's plank. It’s kind of nice.

We began with a rare montage of previous X Factor successes ?dominating the charts?. Cher Lloyd, JLS and Olly Murs. Meanwhile, last year’s winner Matt Cardle is co-writing his debut album with David Sneddon.

Also, every single music video of the ex-contestants shown in this sequence employ the use of LIVE ACTION and ANIMATION and subsequently look like various scenes from Space Jam. Every single one. It's bizzare. Somewhere out there, Thom Yorke can be heard hastily adjusting the black and white settings on Windows Movie Maker.

Continue reading...

X Factor Review, Episode 2: The One Where They All Did The Singing Again

By Sophie Hall

And here we are again. You all look so incredibly tired.

So before we begin, let's really think to ourselves ? what do we really WANT from episode 2 of The X Factor 2011? Because so far, nobody has really got what they want, have they? Nobody really voluntarily asks for Kelly Rowland, for example. Nobody really wants Gary Barlow to be angry to them before 9pm.

Hopefully this week, things will change for the better. We would like to see integrity. We would like to see a jazz singer sing an ironic version of She Wolf. We would like to see at least three testicles. But most importantly, we would like X Factor to bring us a window of entertainment that preceeds an ENTIRE EVENING with Will Young, preferably singing low-key versions of his amazing selection of pop hits, preferably in a tuxedo. Hey. What can we say? We dare to dream.

Continue reading...