Cinema adverts.

So I go into the cinema, get a seat, chat to my friends for a wee bit then the lights start to dim. Then two idiots come on the screen and start making bad jokes and showing clips of Red Bull covered vehicles doing stunts. So this is an advert right? Well it is. But with a twist. This advert lasts for about 10, 15 minutes. Excuse me what? That’s like when Disney show little short films before the main feature. Except they’re good. This is just a couple of “cool” ex-snowboarders making bad puns and showing us clips of unimpressive stunts. And it’s clearly all as an advert for Red Bull, which would’ve been better if they’d mentioned Red Bull more than about once, and you know what, would’ve been better if they’d just had a funny 30 second ad. Making me sit this long has actively put me off buying Red Bull. If I ever had any desire to buy it it’s gone now that they’re the guys who made me sit for 15 minutes bored stiff in the cinema. Then at the end of this mammoth advert the guys say “Now here’s the film!” and I could almost have forgiven them if it had been the film.

But no. It was more adverts. Lots and lots of adverts. And these adverts took 20 minutes. So that’s 35 minutes of adverts in total so far. And the kicker is that one of the second lot of adverts was another one for Red Bull. Have we not had enough from them already? Then there was two trailers. Which bring me to my main point. We all hate adverts in the cinema. We go to see a film not adverts and they’re just kind of forced onto us, but there’s nothing we can do because the funding from the adverts is one of the things that keeps the cinemas open. But if you’re going to see a film can the adverts at least be for other films? I don’t mind sitting through trailers because maybe I’ll see a film I didn’t know about and it’ll make me want to go and see it. But I don’t want to see the exact same adverts as I see on TV. If I wanted to see a 3 minute long 14 year old’s emo poem advertising an energy drink, then I’d see it on the TV. That’s where adverts like this belong.  They don’t belong in the cinema. There are three reasons to go to the cinema and one of them is to get out of your house. And if you’re just watching bigger versions of the adverts on your TV then you might as well have stayed at home.

Doctor Who Review: Meglos

This week's Doctor Who, The Rebel Flesh, was the first part of a two part story. And that means I haven't got the whole story yet. I thought week's was alright, but what if next week's is fantastic, then the whole story will be better or if it's awful the opposite. Although they're on two seperate weeks, they are one story, so I don't want to review half. I wouldn't review half of a film, so why do it with this. So next week find out what I think of the story.

But of course I couldn't leave you with nothing this week. So I trawled the archives of my big box of videos and came up with a classic Doctor Who with a tenuous link to this week's. I say classic, because it's from the original run of Doctor Who, not because of the quality, because well, I'm about to explain. So lets have a look at Meglos, another story where there's someone who looks like the Doctor but with a weird alien twist.

Yes. I know this is the least convincing connection ever. I don't care.

This is a classic Who, so it's split into 4 parts, each lasting 25 minutes. It's a Fourth Doctor story, starring Tom Baker as the Doctor, Lalla Ward as his companion Romana, and it has K-9 in it.

Part 1
The episode starts with a thrilling piece of techobabble between the Doctor and Romana while fixing K-9. Then it cuts to a group of people, from a planet called Tigella, we don't know and they spout exposition and then have a religious debate. In a third so far unconnected story some space pirates bring a man to an alien planet where he merges with a cactus, and reveals himself as title character, Meglos. The Tigellans call for the Doctor to help them mediate their debate, Meglos finds out and traps the Doctor in a "Chronic Hysterisis". Then he turns into a double of the Doctor.

I've just summed up 25 minutes in just over a hundred words. And I've not missed anything out. Almost nothing happens in this episode they just talk to each other explain things they should already know so the audience knows what's going on. But as almost nothing happens. We don't care. The Tigellans are in three groups, agressive scientists, who are right but conpletely unlikable, religious fantatics, who are portrayed like fundamental creationists, so also unlikable, and one old guy who's in charge of both groups, but refuses to make any decisions or do anything interesting. The space pirates are stereotypical pirates, but also somehow dull. And the Doctor and Romana do literally nothing at all, until they get caught in the "Chronic Hysterisis" which is a unneccesary complicated way of saying time loop. And this timeloop means they just show the same 30 seconds of film over and over again, further padding out a completely actionless episode. Oh, and the Doctor already knowing the Tigellans so they can call him for help is just lazy writing to allow the plot to continue.

And they all have ridiculous costumes.

Part 2
Meglos disguised as the Doctor travels to Tigella with the pirates and meets the Tigellans. He acts unbelievably suspiciously, not recognising a man the Doctor knows, not knowing his way round a place he's been before and asking to view the Tigellans power soure, the Dodecahedron, on his own with some bullshit reason that he says only a Timelord could understand. But for some reason, no-one seems to think the slightest thing is wrong and are all shocked when he steals the Dodecahedron. Because... they're stupid? The Doctor meanwhile in trapped in a timeloop where the same 30 seconds is still repeating and there's also an extra bit of time after each loop where he and Romana discuss the situation. Why is there extra time? Because according to Meglos that's how long it takes for the loop to restart. Which doesn't make sense. Him and Romana then escape the timeloop by repeating their actions from within the loop in their extra time. And that works because... it's never explained. And they don't even repeat the exact actions, they get it really wrong, but it still works because... it's never explained.

The Doctor arrives on Tigella and Romana gets attacked by a plant because they needed to seperate her and the Doctor somehow for plot purposes. K-9 runs out of battery, so he can get put out of the way too. The Doctor gets captured because the Tigellans think he's Meglos and Meglos now looks like a cross between the Doctor and a cactus, because... the audience need to tell the two Doctors apart? Then Romana gets cornered by the pirates and they decide to kill her. Cue credits. So, more happened here, but it was still incredibly padded out with unneccesary rubbish. And the things that did happen made no sense.

I challenge anyone to explain the timeloop escape. It make literally no sense.

Part 3
The pattern of stuff happening, but nothing really mattering or making sense continues. Romana isn't killed for very flimsy reasons, and she leads the pirates round in circles til they meet the plot-convenience plants and she escapes. Meglos meets a Tigellan but instead of her screaming or shooting him or anything sensible, she leads him to the exit then gets knocked out by Romana who thinks Meglos is the Doctor. Meanwhile the Doctor is with the Tigellans when the religious nuts take over the city off screen, because it was clearly too exciting for this story. K-9 does nothing, just gets carried around. Meglos has made the dodecahedron tiny so he could steal it and meets the piratesand they all fly away in their spaceship while he manages to make the grand reveal of the tiny dodecahedron twice in the space of 5 minutes to the same group of people. Which, doesn't make sense. And then the religious nuts decide to execute the Doctor by dropping a huge rock on him. Dun dun dun.

Because this is clearly the most practical way to sacrifice.

Part 4
Romana and the dull old man run in and tell the religious nuts that they've seen Meglos. And for some reason this immediately convices them and they release the Doctor. Then the Doctor heads to the Tardis and the leader of the religion gets shot by pirate to save Romana, because... the writers wanted her redeemed? She was played by an old Doctor Who companion so they gave her a big exit? Well who cares because she's forgotten immediately and never mentioned again. The Doctor then follows the pirates to Meglos's base which turns out to be a superweapon and there's a long 30 second reveal of it even though it's not a good model and we saw it in part 1 so it's hardly a surprise. So that's pointless. Meglos plans to destroy Tigella and the Doctor arrives to stop him. There's a bit of them pretending to be each other which is too complex for me to explain here, but they end up betrayed by the pirates and locked in the pirate's ship's brig. Romana arrives to rescue them and you expect the 'which one is the real one' routine, but no. Meglos immediately reveals he's Meglos, and seperates into the cactus and human again. The human, the Doctor and friends all run away in the Tardis and it turns out the Doctor's rigged the superweapon to explode taking Meglos and the pirate with it. Because the Doctor always blows people up. He doesn't try and make peaceful solutions at all.

But the Tardis doesn't seem to be taking off, can they escape before the countdown ends? Of course they do. That was terrible false tension. The weapon explodes. Then suddenly we cut to the Doctor getting thanked on Tigella. He blew up the dodecahedron, their only power source so now they have to live in an area with killer plants, but thats ok. Apparently. I'm not sure why this isn't a major problem, but apparently it's not, because the Doctor's recieved a message and has to leave. So he takes the human back home telling him "you'll be back before you left!" and the story ends on the man looking puzzled. Which is surprisingly suitable for my views on this episode.

For the most part nothing happens in Meglos, and when it does none of it makes sense. The acting and script are simultaneously dull, bland and completely nonsensical. There are fun moments and Tom Baker is clearly enjoying himself, but it doesn't save this poor story.

And it has some really terrible bluescreen.

2/5

Doctor Who Review: The Doctor's Wife

I’m a fan of Doctor Who. I’m not ashamed to admit that. So when I heard about this episode I was very interested. The title, the promo pictures, that it was being written by Neil Gaiman and my favourite, the clip from the trailer where a voice taunts the Doctor “Fear me, I’ve killed hundreds of Time Lords” and he replies “Fear me, I’ve killed all of them”. That just made it look like this one, would be one to remember. And, I wasn’t disappointed.

I couldn’t say it had me rethinking anything about the series, which Gaiman promised it would. It wasn’t an episode with any shocking revelations. But what it was, was very well written. The dialogue in this episode made me laugh, made me sit on the edge of my seat, and if I wasn’t such a hard nut to crack up, then it probably would’ve made me cry. Matt Smith gave a great performance acting pretty much every emotion possible in 45 minutes, and Suranne Jones was fantastic as “Idris”. Michael Sheen, House, had a menacing voice, but I don’t think his character was very well developed. He had a complex plan, but we never really found out why he wanted to do any of this, except for fun. But he was still fun to watch, like Auntie and Uncle, who I wish there’d be more of, because they did make me laugh.

So I liked the dialogue, I liked the acting, I liked the set design, the junk planet looked suitably barren and the temporary Tardis looked great reminding me of the Tardis from the classic series. I didn’t really like the look of the Tardis’s corridors, they looked a bit bland compared to the parts we’ve seen before, but they look better than in the old series.

"Will we make a Tardis set?" "No, let's just use an empty factory!"

I did like seeing the old control room back, and the Doctor’s plan was reasonably good compared to the “hope for the best” shit from last week and the “turn everyone into killers” plan from the week before. There wasn’t a lot for Amy and Rory to do, except for Rory to die, again, which seems to be a theme now. But it wasn’t their story. It was the Doctor’s and the Tardis’s. So good story, well written, good acting, good look, well shot, and hardly anything for me to complain about. Overall, a very good episode, much needed after last week.

5/5

Whatever happened to the 30 day challenge?

I started a 30 day challenge recently. But I gave up after about 8 days. I doubt anyone missed it hugely, but I thought I’d better explain where it went. I don’t like to upload more than one thing a day. Or even one thing every 2 days. Because if I write lots and lots of things people can’t be bothered reading them all and what’s the point in me writing all my stuff if people don’t read it? So with all my other things I wanted to do, like the Doctor Who reviews, I would need to keep putting off the challenge to another day. And I can’t be bothered with that. I’m a lazy guy, and I don’t wanted to keep doing it for months. But what if people actually wanted to hear what I had to say for each day? Well then, here’s the quick version of the rest of the days.

Number 9 - How you hope your future will be like
This is the same question as the second day. Recycling questions already and we’re only on day 9? Not a good sign.

Number 10 - Discuss your first love and first kiss
First love, myself, that’s still going pretty well. First kiss, on a school trip got dared to kiss a girl, does that count? If not, then I don’t know. I don’t really remember shite like that. I keep my memory for important things, like what yoghurt I had when I was 8.

Number 11 - Put your iPod on shuffle and write 10 songs that pop up.
I’ve lost my iPod, due to me not having iTunes. Apple hate me.
UPDATE. I have found my iPod. So:
1. 5iliconeater – Calvin Harris
2. Storm In A Teacup - RHCP
3. Gimme Gimme – ABBA (don’t judge me)
4. Out of Orbit - Comatoast
5. Little Angel – Hard-Fi
6. I Talk Too Much – Just Jack
7. Livin Da Vida Loca – Ricky Martin
8. I’m Comin’ – Will Smith
9. Roseability - Idlewild
10. Sexual Healing (Original AvR Mix) – Alibi vs Rockafella

Number 12 - Bullet your whole day
That seems a bit violent for me.

Number 13 - Somewhere you’d like to move or visit
Somewhere I’d like to move? I can’t move places, I’m not superman. He moved the whole moon once.

Number 14 - Your earliest memory
Eating yoghurt. See above.

Number 15 - Your favourite tumblrs.
None. Tumblr is a terrible waste of time. On here I think of good ideas, then take in writing things, if I was on there I could just post a picture everyone’s already seen, and no-one would complain. Some of my friends have tumblrs. They disgust me.

Number 16 - Your views on mainstream music.
I like just out of mainstream music. Like the music everyone’s heard, but no-one seems to admit to buying. I’ve never had a problem with mainstream music as a concept, but some of the things which are popular are the worse pieces of shite out. So views are mixed but a bit negative.

Number 17 - Your highs and lows of this past year
High – Being held by Ruari Waugh.
Low – Because I was being sick at the time.

Number 18 - Your beliefs
Another recycled question. This day 4. Religion and beliefs are very different in real life, but in a quiz like this, you’d talk about your beliefs on day 4.

Number 19 - Disrespecting parents
This is not a question in any way. It doesn’t ask what I think of that, or if I do it. Or even whether it means me disrespecting parents or parents disrespecting me. So due to lack of clarity I refuse to answer.

Number 20 - How important you think education is.
I think it’s good to have one, but as someone who left school, it’s not the most important thing in life. I’ve not been called to used any of the stuff I learnt in school since I left, except to sound smart. Qualifications get you jobs, but aren’t practically useful.

Number 21 - One of your favourite shows.
Doctor Who. I know it’s geeky. But I love it. It’s probably the only thing I watched as a kid I still watch and it’s still as good. This means I’m allowed to say “I LIKED IT BEFORE IT WAS POPULAR!” But I don’t think I will.

Number 22 - How have you changed in the past 2 years?
I have less hair, but more of a beard? I’m more productive, but less well behaved. I like to think I’m funnier. But that probably ain’t true.

Number 23 - 5 guys who are famous who you find attractive.
I feel this might be a question for girls. In fact I’m starting to think this whole 30 day challenge was designed for little 13 year olds who think they’re smart by doing it. Which means I’ve been suckered in to a blog version of twilight. I’m going to ignore that thought, it’s too horrible to contemplate.

Number 24 - Your favourite movie and what it’s about.
I’m not going to tell my favourite. I’ve seen a lot of films, and if I start having a favourite that means I have to compare every film I watch to it. And nothing would hold up. I mean, I love Men In Black 2 more than Shawshank Redemption, even though the latter is clearly a better film. If I think about it too much it’ll make me look about all the flaws of MIB II. Then I won’t enjoy it as much. So I don’t have a favourite.

Number 25 - Someone who fascinates you and why.
People with total amnesia. I understand how you could forget part of your life, or slowly forget everything as you get old. But it really fascinates me how you could just forget everything, including your name, in an instant. What happens to the old you? Have they died? I don’t know it just interests me.

Number 26 - What kind of person attracts you and why.
Bored now, so short answers.

Number 27 - A problem that you have had.
Lots. Who cares though, lets move on.

Number 28 - Something that you miss.
My holiday to Switzerland. It was fun

Number 29 - Goals for the next 30 days.
Never do anything like this again. Keep in work. Write more because I enjoy it. Watch my dvds. Have fun in parties.

Number 30 - Your highs and lows of this month.
Lows – When blogger broke. When I couldn’t watch Grindhouse.
Highs – Now. Because I never have to see this challenge again J

The Real Box Podcast

The podcast I posted before as the box podcast wasn't the box podcast. Mainly because it didn't involve a box. You might ask, how did I get between the two, well... I didnt listen to the first one. I did however listen to this one. And in fact, I did a bit of editing. So it's not quite as much of of an awful mess. Only just though. At least this one's short.

So in the style of the 80's Ghostbusters cartoons, here is The Real Box Podcast.


ps. Blogger has been down a few days, so you've been deprived of my ramblings and I've had nowhere to ramble. It's been a bad time for me, with this and the PSN down, with nothing to do but watch films and actually go out and make human contact. But this has meant I've got a couple of things written in advance for the blog, so they'll be on their way soon.

Doctor Who Review: Curse of The Black Spot

So the opening episodes created a huge mystery which you wanted to know the answers to straight away. How could a standalone episode work at this point, well by being fantastic. Unfortunately Curse of the Black Spot, isn’t. It’s not the worst Doctor Who episode ever.  But I was not a fan. I’ll assume anyone reading this has seen the episode and just skip the plot summary straight to my problems with this episode. It’s dull. It has lots of good ideas. Pirates, good, but they weren’t interesting enough to be well rounded characters and they weren’t over the top enough to be plain fun. The main pirate, wasn’t bad, but I was put off him from that one scene in the Tardis where he says that the controls are like parts of his ship, it could’ve been funny, but it wasn’t and just didn’t sit right. I couldn’t tell you what was wrong with the scene, maybe it was his lack of wonder as the amazing machine. The Doctor has met some of the smartest men ever and they can hardly handle the inside being bigger than the outside and this pirate wanders in and immediately understands everything.

The scenes of the pirate ship were alright but they seemed to be leading up a big shock. And it turned out the killer spirit was actually a holographic nurse who was just trying to help everyone. Which just seemed like an enormous anticlimax, reminding me of last year’s The Beast Below. In that everyone on a ship is hiding a huge secret and it turned out that the ship had no engines and was instead being moved by a giant space whale. Both these stories had me interested to hear what the twist was, only to make it completely uninteresting. Also, due to the fact the mermaid was a nurse there is no tension at the end, so they have to make fake tension by making the nurse unable to heal people so Amy has to resuscitate a drowning Rory herself. Which she fails at. He comes back to life once she’s given up. Oh, yes, she gave up, and the only reason Rory asked her to do it, instead of the Doctor, who name is the Doctor and has been around for 900 years so he’s obviously going to be better at CPR than Amy, is that she wouldn’t give up. But she did. Urgh. This story annoyed me.

And of course, the pirates going off into space in the ship. It’s so obviously just there to get people to say “Hey, remember that bit where it’s like pirates in space? That was so cool!” Well it wasn’t. It was clearly meant to be, but it failed.

So, it was a dull episode with plenty of parts which didn’t make sense or just annoyed me. Not the worst story ever, but definitely my least favourite Matt Smith episode by far. Hopefully next week’s will be back on form.

1/5

More Robocop TV

I don't know why I watch so much Robocop. It just seems to get worse and worse and annoys me more and more, but sometimes something good turns up.

ROBOCOP: THE SERIES - EPISODE 2 (Prime Suspect)
After the pilot episode I thought there might be a drop in quality, but in fact it’s actually got better. The acting’s actually got better, it’s less cheesy now. It’s still as well made and shot, and this time the story’s actually pretty good.

There’s a religious nut who’s got a whole crew together to protest against Rob, which is a pretty interesting idea, what the church would think of a cyborg brought back from the dead. But the priest gets killed by Rob’s gun and he has to go on the run, which happens in practically every piece of Robocop media. Whole set of things happen and it turns out the inventor of Rob’s gun had a prototype which he used to kill the priest because he was making it unlikely there would be more Robocops made.

That’s the main plot, and I really enjoyed it. It’s improved on the pilot episode and now I’m actually annoyed I only have those two episodes of the show, because it’s really got me in the mood to watch more. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than I ever expected.

Day 7/8 and why I don't think we should talk to Lewis.

Day 7: Your Zodiac Sign and...SHITE. Zodiac is shite. So i'll tell you about something freaky that happened with me and a fortune cookie. I said "Bet this says something shite like "Your lucky flower is rose"" and then I opened the cookie and it did. A bit creepy, isn't it?

Day 8: A moment you felt most satisfied in your life.Not the most satisfied moment, but I felt very satusfied when I managed to revise for about 20 minutes then get an A for all my highers. There's not a lot of point to this, but it just reminded me of everyone staying in every night and day to get their grades while I was having fun, then I still did well. And I always take pleasure in doing as little work as possible.

And now for a little story. I was in town with my friend Lewis the other day. And I saw a hot girl, I said "She's a nice looking lassie" or something like that, but possibly more sexist. Then Lewis turned round and said "Yeh, she's alright. For a coloured girl!" What depths will he reach next? Will he trip up a blind man? Or steal candy from a baby? All I know is, I don't approve of this behavior by Mr Bage, and I will be seeing him in court.

what a racist.

Doctor Who Review: The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon

The new series of Doctor Who has begun on the BBC. I love a good bit of it, so I felt this year the blog could let me share my thoughts about each week’s episode in the new running feature, Doctor Who Review. This week I’ll look at the opening two-parter, The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon. This is the first year that a series started on a double, and so it was a gamble to whether it would draw people into the show if there was a proper conclusion in the first week. Luckily it’s done better than ever, with each week providing a great cliffhanger (but more on that later).

The story opens with the Doctor summoning his companions in a funny little scene, but one thing did occur to me. If you hadn’t seen the show before this doesn’t really explain who any of them are. It wasn’t a problem for me, or for probably anyone who’s reading this, but there was a lot of action going on, but not much explanation, so for existing fans it was a fantastic opening, but I don’t think it’d win any new fans. But except for this little problem the set up for the story is brilliant. The Doctor explains they have to go to 1969, and then is killed by a spaceman. So immediately you want to know what happens there and after a past version of him turns up, how they will save the one who dies. It’s a very effective hook. And from there the proper story begins.




I’m not going to go into detail about the plot. If you don’t know the story then go and watch it. Don’t come here for it. I’m just going to say the things I liked and I thought worked and the things that didn’t. Number one of course, being the new monsters, The Silence. I love the concept behind them. If you can’t remember them if you aren’t looking at them, they can be right behind you and you would never know. Very creepy. I’m glad they didn’t make them speak too much, because a being called the Silence would be slightly ruined by being chatty. They had a nice look as well, based on the grey aliens everyone thinks of when talking about abductions, a common side-effect being memory loss, clearly an inspiration for this alien.



The story itself seemed a bit rushed. One minute they’re at the White House, then the warehouse, then Area 51, then NASA, then an orphanage then back to the warehouse and it’s over. And that’s it. But I don’t think it was because it was disjointed it was due to the lack of conclusion. They never find out who the girl is, or why she’s important. They never find out what the Silence’s plan was. They never find out why the Silence have a Tardis. Or how the Doctor survives from the first part. Or how Amy is pregnant/non pregnant. And so on. And I know that there’s a plan and they’ll come back to all these things, but I really didn’t like the Doctor just going off on an adventure instead of trying to find out what was going on. He’s always seemed to be the kind of guy who’d want to get to the bottom of things, and not just leave them until later. Maybe that’s just me but that bugged me. Once thing I did like was the resolution to the story, the TV message with The Silence. It wasn’t a very Doctor Who style thing ordering people’s deaths but it was a lot cleverer than I thought it might be.



It wasn’t a perfect story, but it was still great fun. All the cast gave a good performance and the show looked fantastic with all the filming from the US. And the cliffhanger with the little girl? Got me hooked. Who is she? Amy's daughter? A timelord definately. Or is she? Can't wait. It’s looking like we’ve got a very interesting series on it’s way.


4/5