TV of 2011

So today it's time to look at the tv of 2011 and see what we liked and disliked.

CHRIS

BEST: Doctor Who
I think you all know what I’ll put here. If you know me or read this blog at all, then you’ll realise that it’s Doctor Who. I love that show. But hey, this is the best of 2011, not just what I like all the time, so I can’t just give the best to Who because I always like it. No, instead it’s getting it because it’s been possibly the best year of the revived series so far. There were only two episodes I didn’t like and even one of them had its moments. People have said this year was too complex, well I like my Doctor Who complex, it’s a family show, not a kids’ show, so it should have stuff in it that makes you use your brain. Oh and some people are still moaning about the lack of David Tennant. Well, he’s gone, there were better Doctors before him and there’s been a better one since, so I really don’t see what people are complaining about. So, interesting storyline, great individual episodes, great cast and scripts, I hope this streak of great Who continues.

After writing this we had the Christmas special. I am disappointed in the sudden drop in quality, but it doesn’t ruin the fun I had watching the earlier episodes.

RUNNERS-UP: Futurama/Chuck
I have two. One is Futurama. After a troubled return, it’s back on form and is generally a great show again. It’s not best show material though, except for one episode. The last episode of the current series was called “Re-incarnation”. Now, maybe it’s just my film geeky side talking, but this is one of the best half hours of TV I’ve seen this year. I won’t say much, but definitely check it out if you haven’t already.
And the other one is a show no-one watches, Chuck. It’s a show about a man who works in an electrical store that gets a supercomputer downloaded into his brain and he has to use it to help the government as a spy. The first series was on Virgin 1, but I’ve not seen it on British TV since. The show went downhill for a bit, but this series has really picked up, and I’d advise you to check it out, it’s a very entertaining and well-made show, and it’s a shame it never really got much attention.

 After writing this I found Season 1 in Grouchos. Very pleased.

WORST: Family Guy
Family Guy. Right let’s move on. Oh, I suppose I should say a few words. The show hasn’t been funny for years, but this year it’s decided to tackle series issues and it’s just offensive for no reason. It’s a sick show that deserves to get cancelled. If you want to hear more, listen to episode II of the Damn Dirty Apes podcast, I get mad.
A special mention here should go to Misfits. I can’t give it the worst TV show of the year award, because technically it’s not, but it’s really disappointed me this year. It used to be a story about people with superpowers with the twist being they’re ‘ASBO kids’. But now it’s a story about ASBO kids with the twist being they have superpowers. Now that doesn’t sound like much has changed, but it now has a fundamentally different base on which the stories are built. The stories now centre around the relationships of the characters with the superpowers taking a back seat. I don’t know whether that makes it a worse show, but it makes it far less interesting to me. I watched the first four episodes this series and except for the Nazi episode which was brilliant, the show just doesn’t seem entertaining anymore. So that’s it lost one viewer.
Oh, and Desperate Scousewives looks like the worst thing ever. I haven’t seen it so I can’t give a proper opinion, but I saw the advert for it and I’ve lost all faith in humanity.

WISH I’D SEEN: The Walking Dead… I suppose.

The Walking Dead. People keep telling me to watch this and telling me how good it is. I mean, I don’t doubt it, but I find it kind of difficult to start watching new TV shows. Especially the ones with over-arching stories, I just don’t have time. I mean I still haven’t watched season three of The Wire, so maybe I will see this in seven years time. But I doubt it. Sounds good, but sounding isn’t enough. To be honest I don’t watch much TV nowadays except my old favourites, the only new show I watched was Black Mirror and I really didn’t see what the fuss was about it. So, while I say I wish I’d seen things, I really don’t mind. I watch the things I like and the other things don’t bother me.

LEWIS

As a heads-up, I don’t actually watch TV. Ever. I very rarely make an effort to watch anything, so these reviews are far less based than the games one. So apologies for how shit they are, this is more like a little round-up thing.

BEST: Limmy’s Show Series 2

I’m a big fan of Limmy from back when his stuff was online, so when his sketch show was aired on the BBC, I was clearly excited. The first series was excellent, and the second even better, a really good laugh, and one to watch again, and again, and again.

RUNNER UP: Doctor Who Series 6

Doctor Who had to be here somewhere. This series was superb, improving on the formula of the previous one, with a lot of emphasis on consequences, rather than just adventure.

WORST: Doctor Who Christmas Special 2011

What even was this? I mean, the overall quality of this episode was a huge drop from the series earlier this year. The plot was some nonsense loosely based on The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, with undercurrents of save the planet, thrown in without much thought. Now, I know that last year it was based on A Christmas Carol, and that was excellent. But this year’s was only based in the setting of the Narnia novel, rather than actually being in the story.

Another issue I have with this episode is the visual effects. i don’t know if it’s down to lack of funds or time or whatever, all I know is I was really not impressed, from even before the title, they seemed nowhere near as good as those of the series.

WISH I’D SEEN: Black Mirror
Charlie Brooker’s new program sounded really quite good, and I’ve only heard good things about since it’s been on, but I just forgot to watch it. I’d heard interviews with Brooker on the radio and read about it and been really quite excited, but when it was actually on I didn’t even think to watch it. My loss, I guess.


Come back tomorrow for third and final part, our look at the films of 2011.

Games of 2011

Myself and Lewis have taken a bit out of our busy schedules to write about the games we liked and disliked this year. So, without further ado, here it is.

CHRIS
BEST: Portal 2
I don’t really play a lot of games to be honest I’ve probably only played about five that came out this year. But I’ll try my best with this. My favourite game of the year was probably Portal 2. For three reasons. First, it’s a fun game to play, I liked the puzzles in the first Portal and this one is more of that with a couple of nice new things. Second, it’s really funny. I was laughing out loud at some of the comments in it, especially the part with the original owner of the Aperture facility, Cave Johnston (COMBUSTABLE LEMON!). And third, it really got me into the other valve games. I’d never played Half-Life until this year, which might make me sound behind the times, but I don’t care. Portal 2 got me interested enough to check them out and I’m glad I did. So yeh, very well made, very enjoyable, I’d advise you go out and play it.

RUNNER UP: Saints Row The Third
I wanted to put this at number one. I really did, but that’s because I’ve only just got it a couple of weeks ago. Saints Row The Third. This game is just so fun. It’s the ultimate sandbox game. You can do anything and get away with it. Want to skydive in a tank? Want to beat up mascots with a giant sex toy? Want to fly a jet and then hover and blast people with lasers? Etc, etc, etc. There are only two complaints I have. One, you can’t replay story missions. I don’t know why, they had it in the last game, but in this one you have to start a whole new campaign. It’s annoying. And also, the story is total shite. It leads you to fun missions and has hilarious cut scenes, but it’s just not very good. One of your crew gets killed by a man in a suit and you think he’ll be the main villain, but then he dies a few missions later and you get a whole load of different gang leaders, but it just doesn’t feel like it matters. I mean the story isn’t the main focus and it’s a really fun game to play, just, it wasn’t as good as it could have been.

WORST: Duke Nukem Forever
There’s only really one game I can put in here. A game that was 12 years in the making. A game we all knew wouldn’t be good. But really, did it need to be this bad? It’s Duke Nukem Forever. It’s offensively bad. It starts off with Duke starting a war and we’re suppose to think he’s the hero, then it goes to an alien spaceship where there are girls stuck in the spaceship as hosts for aliens. Now that would be good in a horror game, but this is Duke Nukem, and it’s just sick and unnecessary. The controls are shit, the load times are loooong, and when I got to the second boss, the Quick Time Event got stuck and I can’t finish the game. Basically, it’s awful. If you want to read more, here’s Daniel Taylor’s review and I agree with every word he says.

http://www.ltww.co.uk/reviews-dukenukemforever.html

WISH I PLAYED: Skyrim
Skyrim. I don’t really like games like that, but I’ve heard so much good about it. I think I might pick it up at some point, but by then everyone’ll moved on, and I’ll be running along trying to catch up. It was either that or SR3 for me, so I think I chose wisely for myself, even if other people wouldn’t agree. My main reason for not getting it was Oblivion. I got told that was a great game and I bought it. Then it was shit. I really just couldn’t get into it and it was a total waste of my money, so I’m not doing that again. So if anyone feels like buying it for it, I'd be quite willing to play it. Please? Oh fine then.

LEWIS
BEST: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii)

This was inevitable, how could I ever pick a game that wasn’t this? I mean, a mainline Zelda game? It honestly doesn’t get any better in my head, and this one really is brilliant.

When Skyward Sword was first really shown off I wasn’t entirely convinced. I was hoping for a more realistic, and dark Zelda game like the last main story one; Twilight Princess, but no, these screenshots were a colourful, arty, impressionist world far more similair to Wind Waker. I wasn’t impressed. But, as time went on I was more and more interested, and eventually really excited once it was dated for release here. And so it came out, and was released in a special edition bundle with a gold Wii remote+ which is gorgeous, and a CD of a recorded show from the Zelda 25th anniversary orchestra, which is excellent, but lets talk about the actual game itself.

I instantly took back every bad thing I’d said about the graphical style, it’s wonderful. The colours and design are so perfect even down to a distance effect which I didn’t know about before, where as things blur into the distance, they become like swirled painted versions of themselves. The gameplay is brilliant, improved upon perfection with adding more modern RPG elements to the already existing Zelda style, with a Stamina gauge, levelling-up equipment, and several choice based parts of the plot. The sword controls are also particularly good, being controlled with motion+ it feels far superior to those of Twilight Princess.

Overall, best game in my opinion, of 2011, and I’m so glad.

RUNNER UP: Sonic Generations (Xbox 360/PS3)

I love Sonic the Hedgehog games, I always have, and I always will. Almost. Since Shadow the Hedgehog was released last generation, things haven’t really been the same, games being churned out with weak, sometimes god-awful plots, based on fairytales or sometimes just bizarre creations of the writers. I still loved the series though, and I persevered. Something had to get better. And then, to celebrate 20 years of the series, Sonic Generations was announced, as if rewarding my faith and my struggle and giving me what I’ve always wanted.

A bit far, but you can tell I was excited for this game, and rightly so. The premise of Sonic Generations is basically a time warp, where Sonic from modern games meets his younger, chubbier self from the original Mega Drive games and together, they have to find out why their timelines have been so disrupted. The levels are all taken from Sonic’s past, with boss fights and stages separated into three categories; Mega Drive(Genesis), Dreamcast and Modern Sonic (Modern Sonic actually being everything after Sonic Heroes, rather than everything after Dreamcast). The re-imagined stages are beautiful, the music is second to none, and it’s clear that an awful lot of effort has gone into making this perfect, a true game for the fans.

WORST: Pilotwings Resort (3DS)

I’m not someone who buys games on a whim, that’d be ridiculous, and I just don’t have the money, so I can’t really say what was a bad game this year. I mean, it’d be unfair to say this is the worst game of 2011, it’s just the one was personally disappointed me, and was certainly not worth it’s price.

Pilotwings Resort is a flight simulator in the Pilotwings game series which lets the player fly planes, gliders, and jetpacks around the Wii Sports Resort island of Wuhu. In it players can either play challenges or free flight, which is basically about collecting different items in different craft. The visuals for the game are genuinely pleasing, being a very good example of the graphical quality and depth that the 3DS can put out, meaning it was one of the more visually impressive of the console’s frankly...shit launch line-up. Now, this all sounds great, but this is a game with no plot, no obligation to advance, nothing to gain from progress and no characters. The overall gameplay is horrendously short, I mean you could get all collectibles and gold trophies in a very, very short period of time. This is my problem, the game doesn’t feel like a game, or at least one you can buy full price in a shop. It seems like it would have come preloaded, or offered as a download, or, maybe like the original NDS’s bundled demo of Metroid Prime: Hunters before it, packaged on a cartridge just to show what the console can do. So yeah, as fun and pretty as this game may be, it’s definitely not worth the price of a full game, because it isn’t one.

WISH I PLAYED: Conduit 2 (Wii)

The sequel to the amazing The Conduit, possibly the best first person shooter on Wii was released in April, after being pushed back by about half a year, and since has been one of the hardest games to find in-store. I loved The Conduit, it’s gameplay and visuals were absolutely superb, it was good to see a company really pushing the console rather than churning out the same on-par-with-PS2 or if you’re lucky, Gamecube trash that’s weighed the console down since the start, and destroyed the console’s credibility. But those games aren’t important. We’re talking about Conduit 2. Now this, promised to improve on the original, graphically and in amply, with the addition of support for Wii Motion+, as well as the Wi’‘s Classic Controller and Classic Controller Pro. The multiplayer also seems to be amazing, as it’s an extreme improvement on the original, which was great already, but maybe felt slightly lacking compared to the other current-generation consoles. I’m sure you could tell by now that I want this game, but I’ve only ever seen it for sale once. Ever. In London. The game was for sale preowned in second-hand electronics store CEX, but I only got here after spending an enormous chunk of money, so I couldn’t afford it. It broke my heart. Now, I’m sure you’re thinking ‘why don’t you just buy it online?’ and you’re right, I should. But I don’t want to. I’m weird with buying stuff online like games and DVDs, I far prefer buying from shops so I might hold out and hope that I find a copy of it in a high street game store...maybe.

So there you have it. Lewis and I's best and worst games of the year. Check back in tomorrow to see what we thought of the TV of 2011.

Doctor Who Review: The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe

First off, Merry Christmas, I hope you all had a great time. Now though is time to be a little more depressing as we talk about this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special. Normally it’s one of my favourite parts of Christmas, but not this year. So settle down after your leftover sandwiches and a half-drunk bottle of wine and I’ll try and explain why it didn’t work for me.

First nitpicky things that annoyed me. The name. I can barely be bothered saying The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe every time I want to talk about it, never mind writing it down, and it sounds kind of lumpy, like The Curse of the Black Spot. And the name’s a bit misleading anyhow considering the story has very little to do with the Narnia story. Except the kids being moved to a big country house in the war and the portal to a snow kingdom, there’s no connection, so it seems a bit of a cheat calling it that, especially the year after The Christmas Carol which stuck quite close to the story while giving it a new twist. Oh and the harvesters being from Androzani. That’s a planet from the old series. And while I like a good shout-out to the classics, this really didn’t work. They said it too much and it was too obvious. It was like Moffat was shouting at us “Look at me, I’m making a reference! Look, Look, look!”. Just didn’t work for me.

So that’s enough of the stupid wee things that annoy me personally, now on to the actual major problems with the story.
1. Characters.
Bill Bailey is good, but he and the other harvesters are barely in it. If you’re going to get a great guest star like that, actually use them.
The children are dull. As in, they aren’t interesting characters. The boy is generic smart kid and the girl is generic fairytale girl.
The mother isn’t anything special. Now, complaining that someone just does an ok job seems a bit pedantic, but remember last year we had Michael Gambon, and the year before John Simm and Bernard Cribbins and so on, every year has a great central character. Now, while there’s nothing wrong with the mother here, she’s just not up to the standard set by previous years.
2. Cliché.
All of the story is clichéd. The saving of the father, the Doctor as the caretaker, the mother being the strongest, etc, they were all coming obviously, and you could see the story twists about a mile off. But the main example of this was the harvester machine. As soon as the mother says “this looks a bit like a plane”, I knew she would drive it. And I hate when things like that happen, if it takes years of training, then it takes years of training, not just strong emotions.
3. Ridiculousness.
Doctor Who is hardly a sensible show, but this episode went too far. Because it was just a fairytale. However stupid the show gets it’s always about science. But this episode about the tree’s souls just didn’t sit right. It would be like if there had been actual ghosts last year. I don’t know what it was exactly but the whole forest with living Christmas trees, tree souls and just happening to light the way for the father, just seemed to childish and silly for Doctor Who.

Don’t get me wrong, there were things I enjoyed about the special. The start however over the top was brilliant and it was all a good bit of fun until the forest. The Doctor fixing the house was mad, but the right kind of mad. And the ending with Amy and Rory was just brilliant. So basically, it had a few moments, but it just came off as a story trying to be cleverer than it was and then it losing the charm of the Christmas special because of it.

2/5

Oh Mariah. Just stop.

So annual Mariah slamming time. Not in that way, you dirty boy. Almost brings the blog full circle. I recently heard the new version of “All I Want For Christmas”. Featuring Justin Bieber. Now while this wasn’t as personally as offensive as Auld Lang Syne, it was just generally offensive by the lack of quality.

Now, the video has two major flaws, one it’s huge lack of originality, really, a chick dressed as Santa in a store, even Destiny’s Child did that. And it’s disconnect with the song. The song says all she wants is her baby and while that’s happening we see Justin looking at some Nintendo 3DS’s. Nice way to stick to the meaning there. Oh and there’s the problem with both the video and the song, that Justin Bieber and Mariah Carey are singing a love song to each other, that’s just creepy, she’s old enough to be his mother.

And of course the main flaw. Justin Bieber. Now, I don’t like to admit it, because I really dislike Mariah’s music in general, but I quite like “All I Want For Christmas”. So her bits in this version are roughly the same. But then we get Bieber coming in. He sounds autotuned, but he still is out of tune, I don’t even know how that’s possible. He gets the whole rhythm of the song wrong and doesn’t have nearly enough talent to match Mariah’s singing. He just ruins a good song. So yeah. It’s shit, try to avoid, but it’s not as bad as Auld Lang Syne. I ain’t over that.


And no-one leave a comment about Bieber’s Christmas album, I know about it, I’m trying to ignore it.

Puss in Boots/Chipwrecked

The first video review of the year. Not as good as I would've hoped, but I hope it's still good.

The Plan for the Year. Going to see every movie.

For my christmas I've just got the unlimited pass from Cineworld. It means I can go and see as many films from there as i want. Which is good. But then it's me and I love to ruin good things, so I'm going to see EVERY film that comes out in the next year, starting now. I'm not gonna see the one which are already out, but anything that comes out from now on, I will go and see. I'll try and see them as soon as they come out as possible, and then after I do, then I'll do a nice wee video for you all to see, telling you about the film and giving a bit of a review. And maybe I'll have a few guests in these videos, aka, the people I went to see the film with. I hope you enjoy it, and hey, if there's ever a film you can't find anyone to go see with you, I'm your man.




So, what's coming out this weekend? Puss in Boots and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. Oh shit, I regret it already.

Review: The Thing (2011)

Think John Carpenter’s The Thing but made by idiots. The end.

Ok, no. I can’t just say this film is awful don’t watch it, because much as that is true, I kind of need to justify myself. Basically it’s a prequel to the 80s Thing. And I really like that film, so I was a bit worried before I even saw anything about this film. I thought it was too long since the original, I thought it couldn’t work without John Carpenter and mainly I thought about how unnecessary it was. Yeah, at the start of the original we see the Norwegian base, but basically we just see how exactly the same thing happened to them as happens to the characters in the film. So basically we already know the story and we don’t need it laid out. But obvious that sounded like a ripe money plant to be picking and a prequel was born. I already hated the idea, then I heard reviews from America where they hated it, so I went into the cinema knowing it was going to be bad, and I wasn’t wrong.

There is a huge pile of issues with this film but six major problems.

Problem number one: The characters
The characters are bland. The original film didn’t have a great level of character depth, but we could at least tell them apart, in this film, except for the two women, the black guy, the boss and the guy who looks like Ewan McGregor, the rest are just lots of the same bearded Norwegian. I couldn’t keep track of who was who, or how many were left or when they could’ve been infected, which somewhat ruined the suspense. And even the characters I just described, that was their whole personally. Take the boss, all we ever find out about him is… he’s the boss? That’s it. No-one is developed at all which means we neither understand nor care what’s happening to them. Oh and it misses the point because the original was all men so they could all try and take charge and be paranoid of each other, but the woman’s presence seems to have removed all the tension.

Problem number two: The effects
Ok, I’d better get this out of the way. This film doesn’t use practical effects, it uses CGI. This immediately makes it inferior to the original, which has some of the best practical effects ever. But hey, just because it’s not as good as the original doesn’t mean it’s rubbish. But the fact the effects are worse than The Phantom Menace really does. Seriously, the CGI is some of the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s bad enough that we have bad CG, but the human face seems to HAVE to been on all the things, which leads to some of the most unintentional funny moments in this year’s movies.  Seeing the boss guy’s face complete with beard on this huge video-game looking monster literally made me laugh out loud. This is not good for a horror movie.

Problem number three: Its connections with the original
This film really doesn’t know what it’s doing in this sense. At times it goes out of its way to show things we see in the first place, for example the two headed thing we see in the deserted base in John Carpenter’s film, is shown in this film, but there’s not really any reason for it to be there, except it ties into the original. Other times there’s stuff that just doesn’t appear, like the guy we see in the original who’s cut his wrists, he’s here at the end, but we never see him do it, or get any impression he was going to, he just does it off camera and we see the result. Even little things like the shit not being dug up in this film when it was in the original, it’s like the makers of this version saw the original, but it was a couple of years ago so it’s like they’re doing the script from fuzzy memories. And of course there’s the fact that half the stuff from the original happens here, the attack on the dog, the unfreezing, the locking people up, the testing scene, the small things in the rec room, etc, tec. This film started off as a remake and it’s pretty obvious from the amount of similarities between the two Things, but this isn’t good for this new movie, because it begins in even more comparison between it and the original, which it loses horribly.

Problem number four: The plot doesn’t make any sense
The entire plot revolves about the thing killing and replacing people so it can survive and spread. So they need to stop the thing escaping so they disable all the snowmobiles. But then later they fix them in about a second, so how did it do any good if they could be fixed so quickly? The thing at the end goes back to the spaceship (we’ll go back to that), and tries to escape in that. But if the ship worked in the first place why did it leave it instead of using it to travel somewhere more populated? And how did Lars survive when he was attacked? And why did they get Americans involved? And why did no-one get surprised when he gets the flamethrower? And…

Problem number five: The plot doesn’t make any fucking sense
Ok, there are a million tiny plot holes, but out of any other reviews I’ve read of this no-one seems to have picked up on the one that annoyed me the most. The way they find out who is the thing is by checking their fillings, because the thing can’t recreate inorganic material. But wait. If the thing can’t recreate inorganic material, what’s up with the clothes. We’ve seen the thing wearing plastic jackets and watches, so explain. If they get attacked and the clothes are ripped off then they shouldn’t have them. Or if they are infected subtlety and their cells are changed from the inside then why would the fillings fall out? So that makes no sense. And why does no-one check the main girl’s fillings, hey we know she’s not the thing but they don’t. And why does the thing change into the monster at the exact moments it’s at its weakest? And… You get the point. It makes no sense.

Problem number six:  The ending
So we reach the ending. And  yes, they go in the spaceship. That doesn’t make any sense for one thing, and for another it barely looks like a spaceship except for some weird CGI 16-bit tower thing, which is never explained. This scene could’ve just as well happened in a cave than a spaceship. It jumps the shark too, as in the original we know it’s an alien, but the rest of the world is pretty normal, which makes it scarier. This just jumps directly into straight sci-fi. So they kill the thing, the woman could still be the thing but just drives off to a Russian base. Wait. A Russian base? But the point of the film is they’re isolated, and now there are three bases within driving distance? And really the only reason there is a Russian base is so there’s somewhere to send the woman, because we couldn’t possibly have a sad ending, oh wait, the original has them both about to freeze to death. And then they have the ending that links into the first where conveniently only the two Norwegians who don’t speak English survive and chase the dog thing with a gun, which doesn’t make any sense. Oh and the pilot hasn’t been around for the whole film so he just believes Lars about the alien instead of maybe thinking Lars killed them all. Oh I give up trying to make sense of it.

In conclusion, this was a film that no-one was asking for and should never have been made. The plot almost exactly mirrors the original until the insane spaceship bit at the end, the characters are bland and forgettable and the effects are laughable.  Oh and it makes no sense. The main problem is it’s dull. It’s the same film we saw in 1982, but just made by a bunch of hacks. There is no reason to watch this film over John Carpenter’s The Thing so just watch that again and you’ll have a far better time.

1/5

The Olympic Advert and the sorry state of this december's trailers.

I've just come back from seeing the 2011 remake/prequel thing version of The Thing. See what I did there? Anyway, I'll talk about that on it's own later, because it was already pretty shit without the pain I endured beforehand. So, I went to the Odeon, and I was, well not late, but not early enough to catch the shitty tv adverts. So far, so good. I fucking hate them. It came up with a notice "the following adverts are suitable for the feature presentation" or something like that, and so you'd think, ah here come the trailers. And they did. Eventually. First though we had... this.

Well, we didn't just have that. It had a really children's story voiceover by Stephen Fry and after the part we see above there was a really shitty montage of the people shown helping bring a bus to the school to replace the library.

Now. Here's the part I start to complain. First, problems with the advert itself. It's terribly animated, the story is stupid (like, the school library get destroyed? who is gonna care about that?), the mascots do nothing except call the athletes so why even have them, although it has athletes we don't know who they are and they don't really do anything that makes the olympics seem more appealing and just, the mascots are shit. Like really shit. So basically it would be a good advert if it was for a shop or a bank or something, but for the olympics that the government's putting all this money into to advertise, well I'm not impressed.

My main problem however isn't the advert in itself. Yeah it's shitty, but I don't care about the olympics. The problem... why is there a fucking stupid olympics advert at the cinema? I see enough shitty tv adverts I don't need this one as well. One, it's not suitable. I'm going to see a horror movie, I don't want to have the mood ruined by a cheesy colourful patronising advert for the olympics. I don't care about them, what is it even advertising? That they're happening? I don't live under a rock, I fucking know already. That I can get tickets? No, because they've already all been sold. That I can watch it on tv? No, cause it's not for 6/7 months so it's too early for that. I don't get what the point is. All it seems to be is an advert to be like "look at us, we've got the olympics!" but everyone at the odeon already knows, and would rather the government spent their money on something useful than adverts telling us stuff we already know. This really annoyed me, because bad adverts are bad enough, but this one didn't even have a point to it, so it was just wasting my time for no reason.

I was put into a great mood by that piece of shit, then I got even more to love by the trailers I got. First, one for an exorcism film. I can't be bothered going into detail, but it's the same shit we've seen a million times before, it looked unbelievably unoriginal and quite poorly made, there was nothing about the trailer that made me want to see the film. Second was about invisible aliens invading Russia. Invisible aliens? Come on, that's such a cheap trick. The trailer ironically only showed the aliens, and it gave no idea what the story'll be and whether there's anything worth seeing in it, something that gives me the impression that there really won't be. And the third and final trailer was one for the new Alvin and the Chipmunks film. It was really shit. I don't even need to explain why, you understand. It just upset me that we got so few trailers and none of them looked good.



Oh and there was a muppets orange advert. I liked that.

Robocop’s stup-wait no… Cyborg Cop, no... oh for fuck sake. It's Cyborg Cop II.

The last time I did one of these it was almost what you could call a review. I can’t do that for this one. Because… erm… I fell asleep during it. Yep. That happened. Don’t blame me. I was tired and it wasn’t very interesting.

From what I remember they commit the Robocop 2 sin of making the cyborg out of an evil criminal. That goes about as well as you’d expect. Well actually, it went well to begin with, because they had a control device to override the cyborg. Oh dear, Rob 2, you’ve been outdone by your rip-off. Not good. But basically everything’s going hunky dory, then the main scientist who has a control device, takes it off to have sex. Now that’s fine. BUT, he does it right in front of the evil cyborg, who has a mind of his own and that mind is of an evil killer. So obviously he takes the remote and now he’s free and can control the other cyborgs. Like seriously, how did the scientist not see that coming? He deserved what he got for being wildly irresponsible. And then, even though all the other scientists seem to have the same control device, which has a kill switch in it, they are all overpowered and surrender their remotes. Why did they use them to kill the evil cyborg? I don’t know. That’s how he gets beaten at the end.

David Bradley is back, big woop. I mean, he’s good enough in this, but it’s nothing to get excited by. The kid’s around, but I don’t remember him doing anything and the girlfriend from the last film is gone, but we have a new one, so it’s all good. Really though, except for a dull proper cop bit at the start (WOW! There’s a real cop in Cyborg Cop! Pity he’s not a cyborg though), I don’t remember anything else. Now, you might think I’d being lazy not watching it again. You’d be right. But I don’t want to and you can’t make me, so tough. It’s stupid and it’s kind of dull, not as good as the first one.

Talking of not as good as the first one… that’s like the actual Robocop films. Now, it would be too much of a coincidence for there to be a third Cyborg Cop film without the main lead actor of the first two and a major drop in quality, wait, you know where I’m going with this. Yes, there is. I’ll watch it, but if the Cyborg Cop gets in a pimp mobile or fights robot ninjas then, I’m out. I’ll turn it off. You’ve been warned CC3.

It also has a really misleading cover, because the Cyborg from the first one is dead.
So the tagline's wrong and he shouldn't be on the cover.