Crap Films My Housemates Own #2 : Rollerball

Now, before you start thinking to yourself "hang on there skippy, Rollerball was a 70s scifi classic and Sonny Corleone is awesome in it as a rollerskating, ass kicking mafia badass!" I want to make this clear - I don't give a crap what you think.

Also, I'm talking about the 2002 remake. So there motherfuckers!

On the face of it, this shouldn't be a load of big hairy balls. It's directed by John McTiernan who's credits include Die Hard, The Hunt For Red October, The 13th Warrior & The Thomas Crown Affair remake (which I prefer to the Steve McQueen version). It stars the coolest frenchman known to man (Jean Reno) and let's face it, the original was a pretty good movie. But then it starts to all go wrong. It's got LL Cool J in it. It's got Chris Klein in it (one of the guys from the American Pie movies who didn't fuck a pie). It's got a character in it called Aurora (I don't know why, but I don't think I've ever seen a film where a character called Aurora is anything but appallingly acted).

So anyway. This film now appears to be about an ice hockey player who goes to play rollerskating deathmatch in Kazakstan or something. I don't really understand the plot as - well there isn't really one apart from the fact that Jean Reno's supposed to be some sort of gangster badass and quite plainly can't really be bothered to act. Rebecca Romjin Stamos is also in this as a moody Kazak beauty. I unfortunately think someone told her that they wanted her part to be that of a moody Kazak fencepost, as that's about as exciting as her character is.

At the end of the day, this is just bad. The wirework's obvious, the directing is lazy and the plot is so bad that I am considering writing a letter to the CIA implicating the writers in a terrorist plot as their work is so shoddy they probably do deserve to spend five years in Guantanemo Bay. Couple all of this with a cast who quite clearly have realised that they've signed up to a big floating turd of a movie, and you've got Rollerball the remake.

My housemates bought it so you wouldn't have to.

Best and worst covers. Ever.

So, the gitter uber nerds at Total Guitar magazine have come up with the five best and worst covers ever.

The best don't really have any surprises, but here they are...

5. Feeling Good - Muse
4. The Man Who Sold The World - Nirvana
3. Live And Let Die - Guns N Roses
2. Twist And Shout - The Beatles
1. All Along The Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix

The worst of course, is where all the excitement is...

In at number five is Mike Flowers Pop with his cover of Wonderwall.
Number four is Will Young's own take on Light My Fire by The Doors.
Westlife stand proud at number three for their cover of funk rocker's Extreme's ballad More Than Words.
Girls Aloud are at number two with their cheerful slaughter of the classic Walk This Way (I saw this on telly the other day, and I actually threw up a small Mexican orphan boy I was so appalled).
and at number one?
This.

I fucking hate Celine Dion.

Conservative party in 'bunch of racists' shocker...

Nice one Boris.

So London's comedy mayor has had his first bit of fun with adviser James McGrath.

James told a journalist "black people who didn't like it here could go back".

Apparently the remarks were taken out of context. Perhaps what he said was along the lines of "If I was a huge fucking racist then I'd say something along the lines of black people who didn't like it here could go back. Good job I'm not a huge fucking racist isn't it. Oh, and Boris Johnson's awesome and totally not a comedy mayor."

Yeah, I don't think that's what happened either.

Just a quick note...

The BBFC rejected one DVD release this year.

In a year of Saw 2, Saw 3: Extreme edition and Saw 4: More fucking sawing, only one DVD wasn't allowed a certificate.

The box set of Weeds. Apparently, a show about a pot dealer glamourises drug use.

Also, I was lying about there being a film called Saw 4. For now.

Crap Films My Housemates Own #1 : Dragon Wars.

So in what could quite easily become a regular feature, I'd like to take the some time to talk about a movie one of my housemates recently bought - Dragon Wars.

Now on the face of it, I have to admit that this film should be damn awesome. The cover's got dragons and Apache helicopters on it for fuck's sake. How can this film not be brilliant? So I thought I'd give it a watch.

Well it wasn't good. It was terrible. It started badly with some wise and noble shop keeper prattling on about how there was an ancient prophecy and a chosen one who could save or destroy the world, and a girl with a tattoo who was the key to it all. There was a giant snake, chasing cars and some samurai fuckers with way too much shiny armour (there's something, if you're a big evil sneak about bastard - why's your armour made of bloody chrome?). Well about an hour into this film and not only have I not seen any bloody dragons but I have been subjected to some of the worst acting I've seen.

I'd love to say that there's some redeeming feature of this movie. But there isn't. No boobies, no huge awesome explosions, no crazy kung fu fighting, just a bloody big snake and some twats with samurai swords and armour. This film is appalling and if you're going to watch this movie you should mentally prepare yourself by committing suicide using a bath and an electric toaster while listening to the theme tune from Cheggers Plays Pop on unending repeat. It's an experience that's almost as uncomfortable as watching this film's bad plot and bad acting, and at least it'll give your local community support officer something to do that's more useful than tasering dogs.

So there you go. Dragon Wars. It's a fucking shitty movie with a big snake in it.

Project Space Cock : Step One.

So I was thinking about the X-Prise this morning.

Now, for those of you who don't know the current big X-Prize is to put a remote controlled vehicle on the surface of the moon and drive it around for a bit. Which is rather cool. But as I was reading some of the stuff on their internet forum, I came across some information on the Aquarius Launch Vehicle.

Now, the most important bit of information I found was the costs of getting something put into orbit via Aquarius. $1000 per kilo. So around 500 quid. Now maybe it's just me, but 500 quid to get something that weighs a kilo seems like a fucking bargain. I mean, if you were to build something out of polysterene foam it'd be pretty big before it weighs more than a kilo.

I think you can see where I'm going with this. I'm going to save my cash, and when Aquarius is up and running I'm going to pay them to put a giant glow in the dark foam penis into orbit. That'll teach those fucking astronomers to quit their bitching about light pollution.

Space rockery roundup

So let's talk about space rocks.

Specifically, lets talk about this space rock.

The Ivuna meteorite is important because scientists believe that it's chemical composition is the similar to the conditions that existed at the birth of the solar system, so it's a good way to look at what was going on way back then.

Which is pretty reasonable. I love the fact that the Natural History Museum are keeping half of it for public display, but they're sending the rest off to research labs around the world so that the space rock community can get some researching done.

Good for you Natural History Museum. Though if I'm honest, a chunk of space rock probably isn't as cool as your huge fucking dinosaur skeletons.

How to be a fucking cock and thrive...

I swear, there's some fucking idiot involved in the programming at ITV.

Take this for example - Piers Morgan on Sandbanks. I mean I realise that being a foul, shit stirring leech on society is practically a valid career these days; but do we really need to get this fucker swanning around with Dorset's super rich?

I look forward to next year's big documentary series on ITV2 - Harold Shipman on the NHS for pensioners. Sheesh.

Youbube

Oh my what a terrible spelling mistake.

I suspect it may be something to do with this youtube clip (no nipples are involved).

I am reasonably impressed, though I was slightly disapointed when I realised it was a twisty top bottle.

Biting off more than I can chew

So as a part of my awesome surfing adventures, I'm planning on a trip to Portugal at some point this year.

It's a country I've never been to, it's a beautiful and relatively unspoilt land, and it gets consistent surf in wonderful conditions. Being that I'm not one to go for the package holiday deal to Torrimolinos to sit on the beach and drink Watley's Red Barrel (no-one will get that reference), I thought I'd investigate learning Portuguese. After all, I have an ipod and there are any number of "Learn to speak a language" podcasts out there.

Holy fucking shit.

No wonder no-one goes to Portugal - it's because the language is fucking terrifying.

Where's that brochure for Torrimolinos? Oh, and pass me a can of Watley's Red Barrel.

Other people won't get this joke

So Wales are playing South Africa in rubgy this weekend. Nothing that exciting about that but I just caught the beeb's advert for the game.

The reason I like it is that they've used the soundtrack from Zulu for it. So around 80% of the people who see the advert will have no fucking clue why it's so clever.