Somehow it goes without saying what The King’s Speech is. As a film, it has been praised beyond all measure, possibly to the point of creating world peace and allowing all people to unscrew pickle jar lids without asking someone else. It’s received countless nominations, including today, 12 oscar nominations. Oscar thought it was good too.

The issue I often have with such wide-ranging praise is that expectations are often raised to the point of people vomiting with joy and therefore it can never be as good as what people make it out to be. It’s almost as if there is an air of suspicion which hangs around like a bad smell.

The film opens on Prince Albert, played by that bloke who everyone likes from Bridget Jones’s Diary, the grand old Duke of York, son of King George V, brother to someone else, opener of jam jars etc etc… prepares to speak at the closing of the 1925 Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium, with his wife Elizabeth (or the Queen Mum if we’re going to keep to explaining historical characters in detail, oh and she is played by an actress who once uttered in Fight Club “I’ve not been f**ked like that since grade school!” I’m not saying that is a bad thing.) by his side.

His stammering speech visibly unsettles the thousands of listeners in the audience, almost as if he was raping a cat right in front of a child, and a scene setting opener if you ever wanted one.

We then cut to some speech therapy in progress, in which after failing to do an impression of Marlon Brando from the Godfather by stuffing balls into his mouth and smoking, Albert says bugger it all and vows to do nothing further to sort out his problems.
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Forget the fact that following the horrific event at one of Moscow’s Airports where someone thought it would be jolly nice to explode, given that there was nothing good on TV, and he also needed to cancel the milk.

It seems that the news for tonight at least has been more concerned by the sacking of Andy Grey, following both his and Richard Keys, or Chewbacca’s hairy sister’s off air comments about women in football. (Ok, before you fall asleep due to it being about football, please hold, there is a point)

Or so you would think they were off-air. In fact, here’s Sky News’s compilation of the offences in question;

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Recently Channel 4 began it’s new series, the 10 O’Clock Show, now running for a few weeks on a Thursday night, in which we meet our rag-tag fighting farting force from the Alternative Election Special which aired last year and promised to be an excellent mix of news and laughter, but alas, what we ended up with something that was borderline a war crime.

One of the main reasons to watch was good old Charlie Brooker, a man who in the past has looked at countless hours of television news and mocked it beyond compare. It appeared that he was sentenced to the naughty step most of the time, perhaps for drawing a penis on his exercise book, while Jimmy Carr labored through jokes so badly written, he’d been better off dangling his keys instead to get a better response.

Lauren Laverne was the lady of the 4, who you may remember from something off the radio, I think, and the bloke off Peep Show and that, wore a suit and thus completed the ensemble.

Despite the amount of crap on that special and of course after being cleared at the Hague, the powers that be or Zeppotron, took it upon themselves to repeat that formula this year, and so with a mixture of news, comments, pre-recorded material and debates with the occasional f**k thrown in, we go on our epic journey into live TV.

But since it’s broadcast last night, it has received mixed reactions that are extreme one way or the other, that you’d be forgiven for thinking that Channel 4 had either given the public a fresh point of view on the news, or just done a sh*t in your mouth. Read the rest of this entry »

And the first film review of 2011 finds our poor eyes staring at another remake, Hollywood having ran out of ideas some many years ago, have been raping and pillaging like good little Vikings anything that may make some quick cash.

It’s easy to just assume the position of a cynical snot about the rate we see pointless remakes and crappy sequels appearing on the big screen such as the almost endless Hairy Potter series, XXX-Men: Wolverhampton (of which we are getting another one, I can see peace in the middle east right now), Batman: The African-Amercian knight and Get Smart (by falling asleep).

But not all remakes have been bad, Star Wrecked for example, while a wee bit light on a few areas, was in fact one of the best examples of bringing new life into a once-thought dead franchise.

And although some may disagree somehow, the A-Hole, sorry Team, also managed to gain some creditability as being something enjoyable to watch, though for the record, having Jessica Biel in there did help a lot. Ultimately what is good and bad will remain in the eye of the beholder.

So, what can Disney do for a sequel to the almost 29 year old Tron film?

Well first of all, what the hell was TRON really about? Aside from a big cycle battle thing, and everyone looking like they were under neon lights at the world’s worst gay disco, it was hard to ascertain what was going on and why for the most part. Even now it’s hard to provide a summary;
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Perhaps one of the most evil things that we humans can do to ourselves is take a break.

Now of course, this isn’t taking a break from a computer screen just in order to rub your eyes to restore some form of feeling back into them, then continuing to spend another 14 hours on that award winning report on types of bread for your boss.

In this case, the break is that of spending time away from it all, actually doing very little, taking walks in the park, stealing meals on wheels from old people, and listening to how someone got their foot stuck in the Uncle Mike’s arse for the 100th time, probably in an attempt to see how much you want to inherit the family home.

We’ve all come back from the Christmas break now, supposedly fully refreshed, ready to go for the new year and all the “new” exciting stuff that it brings and the first week back in the thick of things seems to have killed us all inside.

Now, it’s been mentioned here on more than one occasion that the key factor in all behaviour, motivation, is a waning commodity in these times where the long hours of work practically drain you of energy at the best of times and by the time you reach for the keys to the front lock of your sex dungeon of a home, bring out the gimp, and ride em like the animal you pay them to be, you’re just drained.
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Celebrate good times, come on! Well at least you’ve got more chance of remembering the words to “Celebration” than that Scottish one which everyone holds their hands together to at the stroke of midnight, growl slightly and then leach over that girl who just turned 16 in the corner.

Actually, one does have to wonder why we seem to go ape when the new year comes in, and why we wait for the new year before starting anything new. It’s almost as if we’ve been given permission to forget everything that happened before, and let our hair down for the one time that the police have to pretend not to care about someone being sick in their helmets.

Mind you, it’s the same question that leads us down a lot of avenues with no real answer at all, “it’s just always been that way”, has it? Has it really? Maybe as Doug Stanhope said about the bible, the same applies to it all; “It’s like Timecop. It’s great as long as you don’t question it.”

So to all of you, have a great time at the gym, get that new job / woman / man / fish / monster truck / electronic thingy you’ve always wanted as this is your year big guy or girl. You go out there and make it the best one ever and when it all falls over, there’s always next year to start all over again. This must have been what was meant in the Lion King; The Circle of Life.

That will be all. At ease.