TV: The Review Show…An Appreciation
I’ve been having a running debate with my brother over my love of The Review Show. He is of the opinion that it is pretentious, boring and altogether interminable. I agree entirely, but in a perverse way I think that it’s exactly the kind of thing BBC2 should be devoting fifty minutes of its schedule too.
Music: Thoughts on Giggs
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the music of Giggs for some time now, having stumbled across his frankly terrifying no-budget video for Talking The Hardest whilst procrastinating on Youtube. What sets him apart from other ‘urban’ acts like Chip Monk and Dizzy Rascal is his hypnotically slow vocal delivery, and overt gangsta style that has more in common with American hip hop than UK garage or grime.
TV: Thoughts on Mock The Week
Crikey, Mock The Week has gone off the boil since Glaswegian comedian Frankie Boyle quit. I’m not a knee-jerk kind of person but after five episodes of the new season it’s time to admit that the show is desperately missing Boyle’s dark, caustic one liners that coursed through MTW like a virulent strain of off colour chuckles.
Film: Spookerama – Stay Alive
The noughties have generally been a good decade for horror films. There have been bona fide B-movie classics like Dead End and Planet Terror, alongside utter dreck like Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror. Yet perhaps most interesting aren’t the extreme highs and lows of the genre but the weird little movies that have popped up somewhere in the middle, having zero impact upon the public consciousness whilst doing good business on DVD and cable television. I love these kind of flicks, in fact give me a few bottles of cheap red plonk, a bowl of corn or potato based snacks and a low budget straight to DVD slasher film starring some bird who was in Dawson’s Creek and I am one happy camper.
TV: Thoughts on Knorr Stock Pots
I hope I’m not the only one deeply unnerved by Knorr’s recent stock pot adverts starring top chef Marco Pierre White. White made a name for himself as the youngest chef to be awarded three Michelin stars and went on to mentor bullying cunt and map faced tyrant Gordon Ramsey. Unsurprisingly these two alpha males have since fallen out, with Ramsey turning himself into a shouty mainstay of crap programming and White retiring in 1999.
TV: Thoughts on 24
24 is back on our screens (in my case an illegally downloaded rip on my computer screen) for season eight and it’s great to see it back. As the only TV show I’m aware of that has been referenced by the torturers at Guantanamo Bay as inspirational, 24 is a thick juicy slab of right wing propaganda that is as deliciously decadent as it is devilishly delightful.
Film: Spookerama – Castle Freak
What we have here ladies and gentlemen is an uncanny treat that manages to delight, disgust and dumbfound in equal measure. Castle Freak is the tale of, you guessed it, a freak who lives in a castle. That’s it. Yes there is a bit of plot thrown in to sustain the movie’s 90 minute running time, but to be honest it is simply a well meaning distraction from the pure grubby joy of watching a rank, withered mutant stalking around an old castle, getting up to mischief and generally fucking with people’s shit. You really have to take your hat off to director Stuart Gordon of Re-Animator and Dagon fame for his purity of vision and frank disregard for extraneous nonsense like narrative tension or suspension of disbelief.
TV: No Reservations & A Cooks Tour – I Like It!
Kitchen Confidential author and gastronomic rabble rouser Anthony Bourdain is our guide on a culinary voyage across the globe in search of authentic regional delicacies. Looking like a taller, thinner version of I’m Your Man era Leonard Cohen Bourdain is the antithesis of the boorish American abroad, respectfully rolling up at street side stalls, people’s houses and anywhere else he can scran what the locals scran. Although he sometimes indulges in high end dining, as on his trip to London where he chose to be fed by Gordon Ramsey and Fergus Henderson, as opposed to stuffing a Greggs chicken bake down his gob.
Film: Spookerama – Lurking Fear
In my time I have sat through some truly awful horror movies but feel I have to talk about a mesmerizing piece of trash I caught on the cable channel Zone Horror a week or two ago; 1994’s Lurking Fear. I was so taken by the films terrible special effects, lack of continuity, vague allusions to Lovecraftian mythology and diabolical acting that I felt compelled to give it a second viewing.
TV: The Crank File – Dr, No!
Last week I had the misfortune of catching an episode of Dr Who on BBC3. Well, I was actually trying to read Truman Capote’s true crime masterpiece In Cold Blood but the intrusive soundtrack and screeching dialogue emanating from the TV kept drawing me from my book until I capitulated to the direness and sat in slack jawed amazement at what now passes as entertainment.
New on Resolution Magazine- Review | We Sing Encore 03/09/2010
- Preview | Avoid 03/09/2010
- Mafia II Jimmy’s Vendetta DLC out Sept 7, trailer 02/09/2010
