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Someone Else Holding the Baby Blues
11/01/12
Back to the Future Too
30/12/11
Untold Cooper
29/12/11
A British Defence Against America
08/12/11
Not So Marvellous
07/12/11 Average Rating: 3 out of 5
We need to talk about Gervais
19/10/11 Average Rating: 4 out of 5
A Quarter Life Crisis
06/10/11 Average Rating: 4 out of 5
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
05/10/11 Average Rating: 4 out of 5
An open letter to George Lucas.
01/09/11
Burn Hollywood Burn
19/07/11
The Apprenticed
18/07/11
In Praise of ITV
03/07/11
Sick
28/06/11
Know the Drill
03/06/11
Modern Cinemas are Rubbish
02/06/11 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
My Tooth Story
26/05/11
Game of PWNS
24/05/11 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
West is West
19/05/11 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Crime Crime Crime
17/05/11
The Bored Room
11/05/11 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
The Future Shock
09/05/11
The Worm That Eats Itself
06/05/11 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
The Life Atwatic
24/04/11
Driving Like A Dick
17/04/11 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
A Penny For My Thoughts
27/03/11 Average Rating: 2 out of 5
The Needle and the Damage Done
23/03/11 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
The Meaning of Life Part 1 : Birth
16/03/11 Average Rating: 3 out of 5
10 O Clock Dive
21/01/11 Average Rating: 4.3 out of 5
Falling off of the Witches Hat
19/01/11 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Small Talk
18/01/11 Average Rating: 4.8 out of 5
The Waiting Game
13/01/11 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
2011
05/01/11
2010
31/12/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Police Stop
30/12/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Z Cast
29/12/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
The Crazy Adventures of Bastian and Atreyu
09/12/10
A note to my son or daughter.
08/12/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Baby I can drive your car
22/10/10 Average Rating: 4.3 out of 5
A Good Society
10/09/10
The National Sport of Rubbernecking
09/09/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Scanners 2
08/09/10
What mean Expendable?
07/09/10 Average Rating: 4.3 out of 5
Adventures in Babyhaving
06/09/10 Average Rating: 0 out of 5
Warning : Speculation
12/07/10 Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Adventures in driving
07/07/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...
05/07/10 Average Rating: 4 out of 5
Pipe Up
23/04/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
More Bard News
21/04/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Volcanoes and Elections
20/04/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Grumpy Old Deathwish
29/03/10
The Apple
27/03/10 Average Rating: 2 out of 5
1987
26/03/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
The Long Bad Wednesday
25/03/10
Art for Art's Sake
23/03/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Modern Slash
22/03/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
A Little Bit 'Special'
16/03/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Dead Happy
05/03/10 Average Rating: 3.3 out of 5
Video Killed The Radio Stars
03/03/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Sunday Zoo
01/03/10
Im Flugzeug
20/02/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Radio Times
17/02/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Intellectual Property
16/02/10
Happy Loveday
15/02/10
A Load of Pony
25/01/10
I Want To Lie Down With A Lion
18/01/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
'You Lecherous Moron'
17/01/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
A National Treasure
15/01/10
Snow
13/01/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Friday The 13th
12/01/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Steaks are High
11/01/10 Average Rating: 4.2 out of 5
Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em
16/11/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
BBC Bashing
10/11/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Kenny Effing Powers!
09/11/09
No More Heroes
06/11/09 Average Rating: 3.7 out of 5
What I Did In My Holidays
04/11/09
Jellyneck
22/09/09 Average Rating: 3 out of 5
Can Buy Me Love
10/09/09
Memory Lane
27/08/09 Average Rating: 4 out of 5
Shitting Stars
26/08/09
The Life and Death of My Pop Star Life
25/08/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Are You Being Offended?
24/08/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
My Generation
14/08/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Home Alone 2 : Lost In 1939-1945
12/08/09 Average Rating: 4.3 out of 5
Home Alone
29/07/09 Average Rating: 3 out of 5
Context
28/07/09 Average Rating: 2.7 out of 5
Summer is a bummer
27/07/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Time Waster
26/07/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Yes, but how did it Happen??
25/07/09
He Must Have Some Agent
24/07/09 Average Rating: 3.8 out of 5
Day 2
23/07/09 Average Rating: 4.3 out of 5
A New Morning
22/07/09 Average Rating: 4.1 out of 5
The Sadness
21/07/09
Who Punishes The Punisher?
17/07/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
The New Blog
09/07/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Baby, You're A Ritchie Man
21/05/09 Average Rating: 3 out of 5
An Englishman's Home Is His Castle
20/05/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
The Return
05/05/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Double Trouble
06/04/09
It's The End Of The World As I Know It
05/04/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Not Good Enough
30/03/09 Average Rating: 3 out of 5
Picture This
24/03/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Size Matters
22/03/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
The Death of Mother Tongue
19/03/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
I Am Modern Man
18/03/09 Average Rating: 4.6 out of 5
Not Ready
16/03/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Watched
10/03/09 Average Rating: 4 out of 5
Wired
08/03/09
The Running Man
26/02/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Run, Fatboy, Run
25/02/09 Average Rating: 4.7 out of 5
Absent Friends
09/02/09 Average Rating: 4.8 out of 5
Snow Wonder
02/02/09 Average Rating: 4.2 out of 5
A New Breed of Hero
21/01/09 Average Rating: 4.2 out of 5
You Be The Judge
20/01/09 Average Rating: 3.7 out of 5
Take Hart
18/01/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
What's In A Name?
17/01/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Don't Remake Me Over
16/01/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Random Fluctuations In The Space Time Continuum!
08/01/09 Average Rating: 3.8 out of 5
The Future Is Already Written
07/01/09
The Shortest Story Ever Told
06/01/09
Demon Seed
03/01/09 Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5
2008
30/12/08 Average Rating: 4 out of 5
What's Cooking?
29/12/08 Average Rating: 3.8 out of 5
A Feel Good Story
21/12/08 Average Rating: 4 out of 5
The Curse
19/12/08 Average Rating: 1.8 out of 5
He's Not The Messiah!
15/12/08 Average Rating: 4 out of 5
Who throws a shoe?
14/12/08
Sneaky Christmas
10/12/08
Feeling Blu
09/12/08 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
SHT
07/12/08
Gategate
02/12/08 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Comedy of Errors
30/11/08 Average Rating: 3.7 out of 5
For What It's Worth
27/11/08 Average Rating: 2 out of 5
Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters
23/11/08
National Expression
20/11/08 Average Rating: 3 out of 5
A View To A Job
18/11/08 Average Rating: 1 out of 5
Last Bus Gone
17/11/08 Average Rating: 4.1 out of 5
Jungle Nobodies
12/11/08 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
The Cage Strain
11/11/08
A Common Practice In Poland
07/11/08 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
Close Encounters of the West Country Kind
06/11/08 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
David Brent Would Vote For Barack Obama
05/11/08 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
I am Legend
04/11/08 Average Rating: 4 out of 5
Setting The President In The Art World
03/11/08 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
My Word Is My Bond
02/11/08
Feeling Blu
Or, what the world needs now is HD love
09/12/08
Do you remember when a film would come out in the cinema (without any Internet buzz) and then, 6 or 7 months later, would come out on video?
Then, if you really liked it, you would rent it a few times. Then, it would come out to buy on video another few months later. I was lucky, as my parents were good friends with someone who ran a video shop, therefore allowing me to not only buy ex-rentals (before there was such a thing) but also to rent out any certificate of film. I was watching Aliens, Robocop, Predator etc when they came out, yes, they were 18's, but I could walk into that shop, head held high, aged 10, and walk out with a grown up film, take that Thatcher and everyone in the 1980's.
I loved my local video shop, it was called "Tapes" and was the pride and joy of Carpenders Park. The man that ran it was called Ron and he was a total dude! He also used to give me the standys and posters from films after he had finished with them. As my brother keeps reminding me, if only we had kept them, some are worth cash now.

In about 1992 (though I cant be sure), Barry Norman had a competition on the film programme. It was a dead easy question, which escapes me now, but the prize was all I thought about for that entire series leading up until the end when he announced the winner. The prize was a Laser Disc player and a selection of discs. I was obsessed with winning this thing. There seemed nothing as exciting as owning a machine that played large disc based versions of films that I had only previously been aware of on VHS. I had seen them in shops, I had seen them on TV, now, I had a chance of actually owning one. I had looked into the possibility of asking for one for Christmas, but they were very expensive and the yearly Christmas budget from my folks was always about £100, which isn't bad by the way, just not enough for my laser disc dream. Anyway, I spent the whole of that series watching, waiting, like a technology hungry eagle. Finally, the last episode came, and I waited until the end for the winner to be announced. It turned out, I hadn't won at all, in fact, all those hopes and dreams were killed in front of my eyes by the evil Barry Norman. Yes, he may have been funny in the Morecambe and Wise Christmas special, but to me, he was now the devil himself. How dare you Barry Norman. You said I would win a Laser Disc player, you did. Then you shat on my dreams. How could you?

Anyway, I digress. 1997, DVD came along, the film (with a mild Internet buzz) would be on at the cinema, then, 6 or 7 months later, it would come out on DVD and you could buy that mother straight away!
In 1997 I was working in a video rental warehouse, which meant that we had thousands of new films to rent delivered to us and we would then ship them to little video shops. In one of our team meetings that year, our boss had been to a home video trade show. He said he had just seen a DVD and that he thought it wasn't as good as VHS. obviously, at the time, I knew no better and told everyone I knew this interesting fact.
Of course, now, I think he was a twat.
Whenever I am in a supermarket and I see a DVD player going for about 20 quid, it makes me very sad. I remember in 1998, I saved and saved my meagre temp wages week in, week out and bought myself a DVD player for £230.00. By today's standards it was a total and utter piece of shit that hardly ever worked and took an age to read a disc. I was, a really stupid person from the past. I upgraded a couple of years later, when I had a better income, and bought myself a super-sweet multi region DVD player, which I still have in my spare room and works very well to this day, and until last year, served me very well indeed.

The wife and I got married last year and received mainly money as gifts from our wedding guests. So, we decided to buy ourselves a 5.1 surround sound system and a 40 inch HDTV, and very nice they are too.
In February this year, someone bought my wife a DVD for her birthday, when she opened it up, it was a Blu Ray. Someone had mistakenly bought it for her not realising the difference. Oh dear, I said, looks like we will have to buy a Blu Ray player now. So, we went out and bought a PS3, and the journey is now complete. From a piece of shit DVD player in 1998, to a state of the art Blu ray player in 2008, complete with 5.1 sound, this, is living!

Anyway, my point about all this is just how much the home entertainment experience has changed in our generation. I remember my dad bringing home our first Ferguson VHS player in about 1981, you had to plug the remote control in via a wire. Now, you can watch a film in High Definition and surround sound as soon as it comes out!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are living in a home entertainment utopia!

Today, I took delivery of my favourite film of the year. The Dark Knight and I just finished watching it. It is truly an amazing piece of work and if you haven't seen it, but have heard lots of hype surrounding Heath Ledger's performance, believe the hype, he is immense in this film. I read that they are re-releasing it in January to catch some Oscar attention. I hope it is seen as an Oscar worthy piece, I know that these kind of films are usually largely ignored in terms of award recognition (well, serious awards anyway) but this film IS really that good and the performances contained therein deserve recognition.

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Comments about This Article
I watched Ratatouille on blu-ray tonight. What a great film! The picture quality really brings home how great the animation has become these days. Zod's rating? 10/10!
Comment By: General Zod, 10 Dec 2008, Rating: 5/5
Great blog! I personally felt that the Dark Knight tailed off towards the end. The last half hour, and the stupid bat-voice, are what keeps it from greatness. All in all I'd give the film 4/5 - good effort but could do better.
Comment By: Chris Totty, 10 Dec 2008, Rating: 5/5
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