(week commencing 12th September 2011)

Seemingly overnight, winter is here. Its raining, its windy, the Christmas stuff is up in Sainsbury’s, and there are new home entertainment releases to stop you having to leave your house until next June. Tomorrow, Star Wars The Complete Saga is out on Bluray, meaning another chance for George Lucas to chew up those kid’s films he made 900 years ago and spew the half-eaten crud that remains into the wide-open, aching jaws of people in their 20s and 30s who should know better. This is the first time the Star Wars franchise has been available on Bluray, and to mark the occasion George Lucas’s grinning moonface has been superimposed over Harrison Ford’s in every scene featuring Han Solo, and the entire film has been given a dubstep soundtrack. But HARK! When George Lucas gets his next paycheque, which is evidently all he cares about, there’s not going to be a difference between the 30 year old battering the words “OMG Ewoks shouldn’t blink!!!1” into his laptop keyboard and the 7 year old who doesn’t think Empire has enough Jar Jar Binks, so stop buying the same films over and over or stop whinging.

Also out tomorrow, Pirates of the Caribbean Episode IV: The Something of the Mysterious Whatever, and a Special Edition Twilight Saga boxset. Now you can relive all your favourite moments from the Twilight saga in the comfort of your own home, like when that guy does that thing and the others all look moody, or when stuff happens and all the characters take it very seriously, and who can forget the classic scene where Robert Pattinson skulks around for hours, visibly aching while trying to will his malnourished, teenage Ted Dansen face into something resembling a human expression. Also Point F’N Break gets re-released-

There has never been a more important week for music than this week. There’s new music out tomorrow which will permanently change the way you perceive sound, such as the new albums by Frenchmen Ageing Backwards, Pingpong Batshit, Bruce’s Willies, Hubert The Bastard, and Tnuc. The latter in particular is vomitcore at its finest. In an average week, any of these hugely important new albums would be big news, but not in the week when Bad Bad Beverage release their self-titled debut album. For those who aren’t aware, Triple B have been causing a stir on the Scunthorpe scene, creating seminal music without actually making any sound whatsoever.

In other music news, Madonna emerged from the basement of her Transylvanian castle this week, looking like a cross between Kryten off Red Dwarf and a piece of rope, to announce she will record a new album soon. Meanwhile, in a brave move, The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince has changed his name to a smell.

Hello, you fuckers. The future is almost here and its a vast, neutral space. All books and magazines are on Kindles, all music is on Ipods, all films are stored on Sky+ boxes, all news is beamed into your crying eyeballs through HD televisions. ‘Friends’ are compartmentalised into Google+ circles and communicated with exclusively through Skype.

There are new DVDs and CDs out next week. They aren’t “out” now. They ARE probably available for free online, but apparently you’re expected to wait. Once the iFuture arrives there’ll be no more anticipation. Anyone will be able to pump half-formed ideas and thoughts into ‘the cloud’ for anyone else to take whenever they want. There’ll be no more shelves or clutter, replaced by clean, empty space. An iWorld filled with iTowns filled with iHomes, filled with iPods on otherwise empty marble tables, injecting data into a species of users.

At least one increasingly irrelevant form of physical media is going out with a bang. In it’s last edition, the News of the World, whose staff had nothing left to lose, led with the brave headline “Ed Miliband not human. Friend says he is ‘part-bee’.” This claim was accompanied by a hastily photoshopped picture of the Labour leader pollinating an orchid and a quote from an anonymous source saying “Ed Miliband is not entirely human. He is part-bee. End of messages. To listen to this message again, please press 1. To save it press 2, or to delete it press 3. Message deleted.”

Unfortunately, the new CDs and DVDs that comprise the last days of the physical world are less impressive. Next week’s big music release is Now 79, the latest in the Now Thats What I Call Music series of compilations, featuring all the latest smash hit pop songs such as The Lazy Song by Bruno Mars, Just Can’t Get Enough by Black Eyed Peas, Born This Way (Express Yourself) by Lady Gaga (Madonna) and Suicide is Beautiful by Benighted in Sodom.

Meanwhile, swing revivalists Pestilence release their new album Doctrine, and popular barbershop quartet Toxic Holocaust release their latest set of ditties Conjure and Command. Both of these albums sound absolutely delightful, and not at all like a collection of shit-coloured dirges with no purpose to people with functioning ears, other than to use the track names for a game of Metal Bingo. If you’re playing along at home, you can mark the following words off your card- Judgment; Agony; Damned; Winter; Nowhere; Disease; Revelations; Salvation; Sinister; Divinity; Deception; Malignant. What a shame, I’m only missing “Fallen”, “War” and “Cancer” and I would have had a full house.

Otherwise its a quiet week. CSI Miami Season 8 is released on DVD, which is the final season. From next year the producers will focus on new spin-off CSI Scunthorpe. Sims 3: Town Life Stuff is out for PC. Its an expansion pack that includes new customisation options for your Sims town, and gym equipment for your Sims to get fit, while you remain entirely sedentary, lobbing handfuls of corn-syrup towards your yawning, cavernous gullet. And finally, theres a Justin Bieber DVD, featuring footage of the R&Bot (pictured above) dancing with Usher, interacting with fans, sacrificing farmyard animals to his lord and saviour Satan, and performing all of his hits (such as the classic ‘Baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby’).

“This baby doesn’t need an alternative voting system, she needs a cot or whatever. Vote No To AV”

“This army chap doesn’t need an alternative voting system, he needs guns and that. Vote No To AV”

“This other baby doesn’t need an alternative voting system, it needs food and stuff. Vote No To AV”

The above are actual real life quotes from the No To AV campaign posters, probably. The insinuation of the adverts was that anyone voting in favour of AV was costing the country a huge amount of money we need for other things and, in turn, killing babies and soldiers, but to anybody with their critical faculties in order the adverts just read like two unrelated statements picked from a hat and tied to an emotive photograph. Now I know their formula I’ve come up with some slogans for the No campaign in the next referendum on electoral reform, which I predict will be in the 20,011.

“This asthmatic teenager doesn’t need an alternative voting system- she’s wearing a blue hat. Vote No To Electoral Reform”

“This elderly gentleman from Suffolk doesn’t need an alternative voting system- Dr Dre’s real name is Andre Young. Vote No To Electoral Reform”

“This Yorkshire Terrier doesn’t need an alternative voting system- Why don’t corner shops do penny trays anymore? Vote No To Electoral Reform”

That is all.

Spring is here! The sun is out, the birds are singing, the days are longer, half the world is attempting to rise up against oppressive regimes, etc. What we all need in our lives is a constant drip-feed of numbing, below average home entertainment bought with money we don’t have. So, who here ordered some bland ‘arena indie’ void of any soul or charisma? Did you also order a free side of expensive, unjustified hype? Then here, have the latest next big thing The Vaccines and their first album What Did You Expect From The Vaccines, released a few weeks ago. The band are getting a hard time in the press for being ‘posh’, just because frontman Bentley Windsor has a left hand made entirely of diamonds that he uses to punch elderly tramps. This is just the press being cynical and judgmental, when The Vaccines should really be getting a hard time for making music that is soul-wrenchingly dull. (And for being so fucking posh.) More indie came out that week in the form of Bread and Circuses, the new album by The View.

VIEW FACT: The View have had the same jeans on for SIX YEARS now and are starting to smell like arse.

Also out on March 14th was Blood Ceremony, Living With The Ancients and Funeral For a Friend, Welcome Home Armageddon. Why do metal bands have to be so fucking gloomy all the time? There are so many words in the English language and they chose to put together ‘Blood’ and ‘Ceremony’ when naming their band? If you’re reading this and thinking of forming a metal band, buck the trend and come up with a more cheerful name. Here are some suggestions- Very Good Ceremony Thanks, Nice Gift For A Friend, Brand New Jumper, Smilegasm, Cradle of Optimism… I could go on, so I will- The Brilliant Dinners, This Lovely Orange, Successful Picnic, The Nice Chaps…

That week also saw home entertainment released to put inside your eyes, such as Let Me In, the American remake of the cult 2008 Swedish vampire film Let The Right One In. As it was released in cinemas a mere two years after the original, I can only assume this remake is specifically for people who can’t read and therefore not worth your time, unless you’re just staring at these words because you like the shape of the letters. 5 Centimetres Per Second (DVD), which is some sort of anime but sounds like a subject line from my spam folder, was also released, as was Series 3 of Is It Legal? It can’t just be me who thinks that’s a seriously dubious premise for a dating show, especially one that has reached THREE series. The creators of the show apparently agree, as its actually just a sitcom about lawyers.

The next week was probably most notable for the release of the Nintendo 3DS, a handheld games console that allows 3D play without the need for 3D glasses, assuming you can hold the console in exactly the right position, sit perfectly still, and train yourself to go bog-eyed. Aside from that expensive headache, there were also new albums out last week. It saddens me that we live in a world where an album as grating and persistently joyless as Angles by The Strokes hasn’t provoked some sort of government action to prevent something similar happening in future, or even a single word of condemnation from any world leaders. Our priorities are completely wrong. Green Day’s new live album Awesome As F**k was also released, an album so punk that it’s title is self censored to avoid offence and protect sales. Stick it to the man, Billie Joe! Idlewild’s Roddy Woomble also released his solo album Impossible Songs, which serves as a great reminder for those who need to remember-member-member what a woomble-woomble-woomble he is.*

*(I’m genuinely very sorry for writing this.)

Which brings us to this week. Today saw the eagerly anticipated release of some things and some stuff. Goodbye!

C (I have abbreviated the word ‘see’ in order to save time) U (I have shortened the word ‘you’ as I felt it might be quicker) l8r (which I am using as a sort of phonetic abbreviation of ‘later’, as I am pressed for time).

‘Awards season’ is a strange beast. Every year, figures from within the entertainment industry send shockwaves hurtling around the world by joining together and giving themselves a monumental pat on the back. The BRITs, The Grammys, the BAFTAs, the SAGs, the Golden Globes, the Oscars, and many others, all fall within a few months of each other. This epic level of self-congratulation is something that’s unique to the entertainment industry, and they don’t even seem to have a sense of humour or self-awareness about it, as evidenced by Ricky Gervais’s hostile reception at this years Golden Globes. You don’t see security guards or locksmiths or bakers slapping on their formalwear and parading around in front of the press expecting applause. You’re never going to open a paper and be greeted with the news “Greggs’ Sausage & Bean Melt wins Best Pasty at the Carbies- Harvey Weinstein furious”. Anyway-

New DVDs and Blurays out Monday March 7th 2011

For my round up of this week’s new music releases, click here to visit NorthernNoise.co.uk

The Saw franchise has spawned 7 films, 2 video games, a collection of action figures, a line of clothing, a short lived Saturday morning children’s cartoon and a branded sandwich oven. This week sees the DVD and Bluray release of the 7th and supposedly last film in the series- Saw: The Final Chapter, as well as the “Ultimate Collection” box set containing all 7 films. The real “Ultimate Collection” of Saw films would actually be a box that contained the first film and the 12 hours of your life you’ve spent watching the sequels. As is the norm for the Saw films, Saw: The Final Chapter attempts to up the level of sickness, which has already been set quite high in the previous films, by having its characters get caught in a series of increasingly nasty torture traps. In one particularly harrowing scene a man wakes up to find his knee stapled to a bike, while in another a woman is shocked to find someone has left a rude note on her fridge. Horrific stuff.

Bieber Fever is sweeping the nation! And the only known cure is a single bullet through the brain. Justin Bieber: Teen Idol (DVD) is out on Monday to further appease the lumbering hoards of infected. It’s apparently an “insightful documentary taking a closer look at the meteoric rise to prominence of one of America’s most successful teen pop stars”. So, a must-have for fans of everybody’s favourite Disney-animated, Lego-haired, dead-eyed R&Bot. Still, he’s not all bad- without Bieber we wouldn’t have Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber. Meanwhile, if you still remember what it was like when kids entertainment was awesome, then Real Ghostbusters: Season 1 (DVD) might be for you. Its a two disc collection of the cartoon show based on the popular film. Disc 1 contains the first half of the episodes from Season 1, while Disc 2 just contains video of Bill Murray sat alone in a room, staring disapprovingly at the camera and mouthing the word “no” over and over again.

Also out this week, something called 100 Men & A Girl (DVD). I choose to assume that its Charlie Sheen’s edgier follow up to Two & A Half Men, which was cancelled last week, prompting Sheen to give some crazy-eyed interviews to American news channels. When asked if he was still on drugs, Sheen responded “I am on a drug – it’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it once you’ll die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.” Intrigued by this description I decided to track down some Charlie Sheen to test its effects. This isn’t an easy task if you aren’t sure what you’re looking for, but after the brief solvent high caused by a lungful of ‘Mr Sheen’ wore off, I found a man who sold me what he said was some Charlie Sheen. Rather than making my face melt off, it just gave me an intense feeling of embarrassment and a sort of fatherly disappointment. I’d been sold a gram of Martin Sheen by mistake. When I finally got my hands on some actual Charlie Sheen, the main effects seemed to be the swelling of my right nostril to 3 times the size of my left and the morphing of my hairdo into what a barber might call ‘the sweaty Noel Edmonds’. After the interviews, the Hot Shots Part Deux star then joined Twitter and broke a record by getting over 1 million followers in under a day. With that many people reading Sheen’s tweets, its only a matter of time before “Shut the fuck up” starts trending.

And finally, the Thanksgiving tradition returns as WWE releases the 24th annual Survivor Series pay per view on DVD and Bluray. Filmed last November in front of an excited crowd in Miami, Survivor Series 2010 promised to be the biggest ever, featuring huge bouts between all the major WWE Superstars, such as ‘The Bastard’ Jeff Valhalla doing battle with The Flasher, and ‘The Last Nazi’ Hans Zimmapants locking horns with his long time rival The Fish inside the dreaded confines of The Lube Cube. Unfortunately the show ends in tragedy when WWE World Champion, ‘The Transgender Tyrant’ Teddy Trombone, suddenly explodes.

Thats all the new DVDs and Blurays out this week that I can think of some sort of sarcastic joke or obscure lie about.

END OF WORDS

THE DAYTIME REVIEW

After an hour of wrestling with acute ennui, I finally crawl out of bed, pour myself a bucket of coffee and switch on the television, blankly staring at the first thing that comes on for 10 minutes before realising I’m awake and I’m watching a cartoon called Zoo Lane (BBC2). The only thing I can remember about it now is the following dialogue:

“Mr Platypus wants to tell you a story”
“Oh yay, a platypus story!”

And who can’t relate to that? We all love a platypus story. Who can forget when the Platypus strike in America ruined Heroes and Lost? I look away from the screen for a minute to pour more coffee and when I look back some children, a dog and a puppet are dancing around a fire and it all looks vaguely tribal and worrying.

CLICK.

Homes Under The Hammer (BBC1), and a couple are hoping to spend £5000 to “flatten the ceilings” of their house, as a bearded man says “I tend to put a more artistic spin on things. I see property more like making a sculpture.” The narrator explains that this guy, lets call him Fuckhole McGraw, has spent £147,000 to give his house a “facelift” and is unhappy that if he sold the house he would only make £30,000 profit. Ah, this must be the ‘squeezed middle’ I’ve been hearing so much about. “These homeless shelters and libraries are costing me money that I would rather spend on extending my boiler room. Where else am I going to set fire to all these tramps and books?”

Two cups of strong coffee later, Homes Under The Hammer ends and Save My Holiday begins. By this point I’ve drunk enough coffee to end a life and simply can’t focus on these ungrateful, over-privileged sacks of basted orange flesh, droning on and on of their “grief” that their Turkish hotel hasn’t provided enough night time entertainment. They should have gone to Pontins.

The TV guide tells me that BBC1 is carrying on with this vicarious conspicuous consumption for the rest of the morning, following Save My Holiday with Cash In The Attic then Bargain Hunt, so I quickly click over to Channel 4. Things don’t get better, as I’m greeted by Help! My House is Falling Down, a paranoid consumerist horror story in which it is made very clear, over and over again, that we are all in constant danger of our houses suddenly collapsing. At this point death by plummeting ceiling tile seems a better option than the fresh hell gushing out of terrestrial television. Its time to go digital.

CLICK.

Judge Judy, (ITV2). Ah, Prejudice Judy, perpetually shouting at the poor based on a strict Daily Mail ethical and moral code. MORE COFFEE!

CLICK.

QVC, and the host attempts to sell a £75 skin cream while applying it to the face of the world’s shiniest woman, who is silent but permanently grinning despite looking like she’s had her head smeared in olive oil. The host’s exact words: “What we’ve done is we’ve taken anti-aids, erm, aids… erm, aging ingredients and we’ve encapsulated them in a vegetable… ecasia. If you take this with you in your handbag and reapply it throughout the day then it will help to smooth all those lines you get from laughing and smiling”. Oh, THOSE lines. I’ve heard of those. I think they might be called “facial expressions”.

CLICK.

Dave is showing a Top Gear marathon.

TV OFF.

I’m disappointed by the lack of Climbing Great Buildings in today’s daytime schedule. If you haven’t seen it, the basic premise is a guy explains the history of a great building and then, for some reason, climbs up the side of it. Its genuinely quite informative and refreshing, at least when compared to the rest of the stuff you see on daytime TV, and I’m looking forward to the spin off series- Pissing On National Landmarks.

Maybe its somewhat futile these days to try and differentiate between daytime and primetime TV based on anything other than the time slot. The lines have become blurred. If you added a tense score, some tight camera work and a nauseating sense of emotional instability to a show like Ready Steady Cook, you’d have something not a million miles away from last night’s episode of Masterchef (BBC1, 9PM), which this year has added an X Factor-esque audition process. The basic premise of the show is two drunks sweat and gurn as a succession of unmedicated manic depressives watch them eat. While all this is happening, a female HAL from 2001 Space Odyssey narrates, saying things like “Jeff has made belm chicken with a red wine joie, a slow parade of red cabbage and a devastating blitzkrieg of citrus”. After eating, the judge that looks like a toothy egg will say something like “I like what you’ve done- that blast of bacon is curvy but vivid, then the brown sauce sneaks up on you, like a playful lover” then the other one will respond with something along the lines of “The bread is excellently buttered, the bacon is perfectly fried, the brown sauce really brings the whole thing together. I don’t like it.” At which point the contestant, who had previously been grinning and twitching like someone desperate for the toilet, suddenly begins violently sobbing, occasionally provoking a similar reaction from the judges. Half an episode of watching people go on this sort of emotional roller coaster is enough to make you wish somebody would cook some medical strength mood suppressants.

To summarise, Masterchef is unbelievably awful and stupid, and so I love it because it makes me feel superior to everyone involved.

Unfortunately, the show will at some point begin. There’ll be a voiceover guy shouting over some pre-taped footage, then the four judges will walk onstage dressed in suits and formal dresses, backed by fireworks and music that sounds like the Ride of the fucking Valkyries. The entire thing will have an “opulent apocalypse” feel. At this point its best to repeat to yourself “Its just a talent show”, in case you begin to think you’ve stumbled upon the game show from The Running Man.

If, like me, you thought Sharon Osbourne was still somehow involved, you may be surprised by the current judges. First there’s the eunuch equivalent of Pee Wee Herman, Louis Walsh, who’s only there to be perpetually emasculated in order to make the botox tragedy Simon Cowell look like an alpha male. This in spite of Cowell’s hair like a 1950s barber and his teeth like a bleached beaver. Then there’s the glass skeleton Danii Minogue, who looks vaguely like an inside-out Kylie and is only there to speak too quietly over excessive crowd noise so we can hear the reformed racist Cheryl Cole. FUN FACT- Cheryl Cole now converses entirely in autotune, and while her eyes are permanently fixed into an expression presumably intended to convey sincerity, it’s actually an involuntary reaction to arthritic knee pain!

Eventually Dermot O Leary will say something, with a look in his eyes that says “They pay me a lot but they beat me”, then its time to show some pre-taped footage of the contestants stood in a branch of Laser Quest, before they eventually get around to singing. This week the finalists will perform with famous celebrities, or at least thats what Google has just this second told me. I tend to believe Google, we’ve developed a certain understanding. So One Direction (AKA Multi-Beiber) will be performing with Robbie Williams, somebody called Rebecca will be joined by Christina Aguilera, someone called Matt will sing with Rihanna, and the always controversial Cher will be joined by Sonny Bono.

Thankfully, the whole thing will eventually end and the viewers will vote for their winner, and that winner will maybe be a pop star for about a year before the 2011 X Factor winner is forced to ritualistically end their worthless fucking life.

THE END.