New Doctor, New Doctor Who.

So, the time is finally here. The time we get to see the first glimpse of what’s going to be gracing out televisions for the next few years. I’m talking of course about the first episode of the new series of Doctor who, but not just a new series; a new doctor! For those of you who aren’t familiar with the popular television show, Doctor who, here’s a little break down for you.

Doctor who is a Sci Fi programme aired on a Saturday on BBC1 at around eight a series at a time. The series follows the adventurous life style of the Doctor, an unnamed 900 year old hero that comes from an alien planet and spends his days exploring the universe saving the human and many other races from multiple aliens. Oh, and did I mention he travels in time?

The Doctor travels through time and space in a capsule that resembles a 1960’s British Police call box that he calls The TARDIS (“It’s bigger on the inside”). The Doctor is known to travel with a companion from Earth that he teaches the way of the universe, the Doctor has been known to hold on screen romance with one of his most recent companions, Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), perhaps caused by having the rather flamboyant Russell T Davies as a writer. The Doctor is known by many government organisations, most notably a fictional base of alien studies by the name of Torchwood (later branched off into an independent series on BBC THREE).

The Doctor boasts such a long life expectancy due to his ability to ‘Regenerate’ into a new form every time his body gains damage. His regenerations are said to change his form to a completely new shape but of the shapes we’ve seen, all have been human. Each regeneration brings to us a new actor and thus new character traits to the role. The most recent hand over was from the long running tenth doctor, David Tennant, to the newest member of the Doctor who Family, Matt Baker. Other famous actors such as Tom baker, Christopher Eccleston and Paul McGann.

And so we have it, the first episode as the series finds itself with a new face to it, and a new style, Caused by the shows creators plans to aim it at a younger audience and even an American audience with the addition of BBC America to it’s airing list.

When watching the first episode I approached with an eager yet cautious mind. Eager because I knew for a fact that despite the publics hesitation to the new doctor, after we all fell in love with Tennant’s portrayal, Doctor Who has a knack for making you all in love with new doctors. After all, most of the shows die hard fans were dead set against the change from Eccleston to Tennant.

The program began with the usual shock therapy type sudden entry with The Doctor hanging by his finger tips onto the side of his Tardis as it hurtled through the skies of London with no explanation as to how this situation cam across. The doctor soon regains control of the Tardis only to end up crash landing it into the garden of a small Scottish girl in an unnamed place somewhere in England.

The story line is pretty basic and very typical of Doctor Who at the start with a crack in the girls wall being a portal to another world that an alien prisoner has escaped through. The storyline draws some reference to alien technology used in previous series of Doctor Who and mostly falls short due to the fact that The Doctor’s Tardis is in the stages of self repairing itself and his trusty Sonic Screwdriver s on the frits. As the show progresses a storyline starts to pull together better as the program gets smarter and finally rears away from the all too easy trap of making the first episode all about the new Doctor. I won’t say much more about the storyline as I don’t want to ruin it for you but I will say this…

After the somewhat mundane first twenty minutes it started to pull together and started to become rather good! To my surprise as it reached a climax I found myself growing more and more drawn to the new Doctor and this new style of series. I’ll admit it doesn’t have as much heart as the older series but It was still very entertaining and as a huge fan of the show myself I must say I found it al together very, very good. So I say why not give this new Doctor a chance? Sure, he’s not Tennant but you never know, he could just be brilliant in his own right.

I thoroughly enjoyed this episode and will by all means be tuning in to catch the next episode of the highly thrilling series.

28 Days Later Film Review

Danny Boyle takes the common zombie stereotype and rips it limb from limb in the amazing action thriller, 28 Days Later. With the use of a great storyline, a deserted London and of course, zombies. Boyle creates a perfect environment for a truly magnificent film. 28 Days later follows the story of Jim, a London man who wakes up in an empty hospital to find a deserted London, he soon realises all is not as it seems as he finds himself surrounded by thousands of infected ‘zombie like’ creatures with only one thing on their minds; him. As Jim progresses through his journey to find some form of safety he finds that in such dire times, zombies aren’t the only things to return to their primal urges.

Released in 2002, 28 Days Later revolutionized Zombie films with the introduction of animal like instincts and the ability to run and hunt, thus bringing back the once dying art (no pun intended) of zombie films. The introduction of an all new breed of horror films opened the gate for many more great films such as Dawn of the dead 2004 and Land of the dead.

Others took this all new style to even further extremes, such as George A. Romero, once known for such classics as Dawn of The Dead and Night of The Living Dead, who took this new surge of zombie lovers as a chance to re-establish his skills and created some absolute masterpieces such as diary of The Dead and Land of The Dead. All pretty good considering the budget of less than £5 million, even less than that spent by Warner Bros on a scene From the Hit movie I Am Legend in which Will Smiths Family are brutally taken away from him in a helicopter accident.

28 Days Later is one of the very few films that feature a perfect balance of sheer horror and absolute beauty. Boyle uses a series of different locations that are usually seen in chaotic levels of population, and creates a truly breathtaking vacancy of any life whatsoever, an effect very rarely used to such extremes in films prior. Images of a deserted London with only birds and scattered carnage inhabiting it are used to create an amazing series of glimpses into an uninhabited world.

Unlike most films of the same genre, 28 Days later can also be appreciated simply as a film and sometimes leads you to forget the aspect of fear in the film and focus more on the smaller storylines. The film explores the effect such huge changes bare on different people as they are all forced to adapt to the change, the natural ideas of morals and sympathy for fellow man are a huge factor in the film as the mindset of each of the characters is heavily investigated.

28 Days later bares little similarity to other films of its time and is a striking, original and magnificent work of art. I would bare no hesitation in passing this film on as a must see film and I definitely add it to my list of 100 must see before you die.

Films To Put Your Tisues Away and Ask Yourself “Why Am I Watching This?”.

Perhaps it’s the just that time of year, or perhaps not. But I’ve seen a terribly huge amount of those notorious sad film lists lately. You know the ones I’m talking about, those top ten films to get the tissues out for… Well, maybe that doesn’t really have the same meaning when it comes to men.

A short time ago I gave up and decided to start reading them, and was appalled just by how far off they were, but perhaps the one that infuriated me the most was the list of films that make men cry that a website I wont name recently spat out, A list written by a woman might I add. So, as a man I have decided to put my mind to this one and make a list of films that might actually make a man cry, if any.

The Lion King
The first Disney film to depict the death of a main character. You all know the scene I’m talking about. Personally, I didn’t cry. But if another man were to cry then I would personally excuse them.

The Green Mile
This film actually made me rather angry at times but the use of sad scenes made this film a bit of a tear jerker. Great, now I’m starting to use cliché words like tearjerker.

The Pursuit of Happiness
This film is SO bad that I can’t watch it without ripping out my eyes and using them to clog my ears, if I had to actually watch the full movie then I’d probably have to cry.

The Sex and the City Movie
If you’re a man and you’re watching this movie then it’s pretty likely that you’ve been made to by your girlfriend. If they’ve managed to get you to watch the full film then it’s pretty likely that your girlfriend is a huge Schwarzenegger type woman and they’ve beaten the shit out of you, in which case, crying is likely.

Friends (If one of them were to die)
Come on, its friends. If a single one of them had something wrong with them it would be like you’ve lost a family member!

Well, it’s become rather obvious to me that I could only really think of two real films that are likely to make a man cry and thus proved just how unopened men are to crying. As I don’t have any any ideas on how to end this article I’m going to got for a Sopranos stile e

The Pound Game

I recently found myself rather bored and wanting to shop, I don’t usually feel a random craving to shop but for once, I did. I didn’t want to leave the house to do so and had a minimal amount of money to spend regardless. This left me with only one option; internet shopping. The idea of buying anything you could ever want or indeed need, without having to leave your bedroom. One problem still lurked though, funds. My debit card only had about two pounds on it available, which gave me an idea for a little game…

It’s called the pound game! I designed this game around play.com so you may have to change it slightly if you intend to play elsewhere. The idea was a test, a test to see if internet shopping is as good as, or even better than going to the shops and getting something. You used to be able to go to go to your local media supplier, eg. HMV, Virgin Mega Stores, Zavvi etc. and buy some real classics for unbeatable prices in their bargain bins, whether it be CD or DVD. On the internet, not so much.

I thought internet versions of such shops would be more than happy to at east try, oh how wrong I was. You do get bargain bins, but not because they have a couple left in stock that some under trained shop manager had lying around in the back room, it is in fact a bundle of cheap crap that never really made the grade when it came to selling them, and were reduced so many times they happen to be ‘a bargain’ and are grouped together to create the picture of a bargain bin.

Enough of me winging about online shopping though, back to my little game. The idea is to search through an online shop for a bargain, pretty simple? Well, that’s not all, there are rules and regulations. The rules are as follows;

Price – Here’s the key, you are only allowed to spend a maximum of… £1.

Experimenting – You have to buy something you wouldn’t usually buy, you can’t think ‘well, there might be an old Radio Head album I haven’t got yet’ NO! It must be something you wouldn’t usually buy, the low budget gives you the chance to really experiment here.

Talent – There’s an easy trap to fall into with this game which is to cheat at it and just search for something you know will be cheap because it’s crap! This is pointless as you are simply buying it to play the game, you’ll never use it and it will just sit there and serve as a pointless waste of your pound.

Condition – It CAN be in a new condition, how ether, it can NOT be new, it has to be in the new and used section, this section sells from independent sellers and gives you a much better idea of how much the item is really worth. This rule also filters out the cheap tat the website is trying to flog off at a cheap price, thus breaking the third rule.

And that’s it!

I highly advise you choose a specific type of item to go for here, I chose CD’s as it will give me the chance to really experiment with my musical taste and if you think about it, is rather smart. The CD market is dying out, and is being replaced by MP3’s, this is a horrible thing that is basically unstoppable. However, it does leave a rather big advantage to people like me who want some real bargains, because it means they’re deemed pointless and thus made very cheap!

I spent about twenty five minutes experimenting with this game and surprisingly, I found quite a lot! After filtering out the rubbish and the stuff that was clearly only cheap because it would arrive unusable, I found something unusual, I found that if you really want some variety then you should try soundtracks. There are billions of movies out there and some truly brilliant soundtracks available, I even bought one, I got the full fourteen track Armageddon soundtrack for… 98p, not great, but pretty good for a first try.

Please, feel free to try this game out, and even change some things if you can find a better way of playing it and why not post some suggestions on this article. Also, if you do decide to give this game a try then post a comment, tell me what you could find for under a quid!

Thanks for reading and enjoy.

“ You Have A Friend Request.”… And It’s From Your Prepubescent Niece.

I wish I could tell you I’m too grown up for all of this low brow social networking rubbish, but sadly, I’m not. I do in fact own a Facebook account and regularly indulge in reading mindless incoherent babble about how someone I met once had to go to work today or perhaps how my neighbor has spent the whole day in their hot tub, and I hate every one of them for it.

But I’m not here to mindlessly rant about my disliking for Facebook, nor am I here to tell you about the many hours spent mindlessly circling the updates I have been inundated with, with no direct aim other than to indulge my sweet tooth and join the bandwagon. I am in fact writing this to question the age issues involved with Facebook.

I was introduced to Facebook a few years back when I received an e-mail from a friend of mine. At that point, Facebook was one of those annoying websites you’re inundated with e-mail’s from telling you your friend has one and “you must sign up!”. Simply out of curiosity I signed up to find out what it was that my friend wanted me to see, I gingerly proceeded through the pages and pages of internet jargon and poor attempts to get my password from me and finally got to the end to find… Nothing, I had in fact created a profile for no reason whatsoever.

When I created my account I was asked to provide evidence of a higher education and my own e-mail address to keep the sign up process in check and pick out the uneducated and too young. Now however, not a chance! Anyone can get an account now! And it’s not just Facebook that has this problem, it just happens to be the most recent website to further progress my moans.

It’s annoying enough to log on and find your retired parents have created and progressed a profile of their own, but now even babies can do it! Babies?!? I never even knew babies had the ability to type, let alone set up an e-mail address and password, but all is not as it seems with this one, as when you further investigate the origin of this wonder you find it all goes back to a pregnant teenager that’s barely old enough to buy a pritt stick.

When you question these young faces of modern Britain over the meaning behind their fresh out of the womb, sometimes even still in there, children have profiles they will tell you it’s for their future benefit, so that the child never needs to worry about setting an account up. But does the planet not have enough problems without the future human race being raised as fat chavs with no need for worry about the effects of hours of staring at a computer screen as their eyes were somehow square from birth.

I’m afraid this is the point in this article in which I change the theme f my article from an inability to see the sense behind toddlers occupying a Facebook profile, to me ranting about how Britain is being ruined by today’s generation and start to sound like an old man. That part however is a completely different matter that I strongly believe I will have allot more to say about. So for now I thank you for reading and hope you take something away from this article, or even respond to it, telling me what your take on the matter is! Either way, thanks for reading and have a nice day.

Chuck Norris is NOT The Stig!

Yes, I am in deed talking about the revealing of the Stig to be Michael Schumacher. I am however sorry to inform you that all is not as seems in this spontaneous unveiling of an icon. If you’re reading this and remembering Schumacher pulling the helmet off of his head then chances are you’ve seen the video on you tube and further more, you’ve probably seen the upheaval caused by this on the internet with such comments as “MC is the Stig! I knew it!” and “I always thought it was Ben Collins”.

I’m afraid this is once again a media generated bunch of nonsense. Viewers of the originally aired program will probably have seen the end in which The Stig (Now named Michael Schumacher) drives a lap in the Suzuki Liana (Old Reasonably Priced Car) and makes a huge mess of it including stalling on lift off, grinding the gearbox, almost hitting a camera man and even getting lost!

You may at this point be wondering what the hell did happen… Well here’s how it is. After filming the episode Clarkson printed the news that “The Stig will bare all” in his regular article for the sun, upon this news newspapers jumped on the story and made sure every one in Britain knew it was happening, little did they know what was in store. In a vein hope to shed some light on something that’s been playing on the minds of every Top Gear viewer for years millions tuned onto bbc2 on Sunday 21st of June to find out exactly who this idol really is. And as promised, the helmet was lifted to reveal a grinning Michael Schumacher.

Wait, stop there, Michael Schumacher? One of the greatest f1 drivers on earth, the one man that made so much money for Ferrari he now gets his Ferrari’s for free? Working in secret for a relatively little known at he time BBC program? Somehow I doubt that, hell, it took them two years to get hold of an Enzo, do you really think that with connections like that they’d be left in the blue and have to turn to a member of Pink Floyd for help? Would he really be free every single time they need a driver, he hasn’t always been retired you know!

Is he the Stig? I think not.

I am sorry to tell you that you have probably been grossly miss informed. You see this was in fact, ALL A JOKE! A truly elaborate joke for sure, but a joke! You see the whole joke is playing on the long running joke Clarkson pursues as he occasionally hints the true identity of the Stig e.g. “Don’t let Schumacher see you in that!” Clarkson jokingly comments to Jenson Button as he presents him with the coveted ‘I AM THE STIG’ Tee Shirt and jokes that he’d better not let Schumacher see he has it. Much like many causes of public upheaval, this one was caused by the press and over eager news reporters clutching their laptop with eyes wired open as they anxiously wait for Stig to reveal himself and pouncing onto the unsuspecting keyboard to report their news to the world, you know who you are! Even Wikipedia was caught out by it but quickly amended it, (not knowing that I had already print screened it).

So now that it’s rather apparent exactly what was going on it becomes rather obvious that this was a publicity stunt, or was it something more? Take your mind back a few weeks before this, remember anything? perhaps this will help “The 33-year-old let his secret slip when he asked them to help him produce a limited-edition print of The Stig in action” Remember now? That’s right Ben Collins! For years people have claimed Ben Collins (NASCAR Driver) was the real Stig, and not so long ago these allegations were found to be true! But how much do you remember of it? Not much? Exactly! Because this new media has hidden it!

So with this news I ask you to perhaps consider what actually went on on the 21st of June and how much of this is in fact media generated.

Thanks for reading.

A Lollipop Lady: The Law Or Just An Easy Target?

For years we have seen the lollipop lady as a figure head in traffic calming but is she really such a strong force? What will happen if you ignore her? Perhaps a fate worst than death is in hand, are we perhaps all scared that she will jump in the air and throw each side of her shinny yellow coat to the side to unveil a large collection of Uzis then run after your car shooting repeatedly at you. Or perhaps not, well many have said that it is an offence to even ignore a lollipop lady.

But what kind of offence I ask, what is the punishment for doing this bad deed, many of them are paid by the government, so they must have been given some kind of power, some hired by the schools they claim to be helping, well who knows, the lollipop ladies seem to take pride in the fact that they can chalk down the number plates of the offending motorists on their lollipops, but isn’t that just the same as a waiter with a notepad or even a member of a “neighbourhood watch”.

But as the average amount of motorists increase, the traffic jams increase and the tension level amongst drivers hits new heights the lollipop lady keeps her cool and in-fact has recently been given the power to help anyone they so please across the road, thus the change from her lollipop saying “CHILDREN” to it now saying “STOP”.

But would a respectable middle aged man or indeed woman be happy to wait for the lollipop lady to stop traffic then perhaps skip in a childlike manner across the road as the elderly woman dressed like a traffic cone guides them to “safety”.

As if that wasn’t annoying enough they are now being given lollipops that have a camera inside of them so that they can take a picture of your car and send it to the police if you are an offender of “the law of the lollipop lady”, so next time an elderly lady dressed in yellow plastic clothing flashes you you better hope she is not a lollipop lady.

But is she really that bad? Am I making too much of this? Well really it is entirely up to you what kind of opinion you hold of the lollipop lady perhaps you are one yourself, does she really deserve the abuse that I as well as many people have thrown her or even his way (yes that’s right men can do that job to) some of us are happy to pull over to let he lollipop lady/man do the job that they were assigned to.

I know many of us see her proudly waving that stick an marching across the road and simply see an easy target, but is it really anger at her that leads us to have that little feeling of “lets go faster” but is it really caused by that little devil standing on our shoulders whispering rude words in our ear? or is it perhaps that we are all secretly in-fact jealous that she can just walk out into the middle of the road and stop traffic, I bet if you ever tried that it wouldn’t go down to well.

Or is it perhaps deeper, is it because of a deep childhood memory of not having one when you went to primary school or that the one at your primary school would always be half way across the road by the time you appeared, or maybe she just annoys the crap out of you.

But is it so much of an inconvenience to you if you stop for a few moments to let her take the school children or indeed random people across the road, would you in-fact let them past anyway if she wasn’t their to stop you, is she/he really that bad?

I hope that this article has helped to push your opinion on lollipop ladies in the correct direction, and perhaps given you something to really think about today, as i clearly spent some time thinking about the subject myself.

So next time you’re pulled over by a person frantically waving a large yellow stick at you, stop and ponder for a moment on what you have just read, think about who their helping, think about what they can do if you don’t stop for them, then slam your foot down hard on the accelerator and hope to god that she hasn’t got a camera in that stick of hers.

Thanks for reading.