I can proudly say that I have not watched a single episode of this year’s X-Factor. Not even the auditions, which for me lost their cushion-chewing credibility when a crowd was introduced to the proceedings and the Cowell malevolence was forced to tone down a notch.
Since he took his caustic tongue to America, there seemed little point in continuing to donate several hours of my weekend to his cause. But is my life better for it?
Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller & director Lynne Ramsey arrive at the Cannes premiere of ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’ in May. Probably about to be as replete with awards as they are cheekbones.
You know that Kevin is bad, right? We don’t live in the kind of society that spends a great deal of time waffling on about well behaved kids and their achievements in charity work. And people have been going on about Kevin for ages now.
He must be really, really bad.
Technology is supposed to remove the human margin of error from life. It’s about certainty, and reliability; two things that we, as humans, have experienced rarely in our evolutionary journey.
It minimises the element of surprise and the necessity for terms like ‘coincidence’ – which is essentially just a very human way of dealing with a situation that appears darn convenient and impossible to explain.
Someone, as a matter of urgency, needs to write an eighties action serial drama starring Lee Majors, so that this can be the theme tune.
It has been reported that a rape crisis centre in South London experienced an 800% increase in calls after a character in ITV soap Coronation St was attacked. Carla Connor, who was due to marry her fiance and colleague Frank Foster, was raped by him in the show last week after calling off the wedding in a storyline that attracted more than a little controversy.
No, I have no clue who they are either. But I feel it only fair to give you the same info I have before you continue to read.
Continue reading “Community Service: Now In Glorious Technicolor”
For those of you who have become obsessed with Lars von Trier since I availed you of his twisted genius, here’s the trailer for ‘Melancholia’, which premiered at Cannes earlier this year. If you haven’t, and you have little interest in familial relationships and the futility of human existence, the plot also features a rogue planet and Kiefer Sutherland.
Admittedly Morgan Freeman is not the President of the United States in the film, and although I haven’t seen Melancholia in it’s entirety yet, I’m almost positive the world is not going to be saved by a surprisingly hirsute Bruce Willis in an orange jumpsuit.
But it might be worth checking out anyway.
To me, this looks largely like a shot for shot remake of the original. Which surely confirms the suspicion that they’re only doing it for those people who’ve yet to master reading subtitles, watching the action and breathing at the same time.
I had the misfortune to find myself watching a show called ‘To Catch A Predator’ last night. I realise that I am about three years too late to be critiquing this gem of a TV show, but I figure, if I hadn’t seen it, there must be others who need to be made aware of it’s magnificence.
It’s just too bloody hilarious to ignore.
As soon as it was discovered that there was film of the attacks on the World Trade Center, there was a certain inevitability about the manner in which the event was going to be commemorated.
Two days before the tenth anniversary, as I switch on my TV and surf my way through a number of programmes offering me the opportunity to watch the crashes again, either in real time, slo-mo, or even better, via CGI from the cockpit of one of the planes or indeed from inside the South Tower (my particular favourite), I can’t help but wonder whether what is essentially visual titillation is an appropriate way to pay our respects to all the people who died or were affected in the aftermath.
I’m not sure what’s worse. TV channel executives seeking to boost viewing figures by capitalising on a horrible tragedy, or those who watch it unfold again and again, eyes wide, fingers hovering over the pause button.
Image via businessinsider.com
Chaz Bono appeared on Good Morning America today, defending himself from accusations by Fox News commentator, Dr Keith Ablow, that watching him perform on ‘Dancing With The Stars’ would be ‘toxic’ for children.
Dr Ablow was, of course, referring to Chaz’s transgender status as toxic. As in, ‘kids, don’t watch the scary lady-man on the TV because you’ll instantly be begging your parents for gender reassignment surgery for Christmas’, toxic.
You know what frightens me more than the idea of Cher’s kid blundering around a dancefloor in sequinned lycra? The fact that Dr Ablow is a best-selling author, as well as practicing adolescent and adult psychiatry. That, my friends, is effing petrifying.
Of course, if he’d had actually been referring to the act of simply ‘watching’ ‘Dancing With The Stars’ being toxic, he would’ve had my full, unequivocal backing.
Pity da fool.
Photo by Michael Buckner/Getty Images
Kelly Welles 