Cyberclogs

Just noticed that Clerks 2 (or II) will be coming out in the near future (its already out in the US just now). Must admit I'm quite a fan of Kevin Smith and his sophmore humour, so I was bitterly disssapointed to see that Clerks II will be devoid of the same level of dick and fart jokes that made the first movie so enjoyable... yeah right!!

Clerks II looks set to be more of the same except on a larger budget and in colour of course, hopefully it will be a good return to form for Kevin Smith after the disgustingly sugary sweet Jersey Girl, which by Kev's own admittance is a piece of shit (or at least the film he holds in least regard that he did). It also seems to feature all the usual Smith suspects in his films, Jeff Anderson (as Randall) the whiny Brian O'Halloran (as the whiny Dante), Jason Lee, Ethan Suplee, and of course Jay and Silent Bob (without which no Kev Smith film is complete, probably why Jersey Girl stunk so much!).

And on a rather amusing and funny note, while browising on playusa.com, I noticed a funny little fact about an old rowdy action pic, Road House, check out who does the commentary (Kevin has funny tastes, kidding! I loved that movie too!).

http://www.playusa.com/DVD/Region_1/STRR8/2-/1011239/Road_House_Deluxe_Edition/Product.html

Just back from seeing Superman Returns, the long (indeed long) awaited new Soup movie (not about soup soup of course) which I have to say I enjoyed but I felt there was awful lot of flab in there. Obviously the return of Superman warrants a movie of some epic length but this film clocking in at over 2 and a half hours, just feels a bit too long. The story suffers in certain sections during the quieter lulls while we spend too much time on Lois Lane's domestic front and Lex Luthor's long trundle to the Fortress of Solitude. There's also some rather slow and somewhat pointless whistful montages of Superman flying into the clouds as he contemplates his next move. And yes the overall tone of the film is a bit serious, I do kind of miss some elements of the campy Superman films (but its good that its taken more seriously this time).

OK, enough of my gripes, the good stuff: many people will have already said this but its true, Brandon Routh is the spitting image of Christopher Reeve, and he plays Superman with a kind of graceful melancholy, although he does lack a bit of the natural charisma Reeve brought to the role. His bumbling Clark Kent is thankfully somewhat toned down from the Donner and Lester movies, where he isn't portrayed to be a complete bumbling idiot and he does still capture about the right tone for the mild mannered reporter.

The action set pieces were superb, especially Superman's return to the public domain where he rescues the plane that Lois is on and also where he attempts to save Metropolis from a big crystally doom type fate (plot spoiler sorry!!). Kevin Spacey plays Lex Luthor really well, too, not quite as outrightly comical as Gene Hackman, but with plenty of charisma and some real underlying menace. Kate Bosworth also holds her own as Lois Lane, its a difficult role to fill in Margot Kidder's absence but she does her best with it, although she isn't that convincing at playing an older Lois Lane (Kate is only 23 and Lois's character must be at least in her mid 30s).

Anyways its good to see the caped man back in the big screen where he should be, just hope the next Superman movie is a bit tauter.

I had a look on Microsoft's site and noticed that there is a new beta version of Windows Media Player out, version 11, so I took it up myself to download and give it a test spin. My first impressions were "well its OK, but where the hell is eveything I could find before?". It seems with every new version of Media Player they have to revamp it in some way and not necessarily for the better, such as adding files to your library collection isn't as quite as easy as before. You have to now create a playlist and then bung the tracks into it. Hmmmm.

Aesthetically its not quite as pleasing to the eye either, its OK looking but obviously Microsoft are trying to rip off Apple's iTunes look by making the visual pane alot bigger and putting the track info out the way (to the top right, i.e. album name and song, and have the artist name at the bottom left which isn't so obvious looking).

Being a beta version it may also have a few bugs in it, one potential one was when I inserted a music CD it took ages to find the proper track names, infact it found the name of CD that was in before it. Not too impressive.

Ah well. Despite that it seems an OK upgrade, I'm sure Microsoft will get their software iron out to get rid of some of the bugs in the near future.

Well the summer is here and its not been a bad one, apart from a crappy May, June was nice, and now July is shaping up nicely, as we've had a sunny weekend, and its to be sunny again tomorrow. Just a shame I'll be back at work tomorrow, stuck in a humid office, suffocating away, while doing some more paper filing (ahhh great job, notice the hint of sarcasm there). Its always the way, some sadistic beaurocrats who want you to work during the summer. Pah! No one wants to work during the summer, shame no one would tell them that. ;)

I haven't posted anything if much about Big Brother so far so I thought I'd give it a go as its more than half way through its run now for this series. I was watching Big Brother's Big Mouth tonight and the audience made an interesting point about how the housemates we usually vote for are the ones with arrogant personalities, who actually contribute to make the show more interesting. And yeah its true when we see them argue and bitch etc etc we usually get so pissed off with after a while you usually want to get them evicted asap, but on relfection once they've gone it just seems a lot more boring without them.

Which brings me to the fact that the real housemates they should evict of course are the less interesting, quieter ones who manage to "slip under the radar" as one audience member said tonight, or "stealth housemates" as Russell Brand amusingly put it. Lets face it Big Brother 4 was full of them and they made stupid mistake of evicting all the interesting housemates early on and keeping the dullards in. Thankfully Big Brother has learned of their mistakes since then, but the trend of the bland housemates still sticks with the series and they always continue to do really well in the series, when they don't really contribte a great deal in order to do well.

This is the first Big Brother for a while I've found myself a bit distanced from though and probably the one I've watched least (well apart from BB4) up until recently and its even shown in the papers, even the bookies interests in taking bets is getting a bit wary too. The MTV style auditions of this years show also left me a bit cold as the show is getting more and more garish each year. All the same as long as the public love to see people argue and bitch we will have Big Brother (or Big Brooodah, as Marcus Bentley would say).

I got a set of PC speakers a couple of weeks ago, Creative Inspire P5800s, neat wee set, with a total wattage of 75 watts (OK only 72 but who's counting?) and they were great initially, great subwoofer, too, especially for games and movies. But I've had some persistent problems with them since I got them, namely a high pitched squealy type noise that appears after a minute or two once they are switched on. The sound resembles, on a nerdy note, the noise you hear in the movie Star Trek 3, while the enemy Klingon ship is cloaked (Christopher Lloyd's ship on an even nerdier note!). Now this is rather annoying as it happens quite alot, especially even during gameplay or playing music.

So I emailed Creative's support website and I'm still waiting to hear from them, hopefully I can get this set replaced with another minus the squealy type noises. I also read on the creative forum site this could also be due to a faulty amplifier within the speaker boxes, hmmmm. Whatever as long it gets sorted. There's nothing worse than returning stuff you got from the web.

I manage to get a copy (albeit a poor quality one) of the somewhat cult documentary TV Show, People Like Us Series 2 , off of E-bay, as you can't get it here on DVD just now. For those who saw the first series, its much the same, with Chris Langham playing the always out of sight documentary film maker, Roy Mallard, who bumbles his way through his interviews, asking silly questions and making situations ever more awkward and worse for the person he interviews.

Thankfully the second series is just as much a breath of comedic fresh air as the first one was, as Chris Langham brilliantly chops up sentences in his narration and delivers them wonderfully such examples are "For Peter this just one day out of many more than that", "Paul's job is to look into the treatment and causes of artificial intelligence" "Jenny who is on maternity leave, has to take her baby to the nursery, which not easy as she has been up for nearly eleven months". There are many more of course.

I was also interested to see a pre-Doctor Who stardom, David Tennant appeared in this series as well as struggling actor who only gets bit parts doing radio and tv adverts and makes a muck of nearly every audtion he goes to.

Its a great show overall and in some ways was superior to The Office, which only took the documentary approach for a small office, as this show took it for society in general and showed how silly the average joe public could be. So well worth a watch if you can get your hands on it.

You can get the first series off of play here:

http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/4-/105938/-/Product.html?searchstring=People+like+us

Hello, well this is a new blog site for me, although I'm not new to blogging at all, as I've got one already setup on msn space, and on myspace, which I don't bother using much at all. So feel free to leave comments anyone who knows me (if there is anyone).