Chindie

This thread is going to be relevant all season.

No to both.

You're not with Hays, are you? No. The situation with my job is a bit complex, 3 companies dealt with, I actually don't know who employs me - I work for one company, I get paid through another, and I deal with another for numerous bits and bobs. I sometimes think the situation is a bit like what I imagine you'd go through to launder money . I got to the bottom of the money thing - income tax has taken an extra £40, for reasons beyond my knowledge. I'm fairly sure I haven't earnt enough to justify a hike like that (I'm actually bloody certain) so I guess thats a long phonecall waiting to happen...

Resident Evil is a dead series.

...the eagles at the end of LOTR are often, with reason, referred to as a deus ex machina. Which isn't a good thing, really.

It needs to make decent money for a sequel to be made and, despite a really small budget fir an action film, its not looking great. It needs to make a lot of its money here because Dredd is far less of a thing anywhere else in the world.

Exactly this. If The Hobbit is three films, then LOTR should have been twelve. But isn't this also based on the rest of the books about Middle Earth, like Silmarillion? I think I've read somewhere that that's the reason behind the 3 films thing. And if so, I don't mind it being 3 films. No, just the Hobbit and some appendices from LOTR and some of Tolkeins notes bridging the gap. They've never been allowed to touch the Silmarillion and given that the Tolkein estate hates Jackson and the studios and what they did with the LOTR, they'll never get the rights either.

Second proper trailer Looks ok, definitely looking more whimsical than LOTR.

Knew 11, Morello was one of the first I'd spotted as well. For some reason he's fairly unmistakable once you know who he is, probably because he seems to have one of those faces that hasn't particularly aged/changed much over time. EDIT - A quick (and fairly easy) bonus one to guess.

I get text message alerts letting me know that my weeks pay has been authorised. Got one at work, checked it, noticed my pay had gone down £40. This is the first thing that pisses me off about this situation. I then, in a rush and a bit anxious, tried to access the system I use to log timesheets every week to check if something had gone wrong there. Except I forgot I never log in from work and can't remember the password - so 3 unsuccessful attempts later I'm locked out of it. Number 2 piss-er off-er. It tells me to contact the administrator. No **** clue who that is or even which company actually deals with that whole thing. Number 3. I remember theres a self service portal for queries etc I had to sign up for when starting the job. Except I've never used that and can't for the life of me remember the password. Number 4. I'm pissed off. All because of £40 mysteriously vanishing from my weeks wage. I get an electronic payslip later, if that doesn't reveal whats up I'm not going to be impressed. They've already changed my contract once ('Just some behind the scenes stuff, you won't notice a thing' - wage drops £15 a week) I'm not beyond thinking they've screwed me over again.

It's just terribly written. Apparently those 2 blokes are happy to die 'cos they're mates with a bet. The film doesn't necessarily need any more length - it needed to use what it had better (f'naar!). But the blu-ray is coming with a fair amount of cut footage if the rumours are to be believed which interests me, just to see how they cut the thing to ribbons in the editing room, maybe that may help some of the ridiculous leaps of faith and complete lack of tension in much of the film. Won't save it though.

West Ham fans will provide you with the stories of what he is apparently really like off the pitch as well.

Can you tell me what the flaws and mistakes are? I'm not exactly au fait with the aliens films but i enjoyed Prometheus as a stand alone film, does it not fit in with the rest of the films? It doesn't fit terribly well into the Alien universe. It's a prequel to them, but 2 films removed from that (because... well, Hollywood loves money), and also because Ridley Scott wanted to explore other ideas. But then the studio heavily marketed it as a proper prequel. The flaws and mistakes are so numerous it's hard to note down a list but you get silly stuff like numerous bits of the plot not making any sense (Idris Elba's revelation as the nature of the thing they've stumbled on comes completely from nowhere, and then when you assume his revelation is right, the entire premise for them going to the planet doesn't make any sense, for example. Or why does a scientist, on discovering an alien, get depressed about it before they've done any investigation at all into it? Or why would a bunch of scientists, on an alien planet, discover theres oxygen in the air and immediately all take their helmets off?...and so on) and then really dumb things like like characters being unable to run sideways even when their life depends on it, the entire alien goo thing having no logical progression (it may as well be called magic - it appears at one moment to suggest it does 1 thing, that makes sense... and then later suggests it does other things, that do not make sense at all. It basically does what the plot demands it needs to, which is terrible terrible film making). Add in some truly terrible acting (Shaw's revelation is a perfect storm of awful acting, awful plotting and awful dialogue) and it's an all a bit crap. In fairness almost all the flaws come from the script - it needed binning and being given to someone who didn't write Lost, i.e. someone who could make a competent and coherent plot. And to be honest it needed to be a true prequel - none of this nonsense leaving a gap for 2 more movies to join up Prometheus with Alien, just explain the Space Jockey from that movie - what he is, what the ship is, what the cargo is, where it comes from, what went wrong. Theres a lot out there about the problems Prometheus has, and it's surprising how many valid criticisms there are, the film really is riddled with issues. I should say regardless I enjoy the film for what it is, but it could, should have been a masterpiece.

Gamestation used to pricematch CEX (and other competitors) within a certain distance of the store. I can't say for sure whether a) this extended to Game too (I believe it didn't), and whether they still do it, I wouldn't be surprised if they no longer bothered.

The edit hasn't been made in the US, so it's not a US certification thing. It seems that they've decided to just make a European release, including us in that, and in a few Euro states a single small scene didn't go down very well (being digitally removed from the cinema release), so out of sheer greed and laziness, they've censored it for us too. The US and Aussie editions remain exactly as they should be.

I had a fairly dull and fairly expensive weekend. I was supposed to be going to play squash on Saturday then had it hit me that I have literally no sporty clothes at all, so went a got a few bits and bobs, had the lads round and had an unexpected curry before watching MOTD with some ciders. And today I went and bought a much needed new suit and watched a few films. All in all I've enjoyed it and frankly, I don't wanna go to work tomorrow at all. Happy anniversary by the way Mike.

It's not a good film. I could enjoy it on a superficial level, it being pretty and can be watched fairly brainlessly (arguably it falls apart if you engage your brain, tbh), but its too riddled with silly flaws and mistakes to be good.

The Avengers has been censored for the UK release, for pretty much no reason beyond Disney being incredibly lazy. Only a very, very minor changes, no cuts involved, but it'll still annoy me that I'll know they've changed something for absolutely no reason. This version of the film hasn't been certified by the BBFC either, technically, which could cause some trouble if anyone makes a fuss. Disney really hates the UK. They've even sold off the extras in numerous markets to be retailer exclusives. And they've completely binned the commentary track for the UK release, citing the UK release coming too soon for them to add it... despite the fact that it's only released here a week before the US...

The helmet would be my one major bit of art design criticism - it was too big for Urban! The rest of it was perfect though - initially I had wanted the more overblown Dredd look but I grew to love the more utilitarian style they gave it. Never more so than the sequence where Dredd does his lone walk through the block and all you get is him just stalking the corridors with no sound besides the thud of his boots and the creak of the leather kit he's decked out in.

The Gamestation brand was unceremoniously killed off this morning. Some might argue it just had a slow lingering death since the takeover in 2007...

I loved Nintendo for years. I own, to this day, a Gameboy, SNES, N64, Gameboy Colour, Gameboy Advance and Gamecube. I loved them all. I bought a Wii and just wasn't gripped by it. It's entirely a novelty and one that hampered it's ability to produce the range and quality of games gamers, at that point, demanded. Subsequently I've missed out on the Mario Galaxy titles, and Zelda Skyward Sword, amongst others, and whilst I wished I'd played them that wasn't enough for me in the end. The Wii U is simply more of the same. In a year it will be a generation behind again, with only it's gimmick and an increasingly tarnished Nintendo stable of titles to differentiate it. The gimmick is crap, the DS (a console I never bought into) writ large. This could be Nintendo's Dreamcast. I can't think of a console with less anticipation behind it.

Just more evidence of the work needing to be done in the Arab world.

I watched Dredd on Tuesday, haven't really had chance to put down my thoughts. I really enjoyed it, even the 3d wasn't particularly obtrusive. It's brutal in all the right ways, it can be quite pretty, it has completely deadpan humour, it looks right, and despite a pretty simple storyline manages to hit all the right notes along the way to drag you into it. Urban absolutely nails Dredd. He's not the most 3-dimensional of characters and easily can fall into caricature but Urban plays him straight as the most hard ass of hard ass coppers. The film opens with him responding to a call to apprehend some guys in a van who are under the influence of a drug that forms the heart of the plot, Slo-mo (...guess what that does!) and already wanted. They choose to fire on him with an Uzi as he chases them down on his Lawmaster bike and he doesn't flinch, when dispatch asks if he requires back up he growls back 'No'. He says very little throughout the film but every word, and every movement, is perfect. And Thirlby is great as rookie psychic Judge Anderson. I think I fell in love a little by the time the credits rolled. and her psychic ability is handled fairly well. I can see some people disliking it - a lot of the action is played strangely matter of factly - Dredd dispatches those standing in his way with little ceremony. A few scenes have him simply set up an encounter and professionally pop off shots as he walks through criminals. Thats not to say all scenes are like that - a notable scene turns the cold professional killing into a curiously beautiful if also horrific. And between bullets flying the film drops in pace considerably. I really enjoyed it. Go see it. I hope it can make enough to justify a sequel, sadly I think even at a £50m budget it's going to struggle.

No interest at all. The Wii injured my love for Nintendo to the point I really couldn't care about this at all. Saying that I doubt I would have anyway, the concept is awful.

Big headed arrogant bastard. His continued inability to find a club is hilarious.