Chindie

Nobody, with a straight face, can really think Moyes is an option.

I wish I could justify going on Friday Also, apparently there was a French screening yesterday, for some reason, and 'proper' spoilers and reactions are coming out. I'm avoiding the spoilers, just in case, but the general feeling on the reactions is 'mixed'. So temper expectations to as far as possible reduce disappointment.

The small age difference is huge too, of course BOF. Wickham looked like he could hack the top leagues from the moment he set foot in Ipswich teams in anger. Rodriguez, 22... 2 half decent seasons at Championship level and not really been touted as 'a thing' in the football world... £7m, from Soton?!

£8m+ IIRC. But the fact that Sunderland were a fairly established Prem side reduces the 'what?!' factor for me a little (also he was only 18, though hadn't set the world alight scoring wise), whereas Southampton are betting £7m on 22 year old as a newly promoted side. Both are mad, but Southamptons is just a crazy amount given their standing right now.

They held the trademark for the name 'Heroin' until WW1 too.

Was just going to put up something about that. I thought I'd misheard the radio. £7m!? For a championship player!? From a promoted team?! The worlds gone mad!

The last couple of years has seen me pick up a pretty surprising bluray collection - never felt they were pointless but they were/are expensive. Thankfully they are slowly coming down. The Alien boxset has basically become a running joke on it's constant deals to be honest, I got it when it was £15 I think... Great set. The Iron Man steel can be had in English and, I think, in UK region, but that is the Future Shop one, aka the one everyone wants and so you'll never get hold of for a decent price. There is talk, though, that a 10 disc Avengers set is coming. A lot of people felt it wouldn't happen (because the films are split across 2 or 3 different distributors) but apparently it is, so might be worth keeping an eye out. The US home media release of the Avengers was pinned for the end of September so check up closer to then.

One might also argue, that theres a reason he played for 3 top sides... and played for top sides for so long...

The fall of Singapore is an incredibly interesting period of WW2, and moreover British history. It represents one of the biggest cock-ups in our military history. Beaten by chaps on bikes.

Steelbooks are an expensive thing to collect, I can tell you! I've only got... 5 or 6, and a number of them, once they go out of print or become particularly rare, become very expensive. I've got the Cap steel - very nice. I didn't get Thor because, at the time, I wasn't sure about how much I was going to like Thor so didn't want to invest the extra on the steel, turns out now I wouldn't mind getting it it's often up near £25 instore (though rumours abound some stores have reduced it to £12/£15, complete pot luck but a very, very nice steel). Couple of things to bear in mind if you want to get the Marvel film steelbooks. First one, and the most important - you aren't getting Iron Man, and less so, Iron Man 2. Iron Man was never released as a steelbook in the UK, so import editions only are available, and all of them demand a high price. The most popular one, from Canadian retailer Future Shop, goes for silly money and is quite rare. Same goes for Iron Man 2, but less so. And because you would be looking at importing, you need to worry about regions and region playback on your bluray player and so on (and sometimes it's more difficult than it sounds as some studios don't bother with region coding at all, others region code some releases, etc etc). Second thing, the Incredible Hulk release from Play, is part of an anniversary collection from the studio Universal, and all are nice releases and great value, especially as it's the first steel release of the Incredible Hulk. However, all of them are what is known as 'quersteelbooks', which some people don't like. It means that they are horizontal, designed to be displayed in such a way that any other disc would be sitting on it's side. Which means it would look a bit weird in amongst your other Marvel releases. And thirdly - it's strangely addictive! Most people will think this is mad, but... the steelbook cases just look really good, a good steelbook is almost like having a little piece of film art, like having a really good release poster or something. The best ones just look so nice and feel quality.

There is a significant amount of ethnic Serbs living in Croatia, most of which have dual citizenships with a primary national allegiance to Serbia. The Bosniaks suffered worst of all in that war but as BiH is roughly 1/3 ethnically Serbian (Republika Srpska is 49 per cent of BiH's area), Serbia will always get a lot of points from BiH. As my Bosniak missus would tell you, they're not voting for their neighbours they're essentially giving points to themselves. I actually knew that this accounts for an awful lot of the... odd/political... voting, but I didn't want it getting in the way of a rant . It's why the Germans always give a boatload of points to the Turks - doesn't make sense at first but then you consider theres a massive Turkish community in Deutschland and well... there you have it. Voting for home/culture. Of course the mess that the Eastern Bloc was/is/will forever be in with regards 'displaced' communities and cross border allegiances exacerbates that and so on makes the whole thing slightly more galling than it would be otherwise

They all went up in price with the Avengers. It coincided with a few of the films disappearing off streaming rental services apparently too.

Some of the older films, the Incredible Hulk in particular, have been like hens teeth on the High Street for ages. And I've heard that, since the run up to the Avengers, the films all became quite hard to find. HMV do have Thor and Cap as steelbook blurays, but both are rare and both are usually at a premium.

Wow, that episode of Game of Thrones turned it on a bit. Nice.

(that entire standup is incredible... as is the before it... but this is incredibly relevant to the discussion here)

Mentioning Drive actually, Winding-Refn is doing another film at the moment with Gosling, called Only God Forgives. Ain't It Cool saw a bit of it at Cannes... Linky Sounds... interesting. I'll be on board to see it.

Denmarks drummer deserved better.

We'd be a joke if anyone cared about us. As it is, we're a non-entity.

I think it's hard to deny that the political voting has a bit of an effect. May not always decide the outcome, but the voting for your buddies and neighbours is tedious (and sometimes unintentionally hilarious - Croatia gave Serbia douze points, they were at war in effect less than 20 years ago!). For example Greece could put up a track consisting of a surly man shitting his insides out after some shifty taramasalata and Cyprus would give it 12 points. The Yuogslavia and the USSR falling apart only made it all the worse. I don't really care about it, in all honesty, everyone in the UK and I imagine Ireland has treated it as a joke for years now, it would just be funnier if the punchlines weren't so predictable.

Drive was my favourite film of last year. It's superb, effortlessly cool, has a great soundtrack, and Carey Mulligan in it. Theres little wrong with it. Completely took me by surprise at the cinema. Which is part of the reason why I want to see what Mike makes of it. I have an inkling, but I'll be keen to hear the judgement of it.

Yeah adverts these days are increasingly about brand awareness more than 'product' awareness. The advertising world has a problem though, people are increasingly 'advertising savvy' and have found ways to ignore it - adblock online, being able to zone out adverts and not giving them attention, etc. The convenience of DVRs for skipping ads has terrified advertising agencies for a while and they've slowly begun to react to it. They weren't happy about people being able to fast forward ads at will, but a company permitting people to completely remove ads from major shows really has them, and by extension the networks relying on ad revenue, worried, especially as people increasingly use DVRs to 'timeshift' programmes. When you had to use videos there was a trade off, the video was a consumable that eventually wore out and the quality was usually crap, and it was sometimes awkward to get everything ready for recording. Now, you press a button and get a perfect recording, probably in HD, to watch when you like and you don't need to worry about running out of tapes or the tape degrading and costing you more money - you watch something, and delete it, and can use the same space to record something just as well next time. So, with busy lifestyles and everything else vying for attention, recording something to watch later is a no brainer... The reaction will see more product placement, possibly overt product placement, in shows, more obvious show sponsorship, and adding in unskippable to advertising more thoroughly - something thats already in place for on demand video. On demand is one future of tv viewing (where companies will just put their entire schedule on a library for you to watch as and when you like, rather than the iplayer style we have now) and you can bet the advertisers will chuck money at broadcasters to add in forced advert breaks to it.

That is basically the argument that the Dish Network have made. They argue that loads of TV boxes already offer features that let people skip chunks of ads, be that 30 second skip features or simply fast forward, and that people already choose to not be an audience to ads by changing channel or going for a piss. Fox's claim that recording a show without ads is tantamount to making a knock off copy of it is laughable, especially since the US Supreme court ruled years ago that recording something for personal use after broadcast is completely legal.

Ze Beeb I think this is great. A company gets fed up of being charged through the nose to air shows, so shoves 2 fingers up to all the networks by making a tv box that can at the press of a button negate advertising on recorded shows, threatening the broadcasters revenues. Anything that pisses off advertisers can probably be considered a good thing.

I want to go to an early screening on Friday, like I did with the Avengers, but this time I won't be able to. Will see it with a couple of mates next week I think. A shame becaus eI kinda enjoyed going to a more or less empty cinema for the Avengers and enjoying that film in more or less mint situation (apart from when the film skipped and melted...) It's being press screened on Wednesday in the UK, so assuming embargoes end then too expect reviews to start dropping Wednesday night. I've still got this niggle that Ridley is going to serve up something that disappoints the Alien fanboys... I think the mystery of the Space Jockey is going to be rather less fulfilling than the fans might hope. The stuff from the Dark Horse comics is going to need to be binned, imo. Heres hoping I'm wrong though! I want to come out of the cinema when I do see it, doing this The biggest decision though... 3D or not? Give Ridley the benefit of the doubt and 3D it's last chance, or save my money as per avoiding a silly gimmick...

I'm fairly sure Facebook's bubble will burst, eventually. Probably not any time soon, but it will go. I'm not convinced that it's advertising model works, and I think, increasingly, the companies it's selling the advertising angle to will work that out, at which point Facebook needs to start moving towards other ways of making money. Social media itself is here to stay, it's become a new string to our social bow and will become increasingly ingrained into our everyday life. I do wonder what form it will eventually take though - I don't think any of them can survive indefinitely on advertising revenue. Facebook for me is... well it's a tool, really. At university it was an easy way of keeping track of societies and those friends you sometimes ent for a drink with but then wouldn't see for a month, and also my friends scattered about the country. Since leaving it's become a way to keep in touch with some friends, and simply keep a possible line of communication open with others. I don't spend a lot of time on there, I update my status a couple of times a week on a busy week, and other times won't update it once in a month. I don't spend hours on there, because a lot of what addicts people to Facebook, the games and the apps, hold no appeal for me, and I don't tend to chat to people aimlessly for hours (my friends would tell you I rarely keep in constant dialogue with anyone outside of meeting up - I don't ring people, I only text when bored or when something important requires it). I think the numbers of people who use it in that manner, will only grow. It's not in Facebooks interests for that to happen really, which will only compound it's troubles. The 'advertising not working' thing is already happening, General Motors recently abandoned it. In terms of revenue from GM, Facebook won't be overly harmed by losing their custom, but it suggests other companies will consider just how much their getting from their buck from Facebook adverts. I also think we're probably nearing saturation for social media. Everyone who wants to use Facebook, probably already does, imo. It's got near a billion users. Facebook is probably terrified that it's growth is going to start slowing, and when that happens it'll start to really shake the foundations it's made.