The films I saw in 2012

In January I decided it would be a great idea to keep a list of the films I saw, for the first time, in 2012. And while I was at it, why not continuously rank them in the list? I don't remember the exact moment I came up with this idea, but I know it certainly wasn't New Year's Day, when I was watching Music & Lyrics.

Am I a good person?

Rhetorical questions are one of the best tools an advertiser could use. They are inherently intriguing, as with the above pictured booklet. “Are you a good person?” Of course I’m going to want to find out more and, in particular, find out whether I am a good person. So I took it from the university noticeboard where it had been pinned and began a voyage that may loosely be termed self-discovery, but more accurately is A Bit Of A Rant.

Don't tell me the sky's the limit if you're a moron

When it comes to wittily-constructed names of musical artists, I suppose I would have to side with will.i.am over Flo Rida. The annoying punctuation is a problem, but at least there's a construction of something from a normal name that makes sense, rather than just chopping a place name in two. And for bonus points, at least he's actually called William. But that's where my admiration of Mr .am has to end, for there are numerous problems with his tenuous grasp of grammar and common sense.

Why I won't be saving the world

There I was, sitting in my first-year University kitchen. It was the social hub, really; we lacked any shared space except the kitchen. A girl from an American university, staying for a semester, was sat with me.

“Stephen,” she said, for that is my name, “you’re pretty smart.”
I hate it when people say that to me. It doesn’t happen regularly or anything, but it has happened in the past. How are you supposed to respond to such a flattering accusation?

Casting "Wacky Races"

I bloody love Top Cat, and I'm pretty disheartened to hear that next week there's a new, 3D, all-digital film version of it. It sounds utterly dreadful and, possibly, worse than the recent Yogi Bear. (Well, OK, I haven't seen Yogi - because the trailer was far too much.) But Wacky Races, which I also love, could make a great live-action film. Here's my dream cast list.

Themed Bars

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Re: Alien prequel (redux)

There was a post with this title (sans "redux") published on the same date that it says this was posted. This is not that post; this is written almost exactly a year later. That post has, rather Stalinistically and completely out of shame, been reverted to draft (I didn't want to totally delete it). In that post, I said the idea of an Alien prequel focusing on the Space Jockey(s) was absolutely the wrong thing to do to the saga. Of course, it eventually ended up in cinemas under the name Prometheus and was staggeringly brilliant. In it, I laid out a plan for a superior new Alien film. I still like my idea, even though it's no Prometheus. Let's see how wrong I was.