Film Fuck-You-Then

This weekend, Channel 4 encouraged viewers to expand their cinematic knowledge (and by proxy promote the fact that FilmFour is coming to Freeview) by informing us of 50 essential films that everyone should see, or as they put it, 50 Films to See Before You Die.

They attempted to do this via the unusual method of showing all the endings and revealing every twist and surprise in them.

Whose brilliant idea was that then? If I had to guess, I would say it was probably Iain Lee. The lanky alleged comedian and full-time TV talking head has built a career out of ruining the enjoyment of films and TV programmes.

Why bother writing jokes when you can just spoil Fight Club for anyone who hasn't seen it?

In any case the whole exercise was academic as far as I'm concerned, as we won't be able to pick up FilmFour anyway.

It joins a handful of channels that someone has decreed should not be available to the likes of me, or at least only once in a blue moon when the planets are aligned and the wind is blowing in the right direction.

I can't say it's bothered me up until this point - most of the output of the channels that are MIA seems to be wall-to-wall music videos and some camp bloke pretending to talk to ghosts.

I suppose I could just stop being such a cheapskate and buy a satellite dish, but why should I? I like getting stuff for free - and anyway, if they didn't want you to take them, why would they put the Milky Ways in the CCTV blind spot in the newsagent's?

Bring Back Lan Jam

For virtually the entire existence of gaming, people have bemoaned the lack of decent - or any - games-related programming on British telly. Currently, with Cybernet being axed to make way for ITV's chav extortion scheme, the situation is that there is officially no dedicated programme focussed on videogames on terrestrial television.

If any production company has any ideas about making one to fill this gaping void, don't bother - it'll almost certainly be complete rubbish.

Here's why:

1. They'll get some message-T-shirt-wearing idiot to present it who used to do some kids' show, whose sum-total experience of playing games is using the fruit machine while waiting for their next Snakebite.
2. They'll do a feature on 'pro gamers', a topic most ordinary gamers couldn't give a tuppeny-toss about, interviewing a bunch of square-headed American boys called stuff like 'Thrustkill3r', who do nothing but play Quake IV every second of their lives.
3. They'll try and get celebrities to appear on it, but because they have no budget, and because no celebrities actually play any games, they'll get whoever was leftover after QuizMania have had their pick, and whose connection to the world of gaming is that they once saw someone playing Snake on their mobile.
4. They'll cram the show full of CGI sequences from games, because that always looks better than gameplay footage, and the production team probably don't know the difference anyway.
5. On previous form, they'll probably get some kids to do the reviews.

Test This You Mother

Christ McBlimey - how user-unfriendly is this blogging rubbish, eh?

I write this merely to test this stupid thing, because for some reason it won't let me see my 'blog' without any posts.

Still, at least it doesn't always look like it's going to fall apart before your eyes, like MySpace.