Return of the Mac (Advert Bashing)

Just found these vids of my favourite comedy double act, Lee & Herring, back together again after some years apart: It's a one-off for some charity do earlier in the year, and it's only 20 minutes long, but it's a great reminder how good they were together; the painfully accurate targeting of their bile, the ludicrously layered in-jokes etc. I hope they do more.

I was struck though, by yet another kicking for fellow comedians Mitchell & Webb, and more specifically those online Mac adverts they did. I only saw a couple of the ads at the time, and while not being particularly impressed, they certainly didn't negatively impact my life in any real way.

Given that most of the criticism that I've noticed of Mitchell & Webb for doing that campaign does seem to have come - it has to be said - from other comedians (and Internerds, obviously), it's difficult not to wonder if any of the snidey-ness might simply be based on pure jealously. In fairness, Lee & Herring's own diatribe is ultimately subverted by Rich whingeing that it should have been them doing the ads instead, but there does seem a genuine underlying disdain for the other duo being, as they put it, 'sell outs'.

What exactly does that mean though? How are they sell-outs? Maybe if they'd built a Bill Hicks-esque career on the back of likening advertising executives to the spawn of Satan, or if for some reason they'd previously waged a public campaign against electrical retailers I could understand it, but as it is I don't really know what the big deal is. And they're only selling computers anyway - it's not as if they're flogging a new brand of asbestos nappies or something. As it stands, any criticism from 'fellow' comics only sounds like the sourest of grapes.

David Mitchell and Robert Webb are excellent comedians, and in many ways natural successors to Lee & Herring - intelligent, subversive, with a keen eye for the absurd. All of which may actually account for some of the needling - you know, threat assessment and all that.

I'm reminded of the time a few years ago when I was flicking around the TV one morning and I noticed Lorraine Kelly on GMTV sat on front of a table filled with 'hilarious' novelty items, such as that Big Mouth Billy Bass singing fish thing, and sitting round the other side on the sofa was none other than Richard Herring. I switched over too late, so I missed the feature, but it was clear they were doing some kind of Christmas novelty toy round up thing.

I don't know about selling out, but if you ask me, I know what I find more disappointing.

The Fury of Richard Madeley

Whoah - two blog posts in one day! It's like I'm the new Scaryduck or something! Except... you know... shit.

Anyway the reason for this unprecedented outpouring of unread illiteracy is one of my favourite people in all the world: the Senator of Sad himself, Mr Richard Madeley.

Following a corker of a gaffe the other day (I couldn't find a clip sadly, but it involved a discussion about Princess Diana's memorial service and an analogy about speeding into a brick wall - priceless), today Madeley turned his not inconsiderable rage against a young protester who had come on the programme to talk about some demonstration or other he and his group were planning at an airport over the weekend.

Now, if there's anything that'll raise the heckles of ever-youthful yet curiously-hued Mr Madeley it's:

1. Polit-it-caaaarl cowectness gorn maaaaad
2. The staff in the control room not putting a picture up quick enough

or

3. Airports.

Namely, having to hang around in them, something Richard would seem to do fairly often having - it would appear - about 17 holidays a year.

The protest is apparently over the proposed expansion of Heathrow, and this lad and some other woman from the Green Party came in for an almost Paxman-esque interrogation from Madeley and his hired tabloid hand (in this case that bloke with the greasy hair from the Mirror), and yet all the while I kept thinking about that time they had Tony Blair on, and from what I recall the interview went something like this:

MADELEY: "So that Iraq war then. What's all that about?"

BLAIR: "Well, you know..."

MADELEY: "Oh, never mind that. Do you want to play You Say We Pay?"

The Bourne Tedium

I was in two minds whether to write this post. Having just seen The Bourne Ultimatum, I thought I'd tell anyone who cares (i.e. no-one) what I thought of it. The problem is, it usually takes me a while to work out what I actually think about a film having just seen it.

The reason I write this so soon after is probably related to the palpable feeling of disappointment currently swimming in my gut.

Having enjoyed the first Bourne film, and when the sequel turned out to be even better if anything, I was hugely excited by the prospect of a third entry in the series. Something you should understand too, is that I hardly ever go to the cinema, mainly due to the reality of most films being total dross, and also because even the better ones are rarely worth the £8,000,000 a ticket or whatever they cost now. So it takes something rather special to shake me out of my semi-agoraphobic stupor and drag me to a cinema complex.

But Bourne was definitely a franchise I'd grudgingly put some trousers on for.

Here's the thing; I was kind of... bored. Maybe that's too harsh a way of putting it, but whichever way you say it, that's not a great endorsement for an action movie. It wasn't bad by any means, it just felt like a re-run of the previous films - he still doesn't remember who he was, there's yet another shady CIA ponce after him (with a safe full of evidence that could completely destroy him - doh!), a couple more mute assassins, etc.

Even the obligatory car chase made me wonder if they'd accidentally slipped in a reel from the previous film.

It's worth pointing out that when I first saw GoldenEye at the cinema, I was less than thrilled, mainly due to the fact that virtually EVERY ruddy scene (bar the very end) had been shown endlessly in trailers and clips. But over time (and perhaps helped by the excellent N64 game) it's become one of my favourite Bond films.

I can't say it was the same situation this time though - I deliberately avoided looking at too many trailers or reading lots of reviews - but it's entirely possible I'll revise my opinion upwards as various good bits come back to me in the following weeks.

Interestingly, one of the last films I saw at the cinema was Casino Royale (it would have been the last one, but I saw Die Hard 4.0 the other week, which elicited a more understandable feeling of disappointment), which I enjoyed a lot more, and more immediately, which makes Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass's rather disparaging comments about the Bond franchise even harder to take.

And as for Bourne being more 'realistic', there's just as much techno-bollocks in those films than in Bond.

To be honest though, I think the film may have lost me quite early on at the bit where the (unarmed) British police race to the scene of a shooting at Waterloo station... blowing whistles. I think it's fair to say the security situation in the UK has moved on somewhat since, y'know, the Victorian Age.