28 Days Later: nobody in their right mind will argue with you if you include 28 Days Later in your all-time top-ten. The reason it deserves to be in the top-ten is because not only is it a classic modern-day horror film, it’s a damn good film in general. Compare it to any other film, regardless of the genre, and it’ll come out at least equal or maybe even on top. And so when the sequel came out I was there at the ticket-office first thing. Then I was subjected to what I can only describe as one of the most horrendous movie-going experiences of my entire adult life.

Where 28 Days Later achieved new levels of horror quality, Weeks stooped to a level untouched by such horror flops as Nicholas Cage’s Wicker Man abomination and even, dare I say, the hilariously terrible The Hitcher. The strangest thing about Weeks, though, is that mostly it has all the good qualities of a sequel. Unfortunately though, all of these potentially good qualities are marred by the editing: sloppy, incoherent and generally incomprehensible at all times. And it all starts with the zombies.

By zombie standards, Days pushed the boat out enormously. It dared to make zombies faster, stronger and more vicious than perhaps any other film. You could believe this, though, because the story was so captivating. Had Weeks taken that approach it may have at least saved itself from awful-status, but sadly it didn’t. The zombies in Weeks are even faster and more bloodthirsty than in the original film. As a result the entire premise is ludicrous, hard to watch and action-packed to such a degree that watching it too closely could induce an epileptic fit. Need a comparison? Let’s just say that Weeks makes The Bourne Ultimatum look like a film shot in slow-motion.

More good news, I have just gotten paid for the image work that I did on those pop up display stands last month. Turns out that Stephen was right, and the purple was much more attractive.

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The subject is this: the much under-rated bus-stops.

Take our bus-stop for example. It was an amazing wooden shack built by craftsmen—and women, of course, even if they only made their crafts-men husband’s tea they still played their part—and was so much more than a bus-stop. It was beautifully made from dark oak, housed a small table inside for putting stuff on, and had a bench that was made with real love and care. Unfortunately some youths didn’t hold quite the same affection for this structure. They burnt it down; in an hour it was reduced to black ash, the space left open for the first time in fifty years.

Then came outrage. Our village people formed a petition for the rebuilding of the shelter, knowing full well that the council would go and stick a hideous plastic one there.

So we had a meeting: we want a proper shelter, that was our statement. The council listened, and we thought they had actually taken it in–

Until the new shelter arrived on the back of a lorry. “Wow!” we all yelled. “That looks identical!” But on closer inspection things were not as they seemed–

It turned out that our new identical ‘wooden’ shelter was made of PLASTIC. It just looked like wood! How horrendous is that? So now we’re back at step one, campaigning for a brand new bus-stop, only this time, a bus-stop with soul. One which is worthy of human habitation (however temporary).

Before I go, I am attempting to sort something for my mother as a gift. When I was having a chat with her the other night she said that she would like a new pair of running shoes. Anyone know of a good place to get them?

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I read the first book when I was travelling in Australia as my travel buddy insisted I must as it was so amazing, so I settled down to read it. I can’t say I was impressed. I thought the main character Belle was just a complete and total wet drip that needed a good slap, and Edward Cullen? Get a grip and stop being so intense; it’s really not an attractive quality.

When I got home I returned to my office job where some of the women have pictures of the male cast members from the film on their desks, and they drool over them all day dreamy-eyed and gush over how ‘wonderful’ they are. REALLY? Do I need glasses? I don’t see the fascination myself.

The film Twilight came on TV and I watched it, with no real sense of anticipation, but I wanted to see what all the fuss was about and why grown women turn into gushing, blubbering wrecks. Well what can I say? Oh my god I was so BORED. It was utter trash. The acting was horrendous and Belle was even worse than in the book. What is that god awful permanent pout about? Its like she’s trying to compete with the equally horrendous Keira Knightley on who can look the most gormless. And that Robert guy, is he really supposed to be a heartthrob? REALLY?

There was no chemistry, the script was plain, and nothing grasped me in the slightest. I always thought the whole thing about vampires was supposed to erotic, but this film was about as erotic as wiping snot from a baby.

I can safely say I will not be watching any others. In fact I would rather stick hot pokers in my eyes and shelf designer bathroom accessories in a home store for the rest of my life.

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Neil Marshall has made some inspired horror films—top of the list has to be The Descent—but he’s also made some shockers, too, and not in he way cinematic nature intended; Doomsday, for example, the 2008 science fiction action film set in an apocalyptic Scotland, was made with an enormous budget but transpired to be laugh-out-loud bad.

Fans only recently aqcuainted with Marshall’s work might not know that long before The Descent, the director made a solid action-horror called Dog Soldiers (2002); set in the Scottish highlands, it tells the violent story of six British Army soldiers who stumble across a Special Forces operative lying mutilated in the woods, and later find themselves holed up in a cabin besieged by werewolves, fighting for their lives.

Up until Dog Soldiers came along werewolves had pretty much been left on the horror movie shelf in favour of more eloquent, trendy monsters such as vampires, and why not? For every good vampire film it’s fair to say there are probably ten bad werewolf ones pulling the reputation down; so Marshall was taking a big creative risk here, and not one that other directors were eager to follow. And with so many bad films littering the past, I have to say I didn’t expect much. My number one concern was how the werewolves would be brought to life; something which the film handles brilliantly, in a way which has more in common with theatre than film (something which can easily be explained by the wereolves themselves being played by trained dancers).

For what is actually a very simple story, Dog Soldiers packs in laughs, thrills and climactic scare scenes, all the while moving towards a nasty twist which should catch most viewers completely off guard. There are few bad things to be said about the film; the acting is a morbid mix of black humour–provided by top British talent including Sean Pertwee–and the werewolves are brought to life super-stylistically, making Dog Soldiers the werewolf film to beat.

One last thing, I have been allocated to set up the stand for my work at the commerce convention this friday. Does anyone know where I can get some good pop up display stands at short notice?

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Then I heard of a new show called Horden and Corden; a sketch show—nothing like Gavin and Stacey, but I thought that might even be a good thing. Maybe, I thought, this will be even better…Maybe right up my street.

Seeing this Horne and Corden discussion brought the dissapointment back.

Horne and Corden, sadly, is—and not just in my opinion, I think you’ll find—an appallingly bad TV show and not worthy of anyone’s time or laughter. Its un-funniness can be found operating on a number of pity-inducing levels: the jokes are flawed to begin with, then badly executed, then, as a final insult to the viewer, combined with a ‘live’ TV show where the audience are clearly under duress to be made to laugh.

I wouldn’t have minded that much about any of that, until, in the above discussion, I discovered that Kathy Burke—yes, THE Kathy Burke of Gimme Gimme Gimme fame—had been heavily involved in it! I had to Google it to make sure I wasn’t seeing things but yes, there it is, it’s true. My world fell apart for several seconds, then it re-assembled itself in the fine knowledge that almost every other person in the same universe thought exactly the same thing as me.

Let’s hope the next project will be a lot better. Come on Kathy, we’ve been waiting too long!

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Avatar has today become the highest grossing film of all time in the United Kingdom, and the fawning blanket media coverage would have us believe that this equates to being the greatest fim of all time. Ever a slave to my art, I queued up to watch the film so that I could report my findings back to you, dear reader. I am disappointed, if not surprised, to report that while the special effects may well be spectacular the film as a whole is spectacularly underwhelming.

Avatar is available to viewers in two forms: two dimensional and three dimensional. The three dimensional screenings come at a premium, but the general viewpoint is that it is worth paying extra to watch the film in this spectacular new fashion. My opinion, however, is that it would be worth paying even more to get out of watching Avatar altogether and avoid losing three precious hours of life that you can never get back.

Apparently it took ten years to bring Avatar to the big screen, the problem seems to be that for nine years and 364 days the producers concentrated on the special effects and that only left one day to work on the script. It didn’t help that this was then seemingly handed to a bunch of 14 year old high school students to complete.

It must be said that the special effects, and especially the wonderful 3-D visuals, are amongst some of the best ever seen in the cinema. The time has surely now come however when we must condemn CGI as being the most destructive force ever to hit the previously noble art of film-making. We constantly hear about how incredible the CGI technology is in movie X or movie Y but when we see this supposed masterpiece it sticks out like a sore thumb. It is undoubtedly true that CGI graphics are used to cover up holes in scripts and acting, to desensitize the critical faculties of the viewing public.

Avatar has a giant black hole at the heart of its soul, the most depressing thing is that the huge box office revenue generated by its publicity machine ensues Avatar 2, 3 and onwards into infininty. By all means keep on watching the unrealistic graphics and visually exploitative 3D effects but I will stick to the tried and trusted classics that appeal to the mind and soul as well as the eyes. The greatest Hollywood film of the last 20 years is Schindlers List and that is definitive proof of what all true film buffs have always known: stars come and go, fads come and go, special effects come and go, but films are always better with a fantastic script and shot in black and white!

One last thing, I have just checked out the web design for this hr software site and I must admit in my personal opinion it is really nice! I am thinking of creating a site based on this general design idea!

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Call me old-fashioned, but I think that when it has taken you ages to save up for a laptop that costs £400 it should be worth the wait. It should be of good quality, a pleasure to use, worth its money and, above all else, it should work properly.

And so it all began. I saved, I waited, I bought an Acer Aspire. It was a lovely looking bit of kit and I thought that I had finally got myself a half decent laptop. I was very wrong.

Within only a week of owning it, the screen began to play up. Unless you tilted the lid at a precise angle it would display everything in a mass of psychedelic colours. I couldn’t believe it!

I got in touch with Acer and arranged for it to be repaired. Again, I waited…

After a few days my laptop was returned… with exactly the same problem! This was ridiculous; I had actually only managed to use the thing for a few days! It had taken me yonkers to save up for my Acer Aspire and, unless I began dropping LSD whenever I wanted to look something up, the screen was totally useless.

I got in touch with Acer and arranged for it to be repaired (again). Again (again), I waited…

Four days later I got my laptop back. The screen still had the same problem, but it now had two ‘bonus’ features as well. There were dirty finger marks all over it and the lid wouldn’t close properly.

I was devastated! After crying for a little while, I decided to give Acer a call and have one last go. They arranged for it to be collected and I sat down and waited for it to be returned (again, again, again).

There is, I suppose, a happy ending to this sorry story. When my laptop came back to me it was clean, the lid closed and the screen worked properly. The only problem was that I had now developed an intense hatred toward it; I continued to see it as an aberration for another week or so before I slowly began to mellow.

But time is a great healer and I love my laptop now; it has been just over a year since all of that took place. Why couldn’t they have just sorted it all out to begin with? Surely, most of their customers are not subjected to this drama.

What an absolute nightmare it all was!

Onto a better internet review, I have just finished off a small amount of copywriting for this webpage on shutters, and I have to admit that I actually really love the overall look!

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For a good number of years I have been collecting all my favourite films. Now, this has a good side and a bad side to it… The good side is that you are never short of something to watch (besides, some of them are such crackers that I can happily view them time and again). However, the bad part of it is that a great many of them are on VHS!

I recently invested in a gadget which I thought would solve all of my problems. It is a special ‘video capture’ device that you plug into your computers’ USB socket. With one of these baby’s you are then able to transfer all of your favourite flicks from their archaic prison of VHS to the brilliance of DVD. Cracking idea.

So, when the Postman turned up with it the other day I was really keen to get started on my mass movie converting. I plugged it all in, carried my trusty old VCR over to the computer and read through the instructions. And when I had finished educating myself, I began…

I decided to start with something short (around four minutes) as a bit of a ‘test run’. After having half a dozen unsuccessful attempts I remained sure that it was simply a case of fine-tuning the settings. However, after another five or six goes I was beginning to get a little bit frustrated. It all seemed to be unnecessarily complicated and I just couldn’t work it out. I was managing to convert the video, but it was only coming out in one of two ways; either the quality was dire or the sound and picture were great but it was ludicrously large. A film of four minutes should be around 30 or 40MB, but this (with a half decent picture) was coming out at around 6,000MB (6 GIG!!).

Time passed and my patience wore thin. I spent the next few days mucking about with the device and I tried everything I could think of; tweaking the settings, looking for help on the net and watching a ‘tutorial’ on YouTube…

But it was no good. I had wasted £25 and two and a half days of my life. My soul was bruised, my patience had been frayed and I felt like sacrificing the gadget to some dark god. It was, in a word, pants.

However I feel that with all this ranting I should give you guys a good review of something, and with the cold weather I think that everyone should check out this Enigin Energy Savings Company. Now they really do get a thumbs up from me!

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I am a big fan of M. Night Shyamalan’s films, so when I heard about ‘The Happening’ coming out I can remember really looking forward to it!

He had already created some totally brilliant movies that were a refreshing change to much of the other dross that so frequently wandered out of Hollywood. ‘The Village’, ‘Signs’, ‘The Sixth Sense’ and ‘Unbreakable’ had all been very cleverly made and seemed to have something a bit special about them. It appeared that Mr. Shyamalan was able to take actors who I had previously seen as being a little overrated and put them in films which actually showed off their skills.

For me, the only mediocre part of his career had been, ‘The Lady in The Water’, but even that had been an interesting idea to make into a film. Okay, so it hadn’t quite been on par with his previous movies but it had still been a reasonably good effort.

And then I watched his latest film. Oh, dear.

I hate to say this, but I think that ‘The Happening’ is one of the most disappointing films that I have ever seen. I say this because it starts off so very well; you are absolutely hooked within the first few minutes. What could it be that is causing tens of thousands of people to commit suicide? It is a totalling gripping idea for a film and, as far as I am aware, no-one has ever done anything like it before. But then, after this completely riveting start, the film goes on to become sluggish, incoherent and bland.

At the end of ‘The Happening’ I was left feeling disappointed, deflated and even a little bit depressed. What had prevented M. Night Shyamalan from making this story work? It really could have been so, so good.

My only hope now is that he returns to his former glory. He is one of the most original filmmakers we have and it would be a terrible shame if this were the first step on a downward slope in his career…

Right before I log off I need advice from all my internet savey mates a friend of mine has recently started an online book binding business and was desperately looking for ways to reach out to her clients. Since she new site went up, her mailing list has doubled within an incredably short period of time and she has been looking into email marketing software, does anyone know a good place who do this for small businesses for a good price?

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Okay I’m sitting here waiting for the new years day version of Dr Who. I missed the first 15 minutes so I decided to wait till tomorrow to watch the whole thing on iPlayer.

Whilst I was here I though I might as well take the time to do a review on the first half. In short I though it was arwful. Really dire. I had little to nothing going for it. Let me list the problems:

• A fake sense of urgency.

Their was this strange idea that something urgent was happening, but apart from a couple of nightmares that people couldn’t remember nothing seemed to be wrong. Why is everyone so miserable.

• Everyone was miserable.

Okay I know that they don’t need to be cheery all the time, but combined with no sense of urgency and just a mysterious undertone it put a real bummer on Christmas.

• The danger / problem wasn’t very convincing

I don’t know if it just me but when everyone turn into the master, "I felt well that silly", I didn’t feel any connection to anyone infected, It wasn’t like the cybermen where it was nasty. In general I feel most the characters had been cheered up by their transformation. I just simple didn’t care. Maybe if they invested in one character that got change it might have been interesting.

But for the moment I don’t care and I’ll watch it tomorrow praying to god that David Tenants swansong isn’t completely screwed up.

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