If you liked Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, loved Snatch and are gagging for more of the same, you’ll probably get a kick or two out of this movie. Personally, I wouldn’t waste my time. There’s nothing new about RocknRolla at all. Guy Ritchie is painting by numbers, once again dredging up and dusting off all the old “Mockney” crime-farce elements that made Lock Stock so, um, original. Once again, we’re dealing with an elaborate orgy of colourful characters, unlikely coincidences, tired soliloquies and poorly conceived MacGuffins (remember this one). Only this time we’ve seen it all twice before and it’s just not funny.

Critics (in the loosest sense possible) are hailing RocknRolla as a return to form for Mr Madonna, but seeing as he’s following up on two of the biggest cinematic disasters of the past decade (Swept Away and Revolver), the plaudits are tarnished by context. Sorry, dude.

The performances (particularly Tom Wilkinson’s) are mildly entertaining and the film has its moments, but they aren’t enough to save the package from mediocrity.

5/10 fingers from the Salami. But we’re rating movies here, not pleasuring the ladies, so that’s nothing to get wet about.

I saw this one yesterday, and I really enjoyed it. I understand that a lot of people didn’t really enjoy the first Hellboy and the eponymous character isn’t particularly well-known to most, but golden-boy Guillermo Del Toro finally has a big budget to play with and immerses the Hellboy mythos in one of his vividly surrealist worlds, seamlessly blending the half-demon’s occultism with his own Tolkienesque imagination. The result is a fresh reworking of the comic and fantasy genres, drawing on the best of both and dispensing with many of their respective cliches (although Del Toro does embrace a number of these on the fantasy front). It’s Men in Black versus Indiana Jones in Narnia, but mature and visually enthralling, with some of the sickest fight sequences of the year (thanks in a big way to the efforts of career villain and former half of boy two-piece Bros, Luke Goss).

I totally accept that this kind of stuff isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but Hellboy II: TGA (I didn’t just make that up) won’t disappoint you if it is. It’s not exactly Pan’s Labyrinth, but then again it’s not really trying to be. Although all the visual elements are there.

PS. I’d hit the wacky tabacky beforehand.

Glorious! As much as you hate him, you’ve got to rate him.

I’m particularly fond of Dickie Muir’s “The Donald” look. Very sexy, Dickie!

I had a good laugh at this over lunch - look at Victor Matfield grabbing Ricky Janarie. He’s beside himself with excitement! He’s never seen anything so adorable!

Well done on a solid 102-fer, Percy. Awesome to finish up by thrashing the Aussies with 50 points. I never thought I’d say it, but I might actually miss you. A bit.

In a half-assed bid to woo undecided Clintonites, John McCain has selected Alaskan governor, anti-abortionist and gun-lovin’ Sarah Palin to be his running-mate for the upcoming POTUS election. And should McCain go on to win, Palin will once again be the runner-up in a major political contest.

The Miss America Organization is pleased to announce that former Miss Alaska contestant, Sarah Heath Palin, has just been named as John McCain’s vice-presidential candidate on the Republican ticket. In 1984, Palin was chosen as Miss Wasilla and went on to become the first runner-up in the Miss Alaska Pageant and received the Miss Congeniality award the same year. Her husband, Todd Palin was a judge in the 2008 Miss Alaska Pageant.

I guess being the best of the losers in a beauty pageant is something to sort of be proud about, but it’s not like she accomplished the feat in California or anything. It’s common knowledge that pretty much everyone in Alaska looks a bit like this or this.

Heck, the only vaguely attractive Alaskan that I can think of is Maggie O’Connell from Goeiemore Alaska, but she’s fictitious (surprise!) and is actually Nebraskan. Scratch. So in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we have to conclude that Palin played second-fiddle to White Fang in the beauty stakes, and probably only won the Congeniality title because White Fang was a lonesome wolf-dog not particularly well known for joke-telling and grinning for the cameras.

Frankly, I can think of at least one beauty pageanter who would’ve slotted perfectly into the Republican team, specifically seeing as she already has heaps of experience after serving a year or two as a foreign policy adviser to the Bush administration.

Before any Alaskans get their sealskin loin-cloths in a twist, I’ll concede that I wouldn’t mind sharing an igloo or two with Jewel or Holly Madison (Hef’s main squeeze…for now), both of whom are natives of The Land of the Midnight Sun, but I don’t think that either of them competed in the 1984 Miss Alaska pageant. Castrate me if I’m wrong.

Update: turns out Sarah’s 17-year-old daughter has pulled a Jamie Lynn Spears. And this development might just swing the Southern vote in favour of the GOP. Kudos.

I’m off for a whistle-stop 10-day visit to the US East Coast, and it’s unlikely there’ll be much posting before 1 September (unless latent contributor smg decides to grace us all with his wit). I know you’ll be alright without me.

Take care, keep it real and see you on the flipside.

Ciao.

Salami

Sure, Swedish crossbow, um, shooter Sara Boberg is a fresh-faced, pure-hearted cutie-pie. Until she spreads them for the camera, that is. There’s been a lot of blog focus on Olympic hotties since the games kicked off, but so far no-one’s slutted it up with more style than Sara. It doesn’t hurt that she’s fit as biscuits too.

Click here for nsfw delights.

Oh joy!

Hardcore fans of 30 Seconds to Mars aren’t the only ones who want more of the band’s music. Virgin Records has sued the group for $30 million, saying it has failed to deliver.

Virgin Records sued the band and front man Jared Leto in Los Angeles on Friday, claiming they refused to deliver three albums as required by its contract.

Haha. “Failed to deliver”. That’s wishful thinking, Virgin. 4 monkeys with old-school typewriters could deliver the Complete Works of Shakespeare faster than this bunch of ass-jockeys could deliver a self-addressed envelope.

Face it, 30 Seconds To Mars - you’re fucked. Perhaps you should stage a timely 4-way suicide in lieu of this Tuesday’s weekly circle-jerk?

I’m going to be on the horn to Sir Richard every day for as long as it takes to squeeze every last cent out of your girl jeans. We need to maintain the impetus on this one!

In case you’d forgotten about 30 Seconds To Mars and/or why they’re a bucket of vomit, here are the facts.

Got back home this morning after an epic V Festival in Essex, had a shower and went straight to work. Thankfully it was a quiet one today, because my body and brain are still ravaged from the weekend’s excesses. I’ve got supernova heartburn and some gorgeous bruises all over my body thanks to an impromptu bout of Bacardi- and mushroom-fuelled crowd rugby during The View’s awesome early-evening Sunday set, which peaked with Superstar Tradesman. Hells’s bells - Brian Lima would have winced at some of the sackings being dished out.

Stranglers, Main Stage, Sunday
Overall, the Festival was a hoot and seems to have been very well received in the press. The weather held for the most part, with serious rain only falling once we’d all retired to our tents for zzzzzzzzs.


Hold Steady, Channel 4 Stage, Saturday
Muse stole the show on Saturday night with trademark flair: 6 choreographed, NASA-sized satellite dishes flashed lights, graphics and lazers through screens of smoke and fire as the band ripped through a collection of their biggest songs, kicking off with Map Of The Problematique and New Born and finishing up with Plugin Baby and Knights of Cydonia (which I stupidly missed because I’d simply run out of juice). They were preceded by the Kooks and Stereophonics, both of whom had the packed Main Stage singing and jumping for most of the evening. I was pissed that we had missed the Futureheads at the beginning because we were still dicking around a bit, but we still got to see the Hold Steady and they totally rocked the kasbah. We also flitted past Spearhead, Paul Heaton, The Scripts and Air Traffic, but fucked up our scheduling quite a bit because I’d been sent an incorrect list of starting times. Still, there were plenty of bars, food stalls and non-musical distractions to keep a handful of blithering idiots occupied for most of the afternoon.


Muse, Main Stage, Saturday
Sunday was a more dedicated affair. We started with the Stranglers, took in Noah And the Whale (one to watch!), the Dodos, the aforesaid View, a bit of Lenny Kravitz (predictably dull) and finished off with the ever-reliable Kings of Leon and a surprisingly good showing by the Verve. And once Richard Ashcroft had rattled off Bittersweet Symphony, there was just enough time to rush across to the electronic tent to catch the Chemical Brothers’ pump Block Rockin’ Beats. Surprise of the day, however, was Alphabeat. Yes, they’re quite pop and very 80’s, but the crowd went absolutely tits and roared when they left the stage - which isn’t bad going for a band playing at the bottom of the line-up in the most remote tent.


The View, Channel 4 Stage, Sunday
Looking forward to getting home this evening and scooping the mud out of my pack. And I think I’ll have to attack my shoes with a toothbrush and a bucket of industrial-strength detergent. Bliss.

As a parting shot, here’s The View doing Same Jeans. Sweet, sweet candy.

The best part about the Games are the Olympchicks. Like Germany’s Katharina Sholz (field hockey), Nicole Reinhardt (kayak), Petra Niemann (sailing) and Romy Tarangul (judo), who all got fresh (i.e. nsfw) for Deutsche Playboy.

So is there any quality muff at all in Team South Africa? Other than the obvious, of course. Mmmm. Gorgeous.

This is something worth checking out - an Aussie bird has put the dirty undies and condom wrapper that betrayed her sneaky husband’s affair up for auction on eBay. If you’re interested in the item specifics, here we go:

Weirdness: Really Weird, unique, unusual
Condition: Used - BUT ONLY ONCE
Subject Area: Adult, immature
Year: Knowing him, under 20 year
Type: Weak Type - IQ of a cabbage

The story itself is fairly lengthy and I suggest you read it for yourself. Basically, Annastella007’s suspicions were aroused when she got an unusual text message (also known as an “sms”) from her husband just a few hours after leaving him at home before she went to work. It read “Where are you darling, I’m waiting”. She got home to find him sitting on the couch. He tried to keep her from going into the bedroom, so she strolled in and checked the linen. Which is when she found the knickers and the dome wrapper. Eina.

Now this is where the story gets really amusing. You have to marvel at the sheer tenacity and determination of the male sex. This is why guys rule.

Explanations were needed pronto and would you beleive it, he actually came up with some. They were all a pack of lies and instead of admitting it, apologizing and starting to grovel, this is what he came up with. ‘I dropped my phone down the toilet, I didn’t want to put my hands down there and I could’t get it out with the toilet brush so I used a condom because I couldn’t find any rubber gloves’. Well, well, well, that was thinking on your feet eh! She thought she had heard it all now but figured she would see how big a hole he really was keen to dig for himself so she then asked. ‘ When was that then and where did you get the condom from?’. He replied, ‘It happened just after you left for work and I rummaged around and found one in the pocket of an old jacket in the wardrobe’. ‘So how is your phone then, is it working?’ she asked… ‘No, it’s stuffed’, he replied. ‘So how do you explain sending me a text message a couple of hours after I was at work then’. ‘What message? It wasn’t from me, my phone’s not working’, he replied but noticed he had gone a funny shade of green as it began to sink in that he had actually sent the text to her by mistake. ‘What about these knickers then, what are they doing in our bed and whose are they’, she asked thinking to herself, this will be good. She wasn’t disappointed, as blatant as lies go, it was a classic. ‘Sorry love, I’ve been meaning to tell you for years but I am a closet transvestite and they are mine’.

Never give up, never surrender: a dude mantra if ever there was one. Shit, if Winston Churchill had been a chick, we’d all be speaking German and drinking weisbeer poolside at Kelvin Grove (some of you may be a little young for the Kelvin jibe - ask your parents). Yes, we lose out in the inconsequentials like this story, but every lie we persist with makes us stronger, and when the day comes to rise against an insurmountable foe, it will be the successful philanderers (excluding Solly), career cheaters and all-round real men who will be first into and last out of the breach. As legend goes, the mighty Leonidas repeatedly denied meeting his ex-girlfriend for coffee simply to catch up on old times, despite incessant interrogation by his hormonal wife, and look what happened to him. If it hadn’t been for his fierce devotion to that little white lie, he simply wouldn’t have been prepared for Thermopylae and, well, 300 would’ve run for about as long as a Looney Tune in the cinema.

Let this be a lesson to us all.

Other way round, moron. Jeeeeez.