Toe-Face: The Stalker of Robert Pattinson

Greetings readers,

Today I have some rather tragic news for you all. It is my solemn duty to report that somewhere in Scotland; a mad geneticist has successfully fused the underside of a sweaty, 300 pound man’s big toe with a sweaty, 300 pound fan girl. This was the result:

Horrifying, is it not? But before I begin ranting incessantly about her, I thought I would indulge a little and rant incessantly about a franchise I consider to be somewhat of a plague upon the Earth. I realise this may raise some pulses but if you happen to be one of those whining tweens who is going to get moody about this then you should probably close your browser.

The series I speak of is of course, Twilight. Now let me explain something to all you nay-sayers who think that this series is worth the pain and agony it wreaks upon the educated people of the world. First; Stephenie Meyer... YOU WERE WRONG. Not just about one or two things – I mean you were wrong about everything. I understand that it’s merely a creative piece of writing and you are free to do with it what you will. But in the interest of preserving all that is correct and sacred about the history of the vampire; if I could travel back in time and stop you from ever writing those novels, I bloody well would.

I also understand that bitching and moaning about this series won’t do anything and I have no doubts about your writing skill. I do, however, want to bring up a few small grievances about these stories. First of all and most importantly, the characters – specifically those of the undead variety. I would like to think that if Edward Cullen decided to join a real coven of vampires, they would simply laugh, ruffle his hair and send him on his way. Also, what’s with the vampires waltzing around in broad daylight? In what short story, novella, novel, short film, feature film, magazine article, research document, or TV documentary are vampires immune to the effects of sunlight? That’s just fucking ridiculous. Vampires were fabled as creatures of the night – giving them the ability to walk freely among humans in the daytime hours robs them of all and any mystery they once had. This also makes them much less frightening, taking away yet another of their vital traits.

I’d now like to move to the concept of Mr. Cullen’s “family”. Let me make one thing clear, vampires are not nice creatures. While, in some cases, they do hold some form of nobility and a definite pack – coven – mentality, they still don’t accept humans into their family with open arms. Had Meyer been more realistic with her approach, the plot would have taken a slightly different path:

“Girl starts at new school; girl meets boy; boy reveals dark secret to girl; girl accepts boy; boy romances girl; girl meets boy’s family; boy’s family tears girl limb from limb in a gruesome ritual, ending the festivities by drinking girl’s blood and impaling her corpse on a large wooden stake in their front yard.”

Something tells me Meyer had never read the history of Vlad Tepes. I would like to make a note to all of the soon-to-be authors and screen writers out there. If you are going to write a novel or movie script about vampires, please stick to the legends. I know it may seem a tad cliché but do you know why it’s called a cliché? It’s because people use it a lot. And do you know why people use it a lot? BECAUSE IT FUCKING WORKS!

Vlad Tepes – Dracula – despite supposedly being the best leader Wallachia ever had, committed numerous atrocities. The most prominent of these was of course his affinity for impaling as a form of torture and very slow execution. And he certainly didn’t stop at men; Vlad impaled women, children, and great lords – more or less anyone he could get his hands on. It has also been told (and I’m not 100% on this because there are a few different versions of this story) that a group of travellers visiting his country – whether they were ambassadors or otherwise – refused to remove their hats in the presence of the prince as was custom in Wallachia at the time. Vlad was enraged and so, had their hats nailed to their heads so that they could never remove them.

All I’m saying is that while Meyer does seem to spin a good yarn – considering the worldwide audiences she has captured with her creation – almost nothing she wrote about vampires was correct. Among others, there was one detail that not only caught my eye, but made me question my faith in the future of writing – vampires with diamond skin. What the fuck? It still bothers me to write about it even now. Why in the hell do these vampires have shiny skin? What was the logic behind writing this into the story? The only scenario I can think have in which diamond skin would be useful is for... well, cutting diamonds. I imagine the vampires of the Twilight world would have absolutely no trouble getting work in Antwerp but aside from that, I am quite baffled.

Anyway, onto the thing – “thing” being the operative word here – I wanted to talk about in this rant; the fan girl. I’m not one to be needlessly cruel, but it’s people like this who make the world more unbearable for the rest of us. It’s all well and good to be excited about a new movie, book or game being released but it’s an entirely different bag of gravy posting a video of yourself ranting, screaming and crying in response to a movie trailer; especially a Twilight movie trailer.

· She was very distraught over Edward and Bella’s breakup.

· Pearl wasn’t too happy about it either...

She also made a point of telling everyone not to bitch about her posting this video on youtube but when a piece of media literally makes you feel sick, you’re obligated to voice your frustrations about it.

I’ve never really seen the point of these reaction videos as it is. If you want people to know what you think about something, write a review and post it online. No one... and I mean NO ONE wants to watch you watch something else and react to it for ten fucking minutes.

Overall, I have no issues with Stephenie Meyer as a person. I’m sure she’s a perfectly decent human being who wanted to put her thoughts onto paper. This can be very theraputic and as I understand, was a way for her to process a perpetual dream she had been having. It’s merely the concept of the story she wrote and the fact that she wrote it four times! It’s bad enough as it is now with a second film being released soon, but there are still two more to be made. I only pray that the film makers come to their senses before these future instalments are released. If not, I’m afraid we will all be doomed to a world of screaming, teenage fangirls resembling the likes of this:

· MOAR TWILIGHT!!!

Sorry to end the article with that but I had one more screen shot of this raging behemoth and I had to put it somewhere.

Yours sincerely,

Riddick-ulous.

Blue Demon: Legacy of the Zooming Sharks

Greetings all!

It has been a while since I've posted anything up so I thought I'd review the most horrifically stupid film I've seen in a while.



So, let's get started shall we? The title of the film is Blue Demon. And no, there is no subtitle following that details any kind of "zooming sharks". This is merely a nod towards a point I intend to make somewhere in the body of this review; anyway, to the plot synopsis.

Blue Demon is about a government organisation utilising a marine biology research centre in order to create a group of "super sharks" as it were, for use in detection of mines or other explosive devices used in sea-combat. They have been training these sharks to recognise explosives and lead vessels to safety without being detected themselves. As usual, we are introduced to all of the "important" characters - the inverted commas should sufficiently outline my disdain for them as well as just how pointless I think they all are. First, we have the male protagonist; a 30-something year old marine biologist with the mind of a 12 year old and the attitude of a 12 year old and the... Well let's face it, this guy may as well have been a 12 year old. In place of his actual name - because I don't care to remember it - I dub thee; Billy!

Introduced second we have the sassy, sexy-ish 50-something year old blonde - who looks like she missed out on a couple of face lifts - marine biologist and ex-wife of Billy. The first thing I noticed about these two and the first thing to get on my nerves about this film was that they seemed to spend the entire first half of the film exchanging rather cold witticisms and insults over the head of some other marine biologist with vague resemblance to Wayne Static (the singer of the band Static-X). After about ten minutes of this you actually start wanting to yell at the screen for pushing the point that the couple are obviously going through some withdrawal from each other. This is made ever more prominent considering the blonde (I'm calling her Julie... Strangely enough, I think that may actually be her name in the film) is still seen to be wearing her wedding ring; revealed to be somewhat of a family heirloom to Billy early on in the film.

There was also a rather callous "little person" - that's what they like to be called - introduced to the audience as the couple's boss at the research centre. The most off-putting thing about this casting choice was this actor being the only person I actually knew from other, more popular films. While I pondered, nearly napping... I woke up and realised that the film industry isn't blessed with enough little people to fill all of the either contrasting or demeaning roles. What I mean by this is that little people only ever seem to get work in the film industry if the role is a dwarf or a troll, a highly important managerial figure (hence the contrast; it's like calling a really skinny man "Fat Joe"), or simply two freaky midget wrestlers - one of which is Mexican and enjoys sex just a little bit too much.

... Sorry about that last one. I also watched Feast II recently and two of the key characters were in fact midget wrestlers... and they owned a key making business which was slightly odd.

Anyway, I'm not really going to bother with the Wayne Static replica because all he did was confuse me. He started out as the comic relief for the heroes and somewhere around the third quarter decided it would be a good idea to reem Billy over the back of the head with a large stick. I wasn't really sure what happened after that point. All I know is, like most of these stupid movies, the protagonists enjoyed a happy ending.

So now we move to the focus of the film, the element without which this film would lose all meaning; the sharks! So as far as I could tell, the government commissioned six of these bad boys to be created and trained. Can you guess what happens next? That's right! The killer fishies escape and go on a rampage, consuming all in their path. Unfortunately, this is yet another point where the film rolls down a hill and lunges off a cliff into a giant crater filled with scorpions. It also happens to be the part of the film I said I would refer to in my introduction.

Let me ask this of all the marine biologists out there; when was it that sharks began making "zooming" noises when they passed by? Was I asleep for this little transformation? Did Mother Nature get bored and think "You know what? I just feel like there's something missing with those sharks! I know! I'll make them sound like Formula 1 cars when they swim around! Brilliant!"

NO!

In my opinion, it's much more likely that they went to a special school, kidnapped a lower-functioning autistic child, stapled raging baboons to his eyelids and set him to work on the soundboard during post-production. Who knows? They may have done this a few times until they had a veritable workforce of autistic, raging baboon stricken children putting the entire film together. And it's just ignorant to say a chimp wrote this script... because chimpanzees are intelligent.

To sum it all up, Julie loses her wedding ring, the sharks kill a few people, there are a couple of random appearances made by this black fisherman who manages to kill one of the sharks with a spear to the face, the protagonists run around trying to stop the sharks... and well, to be honest, I actually have no idea what happened after this point. I practically blacked out and when I woke, Billy and Julie were on a street somewhere and he was putting his grandma's ring back on Julie's finger and they kissed. THE END.

My God, it hurts to even talk about that film. I'm beginning to think that this pile o' junk doesn't even deserve a rating. But for the sake of professionalism, I will try. Okay, I would give this film a shocking one out of five. I mean I can't exactly give it a zero can I? It's not like the premise wasn't alright; the film makers merely lacked the funding required to hire any real actors and really put their vision onto the screen in a way that didn't make me want to throw my TV through the window and go bludgeon some kittens with a cancer patient.

Yours sincerely,

Riddick-ulous.