FlashForward - Believe

Please be aware this review contains spoilers….Woohhh scary!!

So this was supposed to be the week. Finally after two months of perseverance and plummeting expectations, we were supposed to be treated to some major developments that would make it all worthwhile. Instead, and you knew their would be a ‘but’ coming and ‘instead’ is just a fancy ‘but’, instead what we have is the hospital and law enforcement from The Simpsons and show drowning in it’s own homemade pool of disappointment. I feel obliged to keep watching as I did decide to write this weekly column but those who are doing so of their own feel will should be commended, gold stars and medals all round people.

This week we follow the story of Bryce and his repressed Japanese soul mate from his flash forward epiphany. Not why 20 million people are dead but Bryce and his repressed Japanese soul mate. Insert “yawn” here. The reason why he tried to kill himself in the moments leading up to the black out was because he had been living with terminal cancer. It would have been another outrageously public suicide, with Bryce blowing his brains out onto the promenade decking right in front of families on their weekly casual stroll along the pier. Surprisingly for a man working in a hospital alongside geniuses such as Olivia Benford, nobody noticed. None of these doctors noticed the regular days off from work after painful, life altering chemotherapy sessions that had been going on for a year.

An impatient Bryce ignores the offer of experimental treatment to fly to Tokyo and search for the woman he saw in his flash forward, without much luck. Keiko, who is a bit of a free spirit, escapes her conservative mother and sexist work place, coincidently on the same plane as Bryce’s return flight. They haven’t met yet but they soon will. How exiting.

Back to the comically organised FBI and their investigation. Nothing to see here. No progress on enhancing the photo pulled from the baseball ground, no progress on D Gibbons and no progress on anything else at all really.

The NSA have been tapping Demetri’s phone and intercepted the ‘death’ call he received a few weeks ago, which can be traced to China. The same China that were accused of causing the black outs by the C.I.A. Despite Wedeck’s protestations, Benford and Demetri decide to go to Hong Kong anyway.

You might have noticed their hasn’t been much of a mention of Benford so far and this is partly because he didn’t have much screen time. However, he featured just long enough to force his name into the hat for, Most Confusingly Smug Man Of The Year 2009. Irked after stumbling on Olivia’s motivational “Mark was drinking in his flash forward” phone screensaver, he goes on to accuse the only two people he told about it.

The first round of accusations didn’t go too well, his AA sponsor Aaron was so offended he started throwing chairs about. Okay that was a set back, change of tact Benford next time. You’re an FBI agent, maybe try a different approach when you confront Wedeck, you must have learnt all sorts of subtle ways to get information out of people in the academy? Or just say this: “Did you send my wife a text telling her I was drinking in my flash forward?” This gets him kicked out of another room and fractures yet another relationship. His response is to smile as if this was all part of his plan to let off a silent fart without getting caught.

By my count there have been a total of five people working on the black out case. Benford and Demetri who are about to leave for China, Janis who was shot and out of action for a few weeks, Wedeck who doesn’t do anything and Gough who didn’t want to do anything so badly, he killed himself. No wonder things are moving so slowly.

FlashForward - Playing Cards With Coyote

Please be aware that this review includes spoilers…

Unfortunately it seems as though we’re in for a, one week on one week off, scenario where for every decent episode, we have to sit back and wade through a poor one. Their are times during the inconsequential jabbering, when I forget that everyone in this programme is mind numbingly stupid. Going back to Gough, the agent who sacrificed himself last week in order to save a woman he may have been destined to kill. A week later she is found and left burdened by a suicide note written by a complete stranger who has left his friends and family in mourning. Stupid.

This sacrifice was also meant to “change the game” giving those who did not like what they saw in their flash forward, hope to change the future. Benford takes this advice and grabs the future with both hands and an itchy trigger finger.

The latest image from the magic board of clues comes from an eye witness to a murder. Hiding behind a car as a man is shot and his case stolen, a woman manages to film the event on her Blackberry and sends the video to the FBI. Still shots pulled from the video reveal a man with three stars tattooed on his arm, the same tattoo Benford sees when he has guns pointed at him in is flash forward. Suspecting a mole in the FBI, Benford uses the witness as bait in an attempt to ensnare the criminal and pre-empt his future attack. Classic, Bauer!

The plan comes together perfectly until, when coming face to face with Mr Tattoo man, Benford reacts by shooting him dead, in fear for his own safety. Or at least that’s how it will sound on the internal report.

So we’re done, the future is saved! Well done Agent Gough, well done Agent Benford. Except for a glaring oversight that Bauer would laugh at and shoot in the leg and one which will make everyone look a bit stupid in a few months time. Shockingly the man is not the only one in his militia with a tattoo of three stars on his arm, in fact everyone has one, kind of like an ipod but it only comes in one colour. This is also forgetting for a moment that Benford was being hounded by several gunmen in his flash forward and by killing one of them he has only killed, ONE of them. Any moderately serious organisation, the kind that tries to kill witnesses and has something to do with the largest global catastrophe since ‘Jedward’ became a word, will probably be able to get a replacement, so interrogation might have been the better option.

Lloyd feels guilty about being responsible for the flash forwards and urges Simon to go public and tell the world. The decision is settled by a game of poker about half as tense as watching a slug fight a snail. It is mostly ruined by the ‘science banter’ spewing out of Simon’s mouth. Their is no such thing as ‘science banter,’ that’s why nobody uses it anywhere, let alone while playing poker. Poker conversations are supposed to be about cool things like killing and world domination and unless it involves blowing something up or pet dinosaurs, science is not cool.

Beardface, AKA Aaron, is stunned to find his daughter alive and well, minus a leg, and is desperate to know what happened to her. Tracy believes the attack was an attempt to silence her after she saw members of a private security firm hired by the US army, slaughtering women and children in an Afghan village.

If only more time was spent on this sub-plot and less on whether or not two people who hardly ever talk to each other might or might not break up. It’s simple, Olivia, if you’re ever in a situation where you might have sex with Lloyd, don’t. Actually I don’t care but someone can’t just jump off a roof every week to remind you, stupid. With the flash forward conspirators set to tell all, next week should provide some major developments but then again we have been disappointed before.

FlashForward - The Gift

After the mundane drivel that was week six, episode 7 sees a “change in the game,” as FBI Agent Gough takes destiny into his own hands in an overdue attempt to cast doubt on the certainty of the flash forward theories. Light entertainment is provided by the Blue Hand Club from Benford’s magic board of clues, not to be confused with the Blue Man Group who incidentally are a lot scarier but not quite as stupid.

Those who were unfortunate enough not to have a flash forward and thus believe they are destined to die have formed secret death club, with Russian roulette as the entry policy and, We Might Die Soon So We Might As Well Try and Kill Ourselves, as the Monday night fancy dress theme. “Like a book club but with bullets,” says Benford with all the humour and comic timing of rich tea biscuit. With undercover experience, Gough joins Demetri and Benford to investigate and finds willing torture victims who would rather experience unbelievable pain rather than spend time with their loved ones? Odd, but maybe that’s just me.

In the middle of the night, instead of a foam or balloon party, one reveller is chosen to die. To be honest I don’t blame them, foam parties are rubbish and balloon parties are pointless. Tonight however Benford, who is faster than a speeding bullet, stops the vulgar act just as the latest ‘victim’ is about to pull the trigger.

A rant about not being able to escape the inevitable encourages Gough to confront his own demons as we find out he causes the accidental death of mother named Celia in his flash forward. Unwilling to accept this fate, Gough offers the ultimate challenge to his unwanted future, with an excessively spectacular suicide from the top of the FBI roof. I suppose this is TV Drama after all. I was half hoping/expecting him to land on poor Celia right in front of her precious twins, killing her but escaping largely unharmed, left wondering what might have been had he chosen a more community friendly way to die.

His death does however change everything previously accepted by the flash forwards. It is hard to believe that he’s the only person out 7 billion people to try and change their future but nevertheless, things have just got a lot more interesting.

So, the Benfords don’t have to split up, Demetri doesn’t have to die and most poignantly of all, Wedeck doesn’t have to be on the toilet!

The sub plot involving Benford’s sponsor and his alleged dead daughter also gains some legs, no pun intended. You see, her ex army buddy arrives in town letting Aaron know that she can’t be alive because he saw her die in an explosion. He didn’t, he saw her leg blown off and she was unconscious because apparently things like that hurt a bit. Episode cliff-hanger sees daughter, Tracy, sitting at the dinning room table. Dream? Look-alike? Wedeck in a Mission Impossible mask? I’m not sure.

The series has a clunky script, characters I don’t really care about and moments of truly bad acting, Fiennes’ attempt at looking sad or stupid or whatever in this episode was one of the funniest moments ever filmed. He looked like he just heard his book club ‘joke’ while biting into a lemon and thought, “oh that was just awful.” Yet I’m still watching it, waiting for episodes such as this one. Next week it will be interesting to see who will be the next to kill themselves and how? I’d go for Aaron, drowning in his own beard.

Arctic Monkeys Cornerstore Video: Genius or Laziness?

Now we all know that Beyoncé had one of the greatest videos of all time, of all time! The one where she and two other girls dance in front of the camera for a bit, Single Ladies was it? No, no it was Sweet Dreams of course, or was it Ego? I don’t know, if we’re honest they‘re all exactly the same.

The video for Arctic Monkeys’ new single Cornerstore reaches new levels of minimalism, featuring Alex Turner, on his own in front of a white background, singing into a tape recorder.

The band have a history of unconventional videos. Think back to the likes of, Fluorescent Adolescent or A View From the Afternoon, but never has opinion been so divided than as it is on their latest effort. Turner is either a lazy idiot or a genius. One thing is for sure, the band are certainly brave for trying the concept.

Turner’s unique brand of story telling depicts a man, maybe him, going to pubs each night pining for an old flame. Courting girls he thinks look similar, he asks if he can call them by his lost love’s name. Perhaps nine out of ten directors and bands would have gone with a very literal video showing a man, maybe Turner, going to pubs each night pining for an old flame, courting girls he thinks look similar asking if he can call them by his lost love’s name. This however is very different, but what does the video mean?

My interpretation is that tape deck Turner is singing into is meant for this ex lover, while standing on his own in front of a plain white background looking slightly effeminate is way of bearing his insecurities now he is unable to have another relationship.

That could however be absolute nonsense. The guy may have just lost a bet and his forfeit was to sing in front of the camera looking a bit like a girl. That would also explain why he still hasn’t cut his hair…

FlashForward

Last week, with people getting shot at and cars exploding, it seemed like FlashForward was building, unfortunately it appears to have been a bluff, with episode 6 a virtual non event. The series is moving slowly which is fine, and we now know around 3% more about the flash forwards than in episode 1 but instead of being intrigued, I’m left clinging on the to hope that soon and hopefully very soon, someone catches that damn kangaroo!

The nail biting filler here is the Janis’ will she, wont , no because you’ve already shown us she wont, death bed scene. It feels like a bit of a waste of time given that there hasn’t been so much as a suggestion that the FlashForwards, including her future sonogram, might not be true. DR Olivia is of course on hand to perform some medical something or other and save Janis but the location of the bullet has made it “virtually” impossible to have kids. Outside of virtual land 6months from now, she’ll be throwing up and taking pregnancy tests. Demetri, who I am betting is the father, is chasing more clues from Benford’s vision, following blue hands around town.

The Benford household is an even frostier place than usual with Lloyd inevitably coming face to face with Agent Serious, causing a few lasting ripples between Mark and Olivia. To remind her of her husband’s alcohol addiction, Olivia has the anonymous text “Mark was drinking in his flash forward” as her phone screensaver. With his drinking now in the open the Benford marriage is now officially, rather than hypothetically on the rocks.

It is revealed that the flash forwards which started the Benford’s downward spiral oh and resulted in the deaths of over 20million people, was caused by a science experiment Lloyd remember is part of the flash forward conspiracy and we get a closer look his accomplice Simon (Dominic Monaghan) the person who phoned him at the hospital. Look up the phrase “quantum physicist genius” you’ll find him apparently. Look up the phrase “slimy hobbit like murderer” and you’ll probably find him to. In his dark and violent flash forward Simon is strangling someone twice his size and no he’s not a hobbit in this. The full extent of their involvement remains to be seen.

About that kangaroo, I’m hoping it is more relevant to the plot than meets the eye and like the crows, other animals are affected by the black outs. If not, then I want to see it in a race with Benford and his Terminator run. I’d put money on Benford, he doesn’t look very fast but the lack of a facial expression might just unnerve the kangaroo.

Lesbians, Crows and Jessica Alba's Baby

I had a theory last week on how to improve the disappointingly annoying, FlashForward. It involved, Noel Edmonds and Mr Blobby and needless to say, had the writers of the show contacted me earlier, they would be bathing in the pool of glory that comes with such artistry. Unfortunately for them they didn’t but this week has nevertheless been an improvement of sorts. I can’t quite put my finger on the reason why but episode five seemed more interesting. It might have been because I found the phrase “crow attrition” so amusing. As if the crows, found dead after the flash forwards in both 1991 and 2009 ,died from exhaustion after some sort of Crowlympics. It was either that or the revelation that Janis is a lesbian.. It was the crows, honest! Well, probably.

Benford and his posse are hauled in front of the supreme court who have decided its about time to get a grip on the whole, millions dead, world catastrophe, largest global phenomenon in history thing. As you would expect, multiple agencies are investigating the flash forwards and it is up to the senate to choose which investigations should now receive additional funding and which should be scrapped.

The C.I.A have to be the first voted off, according to them the Chinese did it because most of them were asleep. If we’re using that sort of logic then students did it, most of them were asleep too or maybe Jessica Alba’s baby?

Stanford Wedeck, the boss of Benford’s FBI division, who had a vision of himself on the toilet 6months from now, comes to prominence. His contribution to this point has been to say things like “yeah” and “no” and “but i was on the toilet.” Now we learn that he has enemies in Washington, possibly cheated on his wife and so far, he’s FBI agent who understands what a metaphor is. It also takes him a good few hours to storm out of a building.

Benford is put on the stand to explain his vision and why he is only able to recall parts of it. In his flash forward he is drunk. His only defence is to say the word ‘presumably’ as often as possible. Senator Joyce “hard ass” Clementi also asks why none of his superiors have put this question to him, much to the displeasure of Wedeck, who storms out of the court room at lunch and doesn’t manage to find his way out of the building untill sunset.
I have a question, why was Benford the only person across all government divisions doing any work whatsoever in his flash forward?

Bad blood between Wedeck and Senator Hard Ass, forces Wedeck to nonchalantly bribe the president over a glass of whiskey in order to keep his investigation running.
Boooooring I hear you moan. You said something about lesbians didn’t you? I did. Yes I did! It turns out, Janis is a lesbian and she embarks on a relationship with a woman who in her flash forward, is wearing a wedding ring. Janis is of course pregnant in her flash forward. Who’s the daddy? Who’s the other mummy?

During the closing stages Benford and Co are ambushed by a mysterious armed squad and are able to remarkably to survive a side on car collision, gunfire and an explosion with the only damage being to Demetri’s tie, which was slightly askew. The laughably bad choice of soundtrack to accompany this perfectly manicured shootout makes the scene far funnier than it ought to be but that has become the staple of every episode of FlashForward to date. It reminded me of this.

Meanwhile, Janis suffers an ambush of her own, shot in the stomach by someone from ‘presumably’ the same team that attacked her colleagues.

What if Noel Edmonds was in FlashForward?

Sometimes terrible ideas turn out to be complete masterstrokes. Think about it, someone once pitched this idea to a Television executive; a show about one person pointing at a few other people until they win some money. Sure they might have jazzed the speech up a bit but essentially that’s the format. Turns out that idea was the infuriatingly successful Deal Or No Deal? What happens when the opposite occurs, is FlashForward.

With the human race given a window into their possible futures, is their fate already determined and if the future has already happened, how can it be changed? The concept is mind boggling and not in the way that having 300minutes and unlimited texts for £15 a month is apparently, “mind boggling”, according to that idiot girl who has been cut out of the T-Mobile adverts.

Frustratingly this idea is being mercilessly gobbled up by Wheetabix style acting that is so bland and forced its almost impossible to swallow any serious scene without laughing to yourself. What this program needs, is Noel Edmonds! Just imagine him with his little goatee and floral patterned shirts running around L.A, desperately trying to stop a future where Mr Blobby with a top hat and mustache reveals himself as the orchestrator of the FlashForwards.

Filled with characters devoid of any personality and with very few action sequences it is hard to watch at times. This week around two minutes was devoted to an entirely emotionless scene where recently widowed father Lloyd enters the house of the dead wife we’ve never even seen to the backdrop of sombre music. Thankfully having Sky Plussed the episode I was able to skip at least half of those two wasted minutes.

The terrorist suspect, last seen in the series opener, comes to the forefront of the FBI’s investigation into the mass blackouts after being interrogated by Demetri and Benford. As it happens, the cause of the global phenomenon stems from a much larger group of conspirators than first thought. Instead of asking how the event happened Benford is told to ask why?

His wife, Olivia, having seen a future she does not wish to come true, refuses to accept the flash forwards as fact to the risk of a patient with Addison’s disease. Having almost killed the man Olivia sort of says, whoops and its all forgotten.

The major twist, well I say twist its more like slight left, given the rather obvious set up, is that Lloyd turns out to be part of the global conspiracy. Receiving a phone call from a superior (Dominic Monaghan) he is told he has more work to do. I suspect he is under some duress but that remains to be seen in future and hopefully better episodes.

Get me the world's population of crows! Right now!!!

The freaking Nazis did it! Well, the freaking Nazis didn’t do it but they do get a substantial mention in episode 3 of Flashforward.

Benton and Janis, who is a computer wizard but terrible at lateral thinking, (more on this later) travel to a German prison after an ex-Nazi inmate requests a personal meeting with Agent Serious (Pictured right) to discuss the future and to negotiate his release. A few minutes of prisoner Geyer’s, for the moment, nonsensical riddles about Kabala, crows and the amount of seconds the blackout lasted, gets right up Benton’s nose.

Lunging for Geyer and banging his fists on the table, Benton does what any good government agent would do. Adopting the Jack Bauer whisper-grunt, he insists that under no circumstances will he be released unless his information is relevant, before caving into every demand Geyer makes. Geyer probably could have ordered a Big Mac and Fries and had it served by the one and only Ronald McDonald, or even better Colonel Sanders.

Interesting questions are posed about ‘the greater good’ and whether releasing a man guilty of heinous crimes for potential information about the global catastrophe is worth it?

With planes back in the air, Dead man walking, Demitri is finally reunited with his fiancé, Zoey, who had been grounded in another city. Afraid to tell her about his own non-vision and imminent murder, Demetri is given a lifeline as Zoey says she saw him in her flash forward on an idyllic beach on the day of their wedding. Now, call me sceptical but I don’t trust the woman. Largely because she’s a lawyer but also because actress Gabrielle Union, played a back-stabbing career woman in 24 and I don’t like her face. Also because introducing her character for no reason other than a kiss and cuddle with Demetri would just be a waste of time. I also don’t trust the woman who told Demetri he would be murdered and promptly became impossible to get hold of. Either that or she’s on business in some rural part of Devon and just has no signal.

The investigation into the mysterious mass blackout has a new lead, with Geyer revealing information about a group of crows (apparently a group is called a Murder of crows) dead on the ground after he awoke from his own unconsciousness. Benton then has a eureka moment during his departments wake for colleagues lost in the devastation caused by the blackout. Benton asks Janis to find the worlds population of crows and as that data is of prime importance to most if not all FBI investigations, it is only few clicks before it is shown that there was a similar drop in numbers on the day of the blackout and in 1991. Obviously as Janis (pictured left) has worked for the FBI so many years, conversations about crows and population levels are so frequent that she’s unable to realise that this might be an important one. Thankfully Benton is on hand to spell it out and ask if the blackout has happened before?

As it turns out, the freaking Africans did it! Well, they probably didn’t but the end cut scene is in Africa showing a Murder of crows (that is so confusing) falling unconscious near a tower emitting some kind gas or smoke suggesting the mass blackout phenomenon has been caused by foul means.

Slow Motion City

Episode Two

With a name like FlashForward, the numerous slow motion cuts come as a bit of a surprise. Now I could understand if they were super slow-mos of a building bursting into flames, or a bullet flying from the barrel of a gun, or even of a dog, sitting down. But I can’t help but feel that the ones so far have been misplaced. Head investigator and Mr Down Right Serious, Agent Benford, meets with his AA sponsor agonising about the possible future ahead and after receiving some advice, best heard from a man with the wisdom of a fully grown beard, he realises that he isn’t the only one with problems. This is set against the backdrop of normal people getting on with their lives despite whatever burden they might be carrying. Obvious message, maybe, but wouldn’t it look better if everything was really really slow? Dave Chappelle, you were wrong! http://www.videovat.com/videos/884/dave-chappelle-slow-motion.aspx

Episode 2 sees the conspiracy deepen. I haven’t introduced many of the characters yet so here‘s Benford’s team. His partner, Demetri Noh, who didn’t have a vision while unconscious and assumes that’s because 6months from now he will be dead. Stanford, head of the FBI division, who had a vision of himself on the toilet, whilst on the toilet and Janis Woods. Just think Chloe from 24 or, if you can without getting a bit confused, Janis from 24, and that’s her job.

Hot on the trail of the man in the stadium from episode 1 Benford recalls the name D Gibbons from his flash forward. Tracing a stolen credit card leads the team to an abandoned doll factory where D Gibbons is hiding with what must be some pretty incriminating evidence because soon after he is spotted he sets half the building alight before jumping through a window to escape. In slow motion you must be thinking! Nope.

Ominously for Demetri a local policewoman who didn’t have a vision either is shot dead by Gibbons during the raid with his suspicions confirmed later on.

Janis analyses the evidence brought in from the doll factory explosion and back-dating Gibbon’s phone records shows that at the time of the flash forwards he was on the phone to someone else who was also awake.

Part of the FBI’s investigation is the Mosaic program, a social networking site for people across the globe to post the details of their flash forwards in an effort to build a picture of the future. Janis, who sees herself having a sonogram in 6months, encourages Demetri to post with her if only to find out how he might die. Hours later he receives a phone call from a woman who in her flash forward, reads that he has been murdered.

I expected it to get better and with added intrigue and moments of humour it has. Needless slow motion aside, i think i will be sticking with the series. The juicy nugget left for next week comes when Benford’s daughter, Charlie, who had been reluctant to share the details of her flash forward finally reveals, “D Gibbons is a bad man.”

Jay-Z - Blueprint 3

With Jay-Z’s temporary retirement now a distant memory, his eleventh studio album marks a return to the Blueprint series last seen in 2002. Hotly anticipated since first murmurings were uttered in the build up to last year’s Glastonbury, Blueprint 3 has all the well deserved, brash confidence of arguably the most important man in the urban music business today.

A statement of intent is the guitar influenced, drum heavy attack on the current landscape of popular music, D.O.A (Death Of The Auto-Tune) The song will certainly get heads nodding and minds thinking, especially given the irony of his allegiance to one of the pioneers of the modern incarnation of the auto-tune.

I am of course referring to part-time producer, part-time rapper, full-time award show speech interrupter, Kanye West, who features on current single, Run This Town, with stable mate, Rihanna. Jay boldly proclaims “You can call me Caesar” and with virtually anything the three superstars touch turning to gold, or should I say platinum, the track highlights the dominance of Jay-Z’s former Def Jam label and its affiliates.

Features are ever present with somewhat underwhelming guest appearances from, Young Jeezy, Swizz Beats, Drake, Kid Cudi and Alicia Keys who eases her way through the chorus of Empire State of Mind. (Dead Presidents anyone?) Uplifting and generally inspirational, the song speaks of the American Dream localised to the streets of the Big Apple. “Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, there’s nothing you can’t do, now you’re in New York.”

Throughout the album Jay-Z alludes to how far he has come since the days before Reasonable doubt,

“Set sail, I used to duck shots but now I eat quail, I'll probably never see jail.”

While in sign of how far hip-hop has come in the ringtone era, he and Swizz Beats have an attempt at the southern swagger perfected by the likes of Dem Franchise Boys with lacklustre results on perhaps the albums weakest track, On To The Next One.

Having been in the game for some 20 years, Jay has to be commended for keeping such high standards in his lyrical delivery, flow and execution. No one has been as consistent in their wit, leading listeners in and out of breaks, before serving that killer punch line with such smooth assurance.

This is best exhibited on stand out track, Thank You, where Jay thanks his contemporaries for clearing the path for him to be where he is today.

“I was gonna kill a couple rappers but they did it to themselves, I was gonna do it with the flow but they did it with their sales, I was gonna 9/11 them but the didn’t need the help and they did a good job, them boys is talented as hell.”

So Ambitious is a F*** You to those who doubted a young Sean Carter when he decided to become a rapper and Young Forever further asks the question of: just who is Mr Hudson anyway and why does everyone from Kanye to Jay-Z want him on their track?

In the end, Blueprint 3 is a contradiction, Jay speaks as if he is doing something different and unique while shockingly embracing the Auto-tune on A Star is Born and employing the same weak rappers he castigates throughout. In the end, without being a poor album in modern day standards, Jay-Z comes across as a little hypocritical and just as much of a slave to the ringtone, auto-tune generation as the rest.

He came, he saw, he conquered and now he’s back just to rub it in.

FlashForward

Episode One

Prime Time British Television is awash with American imports, it has been for years. Think, Lost, Ugly Betty, 24, Desperate Housewives and any one of the various incarnations of CSI, be it Miami or New York. I doubt many people would be that eager to tune into CSI Middlesbrough. Not everything American is good though, I for one can’t sit through five minutes of seeing the ginger crime scene investigator’s sunglasses go on and off and his affliction to sentences consisting of more than seven words.

FlashForward though certainly comes with top billing. Labelled as the ‘next Lost’, it promises to be addictive viewing. Lets just hope it’s full of the suspenseful, intriguing and shocking characteristics of Lost, rather the fact that not a single question being answered in five series makes me want to eat my own face.

Episode One sets the premise, seemingly every person on the planet falls unconscious for two minutes and seventeen seconds, seeing a vision of themselves 6months into the future at 10pm. That’s when but, How? Why? What? Who god damn it, who??!!

With this sudden unconsciousness, hundreds of thousands across the world die in plane crashes and road accidents.

Leading man Joseph Fiennes plays FBI agent Benford, leader the investigation into the mysterious global incident after he sees a vision of himself in that role.

The recovering alcoholic also sees himself drinking again, while his wife, (Sonya Walger, Lost) who had promised to leave if he got back on the wagon has a vision of herself with another man.

So far, the idea seems good, although I’m not quite convinced it is box office worthy just yet but I do expect it to get better as the series goes on. The dialogue seems wooden and is very plot driven, giving as many characters the chance to chip in as possible.

Cliff-hanger at the end of episode one is CCTV footage taken from an eerily still baseball stadium, as among thousands of motionless bodies, a single figure stands and walks ominously to the exit.

The Cribs - Ignore the Ignorant

In a year where Arctic Monkeys have grown up, the three brothers from across Yorkshire have been joined by the ultimate elder statesman of indie music, Johnny Marr. Former member of The Smiths and executor of some of the greatest riffs the 80’s had to offer, Marr adds weight to The Cribs’ sometimes tinny sounds.

While this means Ignore the Ignorant lacks the instant appeal of previous albums, repeated listens offer a gateway into a style that is complimented rather than suffocated by the addition of a new guitarist.

Familiar rough vocals are evident in first single, Cheat On Me, while the grand opening from, We Share the Same Skies, illuminates the bands rise in stature.

No longer as raw and impassioned, The Cribs are still uncompromising in their love of contagious choruses, now taking their time, allowing words to float into the consciousness. This is highlighted by the wistful, Last Year’s Snow and the powerful and rangy, Nothing, while, City of Bugs adds yet more grandeur to proceedings.

Gently skipping away from the slightly more commercial sounding Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever, the new album is more of a return to their self-titled debut, but five years on, older, bigger and aided by the iconic Marr, maybe a little better.

The Final Destination

The forth instalment of the Final Destination franchise sees Death cheated on once more. I can picture it now. Death sitting at home with a cup of coco before bed, planning a date at the race track for the following afternoon. Sunshine in the sky, the adrenaline of speeding cars, a dodgy spectator stand and careless mechanics, all making for the perfect goodnight kiss of carnage, destruction and multiple fatalities.

Unfortunately, a member of the new gang of 20 somethings, lets call him, Bad Actor, just happens to have a premonition of his impending doom and decides, death, no thanks!

As with the previous offerings, the gorgeous characters are then picked off one by one, this time with set ups so stupefyingly absurd they make Final Destinations 1,2 and 3 seem like reconstructions of real life events on an episode of Crimewatch.

The ridiculousness isn’t the problem. The whole point of the Final Destination series, embarrassingly for us the audience, is to watch on with anticipation and delight as Death burns, chops and explodes its way through nameless pretty faces. Hopefully, making them just as nameless and not so pretty by the end of it all.

The problem is the death scenes are all the same. A bit of wind from a fan or some water makes an everyday item fall improbably onto a lever or some other contraption, starting a domino effect that will somehow cut some ones head off or blow up a cinema. Why, in an area so affluent homeless men treat pennies with distain, does everyone own a fan anyway? Haven’t they heard of air conditioning? Maybe it’s a global warming thing? Yes that’s it, characters with the emotional development of a carrot, are so concerned by climate change they would disregard modern cooling systems to the risk of their own unfortunate demise.

There was a moment where I thought the writers had come up with the genius idea of getting the two female leads to literally talk each other to death!

Instead their death is so painfully obvious and badly written I’m going to tell you what happens. They get hit by a truck. ..

Watchmen

To start with, I must admit that I know next to nothing about the Watchmen story. In fact all I really do know is that one of them, the one with a penchant for delivering compound fractures with alarming regularity, looks a lot like Batman and acts a lot like Superman.

Far from archetypal good guys, the Watchmen encompasses a murderer, a rapist an alcoholic and the mentally deranged. Justice League this certainly isn’t.

Set in an alternate 1985, the story opens with the death of retired superhero, The Comedian, murdered in his penthouse suite by a mysterious villain hidden in the shadows.

Following this is a quite fantastic montage, depicting the fictional history of America, where wars were won and bad guys foiled by the Watchmen, before inevitable human fear demanded the vigilantes are unmasked and held accountable for their actions. Bob Dylan provides the score with, “The Times, They Are A-Changin’”, a song that fits so seamlessly with the images on screen that they could be a single form of media.

The driving force behind the plot is the brutal, mentally scarred, no nonsense face of trilbies and trench coats, Rorschach and his quest to find The Comedian’s murderer.

Flashbacks are used frequently to provide the characters with back story and substance and this works well to bring the story together in a rounded way but I can’t help but want to spend more time in the 1940’s and 50’s where this action takes place.

Now, well I say now but I really mean 1985, Nixon is still in charge, the doomsday clock is at a quarter to midnight and the world is on the verge of a nuclear holocaust with the Watchmen given no authority to defuse the impending conflict.

Most powerful of all, Dr. Manhattan has the ability to see into his own future, teleport to Mars and turn Vietnam soldiers into dust but cannot muster so much as a pair of Y fronts to cover his manhood.

Genetically altered by a radiation accident some years ago, Dr Manhattan had been America’s ace in the pack against the Russians but his, elevated state of being, alienates him so far from the rest of humanity he is unsure whether or not to leave earth to its own destruction.

While visually stunning and often thought provoking, the film seems overloaded. It is a long weekend spent in an alternate reality too vast and too terrific to be truly appreciated in a single films worth of time.

Songs update

Jamie T - Chaka Demus

"Two World Wars and one World Cup!" I'm not even patriotic. On Jamie T's second EP before his album is released (next week i think) the title song Chaka Demus paints a poignant picture of England. "An Englishman in every coward."

Method Man - Sweet Love

Method Man really annoys me, in fact everyone in Wu-Tang apart from Ghostface and Raekwon really annoys me and Raekwon only escapes from this tag because i haven't dared to listen to anything beyond the masterpiece that is, Only Built For Cuban Lynx! The reason why Method Man annoys me in particular is because he's never made a good album, yet on the tracks he shares with other Wu members he often steals the show. The gruff voice and hint of a lisp is unmistakable.

Grand Puba - 2000

Former member of Brand Nubian, Grand Puba had one of the best flows in the business and in this song his delivery and punch lines induce a 3:38 long smile.

The Cribs - Emasculate Me

Review of their new album Ignore The Ignorant is on its way but I thought i'd add the one song that jumped out at me on first listen beyond the singles, We Were Aborted and Cheat On Me.The Cribs still know how to make infectious choruses.

Bombay Bicycle Club - I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose

Named after their local restaurant chain, Bombay Bicycle Club fittingly serve up a deliciously energetic debut album with a number of tracks ripe for picking this summer season.

Fans of the band will have heard much of the album already as a host of songs have already featured on the North London foursome’s previous EP’s, although, The Hill, among others have been slightly reworked.

The awkward and gawky looking teenagers provide excellent, catchy opening riffs, at times stomping, as with What If and on other occasions, enchanting on the likes of Lamplight.

The songs all do follow a similar structure with the middle sections hyper enough for a beer spilling, jumping session, the requirement of any good indie gig.

First single, Always Like This has a hip swaggering, Hawaiian tinge to it, perfect for festival season. Other highlights include, deep and bass heavy, Dust On the Ground, The Hill and Evening/Morning, which builds into a sharp almost robotic sounding attack from lead singer, Jack Steadman’s, shaky, shivering vocals .

In truth there is a barely a moment where the album disappoints and it is difficult to see how I Had the Blues But I Shook Them Loose doesn’t deserve a Michelin Star.

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (This review is a bit rubbish)

Ultimate pizza brain, lad’s lad film maker, Michael Bay, returns with more fighting robots making a right mess of our lovely planet earth.

Shia Lebouf is the quick witted, fast talking, Sam Witwicki, flesh bodied friend of the huge clunking Autobots in battle with the evil Decepticons.

Predictably it isn’t too long until, Megatron, frozen a million miles under the ocean, escapes and sets about exacting his revenge.

As expected, the plot is about as complicated as a cheese sandwich and unlike its predecessor; the multiple and lengthy scenes of the Autobots, rolling in, rolling up and rolling out are barely impressive.

We’ve seen it all before and as with all blockbuster sequels everything is bigger. The explosions are bigger, the battles are longer and unfortunately none of this equates to a better film.

Megan Fox is put in uncompromising and seductive positions and the utter ridiculousness of her relationship with Lebouf is brought further into focus. I mean come on, the good guy never gets the girl, nice guys always finish last and Fox’s character would still be with that idiot oaf with the big arms in Transformers 1.

Jealousy aside and back to the plot.

Megatron reports to his over bearing leader, The Fallen, an all conquering, merciless warrior hell bent on using the sun’s energy to fuel his race for another millennium or two.

Sam is barely halfway through his first day at college before he is called to help the Autobots. He refuses at first but of course we know he’ll be back, shouting and running in slow motion.

The film makes no apologies for its patriotism, screaming “Americaaaa Fuck Yeaaah,” as earth’s natural born leaders from the U.S.A. decide that all the trouble being caused is the fault of Optimas Prime and chums.

A myriad of multicultural, bit part robots are introduced, sporting different accents and personalities making it difficult to understand what Transformers actually are? And why do they have teeth?

Strangely, with something as simple as a change of location, as the battle moves out of the city and into Egypt the film suddenly grabs your attention with rockets flying and metal clashing.

The battle sequences are long, frantic, confusing and quite frankly, until Optimas or Megatron tear something’s arms or head off, I have no idea what’s going on or who’s winning, nor do I care.

Without being entirely engrossing, Transformers 2 does assault the senses just often and just hard enough to satisfy as a knock-em sock-em visual spectacle.

Songs update

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Gold Lion

I'm not really a big fan of Yeah Yeah Yeahs but i've been listening to this stomping rock number, from their second album, after catching it on the BBC's coverage of Glastonbury. Gold Lion is a powerful head nodder from the colourful Karen O and company.

The Cribs - Baby Don't Sweat

The Cribs are fast becoming my favourite indie band.

Their self title debut contains a whole number of

infectious choruses and Baby Don't Sweat

is just one i've singled out.

http://www.last.fm/music/The+Cribs/_/Baby+Don%27t+Sweat

Michael Jackson - Baby Be Mine

Only fitting really to include one from Michael.

Overlooked on the Thriller album in my view,

Baby Be Mine is a funky RnB disco groove.

http://www.last.fm/music/Michael+Jackson/Thriller/Baby+Be+Mine

Jamie T - Sticks 'n' Stones

I've missed out on seeing Jamie T twice this year,

last night it would have been free which i am gutted

about. Sticks 'n' Stones has been out for a while now

and thankfully Mr T returns with the wit and charm

of the local lad, combining his speedy raps with

strangely appealing out of tune hooks.

Mos Def - Priority

Short track from Mos Def's new album The Ecstatic.

Relatively simply piano keys and drum loops evolve to

give Mos Def a platform to showcase his typically cool

delivery. A nod and a wink to his native Brooklyn

with just a sprinkling of a faux-Jamaican accent sprinkled

on top makes this well worthy of a few repeat listens.

Chamon Cha cha Chamon

Perhaps I am a little late to the party or do I mean wake? In the few days since Michael Jackson’s death I have been able to shake off the sense of pure uncensored shock. “Michael Jackson is dead” was the text message that delivered the news. “Michael Jackson is dead.” Michael Jackson can’t be dead, people like Michael Jackson don’t just die but then again people aren’t really like Michael Jackson.

Then the predictable, melodramatic, outpouring of emotion chugged in through the television like a steam train. With my cynical head on, I ducked for cover like 20’s cinema audiences who feared that images coming towards them on screen would leap out and crush them.

BBC tried their damndest to tweeze out the raw emotional responses of Jackson closets friends, with surgical questions alarmingly devoid of any sense of tact or empathy. They scrabbled together obvious questions about whether the controversy surrounding his alleged child grooming would affect his standing as a true legend of music. A phone call to Uri Gellar before his death was even confirmed was particularly stomach turning.

Then they decided to go live to Lizo Mzimba at Glastonbury who was gauging the reaction from members of the public. I don’t know who I was taking less seriously, the BBC for deciding to ask people would so obviously be on pills for a clear concise comment worthy of airtime, or Lizo, the ‘journalist’ who spent years on Newsround telling kids “Lots of bad stuff happened in another country today but its ok because David Beckham kicked a ball good.”

Apart from shock it was difficult to ascertain how I actually felt about his death. Without being too callous, his superficial face makes it hard to think of him as a real person and without this, it is hard to feel genuinely sad. It would however be immature to ignore the magnitude of his death as an event in the tapestry of entertainment history. I am waiting for the 25^th of June to be renamed “Michael Jackson Day” and the mastering of the moon walk to be the pass or fail requirement of Year 6 SATS.

But in terms of how I feel, I don’t know. For me, there are two Michael Jacksons. The child prodigy, who turned into the slightly odd looking star, that danced his way around the set of the scariest music video of my childhood, Thriller. And then the freaky looking kiddie fiddler it was acceptable to parody in the likes of South Park without so much of a nervous twitch of morality or sympathy.

I cannot connect with either.

Terminator Salvation

The Terminator is back and back with far less bang than the 200 million bucks it cost to make. A CGI infested boreathon, incapable of conjuring even a modicum of the suspense or terror that made the first two so fantastic and the third at least watchable.

Christian Bale, adopting a slightly less irritating grunt than in The Dark Knight, is the grown up resistance hero John Conner, humanities best chance of survival against the machines. His task, in this convoluted plot, is to find his father Kyle Reese and send him back in time to save his mother, Sarah Conner, from a beefed up mechanical Austrian with one liners almost as deadly as his pump action shotgun.

Unlike the average sequel come prequel, this instalment of the Terminator franchise is set in the post apocalyptic future, after the destruction caused by Judgement Day.

While the part of my brain dedicated to the understanding of time travel is around the same size as the part that understands why anyone outside of West Lothian cares about Susan Boyle, I can still see why this was a story that needed to be told.

From the maniacal ramblings of Reese and Conner in the first two films, Judgement Day itself had started to feel like a myth, as if Terminator 1 was all a dream thought up in Sarah Conner’s padded cell. In T3 we find out it does take place and T4 seemed like the perfect opportunity to show how humans banded together under the guidance of their messiah. Instead they don’t band together and Conner goes head to head with his commander, played by Michael Ironside, in a gung hoe role so clichéd it makes my lungs deflate.

Somehow the humans find a signal frequency that will turn off all the machines quickidy split and form a plan bomb the cyborg headquarters sky high and end the war. Conner, aided by a super duper jazzed up Terminator/human hybrid and armed with his, “We’re Better Than Machines Because We Have Emotions” phrase book, finds something morally wrong with bombing the facility, which is filled with people, and charges in at the crack of dawn to try and save the day.

The action sequences are long, dull and unoriginal, with most borrowed from Transformers and IRobot. It even borrows from its previous films, throwing in lines and scenes with all the subtlety and imagination of a fart joke, only with a more pungent stink. With the decision to divert almost all animatronics to the CGI department, instead of the clunky, rigid, relentlessness of previous terminators, these machines wouldn’t look out of place prancing around in a skate park on a new Citron C2 advert.

Then there are other annoyances, like why nobody seems to see or hear a 50 metre wide robot plane hovering overhead, until it fires at something that explodes. Or why everyone in 2018 will have to introduce themselves by their full name, with a knowing look into the camera that screams, “John Conner, yes you know John Conner from the first three films and the last hour of this movie. Yes! That John Conner. Oh you still don’t get it, okay I’ll say it again in half an hour.”

Terminator Salvation is utterly disappointing, the questions about human’s relationship with technology totally ignored in favour of a flaky script, dime-a-dozen explosions and a grotesque amount of green screen. Or maybe it has answered the question inadvertently by showing how a film caked in technology can bore humanity into submission. Let’s just hope The Terminator will not “be back” again.

Jimi Hendrix

Truly amazing guitarist.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Little Wing

http://www.last.fm/music/The+Jimi+Hendrix+Experience/_/Little+Wing

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

X-Men Origins attempts to wade through the back story of Marvel’s most popular of mutants, Wolverine. We follow him as a young boy in 1885 where he witnesses the murder of a man he has known as his father. As we know from the previous X-men films pubescent mutants can be handful and the young Mr Logan looses control of that pesky rage of his and promptly wields his bony claws to attacks his father’s killer.

In fear and confusion he runs off with half brother Sabertooth promising to protect one another. What follows is a series of montages of the grown up siblings fighting back to back through the Civil War, WW1 + WW2 and Vietnam before their animal instincts lead them to behead a prisoner and kill a squad of armed soldiers. This misdemeanour sees them hauled to execution only to survive a barrage of gunfire thanks to their mutant regeneration powers.

William Stryker, Wolverine’s future nemesis, catches wind of the brother’s ‘talents’ and seeks them out in order to offer them a place on his special ops, mutant task force. After an incident during a raid in Africa, the group’s no holds barred attitude weighs too heavily on Logan’s conscience and he leaves to live out the rest of his life as a lumberjack.

If Origins intended to shine a light on Wolverine’s murky past it fails to do so with any detail or conviction. Instead the intrigue posed by the previous three films, of the movie arm in the Marvel franchise, is re-packaged into an ‘Explosion of the Day’ highlight reel.

Origins does however, answer the question of, how many times it is possible to watch a grown man howl, melodramatically at the sky before feeling slightly amused. The answer is once.

Naturally irked by his desertion, Stryker and Sabertooth inevitably catch up with old ‘mutton chops’ in the Canadian hills and conjure a plan to force him back into the fold.

The murder of his wife, Silver Fox, (cue howl number one) sends him on the revenge mission that ultimately leads to the rather painful insertion of his (cue howl number two) Adamantium skeleton.

Dazed, confused and down right angry, he claws his way through a few walls and runs naked into the picturesque countryside and into the barn of a couple who look suspiciously like Jonathon and Martha Kent. Well aware of the potential fall out of Wolverine’s escape, Stryker and his team disregard all civilian life in pursuit, much to the misfortune of Mr and Mrs Kent. Cue melodramatic howl number three.

Devoid of the humorous one-liners of his previous Wolverine scripts, howling is all Hugh Jackman has to work with while Liev Schreiber, (The Sum of All Fears, Defiance) is suitably menacing as the merciless, sadistic, Sabertooth.

Fans of the comic will be annoyed rather heartened by the brief, nonsensical cameos of Cyclops, Professor Xavier and personal favourite, Gambit.

While the film postures to be a story about the internal struggle between Wolverine’s human and animal sides, the lack of character depth or plot detail makes this a money spinning yet needles addition to the X-Men series.

Songs update

Bombay Bicycle Club - The Hill

Dr. Dre - Fuck wit Dre (And Everybody's Celebratin')

I have a habit of ignoring an incredible amount of classics tracks on albums. It usually takes me about two and a half seconds to decide whether or not a song gets skipped. The upside is, around a year later i discover three or four brilliant songs which feels like a bonus. This one is from Dre's The Chronic. Other notable mentions go to: Erykah Badu - Next Lifetime Raekwon - Ice Cream

Common - Thisisme The Smiths - Bigmouth Strikes Again and 100s more.

Why would a shark eat a plane?

"Thriller in Manilla!" I can't remember how we worked this out but, the shark would be around 100 metres long and its teeth about 12 ft. In the film they say its cruising speed is 500 knots and when attacking "pray indiscriminately" (which is code for army bases and submarines on purpose) it can speed to 800 knots. Fair enough really, I can believe that, it is called a mega shark after all.

Then, just when i finally had my right eye brow lowered from the astonishment of seeing Bruce Willis aim a car into a helicopter in Die Hard 4, it also turns out a shark can time a jump (yep, sharks can jump) traveling at lets say, 700 knots to take a bite out of an airplane that is at least 10,000-20,000 feet above sea level.

Oh, the film is obviously rubbish.