Th'Incredible 'Ulk Review

I have been neglecting my duty as a blogger recently, thereby forcibly causing you lot to neglect your duties of blog-goggling.
Well we can't have that now, can we?

The answer is no.

You know what I saw the other day? Well, I'll tell you.
I saw The Incredible Hulk. 'Can you summarise the film in four or less words?' I hear you ask. No, I can not. And furthermore, I shan't try.

All that needs to be said is that the film was very good. Even my godfather, who represents every male moviegoer with slightly different tastes to me, liked it, saying that 'you never felt bored, although the fight scenes were a little bit over the top.'

My godfather is wrong.
The fight scenes were fast-paced and city-shattering. And this is what you want when you go and see a Hulk film. Honestly, how could he not expect high levels of violence when he is going to see a film about a man who turns into a green, nine-foot berserker when he gets too excited who has to save New York from an even bigger monster? A few bouts of fisticuffs were somewhat inevitable, does one not think?

And it wasn't all violence. The love story between Bruce Banner (Hulk) and Betty Ross (not Hulk) was good, and the fact that Bruce becomes somewhat volatile when his adrenaline goes too high meant that love scenes were a no-no, providing not only a bit of humour but keeping it a 12A, saving the younger viewers from having to cover their eves whilst the lead characters snuggle.

The characters were believable, too. Emil Blonsky, the chap that becomes the bigger monster (the Abomination), was a scarily obsessive character whose arrogance you loved to hate. General Ross was a good character, but bad. As in he was a baddie, but he was good as a film character. Ahem.

Right. You get the idea. Good film. Sorted.

I'm not going to conform to some unwritten movie review rule that it needs a conclusion because I'm my own man!

Toodle-pip

Another ramble

I know that I posted a ramble yestrday, but I enjoy doing them and feedback tells me that you enjoy reading them. So here I am, posting another rambling entry for you to lap up like the domesticated animals you are.

Today I will be talking about the weather.
As I live in England I have had a lot of experience with the weather. That is, rain doesn't bother me and nor does the sun. Much. I don't mean that I have had a lot of experience with the weather in a professional context:
"Yes, Mister Wivell, your CV seems up to scratch, and I hear that you have a lot of experience with the weather. Well, I'm really rather impressed, Mister Wivell, you start your job as Lord of Weather next Tuesday."

Recently, the weather has been rather unusual where I live, in that one day it rained and another day it didn't (seriously!). What I mean by this is that it was really wet, but then really dry, and then really wet again. I don't mean unusual in the sense that it rained doner kebabs and the sun was a big cinnamon apple pie radiating spicy fruitiness over the world. Not at all. Don't make that mistake, people! You may very well make the earth implode with your misinterpretings, so stop it.

Right, where was I? Ah, yes, cinnamon apple pies. I love cinnamon apple. I don't think that there is a nicer flavour combination. Well, maybe there is, but I can't bring it to mind. Okay, cinnamon apple is the nicest flavour combination that I can remember at this precise moment. And that's just dandy. Nobody says dandy nowadays, do they? I think it's because they named a comic 'The Dandy' in 1937 (oh yes, I know my trivia) and it became more widely known as a comic than as a synonym to the word 'good'. Poor 'dandy'. Let's form a foundation to support forgotten synonyms: the NSPFS - the National Society for the Prevention of the Fogetting of Synonyms. Or the Protectors Of Often-Forgotten Synonyms (POOFS).

Auf Wiedersehen.

Apologies for my disgraceful lateness

As the title says, apologies for my disgraceful lateness.
To make up for this, I will provide you one of those rambles you few loyal readers love so much.
But how to start, how to start...

...

Oh, I know. I'll talk about Microsoft vs. Apple. Now, I know that it sounds like a geeky thing to say, a topic with very little potential for humour.
That it is. But my rambles tend to drift off and merge seamlessly into totally unrelated topics, and much of the humour lies there.
Ahem.
I personally think that Macs are better computers than PCs. Sure, they don't have the right hand click option, but 'tis a miniscule price to pay for such a wonderful contraption.
Let's face it. Most of us use computers to play games or to access and/or manipulate media. Okay, Macs aren't very good for games, as not many games are released on the Mac as well as the PC, but it's media facilities are out of this world.
Well, not really out of this world. I mean, the Apple Corporation is situated on this planet (unlike Microsoft - I have reason to believe that Bill Gates has a secret evil Moon base). And think of the price! If Apple was situated on, like, a crater on Mercury, all the development software and stuff would cost a lot more to send to Earth than it does currently. Mainly because sending something from Earth to Earth , if you put everything in perspective bearing in mind the rest of the Universe, doesn't cost that much. Virtually nothing. And the internet connection would be crap; say an Apple employee situated in an office on Mercury (there might be a colony, you know, so that he has his family nearby and doesn't get lonely - a bit like an RAF base) wants to send an email to an employee containing some very important files concerning something to do with work - say, software designs for a program you can plug in to your computer that harnesses the power of that moment of mild annoyance when you realise that a website's server cannot handle your request (a powerful, but underused, energy source) to generate electricity to power a little oven that makes you muffins to eat whilst surfing the net - but the distance from Earth to Mercury means that the data is corrupted along the way. Sweet mercy! The designs might be misinterpreted as designs for a mild annoyance-powered oven that doesn't make muffins, but giant man-eating croissants! The Mercury division of the Apple Corporation must be boycotted! A special boycotting agency must be created to combat this threat by cotting boys in every leading corporation! Space bases must be halted!
Also, I hear that Mercury is rather hot. You'll need some mighty fine air-conditioning in those offices. Even more money provided by your average working Joe through taxes. We'll all be poor! And then we won't be able to purchase top-of-the-line Apple products, which, as I said earlier, are better than Microsoft products (a fact that I seemed to deviate away from somewhat). What a terrible vicious circle of economy! Dear me!

Cheerio.

Let's have a go at reviewing a movie, shall we?

I think I should have a movie review up here every now and again.
So here goes. By the way, I won't swamp you with related showbiz gossip and mention other films that some of the actors have been in unless I can draw anything worthwhile from it.
Ahem.
Today, I went to see Iron Man.
I have to admit, it was a truly fantastic film. Now, I'm not one of those people that dedicate their lives to cramming their brains with facts and figures about a FICTIONAL comic book character, claim that they're said character's biggest fan, and then march outside a cinema in protest to a slight alteration to the character in the film adaptation. It's just not me, is all. Anyhow, even if I was, I don't think it would have mattered with this film. Although not an Iron Man fanatic, I do know a bit about the comic book Iron Man and as far as I can see, Jon Favreau (the director bloke) has done a pretty spiffy job keeping to the comic books. One reason may be that Iron Man looks cool no matter how he is portrayed, unlike many comic book heroes or villains (cough-green-goblin-cough) that look okay as a drawing but on the big screen just look downright silly. Iron Man didn't need changing. Tony Stark, the billionaire inventor that isn't anything like Bruce Wayne, didn't need changing. And so they didn't. And I must say that this film is, as far as comic book movies go, a masterpiece. These are my four favourite reasons that this film is great:

REASON ONE: Iron Man is a good comic to build a film around. The story is as engaging as any screenplay. Especially nowadays - they rather cleverly modernised the story by changing the terrorist capturers from a random bunch of arabs led by a bloke called Wong Chu to terrorists in Afghanistan (led by a bloke who may very well become 'The Mandarin', a villain from the comics, if the clues I picked up on serve me well), smartly linking the story to the recent conflicts, and there is a lot of potential for special effects.

REASON TWO: Robert Downey Jr. is perfectly cast as Tony Stark, as he is a lot like Tony Stark in real life. Downey Jr. went through a lot of trouble in the past, including cocaine abuse, but worked hard to get himself together and continue his acting career. Tony Stark matures as a person in this film, and Downey Jr. brings an extra level of believability to the role.

REASON THREE: The fantastic special effects. Seriously fantastic, visually. There is a bit where Iron Monger (the villain of the film, a bigger, badder version of Iron Man) runs through a lab, chasing Stark's secretary, 'Pepper' Potts. It is awesome. He is, like, ten feet tall, running at what must have been about seventy miles an hour, charging through the machinery of this lab, and the secretary only just escapes. It is a brilliant, scary moment in the film that really shows off how much money was put into this movie.

REASON FOUR: Samuel L. Jackson. Some of you may be going: 'So what?'. Sam Jackson plays Nick Fury, leader of the organisation called SHIELD. In the original comics, he was caucasian, with an eyepatch, a cigar and a crew cut. Then Marvel introduced the Ultimate version of the comics, revamped and modernised to prevent the comics becoming too old-fashioned. Nick Fury was changed to look like Samuel L. Jackson (with his full consent), still with the eyepatch. And then, at the end of Iron Man, after the credits, Sam Jackson himself steps out of the shadows as Nick Fury. It was inevitable - he was virtually being groomed for the role. But:

Nick Fury + Iron Man = Ever rising possibility of a movie based on the superhero team the Avengers.

Rumours of films based on Thor and Captain America (other members of the Avengers) are definitely around, so it looks likely.
So without sounding too much like a comic book nerd, I will just say that there may very well be a few cracking films out in the next few years that I wage with great anticipation.
Over and out.

Old men talking

By William Wivell (me)

My first internet cartoon!

Hello again

I feel like doing another poem.
So here goes.

My school routine is stupid. It's silly, daft and gay.
To catch my bus I have to wake at half five every day.
I do not mean the evening, as that would be just fine.
I mean the morning 'cos my bus comes at six thirty-nine.
I get my ticket every day for three pounds fifty pence;
You don't need to be good at maths to see that makes no sense.
And if all that is not enough to make me rather surly,
We're dumped at school (now this ain't cool) forty minutes early!
My sister's at another school; by eight thirty, alas,
She's catches her school bus. By then, I'm sitting down in class!
About two hours, each way, each day, I wish it was no more
Especially as I get home at roughly half past four!
Unfairly treated just because I live so far from town -
I somehow doubt that I'll get any help from Gordon Brown...