Dog Soldiers, Dexter and Family Guy

There aren't many recent horror movies about werewolves as far as I'm aware. Actually after checking the wonderfully unnecessary werewolf movies database there's been quite a few. Including this frankly fantastic description for Big Fish "An estranged son recalls his dying fathers life through the fairytale stories he told when he was a child. Excellent movie, but only a brief werewolf segment.". Anyway, Sean Pertwee is in this film so as you can expect a lot of death is going to happen, including his own. I'm not spoiling the plot, merely pointing out that Sean Pertwee never survives a whole film, he probably gets it written into his contract before every role. As far as British horror movies go this a good one, when it came out people talked about it revitalizing a dead genre, blah blah and all that. Watching it now the werewolves look pretty bad, it's either a guy in a suit or a puppet. But the film still brings up a few twists, turns and shocks along the way. It deserves the four moons it got on werewolf database.

I also managed to catch the first episode of season 4 of Dexter. Why, I'm not sure though. I spend so much time moaning about the show's flaws yet I still return like a victim of domestic abuse. I just can't walk away from it. It opens like every Dexter season opens, a miss-leading little segment about him supposedly getting ready to kill when he's not. Haw haw. That I don't mind though, what really pissed me off about the new season is two things. Firstly they've brought back Dokes, only channelled him through that buffoon Quinn who looks like he should be in The Fast And The Furious (he hasn't, been a load of shit films though). Not only that but they've taken unnecessary romance to a new high with the fat goatee'd detective and the female boss getting it on. That's not even mentioning the love triangle growing with his sister. But all these detractions aside, the new story angle so far is that "the greatest never caught serial killer" is in town and Dexter is really tired. Which actually makes for interesting viewing. I'm willing to stick with it for another season, but my word if they give the Vince guy a love interest as well I'm out. That would be a step too far.

Family Guy used to be the height of hilarity for me, but it's kind of meandered off into it's own rectum of late. Especially when South Park has actually been putting out the kind of episodes that are pretty much the closest thing to satirical perfection. So I watched the season premiere or whatever just because for 20 minutes of your life you can do a whole lot worse. King Of The Hill for example, that show is just terrible. Anyway, its another Stewie and Brian adventure. Which would have been a terrible thing back in the day but they're probably the two best characters in it these days. As you can tell my prose here is beginning to be a bit meandering but that's the general feel of the show, its not quite what it was but its still entertaining. I pretty much summed it up with there are a lot worse things to do with 20 minutes of your life, but when South Park is back they'll also be a lot better.

Max Payne, FlashForward and How Not To Live Your Life

Video games are pretty much my passion. They were a guilty pleasure but with an increase in spare time there's been more than a little increase in gaming. One of the first things I check in the morning is Eurogamer (which is great by the way) so I think that says it all. Due to this I always get a mixture of excitement and dread when a video game adaptation is announced. Max Payne was one I'd been waiting for since it was first rumoured to be knocking around, which was when the games first came out. Which was around what 8 or 9 years ago? The thing is though, the games were heavily cinematic themselves so a film was somewhat redundant already, a comic book of the cut-scenes may have served better as fan service. Although what the film definitely wasn't was fan service, it was more a boiled down version of the basic clichés which lay within the game. The drug was definitely a missed opportunity, bringing in some random Norse mythology nonsense from Too Human and ripping off the visuals of Constantine. The Sin City style was quite nice to look at, but the rest of the film fell by the wayside really and overall doesn't do justice to what is one of the best third person shooters there ever was.

FlashForward (I'm not sure how we're "supposed to be" spelling it, you know they always get funny about that stuff) is from the same stable as Lost. Not sure if it's by the same people but they're certainly leaping onto that bandwagon with this. Only a few years late, but you know whatever. A strange cast is assembled for it, Joseph "Not Ralph" Fiennes, Harold (No Kumar in sight), Steve from Coupling and Peter Griffin. Yeah that's right, Peter Griffin a.k.a. Seth Macfarlane is in it. I know that's weird isn't it. He isn't just a disembodied voice and a loose hand for drawing the cartoons. He's a person too. No wonder Family Guy got shit, he's off gallivanting in epic TV now. Anyway, something about people seeing the future all at the same time then everyone trying to work out what it means. It's a nice plot idea because you can explain it to someone in around 45 seconds unlike other shows of this kind. It's got all the hall marks of absorbing telly, random animals, glassy-eyed stares, everyone has a cut on their face at some point. Still, early days and if Five's on demand service is as shockingly slow at buffering as it was today I may just give up and try and Derren Browning the lottery numbers for my predictive fix.

Finally, How Not To Live Your Life is a little sitcom on BBC Three. Unlike most BBC Three sitcoms I actually feel like living is worth it after watching an episode. It's basically about Don who lives in his dead grandma's house with the butler and an attractive female housemate. Then stuff happens generally involving Don being an idiot. It's pretty standard fair is what I'm saying really, but it's easy viewing. Few laughs in each episode, and the "4 things Don shouldn't do now" device is a real winner for me and brings a bit of surrealism to an otherwise standard affair. Worth watching as it is on BBC iplayer all the time and repeated on BBC Three around every two hours as well.