Half Life 2

Whooooaarrrr! With the banging, and the shooting, and the crowbar, and the flying buzzing things, and the baddies, and the monsters, and the crates, and water, and the suit, and the flashlight, andallofit!

I gave it a good few hours last night, took a little while to install because it told me to download newer graphics drivers, then it took about 25 minutes to decrypt itself. I had no idea what to do at the start. You kind of bumble along for a while, getting slapped around by bad tempered military type people, until you find a friend who kind of points you in the right direction.

The graphics are almost as good as Doom3, but this may simply because Half Life 2 is a much lighter game than the very dark Doom3, where you probably don't spot as many faults. Especially good is the game physics, most objects can be pushed around or picked up and thrown, and they rattle and bounce on the floor very convincingly. Even dead bodies that fall into water float and react in a way you'd expect a dead body to react.

Get it! *****

Religion

It's just wrong! How can each religion claim to be the 'one true religion'. How can every one of them claim to be right, and yet everyone else be wrong? Is it some sort of cosmic joke? Is some superbeing somewhere playing a massive trick on everyone, popping up as one god here, and one diety there? That's not very logical is it? Oh, hang on, the religionists would simply say "God moves in mysterious ways" or "We're not meant to understand". What a load of crap! Superbeing X seems to send some very specific instructions down to various "messengers", but if you take all these messages together, they're riddled with inconsistencies!

No, if you look logically at the whole tangled problem, it makes more sense if none of these crazy religions are right. What we can postulate is, that if Superbeing X does exist, then it seems that all it did was to press the 'Big Bang Button', and then sodded off for the last 13.8 billion years for a nice cup of Supertea.

Celeb Spotting

That bird from The Office (Brent's mate's daughter) and more recently Green Wing, spotted in boots at Picadilly Circus. A quick search on IMDB shows her as Sally Bretton (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0107988/)

Paul Gambacini (who?), radio DJ and music oracle (apparrently), spotted getting onto our train at Marylebone underground station, Bakerloo line.

Anthony Daniels; C3PO himself spotted at HMV Leicester Square, obviously finding it difficult to get work as the only Star Wars actor willing to sign the new Star Wars DVDs for people dressed as Jedis on a Sunday night! I have photographic evidence of seeing Mr Daniels.

Paul Merton spotted just over the road from where we saw C3PO, getting into a people carrier.

Celeb ratings:
**

Excitedness:
***

Hilton Hotels

One shot of vodka from your minibar? That'll be five pounds please!

Care to dial an 0800 number (that's "freephone" folks)? One pound fifty thank you very much!

Hello, room service? Yes, I'll have a tuna sandwich please. What, that comes with a baby's handfull of crisps too? Great! Please charge me eight pounds fifty for what I'm sure won't be a very bland snack!

Just three things I didn't do, and therefore didn't get charged for during my recent stay at the Hilton Metropole in London. I also didn't use the Playstation in my room (that would be a fiver a day... for a PSOne). What I did do though was treat myself to a couple of beefburgers obviously from a packet (frozen) for about thirteen quid. I was hungry and it was late, but you'd expect that at the very least the burgers would be homemade! (**)

Anyway, it wasn't all bad news; in fact mostly it was very good. One quick mention that it was our wedding anniversary and my wife & I were upgraded for free to an executive room with free newspapers. The health club located just a few floors downstairs was a good start to the morning (also included) and breakfast was surprisingly good for a hotel (I got my money's worth!).

Four stars from me to compliment the four from the RAC, or the AA, whoever dishes them out these days. To sum up: very clean, nice room (but the bed was a bit hard), very helpful and polite staff, but eveything not included is a blatant rip-off.

****

Collateral (Film)

2004 - Dir: Michael Mann

Mild mannered dreamer and cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx) picks up the fare from hell in Tom Cruise's "real estate" broker Vincent one night in LA. Of course, Vincent is no real estate broker, but a cool hitman with five stops to make. Poor Max, the guy with the cleanest taxi in existence soon ends up regretting the fare when the first hit goes wrong and ends up crashing onto his cab from a fourth storey window. Immediately Vincent is forced to reveal his true identity and to change the game plan.

This is a superb thriller, often very funny but puctuated with enough sharp bursts of violence to bring you back down to earth. Cruise plays the bad guy so well in this you often actually find yourself routing for him to successfully carry out the hit. His fourth, in a packed Japanese nightclub is excellent, edge-of-the-seat stuff, seeing Vincent stalking his prey while the feds try and protect him, the rogue cop trying to find Max, and the Mexican "real" bad guys along for the ride.

It's the cop/feds subplot that I had a small problem with, though - sometimes you get the niggling feeling that they were only there to set-up the nightclub shootout and to provide some exposition. However it's only a minor quibble.

Beautifully shot on digital cameras, deliberately set up to make the most of LA's garish street lighing, Collateral features some great performances, particularly the leads (Foxx, whose prior work I'm not familiar with, was very good indeed) and supporting players Jada Pinket-Smith & Mark Ruffalo.

****+

No Doubt - Greatest Hits (Music - Album)

Bought for me on a bit of a whim by my wife after I drunkenly declared "Hella Good" to be one of the best records I'd heard in a long time, it took me some time to get into this record. But I'm glad I persevered; of the sixteen tracks on this album, I love half, like most of the others and don't hate any.

Real-life Barbie Gwen Stafani and her band have carved out a varied career reflected in the styles throughout - rock, pop dominating the earlier tracks, and reggae popping up in the more recent songs.

Not being a big fan of reggae, there are a couple of tracks (like the overplayed "Hey Baby") that grate a little but the majority are solid singalongs including "Ex Girlfriend", "New", the excellent cover of Talk Talk's "It's My Life", the sublime "Running" and the aforementioned techno-rock "Hella Good."

Granted, not for everyone, but I like it!

****

3 Of A Kind - Baby Cakes (Music - single)

My ears! Oh my God, my ears! Three minutes of my life cruelly stolen from me. This is the worst fucking record I have ever, ever heard in my life. Three of a Kind should be forced to skin themselves with rusty pencil-sharpener blades while I slowly grind sea salt over their sorry asses. A travesty!

(No stars)

iRobot (Film)

iRobot takes elements of Blade Runner, combines them with the look and feel of Minority Report and serves them up in one of the best (recent) films of its genre. Will Smith seems to have finally brushed off his Fresh Prince persona (aside from two slightly daft 'comedy' moments), and is turning in to a more convincing action hero. Impressive special effects are used to advance the plot, rather than as the main thrust of the film. And you WILL want the 2135 version of the Audi TT. What is slightly disappointing is the unsatisfying conclusion, and, if you're in that frame of mind, there are some unavoidable plot holes and sections that jarr against logic. Not just standard popcorn movie stuff, but a good looking film with some nice twists. Worth a look

****

Review submitted by Cookiemonster

Babylon 5 - series 3 DVD boxed set

I am not ashamed to admit that I am an A1 sci-fi nerd. Girls may find an uncontrolable urge to point and laugh at me from this point on. I can take it. I'm a big boy* now.

B5 series 3 is without doubt the best of the 5 series run, as most of the plot lines set up over the first two series really weave together to form a coherent force that carefully shepherds the main characters like the paddles and springs inside a pinball machine.

As I recall series 4 was still pretty good, but only in the light of series 3. Roll on the next boxed set!

*fnar

WAR

...it's fantastic!

Chocolate HobNobs

You know, I used to think that there were too many nuts in HobNobs, but evidently, my tastes have changed since I first tried them, because as I type, they're going down a treat! They're really scrummy, and go very well with a nice mug of splosh. Unfortunately, this is the last one.

One is not enough. I want more.

****