Sharing is Caring.

Since I started using Twitter my time spent on Facebook naturally decreased but recently I’ve all but stopped using Zuckerberg’s networking behemoth entirely. It got me thinking about why I’d stopped using it and the more I thought about it the more obvious the answers were. I don’t think it’s one specific reason but a collection of several…

There’s the the new Timeline feature which is a bit of a pain but I don’t think that’s the reason. When I first got it imposed on me I didn’t know what to do with it, but in time I figured it out and I don’t actually mind it that much. However the timeline does ruin the pages (or likes) feature as I’ve seen working in small businesses trying to build up their social network presence. It is abysmal for them and I’m still surprised it hasn’t been modified yet…

I think what annoys me the most about Facebook from an individual standpoint is the endless obsession with sharing everything. I mean, don’t get me wrong, sharing is great and all but I am getting a little fed up with being encouraged to do so all the time by Facebook. Tell us where you are! Update your status! Tell the world what you bought off Amazon! It’s all a bit bizarre…

Bird Watching.

Wimbledon has been and gone this year and I’m missing it already. Every time it comes around I get more than a little addicted to it and pretty much watch every available match when I can.

I do like tennis and would watch it a lot more if it was on terrestrial tele more. Maybe that’s why I get so excited when Wimbledon’s on because I’ve been starved of tennis for a whole year thanks to Sky having bought all the other tournaments like greedy little kids who come to birthday party buffets with Tupperware boxes.

Anyone for Tennis? - Mario Tennis Open Review.

Mario has certainly been in his fair share of sports game throughout his illustrious career. He’s had a stab at football, golf, tennis, volleyball, and hockey to name a few; he’s even an Olympian these days! Of all Mario’s sporting efforts though, the Mario Tennis franchise has been one of the most popular over the years and now 3DS owners will have the chance to take to the court with Mario Tennis Open.

It all began twelve years ago when Camelot released Mario Tennis on the N64, one of the best games on the console and my personal favourite tennis sim of all time! Okay, so Mario Tennis isn’t the most realistic tennis sim out there but I find it to be the most enjoyable! It’s essentially a simplified version of the sport with tonnes of action, loads of vibrancy, and the Mario Brothers instead of the Williams sisters. However saying that realism is definitely needed in some degree or the game simply doesn’t work. Just look at the below-bar Gamecube effort Mario Power Tennis where ‘power moves’ were added allowing the player to make an unreturnable shot once they'd built up enough power. The only way to return one of these shots was to have a power shot at your disposal too; you can probably see why this stopped the game from being a success.

Moving the line with the goalposts.

Unsurprisingly the goal-line technology debate has opened up again during Euro 2012 and what a surprise, it involves England!

This time however England actually benefitted from the incorrect refereeing decision during their group match against Ukraine. With England 1-0 up Ukraine were giving everything they had to grab themselves an equalising lifeline to stay in the tournament they’re co-hosting. In the 62^nd minute they thought they’d got it when Marko Devic’s shot looped in to the goal but was scooped out by John Terry on the line.

When it first happened on live TV I thought it was definitely over the line but then I started doubting myself as there is a man with a Wii remote stood a few feet away to make a decision. Surely he’d get it right, it’s his only actual job for the evening but no, it turns out a quick video replay proved he was indeed wrong not to give Ukraine a goal as the ball had clearly crossed the line.

Bad Boycotting Behaviour.

This afternoon I was procrastinating on Twitter when I saw that someone had retweeted a tweet from The Sun about how overweight people could consume the Earth’s supply of food rendering us all to wallow in what they dubbed an ‘armaglutton’.

Pretty standard stuff from The Sun and the word armaglutton is pretty funny so why not retweet it, you’re well within your rights as a free citizen to do so.

This person did just that and was quickly told off by someone for retweeting the ‘vile’ newspaper that is The Sun asking them in no uncertain terms what was wrong with them. You may have already guessed but this person was indeed a Liverpool fan…

Take. My. Money. - Nintendo E3 Conference 2012.

So with the other two big hitters having done their conferences, it was left to Nintendo to close up with theirs and they did it a little differently this year. Instead of having one big conference they used other means to tell us all what they’re doing over the next year. First of all before the conference itself they did a Nintendo Direct to reveal a few things with the gamepad being the main news, then they had the conference itself where they focussed entirely on the Wii U and its games, and then they finished off with a 3DS showcase, showing off several upcoming 3DS games.

Compared to their big rivals, Nintendo’s conference was much more modest and humble. Whereas Sony had a ridiculous arena full of people, Nintendo used a much smaller venue to set the stage for the Wii U. This played out pretty well for Nintendo as it felt a lot more homely and it allowed Reggie Fils-Aime to do what he does best.

There's life in the old PS3 yet - Sony E3 Conference 2012.

After Microsoft had had their say Sony were able to respond quickly having their conference only a few hours later. Was it any better? Well yes, miles better.

Sony’s conference was a far cry from last year’s effort where they spent forever talking about how 3D was going to revolutionise the way we play games. This year there was no mention of 3D and there was an actual focus on games.

Whereas Microsoft kicked off with their ace of spades Sony trickled them out bit by bit and had a much more balanced conference to show for it. After the typical long-winded montage opener we’ve all come to expect from Sony, Jack Tretton emerged onto the stage to give his spiel about how Sony loves the fans and how great they both are together. Seriously, he was either trying to get laid or attempting to farm more money from them, probably the latter in fairness.

Everything is better with Kinect, right? - Microsoft E3 Conference 2012.

Microsoft were the first major company to take centre stage at E3 this year and many were looking forward to what they were going to show. Rumours were flying here, there and everywhere of a new console, the fabled 720, but rather disappointingly this was not to be.

Instead it started pretty much from where they left off at last year’s E3 with Mr Green Helmet Man and his everlasting adventures in space. Yes, it’s Halo 4 and to be fair it looked pretty good! We were treated to an over-the-top trailer that Halo’s getting a reputation for and then a small playthrough of an early level which featured a lot of cinematics and a new feature that sees Chief using his visor to scan objects in a way that has echoes of the Metroid Prime series.

The Highs and Lows of E3 2012.

Last week the games industry came together once again for the annual E3 conference in Los Angeles. It’s the time of year when all gamers get excited and glue themselves to live streams of conference after conference hoping to get a good look at some of the games developers have to offer.

Overall it was a decent expo; some developers did well, others less so. There were plenty of highlights to be found and of course inevitable lowlights… All in all there was something for everyone.

If you like shooters for example you should probably check out EA’s conference as that’s pretty much all they’re bringing out in the coming year with Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Battlefield 3 DLC (no idea why this was shown), Crysis 3 and Dead Space 3 all being shown off. For those who don’t like shooters there’s always SPORTS! Sigh.

Lovilee Jubilee.

This weekend saw Great Britain celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee; 60 years passively ruling over her loyal subjects. The celebrations featured a Jubilee Pageant down the river Thames, a concert organised by (the no doubt soon to be honoured) Gary Barlow, and several other events including a Jubilee thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral.

The Jubilee concert was probably the highlight for most people, seeing as the pageant was like watching an episode of The One Show – a wet one at that. The concert featured such big names as Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Tom Jones, Jessie J, Alfie Boe, Madness and… Cheryl Cole.

City are champions, but at what cost?

The football season ended not so long ago in what was probably the most dramatic finish ever witnessed by man. As a whole this Premier League season has probably been the most bizarre one yet with more twists and turns than a day at Alton Towers.

It started off with Manchester United thoroughly thrashing everyone including the hapless Arsenal before losing steam completely, getting knocked out of the Champions League, getting knocked out of the Europa League, fumbling their way to a massive 8 point lead before finally throwing it all away and handing their big rivals City the title.

Yep, Manchester City are Premier League champions for the first time in 44 years. Do they deserve it? Well of course they do, they finished top of the league thanks to goal difference and so they deserved to be crowned champions. Though they had blips of their own this season, knocked out of both European competitions and several stumbles in the Premier League, they were the better side overall and did do the double over United.

Football: a window into the bowels of society.

Football can be a horrible realm at times and although it is just a game it can sometimes act as a window into society. This season alone we’ve seen that racism is far from being eradicated with the treatment of Patrice Evra by a fellow professional and that being of high status will result in preferential treatment by the criminal justice system.

If nothing else, these events that occur within football show that certain things are seen as unacceptable by society. For example Luis Suarez was wholeheartedly condemned by every corner of the footballing universe and beyond (with the exception of Anfield) for abusing Evra and when university student Liam Stacey made unpleasant remarks about Fabrice Muamba during and after his horrible heart attack playing for Bolton in the FA Cup he wasn’t only condemned, he was thrown behind bars for 56 days.

Keeping in Touch.

It’s local election time again on Thursday so it isn’t much of a surprise to see those familiar red, blue and yellow coloured leaflets popping through letterboxes across the country, each one attempting to persuade us all to vote for so-and-so in any way possible.

My local area has predominantly been Liberal Democrat territory for many a year both in both local and national level. Andrew Stunell has been the local MP for 15 years now and they’ve controlled the local council for a very long while with my councillor in particular being a Lib Dem too. His name is Dave Goddard and he’s the leader of Stockport Council.

Now, I’ve voted Lib Dem at every single local election in the past but on Thursday my cross will not be going into Goddard’s box. Not because the Lib Dems voted in favour of the student fee increase, though that would usually be a good enough reason, but because the communications representing his campaign are disgusting.

You Wouldn't Kick a Kitten.

The Grand National was today and I noticed that the BBC broadcasted it under BBC Sport. That’d be nice and all if it was actually a sport! Horse-racing just isn’t a sport, why do so many people pretend that it is?

All horse-racing exists for is to generate cash by allowing people to bet on which horse they think will win. For this reason horse-racing is here to stay because money is far more important than the welfare of humans never mind animals.

Just because people bet on it does not constitute it as a sport. I’ve already written about this in the past and summed up my argument with this paragraph:

“The fact is, if the government put a blanket ban on betting on all sports, horse-riding would die overnight. Football wouldn’t. Rugby wouldn’t. Nor would any other real sport. Horse-riding exists for one purpose, betting on it. Have you been in a betting shop recently? It’s depressing. All you find is a tatty old man clutching the Racing Post looking desperately at a television as his horse tumbles over and takes a bullet right between the eyes. His life’s become so desolate you feel it’s him that deserves the bullet. Put the poor guy out of his misery.”

Again: NOT A SPORT.

A Game of Two Books.

I’ve noticed recently that a lot of football clubs have had their appeals turned down by the FA. Liverpool’s Alexander Doni had his wrongful dismissal claim turned down yesterday and QPR’s Shaun Derry lost his appeal earlier in the week for his red card against Manchester United where he fouled an offside and diving Ashley Young. If you can’t get let off for that, when can you?

This has made me wonder: why are clubs still bothering with appeals?

Seriously, I can’t actually remember the last time the FA overturned a decision. The ratio must be close to 500/1.

Seventh Heaven? - Mario Kart 7 Review.

Though the 3DS was critically acclaimed upon its birth into the marketplace back in 2011, it had a very slow start with pretty underwhelming sales. This was largely due to the relatively high price tag and the poor catalogue of games that were on offer at launch.

Nintendo rectified this by firstly lowering the price making it more affordable for their customers to actually buy one, and then they boosted the catalogue before Christmas by adding Ocarina of Time, a remake of the N64 classic; Super Mario 3D Land, a brand new Mario Land; and the big one: Mario Kart 7.

Mario Kart has always been a huge staple for Nintendo, appearing on every single console since its genesis on the SNES. In terms of gameplay it’s as simple as you’ll find – Mario characters racing about in go karts, but this simple formula is so unique to Nintendo that many have tried to replicate it, and all have failed. In terms of racing games, this is as good as it gets; you can keep your realistic F1 games – all I want to do is toss a barrage of red shells at the leader and steal first place!

Game Over? Not yet.

Video game retailer, Game Group, finally went into administration in March and the outlook looked pretty gloomy to say the least. A massive 609 shops across Britain and Ireland were sadly closed down with over 2,000 employees made redundant in one fell swoop. Time was ticking down ominously as Game prayed someone out there would stick another pound in and press continue.

And at the very last second someone did! Yes it was OpCapita, the private investment firm that pulled Comet from the mire not so long ago, who threw down a quid and took on the company. I was a little surprised that GameStop didn’t make the purchase as that’s what I thought they would do when they withdrew from the UK market last year; leave, wait for Game to drop into administration, buy them and have instant access to the UK market. But instead it was OpCapita who, like an extra life, swung in and dragged them from the jaws of hell.

Viva España.

What a crazy season of European football it’s been. We’re now in mid-March and England has just one representative in all European competitions – Chelsea, and they’re going through a bit of a crisis themselves!

The worst thing about that sad little fact is that only Arsenal and Chelsea were actually in the last 16 of the Champions League. The other two, Manchester United and Manchester City, couldn’t even get that far, finding themselves in the same European competition inhabited by Birmingham City, Celtic and Malmö (no, I don’t know where that is either).

Top 5 Worst Movie Deaths of 2011.

Okay, I couldn’t let 2011 go by without doing a little list reminding us all of some of the worst deaths over the past year. I’ve listed my personal top 5 worst deaths of 2011, all of them are for different reasons but all are terrible, terrible deaths! 

Undead's do not count, so you won't find any nomination from the Twilight movie I'm afraid. Much as I wish it would just die...

WBMs of 2011.

Last year produced many good movies, but there was also more than one or two bad ones. Those movies you see the trailer for and wonder how they got the money together to make such rubbish. Now, unless I’m being paid, I’m just not going to watch movies that look like tripe and I will go out of my way to avoid them. I don’t care if im seeing them for free, I’m wasting my valuable time so I’ll stay well away when I can. These movies I have, rather lovingly, dubbed WBMs. Wide Berth Movies.

So here’s my list, in no particular order, of 2011’s WBMs...

Top 7 Animated Movies of 2011.

It was a reasonably decent year for animated movies in 2011. It was quite unique in that Pixar’s yearly offering, Cars 2, was pretty poor. This meant other animated movies had to pick up the slack and they all did a decent job in doing so. I saw 7 animated movies this year, obviously not enough to do a top 10, so here are my top 7 animated movies of the year…

Top 10 Movies of 2011.

In terms of movies, 2011 turned out to be a pretty good year and seeing as it’s the done thing on the internet to rank things in order of preference, here are my top 10 movies of 2011. Keep in mind that the movies I’ve included were all released in the UK during 2011, so if you see a movie that was out in 2010 in America or elsewhere don’t be a whiney little gremlin; likewise if you see a movie hasn’t been included it’s likely that it came out in 2012 in the UK (War Horse for example).

I’ve pretty much gone off which films I enjoyed the most rather than analysing them a little too much. Put simply, these are the 10 movies I enjoyed the most in 2011. So, without further ado here is the top 10…

An Expensive Mistake.

Fabio Capello has resigned as England manager, a whole 592 days late.

Yes, it was 592 days ago when England were knocked out of the World Cup in South Africa by the Germans in what was a wholly embarrassing experience for the England team. Capello should have gone then, but he lingered on, until now.

It’s been a very forgettable reign for the Italian when you actually look at it. He was appointed manager way back in December 2007 holding the position for just over three years. In that time England have progressed from being a bland, under-achieving international football team to being a bland and even more under-achieving international football team.

Holmes versus Moriarty. Heads versus Tails.

Sherlock Holmes has been all the rage in recent years. There’s been the outstanding modern adaptation done by the BBC and there’s also been the big-budget outings on the big screen.

The 2009 Sherlock Holmes movie was directed by Guy Ritchie. It was actually a really good film, Guy Ritchie’s best by far! It starred Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock and Jude Law as Dr Watson. Even though Downey Jr is an American, this isn’t an issue as he captures the pompous British accent that’s perfect for the Sherlock character quite brilliantly.

Well now Guy Ritchie has returned with the second instalment Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and it’s even better than the first.

Impossible Missions of the Fourth Kind.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Tom Cruise on the big screen. It was Valkyrie back in 2008 when I last saw him (I refuse to acknowledge Knight and Day) and he was actually pretty good in that, so I was fairly excited to see his latest action movie: Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol.

Now, I have to admit, I’m not really big on the Mission Impossible movies. They’re kind of the third place action movies behind the Bond and Bourne flicks. And let’s face it there aren’t a whole lot of movie franchises that have produced a fourth instalment that isn’t worse than watching paint dry on the inside of your eyelids. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for example, that was fun.

The Cat in the Hat (and Boots).

The Shrek series is one that Dreamworks have enjoyed milking over the years. Since Shrek 2 though, the franchise hasn’t really improved at all, in fact the quality has dropped. They had babies, which means inevitable baby jokes. Sigh.

So perhaps a spin-off movie starring one of the more popular characters would help give the franchise a much-needed boost. Up steps Puss in Boots.

Did it succeed in breathing a bit of life into the series? Well, yes, but only a little.

Puss in Boots is a good character, and he represents pretty much the only draw in this movie; the other characters don’t have the same care and attention put into them that Puss has had. Though attempting to pull off a movie like this with one character alone is difficult, Puss in Boots manages to pull it off reasonably successfully.

A story about storytelling.

The Oscar nominations came out recently and some were surprised to see that it was in fact Hugo that received the most nominations with 11 including best picture and best director. But considering just how good a film it is, I’m not surprised one bit.

Perhaps it’s less surprising when you learn Hugo’s director is none other than Martin Scorsese, who decided that with this film he would have a go at filming in 3D.

Now, I didn’t watch it in 3D, mainly because I don’t like it, but even in 2D you could tell that Hugo used 3D pretty well. It was depth 3D, not just the “oh it’s coming right at me” 3D that’s used by every other 3D movie apart from maybe Avatar.

Computer animated play-doh.

As far as Christmas movies go, it’s fair to say the old ones are the best ones. For all the versions of A Christmas Carol we’ve had, it’s always Alistair Simm’s Scrooge that comes out on top; It’s a Wonderful Life continues to be watched year in year out by many; and not a December goes by without Home Alone being aired on TV.

That’s not to say that there hasn’t been any more recent Christmas movies that have been good, but for all the Christmas movies that get made every year, few are any good. I think Elf, starring Will Ferrell is the last really good Christmas movie that’s been released, and that was back in 2003.

Well deck the halls and jingle my bells the wait is finally over as someone has actually done another great Christmas movie. That movie is Arthur Christmas.

Beware the Ides of March.

American politics is corrupt, conniving, power-craving, misogynistic and undemocratic world. But one thing you certainly can’t call it is boring.

Hence why most of the political stories across the ages have been set in the land of the free, whether they be fact or fiction. The latest offering to the fictional pile is The Ides of March, a film that stars its own writer and director, George Clooney. 

I don’t really know why the film has such an important meaning for the 15th March but it does, maybe that’s election day or something. My best guess is that it’s making reference to the fall of Julies Caesar, but who knows maybe the DVD release date will be on 15th March.

Steven Spielberg and the motion captured quiff.

Ladies and Gentlemen it’s been a while but Steven Spielberg is finally back on form.

Yes after directing turkeys like War of the Worlds, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull and producing turds like the Transformers movies, Spielberg has finally lived up to at least some of his reputation with his latest movie: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.

Obviously based on the comic strips by the Belgian artist Georges Remi (Hergé), Tintin is done quite proud here in this movie. It’s fun, energetic, suspenseful, and thoroughly entertaining stuff! And yes that is a colon you see in the film title. Inevitable sequels ahoy!

Johnny English: Licensed to annoy continuously.

Rowan Atkinson was back on the big screen in 2011 with a sequel to the bungling spy flick Johnny English and as much as I love him, Johnny English: Reborn is below average at best.

Sure, the first movie was okay, but it wasn’t anything that really blew you away. The whole bungling spy thing has been done several times, take The Naked Gun for example. Johnny English never really added anything to the genre, it just existed within it.

The whole premise is essentially: what if James Bond was an idiot? And the filmmakers pretty much ran with that for the first movie. For the second they do very much the same thing. 

Smashy Robot UFC. To a T.

2011 was a year which featured a couple of movies that showed off large over-compensating robots beating the living hell out of one another. One was the boring conclusion to the Transformers trilogy: Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon and the other was Real Steel.

Real Steel stars Hugh Jackman as a down-and-out former boxer who now pits his fighting robots against other mechanical wizzbots. Think of it as Wolverine but with giant robots… that aren’t Sentinals.

Israeli Debt Collectors.

With the Summer blockbuster season over and done with, October started to throw out a few smarter movies onto the screens.

One of those movies was The Debt directed by John Madden (no, not that John Madden). Set in a post-war Berlin, three Israeli agents set out to bring justice to their people by capturing Doktor Bernhardt, the Butcher of Birkenau. The mission is an apparent success but decades later it becomes apparent that the agents lied about the death of Bernhardt, failing to admit he’d gotten away. 

Cage Rage.

Mark Wahlberg’s The Fighter made a large impact on the movie scene earlier this year, so it probably isn’t too much of a surprise to see another fight movie pop up towards the end of it.

Starring the ever impressive Tom Hardy, Warrior is like the brutal step-brother of The Fighter, grappling and pummelling its way to our affection.

Is it as good as The Fighter? Well, no. But it’s a good effort all the same.

Lapin and Me.

Last week one of my best friends, Emily Brown, passed away leaving such a gaping hole in so many people’s lives, including my own.

The only reason any of my written work exists is because of the encouragement of friends, and Emily was one of the biggest encouragers I had. She was such a special person in my life who always believed in me, but tragically not always in herself.

Emily was such an inspiration to me. Though every word I’ve written since we met is my own, her influence weaves through every consonant and every vowel, crossing every t and dotting every i. She used to think my ranting and complaining was hilarious to the point where I should write things down. This is how my blog began; 131 posts later and here we are.

The silly little illustrations attached to the majority of my articles are inspired directly by her also. We used to draw silly little cartoons together quite a lot, making up dumb characters or little comic strips. Before I left for the UK she gave me a massive hand-drawn picture filled with all her little drawings of the pair of us as rabbits. It is one of my most prized possessions along with everything else she made me.