M. Night Shyamalan's Exciting New... Ah, who cares....

 M. Night Shyamalan, a man whose name already has a ridiculous ending (and, indeed, beginning-and-middle) has made a career out of films with ridiculous endings.
 The public fell out of love with M. Night pretty swiftly after his universally adored early effort, "The Sixth Sense." Sure, with ten years of hindsight under our belts, that movie didn't make any god damned sense whatsoever, but we all enjoyed it at the time, and some corners of the nerdiverse think "Unbreakable" was actually an excellent take on the comic book movie.
 But then came "Signs," in which Mel "Are you a Jew?" Gibson and Joaquin "No, but I am fucking mental" Phoenix battled an alien race so advanced that they had mastered interstellar travel by locking them in cupboards and sprinkling them with tap water.
 At one point, Joaquin takes on the alien invaders with a baseball bat, a weapon that's fairly outdated by human standards,  but in the face of super-advanced alien beings should really be the equivalent of bringing your gynaecologist to an Uzi fight.
 That film, despite being an early indicator that Mel Gibson was keen on being disliked by as many people as possible, was a masterpiece compared to "The Village" (shocking twist: the ending really was as stupid as people said) and "The Lady In The Water," a film nobody knows anything about because the target audience for stories about water-nymphs and twig monsters bothering a janitor is smaller than the number of people who can correctly spell "Shyamalan."
 Then there was "The Happening," in which Mark Wahlberg talked to the trees, but they don't listen to him. 
 Probably because he's kind of a dick. Still, terrible movie.
 After "The Last Airbender" got the kind of rage-fucking from the geek community that's normally reserved for characters named "Binks", everyone assumed that the fat lady was singing for Shyamalan. Probably a fat lady who turned out to be a man in drag who was really the ghost of a tree, or something, but still, nobody was ever going to give him any responsibility again, right?!
 Assuming you're new to rhetorical questions, the answer is that M. Night is directing Will Smith's new movie, "After Earth," due in cinemas this summer.
 Aside from having a title that sounds far too close to "afterbirth" for comfort, the movie sees Big Willie playing Colonel Cypher Raige, which actually manages to be a more laughable moniker than "Big Willie." I'd actually probably take a character more seriously if he was named Big Willie Cockhard, because it's somehow less ridiculous than the "eight-year-old's-idea-of-badass" name we've ended up with.
 Arriving on the long-abandoned wilderness planet called Earth, Colonel Cypher Raige must bond with his son (played by Jaden Smith) and fight CGI monsters and all that jazz.
 The tagline's awful, too. "Danger is real. Fear is a choice."  I'm not expecting a degree in neuroscience from anyone who writes movie taglines for a living, but a basic understanding of fear would be beneficial before you start spouting off on the subject. As a good rule of thumb, the people who say "I've decided not to be afraid" are the ones who are a) afraid and b) about to make a large number of poor decisions, normally resulting in the rest of us having to clean what's left of them up with a mop.
 All of this is, of course, immaterial. Laughable character names, hackneyed plotting and awful taglines are just the preamble to what we're all waiting for: the poorly thought out ending twist that marks all Shyamalan movies.
 So, without further ado, here are my favourite ideas so far:

1. There are actually some humans left and the movie ends with a gladiatorial showdown between Jaden Smith and a native warrior, played by Ralph Macchio.

2. After causing trouble on the derelict earth, Will Smith is sent to live with his auntie and uncle in Bel Air.

3. The alien creatures on earth destroy the human mother ship using Jeff Goldblum's apple mac.

4. Jaden Smith is recounting the entire movie to an overly-credulous Chazz Palminteri.

5. "Rosebud."

6. The entire story takes place in distant pre-history. This has the added bonus twist ending of seeing Shyamalan sued by the Battlestar Galactica people.

7. Will Smith is a ghost/robot/ghost of a robot: Cypher Raige is in fact dead, and has had himself made into a computer program or similar so that he can guide his son, Obi Wan style.

8. Holy shit, Wordpress actually understands what "Obi Wan" means without questioning the spelling. This isn't related to the movie, but is more surprising and impressive than the last few "twist" movies released.

9. All of the above - especially the Wordpress thing.

10. In the most ambitious, shocking deceit in movie history, this film actually turns out not to suck.

...Nah, that last one would just be silly...

Everything is Everything...

 I know there haven't been many updates to the blog recently, and, labouring as I am under the misconception that anybody cares, I'll try to explain why.
 Deciding that my glamorous lifestyle of drudgery and penniless scrounging was getting a little stale, I've been attempting to get paid to write, rather than just casting my thoughts into the void as I do around here.
 As such, I've been sporadically published on www.sickchirpse.com in recent weeks.
 I've written a lot more than has actually made it through, and I haven't mentioned it or advertised the site on this blog because, in all honesty, the site isn't that great.
 It's so-far unpaid (they're looking to move to a paid business model later in the year and hire some of their writers properly, hence me trying to get a foot in the door) but there's no editorial direction whatsoever. For the time being, the site is a free-for-all, which means there is some decent content, and a lot of chavtacular filler.
 I've personally been asked by the powers that be to post more video-commentary articles in the "Look at this cat LOL!" style, which I'm not going to do.
 Also, and this is just a private gripe: They cut the heart out of a joke I did the other day, and I want it on record somewhere:
 In an article about the Greek footballer who celebrated a goal with a Nazi salute, I was speculating as to what excuses he could have used to dodge the controversy. One of which was "My gardener was in the stands and I was reminding him how I like my hedge."

                             "This high! I don't want the neighbours to see me in my hammock!"

 They scrapped the above picture and caption, which annoyed me. They replaced it with a picture of Bobby Robson.
 Yes, really.
 Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I'm going to persevere with Sick Chirpse for now, despite not liking the site, the name, or the content (or even understanding what a "Chirpse" is or why it's unwell) but I'm going to try to use this, my original blog, for slightly more free-form pieces like this one.
 Either that, or I'll use it to post things that I think are too "high-brow" for SC. I've already been told I'm too text heavy.
 I've pretty much sold my soul today on SC by writing an article on Emma Watson's tits, anyway.
 The worst part about working for them is that in order to find pictures for articles, you end up on a lot of government watch lists. This week I've Googled "Nazi salute" and "Emma Watson naked."
 To recap (and apologies for this post being a little scattershot) I'll try to update more often, with what might be some of my more high-brow stuff, but will often just be nonsensical bitching.
 Business as usual, then, really...
 

All Work and New Playstation

 Nothing says “tech savvy” like the BBC, am I right?!
 The monolithic, nonagenarian corporation famous for “Call the Midwife” and “Eastenders” and somehow still broadcasting “The Archers” seventeen times a day rarely seems to be steeped in the electronic zeitgeist, and today was no different.
 Following a torturously long press conference in New York, Sony announced the Playstation 4 recently, a console that is both cutting-edge and, apparently, not ready yet.
 This is based on the fact that Sony “announced” the console without actually showing us any evidence of its existence, much in the way I often “announce” my gigantic penis.
 In a blind, flailing attempt to say something on the subject and fill up some air time, the BBC News wondered aloud whether console gaming had become outmoded in an increasingly phone-based society.
 No, is the short answer, but it is worth examining just what, exactly, “gaming” has come to mean in the modern world.
 According to any normal barometer of success, the biggest game of the last few years has been “Angry Birds,” hands down. 
 It’s been the most widely played, it’s been the most profitable, and if you haven’t had a go on it at least once, then you probably don’t own thumbs.
 With the exception of Super Mario (who had a thirty year head start) it’s the most widely recognised video game brand imaginable. Even at the height of her fame, Lara Croft never had plush toys devoted to her in arcade grabber machines. Neither did the Master Chief. Neither did Niko Bellic. (Lara, admittedly, probably didn’t get a line of toys because of the unspeakable things teenage boys would have done to them, but the point stands.)
 At last count, Angry Birds had sold over a billion copies. This is the equivalent of everybody in China buying the same game. Angry Birds, put simply, is about as big a global force as Communism.

                                                                                      

                                                  He’s red and smashes decadent palaces.
                                                       We could be on to something, here…

 Despite all of this, nobody I know who owns a console would argue that Angry Birds is a “proper” game.
 This is because, for all the mass appeal of Angry Birds, or Temple Run, or any of the other mobile phone games, “proper” games are still played on a console.
 There are a number of reasons for this.
 Firstly, immersion. A big screen TV hooked up to a modern console allows for detail, and more importantly, allows you to become engrossed in the landscape. All gamers know the feeling of spotting a tiny moving speck in the distance and immediately switching to a sniper rifle to make sure it’s not the enemy. Of course, this just gives you a better view of the fact that it IS the enemy, and you’re now splattered all over the battlefield at the hands of a twelve year old Korean boy. Still, this doesn’t happen in handheld games because they just aren’t capable of it. You can’t immerse yourself that deeply whilst on the move. The tension a gamer feels crawling through a highly rendered digital terrain would be broken pretty easily if you lost concentration every time the bus you’re playing in went over a bump.
 Interactivity is also an issue. Sure, most phones have Bluetooth connectivity, but playing a game with friends online is much easier - not to say more fun - if you have a sofa to sit on, a big TV to play on, and ideally a headset.
 Whilst it may come as a surprise to younger readers, some people actually use the voice-communication aspect for reasons other than abuse, racism and empty threats, and mobile phone games will never let anyone plan an attack with their team-mates, as the only way you’d be able to communicate over distances would involve using the phone you’re trying to play on.
 Finally, and by far most importantly, is plotting.
 Mobile games can’t be said to have a vast amount of thought put into their storylines. The entire plot to “Temple Run” as far as I can tell is “Oh shit, jump!”, which doesn’t exactly scream Pulitzer Prize.
 Big console games, on the other hand, strive to have the most operatic and engrossing plots possible.
 Sure, most of them fail embarrassingly, but they do at least TRY. You understand the basic reasons why you’re shooting the bad guys, or climbing the tower, or breaking open another strangely ubiquitous crate.
 A game should have a story, an objective, and a sense of progression. A good game should take you to another world, or at least let you live in someone else’s skin for a while; make you feel like you’re an athletic badass with a quest to fulfil, even when you’re sat in your underwear eating Doritos at four in the afternoon.
 Mobile games are popular not because they’re better than console games, but because in an era of Youtube attention spans, we all like to have a distraction at the ready.
 Real games, the kind you’ll see on Playstation 4, are an experience.
 Mobile games are just something you do on the toilet.
 So the next generation of consoles will probably do alright for themselves.