Video/ DVD
Internet
Wdeomg
playing areas. Wielding anything from a pistol to a plane. You can back up yOur infantry friends with a tank or carry them into battle on a jeep. Both collective strategy and individual improvisation play their part and winning is oh. so sweet.
Now for the cruel part. The game is not the prettiest and can be rather overwhelming for beginners. Therefore. the publisher has decrded not to publicise it heavily. Therefore. fewer people Will buy it. Therefore. the battlefields will be sparse and players at a premium. reSUIting in an unrewarding game. If yOu have a COuple of dozen online friends. then yOu should all buy this. Norman No-mates may need to look elsewhere. Cruel. but that's gaming.
PC
PCDJ
(Emission $20—$80 0..
Music software used to be a strictly professional affair. Producers spent hundreds of pounds on the latest kit. turning a Simple PC or Mac into a digital studio. Now it is pOSSible for anyone with a couple of tenners to get similar software. the latest being PCDJ.
This range is split into two areas: producing and mixing. The Mixrng software comes in three strengths and allows simple mixing of MP3s though the appeal is strictly limited to those desperate to be the next Pete Tong. The Producer titles. coming in rock. dance and hip hop flav0urs. are much more fun and within no time tracks can be cut. deals done and millions earned.
OK. the last two may take a little longer but the Producer software is Simple yet impressive. releaSing talents yOu never knew yOu had. lf Pete. Geri and that Irish bloke turned y0u down. this might help you prove them all wrong. llain Davidsonl
internet@list.co.uk
WEIGHTS AND MEASURES www.cockeyed.com/ inside/howmuchinside .html
Did you ever wonder how many cigarettes you can roll from one packet of tobacco? Or weirder. how much toothpaste there is in a tube? How many ketchup-packages cover one bottle? Or how much energy there is in a battery? Weird questions. but the answers and many more are on this website.
HANGOVER CURES
www.hairytongue.com
You wake up and last night's muSic Still bangs in yOur head. The room lights look like they're flashing. yOur mouth feels like sandpaper and y0u spend a lot of time in the toilet . . . do y0u rec0gnise this? Then you need Hairytongue. The site has collected loads of hangover cures and also features great photos of people who might look worse than you.
MONEY SAVERS www.123pricecheck .com
Online buying is getting more and more popular. 123Pricecheck compares all the major online sellers of books. music. DVDs and videos and tells you what the cheapest dealer to buy from is. Great stuff if y0u were planning to buy online anyway.
SNOW ROMANCE
www.snowlovers.net/
Single and a Show lover? Then SnowloverShet is the site for yOLl. By filling in your personal details and. more importantly. yOLir requests for a future lover. you will be able to match up with other snow lovers who y0u can meet on the piste. The site's motto: 'Play in the snow with someone new.‘
FAVOURITE MISTAKES
www.slipups.com
Slipups are easily made. at any time. The slip-up archive files mistakes made in speeches. books. films and on TV. It is a huge archive that will cause many laughs. so watch out for y0ur boss if yOLi look at it at work. (Marieke Smegenl
Carpet beaten at Hairy Tongue
video@list.co.uk
THRILLER COMEDIE DE L’INNOCENCE (15) 99min 0...
Cornediede
e
If this had been done in Hollywood. it'd be all loud blasts of creepy nlLJSIC. ObVIOus emotional reactions and big prods in the ribs to make Sure yOu knew what was going on. AS it is. this French-language
COMEDY DRAMA ABOUT A BOY (12) 97min 0...
Chiller by RaOUI Ruiz is deft. Subtle and underplayed. And it's all the more unnerving for it.
It stars Isabelle Huppert as a well-tO-do mother whose nine- year-old son announces that she is not his real mother. That would be
so much childish fantasy
if he didn't have another woman and an address in mind. The result is a brilliantly acted film in which the line between truth and fiction blurs. leaving y0u as unsettled as Huppert's character. iArtificial Eye VHS rental: DVD rental and retail) (Mark Fisheri
WAR ROMANCE DARK BLUE WORLD
(12) 108mm 0.
This Czech English
Grant is butt-clenchineg good
language WWII period drama rec0unts what happened when Czech pilots left their occupied home COuntry to fight alongside the RAF. Centred around two best friends who fall out over a lonely and. preSleed. Widowed woman. Dark Blue World ignores a more interesting stow-line: the Czech government's imprisonment of the pilots upon their return home. because they
were deemed more a
Annoyingly, About a Boy is a disappointing film. Not because it’s bad, but because it’s good. And the reason, or rather the main reason, it’s good is precisely why preceding ‘hit’ British rom-coms (Four Weddings, Notting Hill etc) were so butt-clenchingly bad: Hugh Grant.
For a start he’s had a hair cut. Gone is the greasy flopped-fringe of the public school idiot, replaced instead with a designer dishevelled crop that emphasises his boyish good looks. The posh plummy accent has been softened to a generic London voice, and not once in the whole film does Grant infuriate the audience with that trademark awkwardness of his: ‘Er, what I’m trying to say . . . I mean what I want to say . . . or rather, in the famous words of David Cassidy, I’m er . . . I’m an irritating cunt.’
Instead, Hugh Grant, playing the character of veteran playboy Will Freeman (free man, geddit?) in the film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel, depicts a loveable rogue - a personality that I suspect is not unlike his own. When we first encounter Freeman he’s full of the joys of singledom, a superficial shyster convinced that he, like all men, is an island, in his case Ibiza because it’s hip and normally sensible girls behave badly there. Then he meets Marcus (played by elfin Nicholas Hoult), a twelve-year—old boy in
need of a father figure.
The ensuing drama does err on the side of sentimentality - Freeman realises that having a circle of friends is preferable to being a single stud - but given some great dialogue, it’s Grant that makes this film a considerable cut above your average Brit flick. (Catherine Bromley)
I Available to rent on vrdeo and DVD through Universal from Mon -" Nov.
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