Flushed dinosaurs, Fringe on vinyl and alien Brussel sprouts
SUPERFLUSH OF THE WEEK
Primeval added a prehistoric twist to that old “crocodiles in the sewers” urban myth in its second episode this week, but did anyone else think that the woman was hopelessly optimistic trying to flush a baby dinosaur down her loo? Even back in the days when toilets had cisterns the size of the Empire State Building it would have been a struggle, requiring frantic prodding from a toilet brush at the very least to get the thing past the U-bend. With today’s green-friendly, water-saving toilets it takes three attempts just to get rid of your own floaters.
DODGY MIRROR OF THE WEEK
I know we moaned about the dodgy FX in V last season, but this shot of a Brussel sprout superimposed over a reflection of Ryan’s body in the season two premiere was a new low. And why’s Ryan hallucinating about Brussel sprouts anyway? Did he have a really bad Christmas? Oh, it’s not a Brussel sprout, apparently, it’s his daughter, floating around in a glass tube. Oh, and while we’re on the subject of V …
BUMMER OF THE WEEK
“Hurrah!” we thought. “They’ve killed off irritating Tyler!” as he turned into a pizza in front of his mother’s eyes (almost, but not quite, causing an emotion to cross her face… or maybe it was just heartburn). Sadly, it was all a dream. And it looked like the season was starting off so promisingly.
MASH-UP OF THE WEEK
YouTube mash-ups are so common these days that it takes something truly extraordinary to earn a coveted Spurious Award. And this one is truly extraordinary because the idea is so simple while the results are uncanny – a trailer for Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind with the soundtrack from the trailer for Inception . Mindblowing. We’ll wake up soon.
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MOST TASTELESS REPACKAGING OF A CHEESY ’8OS FANTASY MOVIE OF THE WEEK
WHAT IF? OF THE WEEK
What if Fringe had been a LucasArts Monkey Island -style point-and-click adventure? Click on the image to go to the animated version. We love the cow’s blinking, for some indefinable reason. And Astrid gets more screen time in this than she does in most episodes. And while we’re on the subject of Fringe …
MARKETING GENIUS OF THE WEEK
Sadly, we here in the UK can’t take part in this, but, still, respect is due to the team behind Fringe for this devious bit of publicity. Y’see, there are spoilers currently hidden all across America… in independent record shops. Why? Well, in Fringe ’s next episode (the first in its new Friday time slot), Walter meets his musical hero: keyboardist for ’70s band Violet Sedan Chair, Roscoe Joyce, played by Christopher Lloyd. To tie in with this, the producers have created a vinyl album for the group titled Seven Suns and shipped it to select independent record shops. Apparently they’ve been out there for a couple of months. Each individual album is different, including specific spoilers and clues about the show embedded in the lyrics (and possibly elsewhere). So now Fringe fans are desperately hunting for the album so they can be the first to put the spoilers online (and have a collectable that’ll be worth a bomb on eBay). But who are the real musicians who have performed on the record? The producers are keeping mum about that at the moment.
TAKING THE PISS, SURELY? OF THE WEEK
It’s the Sega Wee – although sadly that’s not what it’s called. Sega has launched a game machine in Japanese men’s public urinals that's controlled by streams of piss. It’s called the Toylet, and comes with a screen mounted above the urinal, which has a target on it. Hit the target to play such games as:
- Mannekin Pis – wee as hard as you can
- Graffiti Eraser – remove paint by weeing on every part of a picture
- The North Wind And Her – the harder you wee, the more a girl’s skirt gets blown up by the wind
- Milk From Nose – a multiplayer game where you try to wee harder than the guy next to you (and while you’re winning a guy on the screen blows milk out of his nose… answers on a postcard please)
Now we can’t smoke in pubs, all the fun of trying to get a fag end down the plughole has gone, so the sooner we get these in the UK the better.
NEAR MISS OF THE WEEK
Can you imagine what The Walking Dead would have been like if the zombies had shopped at Dead-enhams and De-Kay Maxx? Then sat down in the pub for some Brains Bitter? Or if Rick had co had used tons of Lynx every episode, extolling its virtues with liberal use of sentences, “Hey, you really wouldn’t believe how great Lynx is for covering up the smell of zombies!” It could very nearly have happened. Speaking at a CES panel in Las Vegas this week, The Walking Dead producer Gale Anne Hurd revealed how much pressure the show was under to include product placement – apparently advertisers were all keen to prove how their products could survive the apocalypse. “It’s hard when you're a new show,” said Hurd, but she and the other producers resisted the temptation, deciding that adding anything product-related would completely ruin the show’s feel. Which is a slightly odd thing to say. Makes you wonder if the best way not to become a zombie is to make sure you wear a Gap sweater at all times.
