Alex H

I can't believe anybody thought this would be a good idea. I find it hard to believe that when this was pitched to those in command, not one person stood up and said "Hold on a sec, this idea is total crud."

But it happened. And dear Christ don't you wish it hadn't. Lets start with a basic plot outline. Two brothers, who don't get along, go out flying a light aircraft for no apparent reason. All of a sudden they get caught up in a tropical storm. Their plane crashes into the sea, the brothers escape, but lose track of their Dad. Low and behold they are washed up on a mysterious island, inhabited by...guess what! Dinosaurs! Yes it seems that on this island, humans and dinosaurs live in relative peace. And get this! Some of the dinosaurs can talk!

If you read the entirity of that last paragraph, then you're either a) a simpleton, b) 'genuinely intruiged' or c) as bored as I am.

Let's move on to the cast shall we? You are never likely to see a greater number of career suicides in a single production. Lee Evans, for example, great comedian, some good moments in film (Mouse Hunt, There's Something About Mary) and then this. Granted, you never actually see him on screen, but the very fact that he lent his voice to the Jar-Jar Binks of the dinosaur world (the loathsome Zippo) is a crime against British comedy. And David Thewlis. What is he doing? Having given a performance in 'Seven Years in Tibet' that was good enough to get him banned from entering The People's Republic of China for the rest of his life, he then decides to lend his considerable acting talent to this worthless piece of trash. Why God? Why?

Ahem. Anyway. Where was I? Ah yes. The special effects. Now in some places, they are comendable. Some of the more sedate sequences give real feeling to the creatures, and the flying beasts are excellently animated. The character of Zippo, no matter how much you'd like to set him on fire, is superbly animated and interacts with his human counterparts more or less perfectly. Sadly that's about as far as the positives go. The action packed, T-Rex bashing set-pieces are diabolical. When a human is on the screen with fast moving action taking place around them, they are always surrounded by a faint but noticeable outline, where the blue screen hasn't quite adjusted. Come on people! Jurassic Park did this perfectly years ago, with genuinely scary dinosaurs and believable action scenes. This is just shoddy.

In conclusion then, this is bad, even by TV-movie standards. It might appeal to the very young, but you get the feeling that that wasn't the demographic the producers were aiming for. The actors look vaguley embarassed by the whole thing and the story chugs along like a written off motor car.

As far as entertainment goes, this isn't even tenth rate.

I sincerely hope this is the last Austin Powers movie. There I said it. This should not be misconstrued as a criticism of the series in general but more of a 'don't flog a dead horse' warning to Mr Myers. There is only so far one can take a comedy series before it starts to grate and if we never see those horrible teeth on screen ever again then the series will have survived, reputation untarnished. The point is, this is a fantastic movie.

As with all spoof movies the comedy is distinctly hit and miss (think Scary Movie, Hot Shots, Naked Gun and yes, even Airplane!). Thankfully AP3 has a far greater percentage of hits than misses. Some of the set pieces worked into this movie were absolute, unquestionable genius. The scene with the fountain statue and the Japanese guard had me almost crying with laughter. Another fine & inventive set piece was the scene with the Japanese subtitiles. Other fine examples were the Mole, Fat Bastards wire driven combat scene and another brilliant shadow scene, this time with Mini-Me instead of Felicity Shagwell.

Acting wise, very impressive. Aside from the comic genius that is Mike Myers,this time adding a forth, politically incorrect villain in the form of the hilarious Goldmember ("Hi guysh! I'm from Holland! Isn't zat vierd?"), Michael Caine is perfectly cast as Mr Powers Snr, in a kind of lighter hearted 'Get Carter' sort of way.

Credit must go, however, to young Beyonce Knowles. Popstars who act are a mixed breed. You have the good (David Bowie, Jennifer Lopez, Bjork), the average (Britney Spears, Ice Cube) and the bloody awful (Mariah Carey, Jon Bon Jovi, Mick Jagger). Fortunately for her, the 21 year old is comendably realistic as the big-haired blacksploitation secret agent. Surrounded as she is by a top-notch cast she can hardly fail to look good, but instead of riding the talent of her cast-mates as you might expect from a relative newcomer, Beyonce carries herself extremley well and doesn't look at all like she's reading off a piece of card (I'm looking at you Mariah!).

Now we get to the part of AP3 that forced me to give it a lower rating than it might otherwise have got. Scott Evil. Now you may remember that in the first two movies, young Scott was one of the principle sources of entertainment with his frequent set pieces with Dr Evil. Now call me cynical if you like, but turning Scott Evil...er...evil was about the worst thing they could have done to the character. The whole reason he was so great was that he was a voice of reason within a organisation of evil geniuses. You can also tell that actor Seth Green, is uncomfortable in a role he used to relish, especially at the very end of the movie.

Aside from this one gripe though, Austin Powers in Goldmember is a thoroughly entertaining spoof comedy, easily the best in the series and highly recomended to anyone who wants to be in stiches for an hour and a half. It's not rocket science, but there's only so much arty-farty psycho-analysis movies you can stand. Or is it just me?

I pity any American reading this, I truly do. Over here we get the absolute cream of the sketch show crop. An absolute masterpiece of comedy writing and acting. In America, the cream of the comedy crop is "Everybody Loves Raymond". Hah!

Some of the catchphrases in the Fast Show are so ingrained into the British national concsience that they are regularly used in just about every type of media outlet. "Football isn't it?" "You aint seen me, right?" "This week I have been mostly..." "Suit you sir!" "Schorchio!" the list goes on. What Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson have created here is legend. If there was a book on how to do great sketch shows, this would be the foundation.

The reason the Fast Show works so well is that it has found the balance. It's funny on the most basic level of physichal comedy and repeated simplicity for those who wish to switch there brains off for half an hour, whilst simaltaneously being sharply satirical and brilliantly observed enough to engage the more cynicaly minded viewer. The fact that Ron Manager, the football analyst now has his own column in a Saturday Sport pullout in the Guardian is a measure of what huge cult figures the characters have become.

So in conclusion I would just like to say:

Son terrenos el kleftikos den teflon do Fast Show est ter keles butros butros Gahli. Faliahala falihala faliahalay faliahala Chris Waddle. Ten deros muchos bonkos hinky sminky pinky meth-eth-eth-eth-eth-eth-eth-eth-eth-eth-eth Nelson Mandela win on penalties. Hava vin doros fendevicos Sheffield Uwednesdaye e hemeriodos ton fig leaf e six gerbils.

In other words

Brillllliaaaaaannnnnnntttttttttt!!!!!!!

Looking at all the criticism levelled at this film by so-called 'Tolkienites' it would seem that Peter Jackson did the equivalant of filming the New Testament with Ozzy Osbourne playing Jesus. What these criticisms fail to see is that the film couldn't be completely faithful to the film for one simple reason.

The book is not that good.

There I said it. I wont be surprised if I'm lynched by an angry mob within two days of this review going online but I don't care. The book has a clunky dialogue and no humour and had it been translated into a film directly it would not currently be sitting at the #2 spot in IMDb's top 250.

What has happened here is that the creators have taken all the bits from the book which made you say "Wow, I wonder what that would look like with all of todays fancy special effects?" and distilled the plot into easy to manage bitesize chunks. In doing this, the film is given mass appeal rather than simply giving the "Dungeons and Dragons" players of this world something to talk to their imaginary girlfriends about.

Let's talk about the cast for a second now shall we? Heading it up we have Elijah Wood. Forget all the talk about the Josh Hartnetts and and Sean William Scotts of this world, Wood is the 'next big thing' as far as Hollywood goes. At first I thought the Hobbits, especially Merry and Pippin, a little more angelic looking than I had first imagined them but it didn't take long to be impressed by their very hobbit like manor of speaking and,comendably I might add, the British accents of all the characters. Kudos to the dialect coach whomever they are!

As anybody whos ever been within 20ft of a copy of Lord Of The Rings knows, wizards form the backbone of both good and evil in Middle Earth. In the dark corner we have Saruman, played by the consistently amazing Christopher Lee. If there is any one who can play the bad guy better than this man then...oh no wait hold on...no there isn't any body who can play the bad guy better than this man. And on the side of good we have Gandalf. If you've ever read the Hobitt, cast your mind back to when Gandalf is first described. Now, look at the way Ian McKellen moves, the way he looks, the way he acts. Look famillar? If you answered no to this question then, quite frankly, you're deranged.

As for the rest of the Fellowship, we have Aragorn played solidly, if unspectacularly by relative unknown Viggo Mortensen. Orlando Bloom plays (my favorite character from the book) Legolas Greenleaf extremely well and John Rhys-Davies is wonderfully charming as Gimli the dwarf. By far the most outstanding non-hobbit, non-wizard figure in the film is Boromir, played by the utterly fantastic Sean Bean. Bean will be most well known to American audiences as 006 Alec Trevelyan from Bond movie Goldeneye or possible as Harrison Ford's nemsis in 'Patriot Games' but here he gives a career-best performance as the noble but flawed human hero of Gondor.

That reminds me. There was exactly one moment where I was unimpressed by LOTR. If you are planning to read the book look away now. Boromir does not get killed in The Fellowship of the Ring as it was written by Tolkien and yet he does here. Yes the film did need some drama to end on but in my opinion it was a little much to kill one of the most important characters in the Two Towers to regrab audience attention.

A quick word also to all those who complained that Peter Jackson expanded the female roles too much. Huh? Arwen in in this film for approximately fifteen minutes (despite how much Liv Tyler was used to promote the film) and in the book she's in it for about ten pages. So what? And Galadriel performs her role almost to the letter of the novel. Honestly there's just no pleasing some people.

I really hope this film does well at the Oscars this year, it's the one film on the roster that really deserves it.

Ok, I'm normally pretty open minded about movies. I can normally see a good side to a film which has been totally pandered by others. This is an exception.

I won't waste to much energy telling you what happens, but think along the lines of Bill and Ted meets the worst Police Academy movie out of all of them and you won't be far off.

The thing that really got me about this film was the stupid purile racism that was evident throughout. The general theme of latino/black guys = cool, white guys = lame is slightly amusing for the first couple of jokes but when the same joke has been reiterated for the 500th time (not an exageration by the way) it gets both tiresome and offensive.

I spent months waiting for the laws of Karma to get back at John Leguizamo for this film. I had almost given up hope when the 'My VH1 Awards' were screened live in the UK. What followed was Mr Leguizamo performing the rare feat of a comedian bombing on stage. You'd have to be a complete sadist to laugh at him. Ahem. Ha! Ha! Ha!

How come nobody thought of this before?

The idea of a sitcom set in a different time to ours is a much underused premise. Only 'Blackadder' and "Red Dwarf" (both BBC productions) stand out as meritable efforts. 'That 70's Show" is a slightly different prospect though. It is set in a time which the majority of sitcom watching audiences can remember, and as such they can realte to the characters more.

Whilst the writers ("Buffy" supremos Rob Des Hotel and Dean Batali) have obviously used the 'Friends' template of sitcom creation, there efforts are vastly superior to there predecesors. For a start there are some wonderfully innovative set pieces, most noticeably the 'Stoner's Circle' in which four characters sit in a circle around a rotating camera and give there 2 cents about the plot so far.

The most essential thing in any sitcom is a good balance of characters. If the plot simply centers around the interactions of two characters (see 'The Marriage That Wouldn't End' - "Friends" 1998 to 2001) you have something completley unworkable and unfunny as and end product. 'That 70's Show' succeeds in avoiding this by hooking up four of the main characters up straight away, no muss, no fuss. So in Eric and Donna along with Jackie and Kelso, you have all the romance you'll ever need and you can concentrate on making the show funny.

And here That 70's Show succeeds utterly. The plots themselves can be likened to 'The Simpsons' in that they are events that might nearly happen but are slightly too bizzare to actually take place. Acting wise you have the phenomenal Christopher Grace taking the Eric Forman character by the scruf of the neck and nailing it perfectly. Ashton Kutcher takes the crown of Most Loveable Dumb Guy on TV from Matt Le Blanc with almost frightening skill. Wilmer Valderamma, despite a slightly shaky start as Fez has now become the most laugh out loud funny character on the show. Mila Kunis, for all her youth, is a delight to watch and Laura Prepon's Donna, another slightly shaky starter is a great foil for Eric.

The highlight performance for me though, has to be Danny Marsterson's Hyde. If you were looing for a character who took everything that the 70's was about, you couldn't pick anyone but Marsterson. Up there with Zach Braff (Scrubs) and Ryan Reynolds (Two Guys And A Girl) as one of the best young actors in America, Marsterson plays the character of Hyde with such penache that it's impossible to imagine anyone else playing him. A special mention must also go to the adult actors, Kurtwood Smith and Debra Rupp, who play the satire of the middle American couple almost to the letter.

So, that concludes our tour. "That 70s Show" is one of the brightest, funniest comedies to come out of your United States in several years. If the event of 'That 80s Show' means that it's days are now numbered then it's a crying shame. Watch this one while you still can folks, it doesn't get much better than this.

That this show was cancelled is a television crime of the first degree.

I can count on the fingers of one hand how many sitcoms have the same perfectly balanced character layout and genius comedy timing that this show has. Unfortuantely I would need more fingers than I currently own to count the number of sitcoms that are as funny and well timed as a bad car accident that have had longer runs (ie Friends, Third Rock, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, ect).

I must also stand up and salute Ryan Reynolds for being the best and funniest actor to come out of American network TV in many, many years.

Your initial reaction to this show is almost certainly going to be "Oh, God, not another rip off from 'Friends'. Don't let first impressions fool you, because Peter Dunville and Michael Bergen are funnier than Joey and Chandler will ever be. Traylor Howard manages to put up with stiff competition as well, as Sharon is the most beliveable female character in a sitcom in recent years.

If, in 10 years time, the staff writers of 'Friends' are walking around with signs around there neck saying 'Will write pilot for food' they can take a good look at TGAAG to see were they went wrong. Instead of having the old fashioned (and unfunny) 'What-if-two-of-the-main-characters-hook-up-after-three-seasons-of-sexual-te nsion' routine, the writers went for the novel idea of drafting in some new regulars to act as foils for the original three. Cue the "Two Girls and a Guy" trio of Ashley, Irene and Johnny. And a better balance of characters you could not hope to find. Where you have the cold hearted, snake tounged Ashley, you have the kindly, naive Pete. Where you have the cool headed Johnny, you have the hyperactive Sharon. Where you have the silly, stuttery Irene, you have the quick wittedness of Berg. All you have to then is think up good storylines and your made. Aren't you?

Er...no. Two Guys and A Girl sadly succumbed to the network mantra of: "This is good, lets cancel it." Full of good intentions, no sinister effort to cash in on anyone's misery. Just a story about some people living out there lives. Oh well.

At least we've still got quality sitcoms like um....Frie- no that sucks, er.....Drew Ca- no that sucks too. Well there's always....no, what about.....nah. We can always watch..............um.

Oh crap.

If you look at the history of contemporary televison in general you will notice a trend in the quality of succesful shows over time. It goes along the lines of, mediocre start followed by the show peaking around season three followed by a dramatic down turn in form towards the end. Famous examples include "Friends", "ER" and "The X-Files". The one notable exception to this almost unavoidable rule is "Buffy The Vampire Slayer".

At first glance the prospect is absolutely proposterous. "Sassy high school cheerleader by day, super-strong vampire killer by night" doesn't exactly pull on the heart strings of your typical cynical TV viewer. But there's just something about it. Joss Whedon has taken a premise that would make the sleaziest B-movie director burst out laughing and turned into probably the best hour-long TV show of the last decade.

Whedon obviously had a lot of faith in 1997 when he took on a cast of relative unknowns but the choices he made were absolutley flawless. Sarah Gellar efortlessly slips into the role of Buffy with some Emmy standard acting and, backed up by the brilliant Alyson Hannigan and Nick Brendon proceeds to create a high school trio that makes "Dawson's Creek" and "Roswell" seem second rate in comparison. The adult influence, so often a crippling defect in teen dramas (see again "Roswell") is provided superbly by Rocky Horror veteran Tony Head (aka "The Coffee Guy")

There really is no stopping this series which just seems to get better and better with time. Sort of like a $500 bottle of wine. Only one you actually get to drink.