Jonathan "Tempest" Phillips

For those of you who don’t know, Alan Titchmarsh, a once popular TV gardener has his own day time talk show. Aimed mainly at the elderly market, the show has a variety of topics that it covers but usually how to turn unsightly lip hair into a tea cosy. For some reason it decided that it would tackle the topic of Violence in Video games. So brace yourself for this insanely one sided, uneducated and offensive “debate”

I know I have already tackled this in the latest Episode of Kritzkast, but i felt so angry watching it again that I had to rant about it somewhere. I still have no reason why they felt the need to bring this up on his show in the first place. It is not the field of knowledge, nor for the target audience of the show and clearly done by people who have never played said games and base there opinions on mythological statistic.

I’m all for a fair debate. In fact i would love a truly good debate on the topic where all sides have fully educated opinions. However this was far from fair and reminded me of the farce that was the trials against rock music back in 1984. You’d think the world would have matured since then. But I guess that’s because of gaming too.

People seem to forget that 75% of gamers are over the age of 20 (stats from “second skin” 2008). 25% of people are not meant to have violent games in there hands and unless an irresponsible parent buys it for them, its very hard for them to get hold of said games. Unlike say Books. Macbeth for example features scenes of a sexual nature, a large amount of violence and Gore. That book just so happens to be required reading for under 18s in UK school. sigh.

Well if you, like me, felt this “Debate” was handled insanely poorly and comes down to nothing more than Slander and character assassination of gamers and gaming culture. You can sign this petition which is being sent to the OFCOM (UK broadcasting standards) to inspect the debate and the manor in which it was handled.

With the recent Release of Pixars UP on Blue-Ray, DVD, Digital Copy, Laser Disc, VHS, Betamax and Stone Tablet, Everybody who did not see it at the cinemas has now been exposed to it. This means that we are having a second wave of people confessing how emotional it made them. Just for the record, that film did make me ball my eyes out like a little girl, however was on a ferry going to England leaving my wife behind, so i have a good excuse. But after seeing it again, I realised that the film is not quiet on Par with Pixars usual work. Its just not perfect

However if this was made by dreamworks, I would be astounded and recommend this to everybody I meet in the street. As it is Pixar, yes it is amazing, But not a new chapter of life, like every film they have made so far. It would be like Jesus springing into existence and doing street magic, sawing people in half with out the use of a saw. Yeah its good compared to everybody else, but your old work was better. (PS The events depicted in that comparison are fictitious. Any similarity to Judeo-Christian Mythology is merely coincidental. )

I think the real reason is that it is 2 movies mashed together. The moment he lands The second film starts. Although the second film is good, its pulling the first down. The first film is a Journey Film about getting to the location he and his wife have dreamed about all their lives. Call it a Pixar road trip. The second is a An explorer in a strange land and a small child who tagged along by accident. Sound like a Pixar film?

Just imagine what the first film could have been. You’ve seen Zathura, You know a film based mainly inside a single house is more than possible. Imagine Pixar doing Zathura. Imagine Up where the house is slightly larger, traveling through the clouds and bumping into something like, a fleet of Zeppelins. A world of people living above us in the skies. Maybe between the world wars they realized another was coming took to the skies to abandon the rest of us.

Ok this is turning into a cross between Wall-e and Bioshock. But My point still stands, The journey should have been the film. Not the running around a forest with a house strapped to his waist.

PS i need to point out, This film is amazing, Just worried that one day Pixar will make a bad film. Cars scared the fuck out me by showing me Pixar was infact fallible. I just hoping they didn’t make Toy Story 3 because they were out of ideas.