ClaRK! Kent

Once you've fucked a girl, you want her less? Maybe for the immediate 20 minutes following, sure... maybe I'm just insatiable. Anyway, favourite actress/porn star? Either Julia Bond or Lily Thai. And, frankly, any of the girls from Mr. Chew's Asian Beaver are up there, because yes I have a fetish... sort of. They're just pretty. I've had a surprisingly porn-free evening, although I do have a heap of randomly-downloaded stuff that I just got off P2P before going out the other day, because I'm rebuilding a collection that was forcibly curbed by my last girlfriend. A Money Talks vid, some Heather Brooke shorts, and a My Daughter's Fucking a Nigga, because that shit's just hilarious.

Oy vey, this is gonna get closed fast.

I'm pretty sure that the main reason Healy didn't "prove himself" at Championship level like Lost Soul says is because he was playing for a Leeds team that can't string 4 passes together, and certainly can't provide anything approaching decent service to the forwards. Fuck, Leeds could've brought Adriano in last season and he'd have struggled to score.

FFVI wins out, despite the odd few characters who have quite little to do (notably Gau, Relm and Setzer) after the initial meet-and-greet, for its serious dedication to the shipping stuff. Most of the later games have just focused on the main boy/girl pairing, often in a tacked-on and entirely unsympathetic fashion (I'm lookin' at you, Balthier and Ashe), whereas FFVI really went to town with its pairings and relationships, which is probably quite realistic for the stuff they're going through - stuff gets forged a lot quicker and a lot more intense in crazy circumstances, so frankly it's a wonder they're not all jumping each other's bones the second we get into the World of Ruin. Kefka... he was pretty damn awesome, I loved his nihilistic ending and don't agree that Sephiroth did it better (his motivation was entirely different, for starters), but I guess Skummy and I will have to agree to disagree on him. I've not played FFIV or FFV, apparently FFIV is supposed to be fucking awesome if just for some of Cecil's silly lines. Frankly though, the more medieval stuff feels like a bit of a chore, and was only really bearable in FFIX because of its self-referential and slightly tongue-in-cheek nature, I dunno if a full game of serious 'fantasy' cliche would really do it for me, FF or no FF. I'd be open to being swayed around to the idea, though, but only if somebody can convince me it's better than the last 3 Suikoden games, which have been orgasm on DVD-Rom.

FFIX would be perfect, other than Zidane/Vivi having a moonlit, slashy piss together in Eiko's town.

He was rubbish, though. She basically threw herself at him from day one, the dirty slut, and he didn't even show any remote interest until she got bitch-slapped at the end of Disc Two. That's 2 discs' worth of procrastination! Plus, that scene at the concert in Fisherman's Horizon was beyond lame. "We're all here for you!" "..." "We love you!" "..." "Try not to work hard, okay, at being a military general at age 18!" "..." "Want to dance?" "..." "Well, here's a sentence that implies I'm yours, whenever and however you want me, stud!" "..." "I'm off to bed! Here's my room key!" *Rinoa leaves* "...Whatever."

God I love that 'stache. As for the other games, which I realise I forgot to mention - I love FFVII, Skummy is correct that it is probably one of the high points of the entire series. If you take the time to do the sub-plots/hidden stuff with people like Vincent especially, you get loads of insight into things that maybe didn't make sense before and really round out the story, Midgar is a great city, and it has the Gold Saucer of all things! Sephiroth can be a bit whiny at times, but fucking Hell, so can Kuja and Seifer. I liked FFIX, as somebody said, it was a great send-off to the old style of games before they started to try and push new things, change it around a bit, etc etc. Zidane is a boring cunt, but it's a good game, if nothing else for Vivi, and Steiner's short fuse. FFVI is, for me, the high water mark of the series. Once you disregard the graphics, which is a total moot point anyway, it's got the best story, best cast of characters, best villain, best serious and best comedy moments, and is one of the most lovingly-crafted things you'll ever play. It's the perfect game. FFX and FFXII are good games in their own right, but compared to the PSX games, they just can't measure up to be honest. FFX was nice, got the nuts-and-bolts down well and is probably the best game to start with in retrospect, so buy that one thug, but move on as soon as you're done. FFXII just tried to do too many things at once, too much new stuff, and wasn't exactly helped by a plot stolen from the Star Wars prequels and driven by one of the most unlikeable women in FF history. Although Balthier and Fran get special credit for being fucking awesome. FFVIII has a special place in my heart, despite some of its character flaws and dodgy battle/magic system, because it's the first FF game I ever played and that one always stays with you, no? Plus, I could listen to the music for that game for hours and hours, it's got one of the best scores of any game in the series, possibly the best. No, One-Winged Angel actually isn't that good, by the way. But then, what do I know? I quite liked FFX-2, but that was almost purely for Rikku and the Nooj/Gippal/Baralai trio.

Whoever dissed Selphie is just asking for a big slap across the fucking mouth. Selphie rules the damn world, she's so much fun - which, let's face it, every other character in FFVIII needed a little bit of sometime. Apart from Selphie's ones, every cut scene/story moment was "who's turn is it to have angst now?" The girl's home/school got blown to bits by Galbadian missiles and she still ends up hanging out with her friend by the water fountain and playing tag with the junior classmen. Plus, her Limit Break includes possibly the best spells in the entire game, if you're willing to keep rotating the slot machine enough times. Selphie is so fucking badass it's not even funny. Although the Irvine pairing was a little forced, I grant you. Aside from her, the FFVIII characters well all a bit mardy - Squall is obvious, Quistis is cool but spends way too much of the game obsessed with failure and/or getting into her students' pants, Rinoa is like Ashe/Garnet in the sense that her big quest is entirely uninteresting and you're mostly just hoping Seifer/Edea will show up to kill something, Irvine is way too much of a failed Zack Morris to be interesting, and Zell is a character who spends his entire life obsessed with hot dogs and punching people without ever actually doing either. Selphie owns that motherfucking game. Plus, FFVIII is saved, as I believe Skummy said once, by Tonberries and Jumbo Cactuar's 'stache.

I watched The Infinite Quest just now. It's actually rather good, once you take into account that it's obviously made for the 9-13s, and maybe goes a little too far with the "whee, it's animated, let's do some crazy 'couldn't-happen-on-TV' stuff with it" stuff from time to time, and the pace is a little frenetic because they're gallivanting all over the universe in 45 minutes, rather than just landing and staying put. That said, it's a fun little adventure that reminded me a lot of the Key to Time series from the Tom Baker days, and there's a lot of fun callbacks to the series and silly pop culture references here and there (The Doctor referring to Madame Cholet from The Wombles as one of history's greatest chefs, for example!). Well worth viewing, with those provisos in mind.

Oh dear. That's probably not the best thing they've ever done. The only plus point is that I can't see Catherine Tate, who has her own show amongst other things, staying on to do more than one season's worth of filming, unless she's really committed to it and stuff, which I doubt she is. The logic/rumours suggest that with Martha joining towards the mid-way point of the season, and The Doctor thus having two companions in the TARDIS, one of them will make their exit at the end of the year unless RTD has taken a leaf out of John Nathan Turner's book circa 1981 and just wants to throw companions in left and right. Even JNT managed to realise the Doctor + one companion strategy was better off by the time Peter Davison left, even if sometimes that companion was Bonnie Langford. So, either Tate will leave after one year, or there's something at work here. In remembering the 'crowded TARDIS' of 1981, I remember that JNT was trying to fill the TARDIS with companions to ease the transition for fans after getting rid of such a popular and awesome Doctor - could RTD be doing something similar? After all, I doubt if Tennant would've signed more than a 3-year deal at a time.

If you want to accept the novels and audio plays as continuity (okay, you don't, but let's dream...) then The Doctor is on the Titantic four times, I believe, including Tennant at Christmas. Although I doubt Colin Baker would be the best one to bring back, as he's basically unrecognisable from his 1985-6 tenure as The Doctor, so old and fat has he gotten in the intervening two decades. As for the episode itself - I liked it. A couple of interesting things left open, like Martha's possible return at some date and the "who picked up the ring?" debacle, which I really hope isn't The Rani. She was possibly the worst of all Who's villains, recurring or not, and frankly the main practical upshot of the Time War is that she's not knocking about anymore. Terribly written, terrible character, and overacted to the hilt by Kate O'Mara first time around. If RTD is intent on bringing back icons of the classic series one year at a time, frankly we should be on about season 18 with Daniel Radcliffe as The Doctor by the time they go so far as to bring The Rani back, of all people. Ugh. I'm hoping it was Lucy Saxon, and that her shooting The Master was actually all part of some contingency plan they had, because she seemed a bit emotionless and robotic when she popped him in the first place. Good finale, a little marred by the overuse of CGI for the gnome-Doc and the somewhat silly "the power of faith compels you" resolve, but this is new Who and it's a season finale, and it's hardly the first ridiculous thing they've done in a last episode (Time Goddess Rose Tyler, anyone?) so I can ignore it in favour of a good story. Very much looking forward to another silly Christmas episode, and hopefully we'll get Martha back lickety-split next year, because she ended up being a damn good character and I liked her a lot. Besides, I definitely would. Judging by RTD's habit of casting people multiple times, maybe we'll get Sally Sparrow or that girl out of Hex as the next assistant. Or somebody from Queer as Folk.

Skummy wins yet another music thread. SKUMxCORE! The Beatles were a great band, and they came up with some great albums and singles that do still sound really damn good today. They did also come up with a lot of kitschy crap as well, which people tend to sweep under the carpet in favour of talking about how amazing Revolver, the White Album, and Abbey Road were. The second side of Please Please Me isn't really very good, neither is the second side of With the Beatles really - they didn't make an album where the second side was as good as the first until A Hard Day's Night, IMO. Great band, but 'greatest of all time' is a bit of a stretch when it took them a good couple of albums to really hit their stride, they also did a lot of other stuff which is a matter of taste and opinion too, and a lot more which sounds dated as YI mentioned. Also, Skummy's right in saying that the level of influence a band has isn't really a factor in how great they were. Nirvana were a fantastic band, but if you wanna factor in the bands that they influenced? Nickleback and Puddle of Mudd? Yeah... If we're mentioning other candidates as a couple of people did, The Smiths and Led Zeppelin are interesting choices although I dunno if The Smiths had enough of a catalogue really. Bob Dylan would be amongst my choices, The Kinks would be in there too, maybe Pink Floyd too. Just a couple of random choices.

He would? There's a reason Atlanta of all clubs hasn't renewed his contract at this point, he's not the player he was 3 or 4 years ago by a long way. The fact that he's available on a free makes it tempting, because at this point we only need somebody to plug the bench and play Euro super-sub if necessary, and £16mill for Darren Bent would be an awful signing. Every year we do this, we end up jizzing all of our funds away on strikers when we have 2 or 3 perfectly adequate (this year perfectly bloody good) strikers at the club anyway. Sure, Berbatov was the Premiership signing of the season last year, but lightning rarely strikes twice and I'm not inclined to think that if it was going to strike anywhere, it'd choose Darren Bent. Maybe we take Vieri on the free, keep the £16mill and buy somebody to fill a position that we actually, I dunno, need decent players for? The entire left side of the field says hello.

Cool. In other news, my avatar is a dozen times better than Benji's, but he manages to be cooler than me by being able to have a custom member title to complete the jazzy Saxony look. Bastard. I remember when I could do custom member titles...

Bwahahahaha! Did I just feel sorry for Hitler? Yes, yes I did.

John Simm as The Master is perhaps the best guest casting the series has ever, EVER done in its 40+ year history, he was absolutely magnetic, absolutely hypnotic (pardon the pun) in the role from the moment you saw him last week, and this week was just absolutely brilliant. Like I've said time, time, time and time again - The Master is the best when he's almost a mirror image of The Doctor, not just 'another Time Lord' but literally an analogue of The Doctor's in every way except the fact he's evil. John Simm and David Tennant are beautifully alike and Simm plays it so well, loved it. The plot was interesting, I liked the flashbacks to Gallifrey and the things like the Paradox Machine and Toclafane which have been set up for next episode and such, but really this episode belongs to The Master and to John Simm, in its entirety. Next week's, The Last of The Time Lords, will be the one that makes the two-parter I think, this one was just given to John Simm entirely. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it some more, in fact.

Awesome-fucking-bomb! Looks amazing. Sephiroth + Kuja = Amazing! Plus, Light Warrior, which is cool and highly unexpected. Hopefully they'll throw in tons of characters from the other games.

I too have beaten the game in the last little while. Last boss was hard, but after doing everything else to get 100% completion, not exactly impossible either. The ending was okay, not as good as some of the previous games IMO though. Bit of an anti-climax, what with leaving things open for Revenant Wings and not having Balthier show up again which is how FF usually deals with the character who 'sacrifices' themselves in the final bit, usually the leading man. Bit disappointing, probably a better ending in pure narrative terms but not very Final Fantasy either. I've started playing Suikoden V since finishing FFXII, if you want a great RPG with tons of replay value, cool characters and the ability to fight not only one-on-one duels but also pitched war battles - it's the game to get. Awesome.

THAT WAS AWESOME!!! Ahem. The first 15-20 minutes weren't too good, as timmayy noted, although it did the job of slowly setting up everything that's to come, with Professor Yana getting all befuddled and zoning out, etc, whilst also providing some instant peril - which we wouldn't have had without the Futurekind. Even though it looks like this is gonna be a 3-part finale, you needed the instant peril of the Futurekind to keep the plot moving on for the first half of the episode. Not well-executed, but timmayy's wrong in saying they weren't needed. Everything from the moment you see Yana's watch to the end was fan-fucking-tastic. Absolutely brilliant, not just in a fan-wank kinda way but all really well-executed. As David Tennant noted on Confidential, the attention to detail has been perfect throughout - Face of Boe's message makes sense, the Doctor's comment that he'd 'sense' another Time Lord makes sense, all of it fits into place beautifully and clears up a confusing set of bits'n'bobs. I loved that the first moment of realisation from the Doctor that the Master was back was with them in totally different rooms, great touch. "Creeping terror" as RTD put it. And as for John Simm! WA-FUCKING-HEY! This is what's always been missing from the Master's character - he works best when he's not just the Doctor's equal in terms of intellect, he needs to be so much like the Doctor it's uncanny (just evil) for it to be truly gripping drama between them. Delgado had that a bit with Pertwee, but not enough, while Ainley's portrayal was a bit too 'do scene, cackle wildly, scream when defeated' cardboard cut-out to be compelling. But, in John Simm, they've essentially got the British actor most like David Tennant right now in, and he was fucking awesome. Loved him, and from the look of next week's trailer, he's gonna be awesome.

I'm voting kinda half for the most memorable ones from my youth/that are iconic, and half for my personal favourites. Yeah. 1. Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy VII) 2. Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII) 3. Solid Snake (Metal Gear Solid series) 4. Leon Kennedy (Resident Evil 2, 4) 5. Lara Croft (Tomb Raider series) 6. Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic series) 7. Sim (The Sims, 2) 8. Zelda (Zelda series) 9. Guybrush Threepwood (Monkey Island series) 10. Balthier (Final Fantasy XII)

Group A: Pulp Fiction vs Rear Window City Of God vs Sunset Blvd. Group B: Casablanca vs Seven Samurai Psycho vs Lawrence Of Arabia Group C: Godfather vs Star Wars Goodfellas vs Fight Club Group D: Schindler's List vs Raiders Of The Lost Ark Once Upon A Time In The West vs Amelie Group E: Empire Strikes Back vs One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest Usual Suspects vs Memento Group F: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly vs 12 Angry Men North By Northwest vs Two Towers Group G: Shawshank Redemption vs Return Of The King Doctor Strangelove vs Silence Of The Lambs Group H: Godfather II vs Fellowship Of The Ring Citizen Kane vs It's A Wonderful Life