Last week I was sent an iPod touch by a PR company working on behalf of NBC Universal. They’re trying to raise awareness of the fact that you can buy their movies and TV shows on iTunes, and they’re sending a few of these things out to promote the cause.

In the past, I’ve been sceptical of people watching movies on phones or MP3 players, but in the interest of fairness (and in all honesty, the appeal of a free iPod) I thought I’d try it out for myself.

If you’re worried that I’m about to sacrifice my journalistic integrity for the sake of some free electronics then never fear: watching a movie on a handheld device is seriously crap.

They sent me a digital copy of 9 to play on it and it’s literally torture. The screen is so tiny and reflective that when you do manage to make out any detail, it’s invariably your own face being mirrored back at you. Add that to the fact that you have to physically hold the device for the duration of the movie and you’ve got one of the worst ways imaginable to view a film. It even does the same bit of technical treachery that the iPad does:

HOWEVER: I am a fan of digital downloads. They need to sort out a few things (price is waaaay too high, HD isn’t available in the UK yet) but the basic premise of being able to download a high quality movie in minutes and then hook it up to your TV is a good one. The ‘99p Film of the Week’ is definitely worth a look.

Apologies for the massive length of this post, but I’m going to leave you with a quick review of 9, viewed from the comfort of my television, rather than the misery of my iPod.

9 (dir. Shane Acker)

It looks pretty good but the whole post-apocalyptic ecological-allegory thing was covered a million times more elegantly in Wall-E. And Elijah Wood’s voice is annoying as anything.

9 is out now on DVD, Blu-ray… and digital download.

Against all odds, the BBFC have sensibly rated Kick-Ass 15 for…

… strong language, once very strong, & strong bloody comic violence.

In other words…

… several ‘fucks’, one ‘cunt’ & a variety of stabbings.

Thanks to an embargo that definitely wasn’t in place simply to postpone inevitably terrible reviews, I’ve had to wait until today to write anything about The Crazies.

It’s another remake of a 70s horror classic and on the quality scale, it’s worse than last year’s Friday the 13th but better than recent flop The Stepfather. It stars Timothy Olyphant (that guy from The Girl Next Door!), Radha Mitchell (whatsername from Melinda and Melinda!) and Danielle Panabaker, who is equally recognisable but mainly because she looks like she’s been genetically engineered from the combined DNA of Rachel Weisz, Winona Ryder and Jennifer Garner:

Anyway, The Crazies is 101 minutes long and about 87 minutes of that is crap. The characters are lifeless, the scares are predictable and the allusions to the Iraq War are even more fucking mad than you’d expect.

Final Verdict: 4/10. Don’t see it.

Who the fuck is still watching it?