Jus’ sayin’.

We were rambling on yet again on Monday about how brilliant the Toy Story movies are, and more specifically the new Blu-ray releases of said movies. With the exception of the entirely useless cardboard sleeves, these are among the best Blus we’ve ever seen.

Well, it’s two days later and JUST LIKE THAT we’re giving you the chance to win 1 of 4 pairs of films (they’re actually DVD/Blu-ray ‘combi’ packs so you’re getting a total of 4 discs) just by answering this simple question:

Name a film that is better than Toy Story

Note: It has come to our attention that a lot of people are putting Toy Story 2, either because they think that it's a trick question, or because they genuinely believe that Part 2 is better. In either case, they're wrong. Don't put Toy Story 2.

Second Note: We are also no longer accepting the answer 'there isn't one'. Hard though it might be to believe, there are films better than Toy Story.

Full Name

Your Email

Only one entry per person please. You know who you are.

Winners announced on Saturday morning!

Sometimes things just don’t make sense.

Contains very strong violence, sadomasochistic sex scenes and child abuse

I can’t help but think that warnings like the one above for Michael Winterbottom’s controversial neo-noir The Killer Inside Me are gratuitously specific. Distributors wear them like badges of honour (most explicitly in the marketing of last year’s Antichrist) while the Daily Mail see them as an excuse to forego the act of actually watching the film before writing a reactionary ‘ban this sick filth’ op-ed.

Update: The Daily Mail’s resident madman Baz Bamigboye has in fact already covered the film, and with a surprising degree of restraint. We’ll let you off this time Baz.

Contains moderate violence and scenes of smoking

Don’t go visiting the BBFC page for this unless you’ve already seen it, because the Extended Classification Information is a spoiler minefield. This is however the first instance I’ve seen of a rating mentioning smoking. I’m sure it’s probably happened before but it still seems bizarre. The guidelines cite the fact that there is ‘no clear criticism of smoking, rather it is portrayed as an incidental habit in the lives of some people’. I honestly don’t know what to make of it.

Contains strong language, once very strong, and sustained threat

I know I go on about this too much but the insanity of the ‘once very strong’ clause never ceases to astound me. The BBFC seem to look on the word ‘cunt’ in 15s in the same way that they do ‘fuck’ in 12s: once at the most, maybe a couple more in exceptional circumstances. In the guidelines for Buried they even clarify that ‘the intended recipient of this invective was unable to hear it, and the fact that the man is almost hysterical with fear and anger at this stage provided a compelling context for this single use of very strong language to be contained at 15′ as if people are going to write in to complain that a single use of ‘cunt’ would be better contained in the same category as gential mutilation, graphic torture and even the aforementioned sadomasochistic sex scenes.

Tl;dr? Cunt aint that bad, get over it.

Contains moderate sex references and one use of strong language

Sometimes I can be too harsh on the BBFC and in this case, they’ve done a good job. Like many of its contemporaries, Date Night has been carefully (and cynically) crafted for the PG-13 and 12A ratings, complete with the obligatory single ‘fuck’ and some fairly risque (but not too risque) sexual references. I’d love to see the look on the producers’ faces when they were informed that their ‘references to group sex, anal sex and nipple clamps’ could not be contained at the lower category.

Saying that, the joke’s on me because it’ll probably do quite a bit better at the box office appealing to teens who consider the 12A category too tame.

Contains strong language and sex references and infrequent strong violence

Inside the Extended Classification Information, you’ll find details of all the slightly cringy sexual references you were expecting, but by far the most disturbing detail is the revelation of the unbelievably crap central premise: ‘an American comedy about two police officers trying to recover a valuable baseball card to pay for a wedding’.

There isn’t a rating in the world that could contain that.

We’re a little bit busy this morning. Check back about midday.

We first wrote about Green Zone a couple of weeks ago, but that was mainly to complain about the crapulosity of the Empire Leicester Square.

It finally came out of embargo yesterday, but we thought we’d wait until the Oscar dust had cleared to give it a proper assessment. And here it is:

20 WORD REVIEW
Greengrass directs with Bourne-like kineticism and Damon will fuck your shit up,
but the politics at heart are unbearably heavy-handed.

10 WORD REVIEW
Resembles previous Iraq War films, but with more shaky cam.

5 WORD REVIEW
6/10 for the shouting alone.

I’m still asleep after all that mad Oscar fun last night, but here’s something I wrote earlier: it’s this week’s exciting Blu-ray releases. Don’t forget, you can also get them on DVD if you’re some kind of time traveller from the past.

JULIE & JULIA
Film – I’d have never imagined I could dislike a movie about blogging, but Julie & Julia is unbearable shit. The ‘Julia’ half of the film is actually quite good (if a little inconsequential) but the ‘Julie’ bits are so bad they made me forget that I ever liked Amy Adams in anything ever. Ever.
Blu-ray – Weirdly, it’s the same story here. Julia’s life is full of incredible colour and definition, whereas Julie’s stuff is all washed out and blurry.
Extras – Didn’t bother.
Packaging – Not a terrible effort cover-wise, but Sony’s releases are starting to all look exactly the same.

TOY STORY 1 & TOY STORY 2
Films – Nothing / more / needs / to be / said.
Blu-ray – Having spent about five years of my life watching the same VHS copy of Toy Story over and over again, it’s nothing short of a revelation seeing it on Blu.
Absolutely. Crystal.
Extras – A few nice ‘featurettes’ but faaaaarrrr too many trailers for crap old Disney shit.
Packaging – If anyone on Earth has the slightest idea what the point of those cardboard outer sleeves is, let me know at the usual address.

THAT WAS THIS WEEK’S BLU-RAY ROUND-UP. MORE OF THE SAME NEXT WEEK.

This is going to make me mind less when she wins Best Actress tonight.