The Void - Informing you on music, competitions, wwe, ufc, games and other cool things.

So there I was, wrapped-up warm against a snowy New York City evening with a gorgeous blonde siren asking me to the achingly-hip Angelika Theatre in the Village to watch some film called In Bruges which I had never heard of. Ok, yeah, I admit it, I thought it was some arty Belgian language film which I would undoubtedly hate. I didn’t care though. If you could see her, you wouldn’t care either.

So we shuffled into the grand old theatre and settled down for the spectacle (or in my case, next to her, awww). Well, what followed was the most enjoyable hour and 45 minutes since… well, ever. I’d actually forgotten I was on a date within three minutes.

Turns out that In Bruges is an Irish film about a couple of hitmen hiding out in Belgium and I can say with some confidence that no matter how much of a humourless freak you might be, you will laugh your arse off at least a dozen times before the end.

I was the sole non-American in a room of say 200 people and I spent half the time doing something I hardly ever do… laughing out loud on my own (which is a good sign). It was the good kind of guilty shouldn’t-really-but-can’t-help-myself sniggering. Always a winner. If you like dark humour, and oh God how I like dark humour, then you will not be disappointed. There is swearing, violence, drugs, casual racism, dwarves, death, prostitutes and one-liners… or a Tuesday lunchtime round Michael Barrymore’s, if you will.

Short of pulling the much-mooted but probably-never-actually-performed ‘bottomless popcorn trick’ you will be hard-pressed to enjoy yourself as much in a cinema.

Colin Farrell is excellent, his best performance yet, while Brendan Gleeson is his usual brilliant self. Ralph Fiennes comes close to stealing the show and there are a host of other good performances, but the overwhelming star of the show is the dialogue. I can’t stress just how deeply my whelm was buried under there.

Playwrite Martin McDonagh wrote and directed this, his first venture into feature-length cinema. He really should think about retiring while he is on top, because In Bruges isn’t going to be bettered.

Built it up too much? You be the judge…       Alex Hoad

After the majesty of Super Mario Galaxy, any other platformer is going to have to pull something pretty special out of the bag in order to satisfy the game-starved masses that now make up the Wii’s garguatuan user base. Third party developers have finally caught up, the result being a massive glut of substandard efforts shoe horning in Wiimote controls that do little to dispel the myth that the best games on a Nintendo machine are usually produced by Nintendo.

George of the Jungle, based upon the recently revamped license from yesteryear (“Watch out for that tree”, indeed) is another mediocre effort made only passable (like so many Wii games) because you’re using the remote instead of a conventional joypad. The character does tend to give away the majority of the antics in this platform romp – swinging through the trees, avoiding evil monkeys and crocodiles and collecting bananas – but the pleasant surprise is that the controls are, after all that, surprisingly responsive. Naturally the game’s graphical style borrows heavily from the recent cartoon, and given the recent trend for simple, poorly animated figures, the Wii game – while true to its roots – is certainly not easy on the trained eye.

Is George of the Jungle really worthy of such criticism when your average gamer is clearly not the target audience? Your kids or younger siblings are going to love this as an introduction to platform gaming and after that you can start weaning them onto something altogether better. DLNY

Grab a copy here dawg.

In Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys, the Earth is under attack by a horde of Alien Brain… uh…Thingys!

Humans, succumbing to ray-guns, mind-control, and shiny flying saucers, have failed to defend their planet and let it fall easily into the clutches of the Big Brain and his army of Brain Thingys. The only hope left for mankind is three teenage zombies who have risen from a graveyard which was disturbed in the invasion. The un-dead trio ignore their normal human victims in favor of the pulsing pink brains they see everywhere – all the while being lured to the ultimate lunch: The Big Brain!

To mark the release of the fiendishly funny Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys for the Nintendo DS, we have three copies of the game to give away.

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To enter the competition, just answer this question:

What was the name of Simon Pegg’s famous 2004 zombie film?

Send your answers to competitions@the-void.co.uk

Entries need to be with us by April 30.

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For more information on Teenage Zombies on the Nintendo DS, visit www.teenagezombiesgame.com

Think of a stereotypical Italian family and the image of a loud, large group of people arguing and gesticulating madly may well come to mind. Keep hold of that thought because it is just such a family that exists at the heart of this movie and make it such a joy to watch.

Growing up in a small Italian town in the 60s and 70s Accio (Elio Germano) turns out to be the black sheep, but also the saviour, of his family. Constantly at odds with his mother and father, and forever in the shade of his glamorous older brother Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio) and clever sister, Accio decides to be a fascist when all the rest of his family are communists. When Manrico falls in love with the beautiful Francesca (Diane Fleri), Accio finds himself falling for her too, causing even more arguments between the two volatile brothers. As they grow, their lives may become separate, yet the ties of family love and sibling rivalry keep them fiercely loyal to each other, no matter what life throws at them.

There’s a breeziness and internal energy to this movie that makes it rattle along at an almost unseemly pace. The acting is astonishingly good with Germano playing Accio as a thug with a heart of gold and a native intelligence you just know is going to get him into trouble. In a way, this is almost an Italian version of East Is East with the same sense of rough and tumble and of a large, raucous family containing more diverse personalities than it can comfortably hold.

It’s funny and sweet and in one divine scene Beethoven’s Ode To Joy is turned into an anthem for the communists (‘Mao! Lenin! Stalin!’), only for the fascists to turn up and spoil the party – it’s something you’d never see in an American movie, but it’s brilliant.      Dee Pilgrim

Following the success of their last single, York band Elliot Minor herald the launch of their self-titled debut album with another a slice of operatic rock pop. Well, a re-release of a slice of operatic rock pop. Their ‘new’ single, Parallel Worlds, is a tale of spooky goings on in an attic, and was originally released last year. Now, almost one year after it was originally available, they are releasing it again with a brand new shiny video, which you can watch here.

The single itself is a classy mix of pianos, guitars and vocal harmonics, twisted together with an infectious melody. There are definitely more than a few touches of their influences in this record which, looking at the influences, is no bad thing (they have previously sighted Muse as a major influence in their sound, and there is more than a hint of 1970s Queen in this track).

Naturally, if you bought the single the first time round, there is little to gain from purchasing it again, especially not with the album so close to being released. Despite this, looking at how the band’s success has soared over the last year, and the previous UK chart positioning of this song (a criminal number 31) the track should help cement Elliot Minor as a permanent feature in the UK music scene.

Parallel Worlds is out to buy now, with the self-titled debut album out on April 14, 2008. Check out the new video here!