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

Little wonder that the coolest film of the year so far has spawned the coolest album of the year.

As soon as Barry Louis Polisar’s All I Want Is You begins, you’re dragged into the film’s stylised opening sequence, and the aural memories keep on coming as the album progresses.

With a strong representation from The Moldy Peaches’ Kimya Dawson, the majority of the album is decidedly lo-fi, as you would expect, and there are plenty of hidden gems just waiting to be discovered.  Meanwhile, other tracks are forgotten masterpieces crying out for the attention they deserve – that Superstar by Sonic Youth doesn’t play in every home across the planet 24/7 makes me cry bitter tears.

The sole low point on the whole album is the jarring appearance of All The Young Dudes. Given the genetic make-up of the rest of the soundtrack, Mott The Hoople’s soft-rock classic stands out like a paedo in a playground. The song marked one of the major moments in Juno, so it does kinda needs to be there, but nonetheless…

The Juno soundtrack is near-perfection and filled with beautiful moments – you’ll need it to feed your cravings before the film’s DVD release later this year.

Don’t be a spoon – buy it here. 

Dark by nature, but also extremely dark on screen, Waz is a psycho killer/thriller along the lines of Se7en, but without the cleverness or intelligent dialogue. Stellan Skarsgard takes the role of the world-weary detective Argo, getting a rookie (Melissa George) as his new partner as they investigate a series of extremely grisly murders.

Each victim is found with the WAZ carved into their body and with burns to their fingers, but why are they being killed and, most importantly, by whom? As the bodycount goes up and the cops investigate further, they find themselves on a track that leads them closer to home than is comfortable.

Unfortunately, the script quite literally loses the plot halfway through the film, so what could have been an intriguing scenario falls to pieces by the denouement. There are some nice performances from the supporting cast members Tom Hardy, Paul Kaye and Selma Blair, but their efforts can’t hold together a story with a huge basic flaw – it’s just not credible. And because it doesn’t convince, it doesn’t chill your blood in the way it should and Se7en did.     Dee Pilgrim

Join Margot Zeller (Nicole Kidman), a savagely bright, razor-tongued short-story writer as she sets off on a surprise journey to the wedding of her estranged and free-spirited, unassuming sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Margot, with her son Claude (newcomer Zane Pais) in tow, arrives with the force of a hurricane. From the minute she meets Pauline’s fiancé – the unemployed artist Malcolm (Jack Black) – Margot starts to plant seeds of doubt about the union.

As the wedding approaches, one complication crashes into the next: vengeful neighbours, a beloved tree in the backyard and Margot’s own marital turmoil. The two sisters, find themselves at the precipice of an unexpected transformation ultimately revealing that even when your family is about to implode…  the one thing you can cling to for solace and comfort is your imploding family.Margot at the Wedding (15) is at cinemas from February 29. Find out more about the film and its cast here www.margotatthewedding.co.uk

The prize includes Nicole Kidman DVDs, The Stepford Wives and Days of Thunder. Plus we will also give you a copy of the shooting script! We have three sets to give away, and for your chance to win simply answer the following question:

Noah Baumbach directed a film of which name? (click here for a clue)

a. The Squid and the Whale

b. Whale Rider

c. Big Fish

Send your answers to competitions@the-void.co.uk by March 16.

© 2007 by Paramount Vantage a Division of Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

The BBC are keeping on top of their excellent audiobook releases with this latest. Genius is the Radio 4 comedy series which sees Dave Gorman and a celebrity guest chew over the ridiculous, unworkable but sometimes genius inventions, schemes and policies of the public.

The show invites listeners to air those incredible concepts that strike you just before falling into a nice sleep or after one-too-many drinks at the pub – not necessarily ideas that are worthy or even very well thought through but those that have a hint of genius.

Trophy winning ideas have included helium filled bubble wrap to make parcels lighter and postage cheaper, breeding miniature elephants to be household pets, building lego prisons, a microwave/CD player that selects a tune of the right duration to go with the required cooking time and Tetris – the movie.

The second series of the show features guests Johnny Vegas, Carol Vorderman, Brian Sewell, Chris Addison, Sid Waddell, and Armando Iannucci.

Because we’re so awesome, and have even more awesome (awesomer?) friends, we have digitial copy of Genius: Series 2 to give away, along with a 1gb mp3 player on which you can store it and listen to it over and over again. How positively delightful!

For your chance to win, just answer this question:

Dave Gorman famously had a show called?

a. Yahoowhack

b. Googlewhack

c. nhsdirectwhack

Send your answers to competitions@the-void.co.uk by the end of February. Good luck y’all!

Dave Gorman’s Genius: Series 2 is available on CD from all good high street and online retailers. It is also available to download from digital retailers, including BBC Audiobooks’ new digital superstore.

To hear a clip from the show, click here.

Retro is all the rage these days, and nary a month goes by without a new collection of games from yesteryear being given a fresh lick of paint (or new box-art) and sold on to unsuspecting consumers as an exercise in value. It can be a minefield, often you’ll find any old tat lurking on these ‘Best of’ compilations, the ethos being ‘strength in numbers’.

Enter stage left, the Art of Fighting Anthology, a one disc, three game set collecting the titular first beat ‘em up in the series, its sequel (the predictably-titled Art of Fighting 2) and the third episode, The Path of the Warrior: Art of Fighting 3. It’s the last of these that will be of most interest to collectors as the game scarcely saw the light of day in Western territories.

Back in the early 1990s, everyone wanted a slice of the beat ‘em up pie. Capcom had just nigh-on single handedly re-energized the one-on-one format with the legendary Street Fighter II, and a legion of copycats sprung up to capture some of the market. SNK (who later cemented their position in the beat ‘em up pantheon with their King of Fighters games) started out less than honourably with a number of clones that went on to include World Heroes and Fatal Fury.

Art of Fighting was, on the surface of it, another such identikit fighter but SNK games were, if nothing else, distinctive. Chunky, well-animated sprites doing battle across well-drawn backdrops, the camera scaling out on the action as the characters moved further apart, demonstrating the power of the Neo-Geo arcade hardware on which the games principally ran.

The first Art of Fighting was still a misfire, allowing only two selectable characters, Ryo and Robert, in one-player mode (the rest of the eight characters on the roster were open in the versus setting). Capcom took such umbrage to the rather shameless copy that both Ryo and Robert were amalgamated into Dan Hibiki, the pink-suited Shotokan parody who debuted in 1995’s Street Fighter Alpha: Warrior’s Dreams.

That isn’t to say the games on offer here didn’t try and offer some innovations. Art of Fighting boasts a ‘spirit meter’ which depletes the more a player uses his special attacks, weakening their own offensive capability.

It’s sequel proffered a ‘rage meter’ allowing devastating special attacks as the characters became less and less enamored with their opponent. It also featured each character being able to learn a ‘death blow’ (akin to Capcom’s ‘super combo’ but first in time) during the course of the game which became available from the outset in the last outing for the cast.

The games still all look gorgeous but certainly feel like they’re from a simpler time. As a nostalgic quick-fix this compilation will do the job and for the completist and/or hardened gamer, the nods to later SNK games like Fatal Fury give it a certain sense of place. For anyone else, the beat ‘em up has moved on. It’s hard to believe only a year separated The Path of the Warrior and the seminal Street Fighter III.     DLNY

Buy it here my pretties.