Oh Tesco, I know you're trying to take over the world but you know not what you do....

My great sisters got me Tesco DVD rental for my 30th birthday! It's amazing, I can now get to see every insane film I remember from my childhood and half-arsed trailer I saw at three in the morning. So far I've rented The Suicide Girls: The First Tour, Eve of Destruction, They Might Be Giants documentary Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns.

But there's the kicker, and how my sisters' gift just keeps on giving, Tesco email me and say 'hey, do you want to write a review of the DVD you have just received?' and I, like Jeremy in Peep Show on his wedding day, say...."Do I?"

Well yes I do, since, you, Tesco have asked, I would like to rant insanely about the obscure films that no one other than me would want. I mean it's my own fault, I requested these movies...but still I didn't make these movies, it's not entirely my fault if they are steaming piles of shit. And it is also your fault Mr Tesco to ask me to review them, is that what you want? coz that's what's gonna happen'?....

so far, my Tesco DVD reviews:

Suicide Girls: The First Tour The first tour? Let's hope it's the last...
27th January, 2006 Lorcan McGrane from Norwich I had been really looking forward to this title, so it is understandable that I was ultimately disappointed. The problem is one of projection. The Suicide Girls book and Web site projects an image of the participants as arty, sexy, hip and intellectual--one imagines them supping Absynth while reading Bataille and listing to Peaches. Seeing them in the flesh and hearing some of the idiotic things they say had my stomach churning. These aren't sexual revolutionaries these are spoilt rich Americans (all white too, although the Web site is more diverse) with too much time on their hands. Let's face it, behind every occupation like 'part-time tattooist/piercer' or 'burelesque artist', there is a rich parent back home facilitating this facile inanity--hoping some day they'll settle down. There is a difference between having a an intellecually stimulating reason for being 'alternative' and seeing someone on a Web site and thinking I want to be just like them. Although they play at lesbianism, true sexual trangression seems to not exist in the universe of the Suicide girls. Lowlights include: One of the Sucide Girls laughing as she recounts almost biting the nipple off a guy at college and him needing nine sitches: 'And the funniest thing was he never came back to college!' I'm sure he thought it was Hi-lar-ious. The Suicide Girls harassing an Indian cab driver at four in the morning saying they'd pay him ten dollars to lie naked on his cab. A game of 'truth or dare' with no truth beyond what male audiences want to hear and no dares that don't involve society-endangering public nudity. Vague Highlight: The Probot video, although this is not far removed from old Motley Crue ones. Thank feck renting this from Tesco didn't set me back the 18.99 it costs to buy! I din't realise the 'suicide' part of Suicide Girls referred to their intellect

Eve of Destruction Ah jeez, I've got to stop renting films on the basis of video covers I saw in rural Ireland when I was 15! How could one resist the story of a female scientist who creates 'Eve' a female cyborg...in her own image. 'Eve of Destruction'...do you get it yet? It's kind of like 'The Good Life', do you remember the family was called 'the Goods' was it with an 'e'? 'The Goodes' maybe it was...anyway this scientist creates a female cyborg and wouldn't know, it's powered by a nuclear device in its womb. To add insult to insanity, not only does the cyborg have nuclear bits, its brain is fried with the repressed memories and trauma of its creator. Anyway it goes on a crime spree exploding all in its wake...it's up some Hollywood action type to stop it...who ya gonna call? Well, in this case it's Gregory Hines, that famous hard-ass action hero. Suffice to say it's pretty dull. Hines is okay but his tap-dancing skills are hard to equate with saying things like 'shut up bitch!', firing big guns and hanging on that bit that goes below helicopters, you know that bit? I'd love to hang off that bit. Dutch actress Renee Soutendijk has a good stab at the dual role as wallflower scientist and sex-crazed cyborg but she does not seem to get the idiom of American action movies.

Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns. I slavishly watched the trailer for this movie on the Internet before it was released, knowing in the back of my mind that it would never be released in the UK. Low and behold, it wasn't. This is an entertaining, well-researched solid documentary about alternative U.S. band They Might Be Giants. Famous in the UK for 'Birdhouse in your Soul', which, as I remember jostled for chart space with the Stone Roses' Fools' Gold and Jeff Wayne's Eve of the War. Anyway, it's good but with a few disappointments. First up: Although Harry Shearer and Micheal McKean (of Spinal Tap and much more besides fame) and Janeane Garofalo appear prominantly in the trailer, they merely read out They Might Be Giants' lyrics out rather than discussing why they like the band. Second, and maybe it's the film geek in me, every interviewee talk about the band name 'They Might be Giants' as if it's some sort of existensial riddle. These are all media-savvy intellectual Americans, don't they know it comes from that 1971 movie of the same name where George C. Scott plays a lawyer who thinks he's Sherlock Holmes.

More to come!.