Jonathan Crocker

Things we know about werewolves: they go to the gym a lot, they take their shirts off when it starts raining, they transform when girls don’t fancy them, they’re Native Americans, they’re made of pixels, they’re really, really bad at acting.

Let’s start again. Back in 1941, back before New Moon and Taylor Lauter, The Wolf Man and Lon Chaney clawed out the real template for the modern movie lycanthrope. Read the rest of this entry »

“The edge… There is no honest way to explain it, because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.” Lightning-powered by a hot cocktail of tequila, mescaline, anger and idealism, Hunter S Thompson spent his life hunting that edge. But as Alex Gibney’s overlong documentary does make clear, Thompson’s deadliest vice wasn’t substance but style: it was fame that fried his brain more than drug or drink. Read the rest of this entry »

Ricky Gervais could be a fat Jack Lemmon. In his first Hollywood leading role as a miserablist New York dentist who can’t stand other people, Gervais nails funny, fumbling pathos as smartly as his trademark bum-puckering quips and deadpan sarcasm. He’s Bertram Pincus (“It’s Pink-Ass, right?), a man who, after flatlining briefly during bowel surgery, wakes to find he sees dead people. Everywhere. And they all want to talk to him. Think Ghost, The Frighteners, The Sixth Sense and Over Her Dead Body: it’s the dead who show Pincus how to live. Read the rest of this entry »

“God help us!” The first words of Malcolm McDowall’s addictive DVD commentary say it all. Written by Gore Vidal (who disowned his screenplay), helmed by Salon Kitty saucepot Tinto Brass (who rubbed out his director’s credit) and produced by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione (who personally put up the $17.5 million budget), Caligula remains a disaster of such astonishing epic oddness that it simply can’t be ignored. Read the rest of this entry »

He’s eats too much, doesn’t exercise enough and feels stressed all the time. Sound familiar? Here’s how Homer Simpson can turn his whole life around – and you can too…

1. “All my life, I’ve been an obese man trapped in a man fat’s body.”

D’OH! “At  239lbs, Homer is about 54lbs overweight and has a BMI of 32,” says boot-camp personal trainer Gavin Walsh. “This puts you in the obese category. Men carry excess weight around the stomach, close to the vital organs, which places a huge stress on your heart. Read the rest of this entry »