It has come to my attention that several of my acquaintances and, rumour has it, friends, have been to see The Island this summer. Allow me to offer my personal congratulations. Thanks to your gallant determination and willingness to throw money at yet more abominations like that, allowing the film to reach number two at the UK Box Office and gross almost £1.5 million in its opening weekend, we are virtually guaranteed yet another Michael Bay disastrous debacle of a summer blockbuster (the man seems to believe “summer blockbuster” is a legitimate genre of film). I hope you feel proud.

Of course, The Island does actually have several things going for it. At least it wasn’t The Dukes of Hazard, for starters. Scarlett Johansson’s presence almost convinced me that some of the plot’s intelligence may have survived the inevitable butchering, since she’s generally pretty discerning with her choice of scripts, but apparently in this instance my faith was misplaced (I would love to ask her what the hell she was thinking, since she must have known Michael Bay’s reputation amongst critics at the very least). More importantly, it’s the first of Bay’s films to be considered a flop at the box office compared to the studio’s expectations from their favourite summer cash-in boy. Here Burton’s magic has kept him at bay (so to speak) with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory while in the States he was upstaged by a bunch of penguins, for crying out loud!

Speaking of penguins, if you’re stuck for something to keep you occupied this summer, how about switching to Linux, the supervillain’s choice. I on the other hand am more than occupied with The Globalist. The dates given by our printers were changed pushing our schedule forward so that everything must now be finalised by the September 7th. Working on layout and typesetting I have to work as and when the articles actually arrive as well as sorting out photographs and associated copyright so it’s all getting rather hectic. That’s not to say it isn’t still fun, just fun in the same way as tourettes: liberating, but often rather inconvenient.