The USA Film Festival announces the full schedule of events for the 41st Annual USA Film Festival, April 27 - May 1, 2011.  All programs will be held at the Angelika Film Center Dallas, 5321 E. Mockingbird Lane, Dallas, Texas.  Advance tickets are available exclusively through Ticketmaster beginning Friday, April 15, 2011.

The program includes special TRIBUTES to the following performing artists:

Barry Corbin
William Fichtner
Malcolm McDowell
[Editors Note: For additional information on the Tribute programs, please see the attached PDF of the program schedule.]

The Festival also salutes film, television and theater actors David Hyde Pierce, Peter Riegert and Karen Young with new films The Perfect Host (David Hyde Pierce), White Irish Drinkers (Peter Riegert) and The Green (Karen Young).

"People always ask if there is a "theme" to this year's festival and we always say no, because our selections for the spring program are never theme-based.  We screen new and classic films, shorts and features, and create programs (tributes, compilations, etc.) based on what we think will be interesting and provocative for that particular year." said Ann Alexander, Managing Director for the year-round USA Film Festival.

"Still, every year, certain common threads tend to emerge.  This year, we take more than a few "road trips," an ever-popular film theme, and there is a definite "elegance" to the films featured.  Not elegance as meant in the fashion sense - although Cary Grant is certainly a style icon for the ages - but rather the elegance that comes from keen intelligence and self assurance.  Filmmakers, like Alfred Hitchcock who's supremely elegant To Catch a Thief opens the festival on its 55th anniversary, with a clear voice and steady hand who take the time to tell their story, each with their own unique sense of confidence and style.  Each of this year's writers, directors and performing artists share that aplomb, that elegance."

"From the enigmatic and memorable debut features by women writer/directors Massy Tadjedin (Last Night), Kathy Lindboe (NoNames), Caroline Bottaro (Queen to Play); debut films from writer/directors Nick Tomnay (The Perfect Host) and Sam Jaeger (Take Me Home), as well as director Steven Williford and writer Nick Marcarelli (The Green); to veteran filmmakers Tamar Hoffs' take-no-prisoners Pound of Flesh, Michael Winterbottom's glorious The Trip, Justin Chadwick's inspiring The First Grader, Harry Thomason's contemplative The Last Ride, and John Gray's stunning White Irish Drinkers, these are masterful filmmakers who don't need special effects or tricks to bewitch audiences into coming along with them.  Great writing, shooting and performances are more than enough to hold us elegantly in their thrall."

LIST OF PROGRAMS (chronologically)

REMEMBERING CARY GRANT

AN EVENING WITH JENNIFER GRANT

On-stage conversation with Jennifer Grant, book-signing and 55th Anniversary screening of TO CATCH A THIEF (1956)

Wednesday, April 27 7:00pm

The sweeping vistas of the Riviera pale next to the sight of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly falling in love in this sprightly heist movie.  Grant stars as reformed cat-burglar John Robie, who comes out of retirement when a new jewel thief goes to work using his signature style of thievery. Kelly plays Frances, a proper debutante who discovers that larceny is an aphrodisiac - a theme Hitchcock would pursue more explicitly in Marnie - and tests Robie's resolve by throwing herself, and her priceless jewels, at him. With glorious costume design by Edith Head, a hilarious supporting turn by Jessie Royce Landis as Kelly's mother (she would play Grant's mother in Hitchcock's North by Northwest four years later) and unforgettable fireworks (both literal and figurative), To Catch a Thief remains one of the most charming and exciting films from the Master of Suspense. 106 mins.  The program will be hosted by historian and author Foster Hirsch.

Good Stuff: A Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant

Good Stuff is an enchanting portrait of the profound and loving relationship between a daughter and her father, who just happens to be one of America's most iconic male movie stars.  Jennifer Grant was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She graduated from Stanford University with a degree in history. Her first acting role was in Aaron Spelling's Beverly Hills, 90210, and she later appeared in Friends, Super Dave, and CSI, as well as several feature films. She lives with her son, Cary Benjamin, in Beverly Hills.

              Complimentary copies of Jennifer Grant's book, Good Stuff, will be distributed (limited supply).

THE PERFECT HOST

Wednesday, April 27 7:30pm

Warwick Wilson (David Hyde Pierce) is the consummate host.  He carefully prepares for a dinner party, the table impeccably set and the duck perfectly timed for 8:30pm.  John Taylor (Clayne Crawford) is a career criminal. He's just robbed a bank and needs to get off the streets.  He finds himself on Warwick's doorstep posing as a friend of a friend, new to Los Angeles, who's been mugged and lost his luggage.  As the wine flows and the evening progresses, we discover just how deceiving appearances can be.  Co-writer/director Nick Tomnay's dark-hearted comedy/drama is full of outrageous moments and suspenseful twists.  Audiences may never look at David Hyde Pierce the same way again after seeing this slippery psychological thriller that reveals just how far we're willing to go to satisfy our needs.  Also featuring Nathaniel Parker, Helen Reddy, Megahn Perry, Joseph Will and Tyrees Allen. 93 mins.  David Hyde Pierce and writer/director Nick Tomnay in attendance.

DAVID HYDE PIERCE

Emmy and Tony Award winner David Hyde Pierce made his professional and Broadway debut in 1982 as the waiter in Christopher Durang's "Beyond Therapy."  He went on to create roles in the off-Broadway productions of Mark O'Donnell's "That's it Folks!," Richard Greenberg's "The Author's Voice" and "The Maderati," Harry Kondoleon's "Zero Positive" and Jules Feiffer's "Elliot Loves" before returning to Broadway in Wendy Wasserstein's "The Heidi Chronicles."  In 2005 he originated the role of Sir Robin in the Broadway production of "Monty Python's Spamalot" for which he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical.  In 2007 he won the Tony Award and earned another Drama Desk Award nomination for his role as Lieutenant Frank Cioffi in the musical comedy "Curtains," before going on to appear in the Manhattan Theatre Club revival of the 1930's comedy "Accent on Youth," and most recently, in the acclaimed London and Broadway production of David Hirson's "La Bete. "  In addition to his work in new plays, Mr. Pierce has also appeared in numerous repertory theater across the country.  Mr. Pierce's film credits include Bright Lights, Big City, Crossing Delancey, Little Man Tate, Sleepless in Seattle, Wolf, Nixon, Isn't She Great, Wet, Hot, American Summer, Full Frontal, Down With Love, A Bug's Life, Osmosis Jones, Treasure Planet and The Perfect Host. His television credits include Norman Lear's political satire "The Powers That Be" and "Frasier," for which he earned four Emmy Awards and the American Comedy, Television Critics, Viewers for Quality Television and Screen Actors Guild Awards.

THE LAST RIDE

Thursday, April 28 7:00pm

Based on the tragic final days of legendary country crooner Hank Williams, The Last Ride stars Henry Thomas (E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Legends of the Fall) as country music star Luke Wells and Jesse James as Silas, the young man hired to drive him from Alabama to a New Year's Eve concert in Canton, Ohio, circa 1952. But there's a catch to young Silas' seemingly simple job: he has to not only get Wells there on time, but sober enough to perform -- a task easier said than done.  Wells not only has a penchant for drinking, fighting, and general hard living, he's as haunted as he is talented, fighting against a chronic disease and determination to self-destruct. Two men from disparate backgrounds form an unlikely bond over the course of a fateful journey. Also featuring Kaley Cuoco, Fred Dalton Thompson, Stephen Tobolowsky and Ray McKinnon. 103 mins.

Director Harry Thomason, producer/composer Benjy Gaither in attendance.

Award-winning British film director Michael Winterbottom (Welcome to Sarajevo, 24 Hour Party People) turns his talents towards foodies and improvised comedy with this sublimely hilarious tale that sees veteran comedic actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing "loose versions" of themselves as they embark on a week long road trip across the North of England, visiting top restaurants for a series of reviews, exploring the countryside, and getting on each others nerves. The latter is manifest via witty impersonation face-offs (Brydon is a master impressionist) including a Michael Caine riff that is laugh-out-loud hilarious and a Sean Connery/James Bond "martini" parley that is sheer genius.  In between their misadventures, Steve struggles with his faltering relationship with his girlfriend and his stagnating Hollywood career, while Rob, miserable git that he is, enjoys being a happily married father. A cheeky combination of fact and (mostly) fiction with stunning views of England's Lake District, Lancashire, and the Yorkshire Dales, The Trip is destined to be devoured by smart audiences everywhere. 111 mins.

TAKE ME HOME

Thursday, April 28 7:15pm

Struggling would-be photographer Thom (Parenthood and Eli Stone's Sam Jaeger) is at the end of his rope: he's been turned down for a job for the umpteenth time, evicted from his apartment, and reduced to living in the illegal taxi cab that he uses to make ends meet during times like this.  High-strung executive Claire (Amber Jaeger) is also having a bad day after catching her husband making a pass at his new secretary and learning that her estranged father has suffered a massive heart attack. Partially out of necessity and largely out of desperation, she offers Thom several thousand dollars to drive her from New York to California, embarking on a journey that forces them both to do some serious self-evaluation and make some life-altering decisions. Funny, endearing, and uncompromising, writer-director Sam Jaeger's dramedy is a road trip worth the trip. Also featuring Victor Garber, Lin Shaye, Christine Rose and  Bree Turner. 97 mins.  Sam Jaeger and producer Jane Kosek in attendance.

LAST NIGHT

Friday, April 29 7:00pm

Writer/director Massy Tadjedin's sexy and evocative debut feature is set in New York City -- the story of a married couple that, while apart for one night, are each confronted by temptation that may decide the fate of their marriage. Joanna (Keira Knightley) and Michael Reed (Sam Worthington) are seven years into a successful and happy relationship.  They are moving along in their lives together until Joanna meets Laura (Eva Mendes) at a party, the stunningly beautiful work colleague whom Michael never mentioned.  While Michael is away with Laura on a business trip, Joanna runs into an old but never quite forgotten love, Alex (Guillaume Canet) and agrees to have drinks with him.  As the night progresses and temptation increases for the couple, each must confront who they are inside and outside of their relationship.  Last Night is ultimately a film about choices - the choice you make to be with someone, to give yourself physically and emotionally, and how to survive all three. 93 mins.  Filmmakers in attendance (pending).

NONAMES Tribute to BARRY CORBIN

The feature film will be preceded by a film clip compilation Tribute honoring Barry Corbin

Friday, April 29 7:00pm

Writer/director Kathy Lindboe's haunting feature debut drama is based on a true story about a young man, Kevin (James Badge Dale, Rubicon) and his relationships -- with the town he loves, his fractured family, his girlfriend (Gillian Jacobs, Community), his life-long friends -- and trying to find his place in a dying town with two bars, a cemetery and a mill that is closing.  This sharply observed film captures the free-wheeling 70s, fueled by drugs and alcohol, and the aimlessness and desperation brought about by hopelessness.  Dogged by unsettled scores, it becomes clear that Kevin must leave the town he loves if he is to save himself. Barry Corbin is Ed, Kevin's boss and long-time family friend who tries to counsel him out of a potentially volatile situation. 103 mins.  Kathy Lindboe, Barry Corbin and other cast/crew in attendance.

POUND OF FLESH Tribute to MALCOLM MCDOWELL

The feature film will be preceded by a film clip compilation Tribute honoring Malcolm McDowell

Friday, April 29 7:00pm

Barden College's most revered professor, Noah Melville (Malcolm McDowell) teaches the idyllic school's most popular Shakespeare class. His family, his students, and (most of) his colleagues adore him, yet few of them are aware of his extracurricular enterprise: Between lectures, the professor facilitates an escort service staffed by some of the gorgeous coeds, who finance their tuition through this unorthodox "scholarship" program.  When the corpse of a young woman is discovered near campus, Melville's complicated world begins to crumble as driven police sergeant Rebecca Ferraro (Elizabeth Rodriguez) and troubled detective Patrick Kelly (Angus Macfadyen) begin closing in.  Writer/director Tamar Hoffs' provocative, satirical, twist-driven thriller isn't afraid to push to, and sail over, the edge - tongue in cheek all the way. Also featuring great performances by Timothy Bottoms, Dee Wallace and a cast of young stars including Whitney Able (Monsters). 94 mins. Tamar Hoffs and Malcolm McDowell in attendance.

RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH

Friday, April 29 9:30pm

A witty adaptation of the novel by cult-favorite science fiction author Philip K. Dick (whose works have been the basis for the movies Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau, and many others) by writer-director John Alan Simon. Set in an alternate reality circa the 1980s, it tells the story of Berkeley record store clerk Nick Brady (Jonathan Scarfe), who begins to experience strange visions from an entity he calls VALIS that cause him to uproot his family and move to Los Angeles, where he becomes a successful music company executive. Along with his best friend, science-fiction writer Phil (Shea Whigham), and a mysterious woman named Silvia (Alanis Morissette), Nick finds himself drawn into a dangerous political-mystical conspiracy of cosmic proportions as they attempt to overthrow the fascist president (Scott Wilson) of a dystopian United States. Combining generous amounts of paranoia, social commentary, and genre-bending speculative fiction, Radio Free Albemuth is a film-lovers delight and a PKD fan's dream come true. 119 mins.  Writer/director John Alan Simon and actress/producer Elizabeth Karr  in attendance.

THE LOCKER

Texas Filmmakers Showcase

Friday, April 29 9:45pm

At first glance, Emily (Natalie Dickinson) is a typical 20-something, but she's anything but.  For her, the line between reality and imagination has drastically begun to blur.  Constant paranoia and a feeling of being followed have led to her being institutionalized.  Emily insists that she and four other girls were kidnapped and held prisoner by a unknown masked assailant who tormented them for days before she alone managed to escape. Now she finds herself trapped between what is real, and what may be real, as her doctors tell her one thing, and her mind tells her another as she struggles to find the truth.  Written and directed by Robert Paschall, Jr. and shot in Dallas with a great local cast.  92 mins.  Bobby Paschall, cast and crew in attendance.

SHORT FILM COMPILATION CROSSROADS AND CROSS PURPOSES

Friday, April 29 9:15pm

This collection of dark comedic and dramatic short films feature some of life's messiest and most unexpected moments.  Included are TJ Thyne's RUN; Tom Lenk and Tara Karsian make a connection in the indescribably outrageous HELLO CALLER; a neurotic LA woman (Alex Dawson) challenges the sanity of her shrink (Stephen Tobolowsky) in CLARA'S CARMA; animated mayhem ensues in ENRIQUE WRECKS THE WORLD featuring a terrible chain reaction; and Fran Krause's NOSY BEAR takes on hunters and guns; TIME FREAK explores why you shouldn't do it over again even if you could; THE INTERVIEW shows how to get a job in a post-apocalyptic world; love and greed collide in SWEET SWEET BABY; life's unpredictable choices unfold in BEFORE WE GET TO SEATTLE; and a stunning double betrayal in HOW IT ENDED, featuring Debra Winger, Larry Pine and Halley Feiffer.  82 mins.  Filmmakers in attendance.

THE 48 HOUR FILM PROJECT

Texas Filmmakers Showcase

Group A - Saturday, April 30 5:00pm

Group B - Saturday, April 30 7:00pm

Group C - Saturday, April 30  9:00pm

Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the 48 Hour Film Project's 2011 World Tour kicks off in Dallas this year with three dozen filmmaking teams competing for prizes and bragging rights. Dallas is one of 80 cities worldwide participating in the Project's expanded tour, with a record 3,200 filmmaking teams worldwide expected to take part in the planet's largest timed filmmaking competition.  The finished films will be screened during the Festival on Saturday, April 30th, and the Awards program will take place on Sunday, May 1st.  The race weekend takes place April 15-17.  Each team will be given a genre, a character, a prop and a line of dialogue to incorporate into their film.  Filmmakers supply the inspiration, adrenaline and caffeine needed to accomplish a completed work (between 4-7 minutes in length) in 48 hours.  The audience selects its favorite and a local panel of film professionals will select the Best Film and other category award winners.  For registration and other information, please visit www.48hourfilm.com/dallas

QUEEN TO PLAY

Saturday, April 30  5:00pm

Oscar-winning actor Kevin Kline and French star Sandrine Bonnaire star in this stylish, sophisticated comedy-drama set on the picturesque Mediterranean isle of Corsica. Bonnaire stars as Helene, an attractive, intelligent and very repressed chambermaid who discovers a latent love for the game of chess after witnessing a leisurely sexy match between a vacationing couple (Jennifer Beals and Dominic Gould).  Obsessed with the game (to the chagrin of her husband and daughter) she begins taking secret tutelage in its finer points from another of her cleaning clients, an expatriate American doctor (Kline) living in isolation, resulting in a series of events that radically transform both their lackluster lives.  Based on the novel "The Chess Player" by Bertina Heinrichs, Queen to Play marks the auspicious debut of French director and screenwriter Caroline Bottaro with one of the year's most utterly charming films.  96 mins.

TOREY'S DISTRACTION

Saturday, April 30  5:00pm

What if your child had a rare genetic defect -- one that if left unchecked, would take their life prematurely? Tisha Blood's intimate film follows the amazing Torey Harrah and two other young girls with craniofacial anomalies over the course of 10 years through dozens of surgeries, introducing us to their families and the medical professionals who become part of their extended family.  Recent medical advances are saving the lives of children born with Apert Syndrome, and Dr. Jeffrey Fearon and his team at Medical City Dallas are at the forefront of those advances.  The Festival is proud to salute Jeff Fearon and his team for their commitment to craniofacial research and treatment on behalf of children everywhere.  94 mins.  Tisha Blood, Torey Harrah and other guests in attendance.

DRIVE ANGRY Tribute to WILLIAM FICHTNER

The feature film will be preceded by a film clip compilation Tribute honoring William Fichtner

Saturday, April 30  7:00pm

If you missed this outrageously over the top movie in theaters, now's your second chance to experience its gleefully self-obsessed wonders with one of the screen's greatest hoodlums -- William Fichtner.  Drive Angry stars Nicolas Cage as John Milton, a dead man who escapes from Hell (in a Buick Riviera, no less) to seek vengeance on the self-styled Satanic messiah (Billy Burke), who brutally murdered his daughter, before he can sacrifice Milton's infant granddaughter during the next full moon.  Along the way, Milton acquires a plucky sidekick (Amber Heard) and are in turn pursued by a mysterious infernal bounty hunter known as The Accountant (USAFF honoree William Fichtner).  Shoot-outs, fist-fights, car chases, explosions, nudity, one-liners, and special effects ensue. A throwback to the good ol' days of grindhouse cinema, Drive Angry offers a tongue-in-cheek good time, with no holds barred and no apologies offered.  104 mins.  William Fichtner in attendance. The tribute program will be introduced by producer Garry Brown.

THE GREEN

Saturday, April 30  7:30pm

Having left behind the concrete and steel jungle of New York City for the idyllic shores of Connecticut, high school drama teacher Michael Gavin (Jason Butler Harner) enjoys a quieter domestic existence with his partner, Daniel (Cheyenne Jackson), living by a simple, unspoken code: don't speak up, don't make trouble. His hard-earned peace is turned upside down when he is accused of engaging in inappropriate behavior with one of his high school students. The boy runs away from home, leaving his recovering addict mother (the fantastic Karen Young) and her mercenary boyfriend (Bill Sage in another great performance) to capitalize on the alleged affair. In the wake of it all, Michael fights a lonely battle against the suspicions, mistrust, and latent homophobia of his friends and neighbors, as well as an ugly secret from his past.  The top notch cast also features Julia Ormond and Illeana Douglas.  91 mins.  Director Steven Williford, writer Paul Marcarelli ("The Verizon Guy"), Karen Young and other cast in attendance.

WARRIORS OF THE DISCOTHEQUE: THE STARCK CLUB DOCUMENTARY

Texas Filmmakers Showcase Saturday, April 30  9:30pm

Filmmaker Joe Alexandre's short film about the notorious Starck Club screened at the USAFF two years ago on the occasion of the landmark's club's 25th anniversary.  The screening was wildly popular and Joe collected even more interviews and footage, so that now the project is a feature film filled with all the material that could not be included in the short work.  Aside from being ground zero for the popularization of the designer drug MDMA (legal at the time), the Starck Club was so much more.  Philippe Starck is now a world renowned designer, but prior to the Dallas club, he was an up and coming Parisian designer who was virtually unknown outside of France.  After the club, he went on to design the Hotel Royalton in New York as well as the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills.   Warriors of the Discotheque explores the legacy and influence the Starck Club has had on everything from design, music, and fashion to acceptance and tolerance of different sexual orientations. Incorporating interviews with those that were there including former employees, managers, performers, and key influential patrons, the party that was 1984 in Dallas lives on. 89 mins. Writer/director Joseph Alexandre in attendance.

HURRY UP AND WAIT

Saturday, April 30  9:45pm

In 2009, filmmaker Justin Malone and producer Lior Spirer followed the Atlanta-based band Gringo Star (Nick and Peter Furgiuele, Peter DeLorenzo and Matt McCalvin) on a six week journey through fourteen countries as they embarked on a tour of Europe. Playing at large and lavish venues each night, the shows attracted hundreds of eager new fans, and the positive vibe is everywhere.  Energized by this newfound exposure, sleeping on park benches and showering with cologne each day is part of the deal, and the headliners boast of Gringo Star's determination and talent.  Success is just around the corner, but the stand-offish music scene they encounter in the UK leaves them with smaller audiences and fading hopes.  Playing tiny clubs with no promotion that draw miniscule crowds proves to be the true test of drive for success.  A raw behind-thescenes look at what it takes to make a name for one's self in the dog-eat-dog world of rock and roll, Hurry Up and Wait is a must see for Gringo fans and music lovers in general. 78 mins. Director/Editor Justin Malone, producer Lior Spirer and Gringo Star (Nick and Peter Furgiuele, Peter DeLorenzo and Matt McCalvin) in attendance.

THE FIRST GRADER

Sunday, May 1  7:15pm

Set in a mountain village in Kenya, Director Justin Chadwick and screenwriter Ann Peacock present the remarkable and uplifting true story of an Maruge (Oliver Litondo), an 84-year-old farmer and veteran of the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s who decided to go to school when the country introduced universal education. A man who has suffered a lifetime of loss and degradation, Maruge is determined to seize his last chance to learn to read and write by enrolling in a class populated by six-year-olds.  The school's authorities are reluctant to admit Maruge, partly due to limited resources, but also partly due to tribal rivalries that continue to haunt the young nation.  Moved by Maruge's unyielding determination to learn, young teacher Jane Obinchu (Naomie Harris) becomes his ally in a fight to overcome threats, bureaucratic red tape and the burdens of the colonial past.  A stirring tale of dignity, survival, and reconciliation, Chadwick's film is certain to stir the hearts of viewers. 103 mins.  Justin Chadwick and producer Richard Harding in attendance.

WHITE IRISH DRINKERS

Sunday, May 1  7:00pm

It's early autumn of 1975 in Brooklyn and 18-year-old Brian Leary (Nick Thurston) is killing time in his mostly Irish neighborhood, pulling off petty crimes with his street tough older brother Danny (Geoff Wigdor), whom he both idolizes and fears.  He doesn't really want to be a criminal, but he doesn't share the dreams of his friends from their working class neighborhood either. They all yearn for socially acceptable 9-to-5 civil service jobs with benefit packages that will carry them through weekends of boozing it up until retirement rolls around. A talented self-taught artist, Brian escapes his frustrations and the never-ending shouting matches between his hot-tempered father (Stephen Lang) and world-weary mother (Karen Allen) by putting on headphones and painting in the basement.  Even though Brian's best bet is an offer to attend a prestigious art school and escape a dead-end future, he doesn't want to betray his blue-collar roots by accepting a scholarship to college. Peter Riegert is Brian's boss at the local movie theater,  trying to make ends meet with one big Rolling Stones concert. A stirring coming-of age drama with great resonance, White Irish Drinkers boasts terrific writing and a remarkable cast of established veterans and up-and coming young actors.  109 mins. Writer/director John Gray and Peter Riegert in attendance.

PETER RIEGERT

Peter Riegert has been acting, writing, directing and producing for the past 40 years.  His movies include National Lampoon's Animal House, Local Hero, Crossing Delancey, Chilly Scenes of Winter, Coldblooded, Utz, Oscar, Passed Away, The Mask, Traffic, and the short film The Response, which received the ABA Silver Gavel and was short listed for an Academy nomination for live-action short. Television credits include "The Sopranos," "Gypsy," "Barbarians at the Gate," "Concealed Enemies," "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" and "Damages." On Broadway he was in "The Old Neighborhood," "An American Daughter," "The  Nerd" and "Dance With Me." His Off-Broadway credits include "Sexual Perversity in  Chicago," "The Birthday Party," "Mountain Language," "Isn't It Romantic" and "A Rosen  By Any Other Name."  His directorial film debut was the Academy Award-nominated short By Courier, which was followed by his first feature, King of the Corner, starring Isabella Rossellini, Eli Wallach, Rita Moreno, Beverly D'Angelo, Eric Bogosian and Dominic Chianese.  He is currently preparing to shoot his next feature, based on the novel "A Field of Darkness" by Cornelia Read.

SHORT FILM AWARDS PROGRAM

Sunday, May 1  7:30pm

Join our National Jurors for announcements and screening presentations of this year's (33rd Annual National Short film & Video Competition) winning films as well as the winners announcements for the 48 Hour Film Project. Awards are given to the best in Animation, Fiction, Non-Fiction and Experimental categories as well as awards for Texas ties, student achievement, and more.  Meet the First Prize Winners (who are notified the day prior and flown to Dallas for the show) as he or she presents the winning entries and receives the cash awards. USAFF prize winners who were recognized early in their careers include Alexander Payne, Todd Haynes, Jessica Yu, Wes Anderson, Bill Plympton, Michael Almereyda, John Lasseter, and many more. The USAFF is an Academy-qualified program and many films recognized here have gone on to be nominated for the Academy Award.  Recent Competition-winning films that were qualified for Academy consideration include 2007s Academy Award winner West Bank Story and 2010s nominated Kavi.

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The Baniak family live frugally in a crumbling communist-built steel town outside Kraków, but they remain hopeful for their future

'This is it." Marcin Baniak holds the arm of his four-year-old daughter in one hand and points at an empty flowerbed with the other. I'm not sure what I am supposed to be looking at. The only things poking through the dirt are the stumps of a few rose bushes. Marcin senses my confusion and tries again. He turns round and points at another barren patch of mud. "Maybe this," he says, "is it."

Whatever "this" was isn't there any more. And with good reason, as Marcin finally explains. We are standing in a street near his home in Nowa Huta, a suburb of Kraków, and somewhere round here, or maybe over there, once stood a huge statue of Lenin.

The last few years have been an era of flux for both the town and the Baniaks. Nowa Huta, or "New Steelworks", was built from scratch in 1949 by the new communist government. It was to house the 30,000 workers at the factory from which the town takes its name; for decades, Nowa Huta, a place of vast grey housing blocks and wide, wide roads, was considered an icon of socialist town-planning, an up-yours to nearby religious, academic Kraków. The steelworks themselves were named after Lenin. The central square, when viewed from the air, formed a soviet star. And, for a while, there were no churches.

For Marcin, it's funny to remember all this, especially since Poland is often now considered a capitalist success story. The old admin offices at the factory house two banks: Polski and Deutsche. The flat he and his wife Sylwia bought six years ago for around 100,000 zlotys (£22,000) has trebled in value. Poland was the only country in Europe to avoid a recession during the global financial crisis. That statue of Lenin has been ripped down and sent to Sweden, where it's on display in a kitsch theme park; the central square is named after Ronald Reagan. The steelworks – its workforce cut to 2,000 – was privatised in 2003. And now there are churches. "More churches than schools," jokes Marcin.

The Baniaks moved here six years ago. Back then the family consisted of Sylwia, now 34, a clerk at the local council, and Marcin, 33, an up-and-coming music critic. Two years on, Amelia was born, then Olga. Sylwia took time off work to look after the children, though she wants to return this winter to her job. Marcin became a presenter on Radio Kraków, before losing his job in 2008. He now works in the PR department of a Polish publishing house.

The Baniaks have agreed to let me stay with them for four days in mid-March to catch a glimpse of suburban Polish life. But it's not until I arrive on a Saturday that I realise how generous their offer of hospitality is. They barely have enough space for the four of them, let alone an unknown guest.

The Baniaks' flat is less than 50 sq m, and consists of four small rooms – a kitchen, a playroom for the kids, a bathroom and a living room. They don't technically have a bedroom. At night, they turn two sofas into temporary beds and, during my stay, they all sleep in the playroom. I'm surprised, but, says Marcin, this setup is pretty usual for families living in flats. Some of their neighbours get by with only 30 sq m. Polish dwellings are, on average, some of the smallest living spaces in Europe. Many families use sofa-beds and, like the Baniaks, their bathrooms won't always fit a basin.

"It's my dream to live in a house," says Marcin. He has only ever lived in flats, even in Włoszczowa, the rural town where he and Sylwia grew up. But that might soon change. A few miles out of Kraków, in the shadow of a small forest, stands a small, grey, unfinished house. With luck, the Baniaks might live here by the end of the year. They bought the land four years ago for 80,000zl (about £17,000). At the time they saw it as only an investment; they would re-sell it, untouched, after it had doubled in value. But with flat prices in Nowa Huta rising steeply – 300,000zl gets you just 60 sq m – they realised it wasn't much more expensive to build a two-storey house of their own.

It's been hard work, and a big financial risk. "We don't go on holiday," says Marcin. "We didn't buy a car." Their parents have lent them some money, and the family are doing much of the labour themselves.

During my short stay, Sylwia serves an array of Polish delicacies that would silence anyone who has ever doubted central European cuisine: pierogi (dumplings), twarog (a soft, sweet cheese dish), barszcz (borscht, sometimes with rye and sausages), placki ziemniaczane (potato pancakes), smalec (a pork-and-lard spread), gyros (a layered Greek salad), and rosot (chicken soup, traditional for Sunday lunch). But Sylwia is wary of being photographed in the kitchen. She doesn't want to be considered a typical Polish housewife. She wants to go back to work. But, the Baniaks stress, this isn't a choice afforded to most Polish women: many employers find excuses not to keep new mothers on staff. Sylwia should be fine, because she works for the council, but private firms are more discriminatory. "I know women who are afraid to have children because they may lose their jobs," says Marcin. One friend, a pharmacist, was fired after having a baby because her boss thought she would be too tired. Child support is virtually nonexistent in Poland. The state gives families a one-off 1,000zl (£220) at birth, an amount the Kraków regional government matches for its own residents. But there is nothing continuous.

So the Baniaks count their pennies. They hardly ever eat out – most restaurants are just too expensive, and even supermarket prices are rocketing. Amelia, Marcin and I go shopping at the local Lidl, which the family visits about three times a week. They spend about a third of their household income on food and Marcin is slightly worried because he says some foods have doubled in cost in the last month. He picks up a pack of sugar that costs about 5zl (£1.10). A month ago it was not much more than 3zl (65p); now, in some places, it costs more than 7zl (£1.50). Poland avoided a recession mainly because an emergent middle-class kept on buying. But with prices rising, Marcin wonders how much longer that consumer confidence will continue. "I'm worried there will be strikes because if the prices keep going up, it will be very hard for a lot of people."

Marcin's job is at Wydawnictwo Literackie, a high-brow publishing house associated with Polish literary giants such as Czesław Miłosz, Ryszard Kapuscinski and Witold Gombrowich. Marcin enjoys it – "We support Polish literature, and that's why I like it there" – but it wasn't his first calling. He was a freelance music critic and broadcaster for several years, before getting a staff job in 2006 at Radio Kraków, who gave him his own show. But he was squeezed out because of political machinations. A new centrist government under prime minister Donald Tusk was elected, but the outgoing party, the rightwing Law and Justice, still controlled the state media. So when Tusk made the populist gesture of cutting the Polish equivalent of the television licence, Marcin says Law and Justice tried to highlight the financial cost of such a measure by sacking local broadcasters. Marcin was one of the casualties.

He now earns 4,400zl a month (about £960) in his PR job. More than 300zl goes on tax, around 600zl towards their pension, and 300zl on health insurance, leaving the family about 3,000zl (£650) for bills. A third of that goes on food, a fifth on gas and water, and most of the rest on the new house. Amelia's kindergarten fees used to be around 300zl, but the government recently began subsidising almost all of it. The Baniaks are worried about other government announcements, however. At the moment, Poles pay most of their pension savings to a state fund, and the remaining 7% to private schemes. People are suspicious of a plan to switch more into the state fund. "Many people are worried that our retirement [payments] will be lower," says Marcin. "And many people suspect it's because of public debt."

At the flat, Amelia and Olga are building things with Playmobil. Weekends are centred around the kids, though both Sylwia and Marcin love to read. Their living room shelves are crammed with Polish translations of JM Coetzee, John Banville, Doris Lessing, David Mitchell and Cormac McCarthy, as well as some of Marcin's clients: Ignacy Karpowicz and Jacek Dukaj. The family CD collection is large and varied, but Radiohead's entire back-catalogue takes pride of place, and a poster of a smiling Thom Yorke hangs in the playroom.

In the years following 1989, Nowa Huta was "considered something like a slum", says Marcin, and when the Baniaks arrived, their flat was almost derelict. Today, there is still graffiti inside the building, but the place is more gentrified. A re-paint is due, and the teenage girls who used to loiter on the stairwells have disappeared. Several have had babies, says Marcin. "There's a lot of religious education in Poland, but no sex education."

Catholicism's a vexing issue for the Baniaks – and increasingly for Poland. During communism, the church was a rallying point for dissent. Priests' sermons were often implicitly critical of the regime. Around 95% of Poles still identify themselves as Catholic, but, says Marcin, that figure is shrinking, particularly among the young. They don't like the way the church is still involved in politics, he says, or how it runs a reactionary radio station, Radio Maryja. Or how it campaigns against condoms and IVF. But, clearly, church-going is still popular. On Sunday morning, Marcin takes Amelia and me to a children's mass at the church where the Baniaks were married, a beautiful wooden chapel in nearby Mogila. Congregants are spilling out of the back of the building when we arrive.

Sylwia is religious, and a crucifix hangs in their living room, but Marcin doesn't know quite where he stands. He is not even that keen to talk about it, for fear of causing offence. "The church helped us to survive during communism," he says, diplomatically. But, he hazards, "this is a different country now." He'll still take his children to mass every so often and feels "a big social pressure" to do so. "If parents don't want their children to go to religious classes, they're considered a bit strange."

Poles returning from stints in the UK and Ireland, he says, have brought home "a different attitude to the world", more secular in outlook. Marcin has never considered leaving, partly because overseas work, though well-paid, is not so glamorous. His best friend has two degrees, but when he moved to the US, he could only find work as a roofer. And while emigration helped temporarily lessen unemployment, says Marcin, there are hidden social costs. Emigres created broken families: "Many children don't know their father or mother."

On Monday morning, Olga is poorly so Marcin and Sylwia take her to the doctor. Healthcare is technically free in Poland. "But it's not true," says Marcin. There are long waiting lists, even for urgent consultations. Sylwia had a severe earache recently, but was told she would have to wait a month. Fortunately, a friend who works at a hospital arranged for them to see a state doctor out of hours, but they had been on the verge of shelling out for private treatment.

In general, though, the Baniaks are upbeat about Poland. Historian Adam Zamoyski, writing in Poland: A History (2009), describes the country, which suffered appallingly in the second world war, as "one which has been through hard times and turned the corner". Two years on, Marcin may be worried about whether Poland's economic strength will hold, but his overall outlook is optimistic. "These are maybe the most successful years of our history," he says. "Independence, Nato, the EU, and maybe now the euro. It's exciting."

When Marcin first talks of his international ambitions for Poland, they are limited to gaining the respect of the international community. "I would like Poland to be an ordinary, normal country in Europe. Nothing less and nothing more." But later, he speaks with more ambition. "Maybe we have an important role to connect western Europe to the east," Marcin says. "We are here between Germany and Russia. So we can be something like a bridge."

My last morning with the Baniaks coincides with the first day of spring. To celebrate the passing of seasons, it is traditional for Polish schoolchildren to congregate at the nearest river and "drown" a colourful paper doll. The teachers at Amelia's kindergarten lead all 40 children to the bridge across the local stream. Marcin and I tag along. The doll is called Marzanna (in Polish folklore, she is a friend of winter) and one boy has the special job of putting her in the water. He hoists her above his shoulders, teeters towards the rail of the bridge, and lets the breeze take her. "Zegnaj zimo! [Goodbye winter!]" the children sing, as she touches the water. "Witaj wiosno! [Hello spring!]"

It's politically symbolic, I joke. Marcin smiles. "Maybe," he says. "Communism was a bad winter, the bad years of our country. So this is goodbye communism, hello brave new world."

Bernardo Bertolucci, London

In his early career, which forms the first half of this two-month retrospective, Bertolucci seems to have lived for danger. He was fascinated by eroticism and politics and the connections between them, which, combined with his fluid visual moves, made his films pulse with life. Even before the scandalous Last Tango In Paris, he'd dealt with fascism, murder, terrorism, incest and other hot potatoes in films like The Conformist, La Luna, The Spider's Stratagem and Before The Revolution. His career went widescreen and international, with the star-studded 1900, Oscar triumph The Last Emperor and so on, but the visual mastery never deserted him. Bertolucci himself is in conversation next Saturday and curator David Thompson gives a talk on 14 Apr.

BFI Southbank, SE1, Thu to 30 Apr

Radiophonic Weekend, Bristol

The BBC's unlikely incubator of British electronica gets an aptly boffinish-yet-uber-cool tribute, with films, music, talks and cosmic oscillations from the outer reaches of the analogue universe this weekend, and a Daphne Oram salon in London (see Events Preview). The key screenings here are The Same Trade As Mozart, a 1969 documentary explaining this new-fangled electronic music to the concerned populace, and a new short doc on the workshop's luminous heroine Delia Derbyshire (who created the Doctor Who theme tune). Radiophonic veterans Dick Mills and David Cain will also be on hand with unheard clips and reminiscences on the workshop's 1950s/60s golden age.

Cube cinema, Sat & Sun, visit cubecinema.com

British Silent Film Festival, London

If you're looking for silence, don't watch these silents. The images may be mute but the bill includes skiffle band The Dodge Brothers (featuring Mark Kermode on double bass), a piano improv session (to old newsreels, like they used to), the world premiere of a 1925 score (to Soviet fairytale Morozko), plus archive recordings of early cinema audiences that promise to reveal the "indecent behaviour" of our forebears. For the eyes, highlights include Anna May Wong as an exotic Parisian dancer in Pavement Butterfly and the rediscovered Helen Of Four Gates, a 1920s working class tale set in Hebden Bridge.

Barbican, EC2, Thu to 10 Apr, britishsilents.co.uk

Italian Film, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee

Two countries, two Italian film festivals, and it's a tribute of sorts that there's hardly any overlap. The only movie playing at both the Italian Film Festival In Scotland and Riverside Studio's Italian Cinema London is the singular Le Quattro Volte, a captivating pastoral meditation on man and nature with more goat bleating than spoken dialogue. Both events have a pick of new offerings and both pay tribute to a great actor. In Scotland, it's Toni Servillo, who made such a stunning Andreotti in last year's Il Divo. See him here in several guises, including an exiled criminal in new thriller A Quiet Life. In London, it's Massimo Troisi, best known here for his last film, Il Postino, but with a long back catalogue as both actor and director.

Italian Film Festival In Scotland at various venues, Sat to 14 Apr, visit italianfilmfestival.org.uk; Italian Cinema London at Riverside Studios, W6, Sat to 10 Apr

Spain leads the world in organ transplants, but its success in the operating theatre is matched by its holistic approach outside

Looking tired, Adolfo Martínez Pérez, dressed in a white clinical coat, apologises for being late, saying he has been to see a judge. A difficult patient suing for compensation, perhaps? No. The surgeon and his fellow transplant co-ordinator, nurse Mercedes González González (her mother and father had the same surname), have just returned from witnessing the uncle of a five year-old girl sign a legal document in another part of Madrid's Ramón y Cajal hospital, declaring that he understands the consequences of donating part of his liver to his niece.

Spain has probably the best organ transplant system in the world. Its healthcare is highly regarded – it ranked seventh in the World Health Organisation's top 10 in 2000 (the UK was 18th) – and, like the NHS, it is free at the point of delivery. It has an excellent network of family doctors and a health centre within 15 minutes of every home. But when it comes to transplants, Spain is way out in front.

It is good at the headline-grabbing experimental surgery. Three face transplants of the 12 performed in the world took place in Spain, more than in any other country and, in March last year, a team of 30 in Barcelona carried out the first full face transplant, including teeth, palate and jaw, on a 31-year-old man who had shot himself in a hunting accident.

And it was Spanish surgeons who performed the first transplant of a windpipe manufactured from a patient's own stem cells, which meant that the recipient, Claudia Castillo, 30, escaped a lifetime of immunosuppressant drugs.

But in the routine yet emotionally fraught business of persuading the families of those who have died to donate organs, Spain has also shown the rest of the world the way. The UK is one of many countries that have taken lessons – last week the founder of the Spanish organ transplant network, Dr Rafael Matesanz, was advising Colombia.

Spain has about 5,500 people on the transplant waiting list, compared with about 8,000 in the UK. It has only two-thirds the UK population, but the impressive part is the proportion of families who say yes to organ donation at the moment of death. In the UK, it is 60%. In Spain, it is up to 85%. The organ donation rate in Spain is 34 per million. The latest figure for the UK is 15.5.

Pérez and González are fundamental to Spain's success, according to Matesanz. It's not about donor cards, registers or "presumed consent" but about the teams of transplant co-ordinators in every hospital. "The key is organisation. European people are not that different from one country to another. What really changes is how you approach the moment of death," he says.

In Spain, he says, when a patient arrives in critical care after an injury, heart attack or stroke "there is no limitation to the care if there is a slight possibility to save the patient's life". Medical staff carry on trying beyond much hope of resuscitation or recovery and there are a high number of critical care beds. Spanish families are grateful.

It also means that most of those who die in hospital are certified brain dead on a ventilator, which makes more organ donation possible.

At that point, the transplant co-ordinators will go to see the family. At the Reina Sofia hospital in Córdoba in Andalucia, in the deep south of Spain, but less than two hours from Madrid by impressively fast train, the lead co-ordinator is Juan Carlos Robles Arista, not a surgeon but an intensive care specialist.

Robles and usually another member of the team see the family after they have been told of the death by the treating doctor. Some people in Spain carry donor cards, but the wishes of the family take precedence. The importance of the family in Spanish healthcare, who help feed and care for their relatives in hospital day by day, cannot be over-estimated.

"The first and most important thing is the reaction to the announcement of the death," he says. "That is a hard moment for the family and also for the doctor. It is a painful situation but my job is to explain to the family that in their pain, they could find happiness in helping others."

It's often not one discussion but a protracted conversation. In his 13 years in the job, Robles has found that every family is different. "Sometimes you think it will be difficult and they say yes, of course." What matters above all, he says, is that the doctor believes in the importance of his work. "If you don't believe in what you are doing, you are not able to explain the comfort and happiness of this kind of thing." Do relatives ever come back and thank him for encouraging them to donate? "Many of them, many."

Uxue Gómez Iglesias, 23, is in the hospital, as she has been every day for the last month and will be for the next month, feeding and talking to her mother, who has undergone a double lung transplant. Milagros Iglesias Bello, 54, had emphysema and had been confined to bed wearing an oxygen mask for two years. Her daughter, smiling broadly, pulls out snapshots from last week. Her mother is sitting up and starting physio.

"We are from the Basque country but we now live in Seville," she says. "I was working as a fruit seller but I had to give up my job." It is unthinkable that one of the family would not be with her mother every day. More remarkable still, since she and her mother have no money and Seville is 45 minutes away, a lung transplant charity called A Pleno Pulmón has provided a flat in Córdoba where she now lives for free, and her mother will recuperate for two months.

With the fall in road traffic accidents leading to fewer deaths in young people, the age of organ donors has risen. Spain's average donor is now over 55 and the oldest was 88. Living donations are also on the increase and encouraged. Giving a kidney to a relative should not jeopardise the future health of the donor. A small piece of the liver can be transplanted to save a child's life and will grow back in the donor.

Ramon y Cajal in Madrid has a unique collaboration with the La Paz children's hospital – its surgeons operate on the adult donor and transport the organ to the child at La Paz. The five-year-old whose uncle has agreed to donate – because neither parent is suitable – is older than most. "The child is normally three to five months old," says Pérez. "It takes 10 to 14 hours of surgery for the child who has very tiny blood vessels." Living donors are not the answer for adults, though. Pérez shakes his head. "We have only four or five a year. You have to take more than half the liver. There is a 1-2% mortality risk. In 2002, a New York Times journalist who was a donor died after surgery."

In Spain, transplants, which still seem to be on the exotic fringe in the UK, are a matter of national pride and appear to have been absorbed into the culture – the subject of the Oscar-winning film All About My Mother, directed by Pedro Almodóvar. On my visit to Córdoba, an art exhibition on the subject of organ transplant opened and I was handed the second volume of poetry on the subject by celebrated poets from the region, Tintas para la Vida II.

There is a stocky stone monument outside the Reina Sofia hospital to the donors and, every Tuesday, school groups come to be told about donation and have their pictures taken with donor cards. It's not the card that matters – it is the discussion the young people will later have at home with their parents.

Spain's hospitals, built in the years after Franco when the autonomous regions were given charge of healthcare, are trusted and admired. The 30-year-old Reina Sofia hospital is the pride of Córdoba and its biggest employer. Of the 300,000 inhabitants, 5,000 are employed there. It is big, bright, beautiful and hi-tech. Questions about hospital superbugs are met with incomprehension.

We walk down a corridor with a glass wall, feeling intrusive. Behind it are sterile isolation rooms where young people with no hair are lying on beds in blue hospital pyjamas. They have wifi, computer screens, music systems and television. Some look round startled by passers-by who are obviously neither medical staff nor relatives.

Wandering about a hall filled with natural light are a large number of people, chatting as they wait to be called in when their relative comes out of surgery. All of the 33 operating theatres are in use. Further on is a room with numbered lockers and numbered fully reclining chairs with blankets, a shower and a toilet, where relatives can wait overnight.

None of this looks cheap, yet Spain's healthcare spending is not excessive. "We only spend 6% of GDP," says Dr José Martínez Olmos, secretary general of the ministry of health, although if you add in private sector spending, it reaches 8%. Most people use the state sector. As in the UK, the private sector offers shorter waiting lists, but for major illness, emergencies or cutting-edge treatment, public hospitals are the place to go.

"The healthcare system in Spain is not expensive," Olmos continues. "We spend €1,600 per head per year. This is a price that a developed country can afford."

Doctors' salaries are lower than in the UK - perhaps €100,000 a year for a hospital doctor with 20 years' experience - and there has been a salary cut for medical staff because of the economic crisis. Yet, says Olmos, "that's a high income for Spanish citizens. The president earns €80,000 a year." And there appears to be no great medical migration for higher salaries abroad.

It's hard to square the low cost with Spain's cutting edge medical achievements and not just in transplants. "Everything that medical science has achieved is part of our healthcare system," says Olmos. Nor do they turn down new and expensive drugs - although they insist on renegotiating prices with drug companies in future years and Olmos admits they "are looking at Nice" (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which assesses the cost-effectiveness of medicines in the UK).

Spain faces the same ageing problem as the UK. Martínez Olmos, talks of a big push on tackling the chronic diseases of older people in the home, in order to keep them out of hospital. It's been a theme of the NHS for years now too.

But there is every chance that Spain will deal with the health and social needs of its booming elderly population better than Britain. The massive advantage Spain has is the family. The old bonds may have worn thin in the fast-paced cities, but essentially the commitment of the younger to the older generation is still there, especially in the rural areas.

Just as Uxue Gómez Iglesias, at the age of 23, will give up her job to look after her mother, so families will care for their ailing and elderly relatives at home for as long as they can. And, interestingly, while the Spanish talk much of "the crisis" and Olmos admits that healthcare costs are rising by 5-6% a year, there is no discussion of cutbacks either among medical staff or the population at large. Any mention is greeted almost with a shudder and pushed aside. Spain's healthcare is good and nobody wants to settle for less.

1. Set A budget
   It's easy to get carried away buying Christmas presents. Set a budget and stick to it.
   
   
2. Make A List
   Make a list of every single person you need to buy a present for. Keep it safe and tick off as you buy.
   
   
3. Write A little A Day
   From now until maybe the 14th December, write your cards out, maybe 5 per day. No need to stress about getting all of them done at the same time.
   
   
4. Address labels
   Get someone to put all your names and addresses from your address book into a spreadsheet and then print off your labels. You can pay your son, daughter, niece or nephew to do this for you.
   
   
5. Don't Send Out of Guilt
   If you are sending cards or presents out of guilt, don't. Don't just send because you feel obliged to, cut out this practice and send who you want to send to.
   
   
6. Wrap Presents The Same Night
   As you buy your presents make it a practice to wrap them the same night. This way you will not feel overwhelmed at having to wrap them all at the same time.
   
   
7. Enroll The Kids Into Wrapping
   Kids love Christmas so why not get them involved more into helping you do the tedious time consuming part of Christmas like wrapping the presents.
   
   
8. Fill Up Your Freezer Now
   There's always specials on this time of year but beware as the prices will probably go up again just before Christmas.
   
   
9. Get Into The Christmas Spirit
   It can be quite stressful but remembering that Christmas is a fun time for everyone, or should be, so get into the spirit and plays Christmas CDs, go to Panto's, or see the Christmas nativity.
   
   
10. Make Homemade Gifts
    Making homemade gifts can be a great way to personalize your presents and save you a bit of money. If you're at all arty or can cook why not make presents this year.
    
    
11. Shop Online
    This is a great way to take the stress out of shopping. If you can buy all the gifts from one online store so much the better.
    
    
12. Look At Comparison Sites Before Purchasing
    When you have decided on a present to buy for someone why not check out the comparison sites to see if you can get it cheaper elsewhere online.
    
    
13. Shop Early on in the Day
    There's nothing worse shopping when it is extremely crowded and shoppers are getting irate because it's too busy.
    
    
14. Don't lose your head With relatives
    Remember the Christmas holidays only last for a few days so don't risk falling out with the whole family because of 1 person you don't like.
    
    
15. Buy A Real Tree
    You can replant your Christmas tree in your garden or give it away when the holiday season is over.
    
    
16. Take Some Time Out
    You don't have to attend every single Christmas family event. Take a night off to spend alone or just with the family.
    
    
17. Take A deep Breath
    Remember what Christmas is all about and take a deep breath in times of stress and let it all out and wash over you.
    
    
18. Get More Sleep
    As you will be more busy than usual it's better to get as much sleep as possible so you will have the energy to do everything.
    
    
19. Allow Mess
    Christmas for kids is not a tidy affair it's all about letting go so don't worry too much about the mess. People visiting will expect mess if you have kids. Let kids be kids for the day.
    
    
20. Let them know You're stressed
    Don't take everything on board yourself. Let other members of the family know you are ready to blow a gasket and ask for help.
    
    
21. It's okay to Say No
    You don't need to say yes to every request made of you at Christmas time, or any other time for that matter. Learn to diplomatically say no; there's only so many nativities you can go to.
    
    
22. Remember the good times
    If Christmas is a sad time for you because loved ones are no longer with you, try and remember the good times and ask yourself how they would celebrate.
    
    
23. Hire a cook
    There are lots of places where you can order your Christmas dinner, fully prepared and you pick it up two days before Christmas. Why have all the stress of doing everything yourself.
    
    
24. Stay away from the big shopping malls
    You'll only come home in a bad mood ready to kill someone as you have been elbowed so many times by people rushing to buy presents. Shop when it's quieter or online.
    
    
25. Switch the TV off
    The TV can often be the source of entertainment for the Christmas holidays. Try something different like board games, karaoke, family Xbox or Playstation games.
    
    
26. Avoid too much alcohol
    Yes this is a time to let your hair down but overdoing it on the alcohol can lead you to do things you wouldn't normally do.
    
    
27. No Need to spend the same amount
    My mother always spend the exact same amount on each grandchild no matter how much presents there are. there's no need to do this. It doesn't mean you love one more than the other.
    
    
28. Don't overfill your food cupboards
    there's no need to stock up for the Christmas holidays, the shops are only closed for 1 day or two.
    
    
29. Let things go wrong
    Christmas doesn't have to be spot on perfect. things will go wrong, laugh about it and get on with it.
    
    
30. Make it magical
    Put the fun back into Christmas for the kids and for yourself. It's tradition in our house that the biggest present is always turned into a treasure hunt. Make games up, sing, be silly just let go and be yourself for a full day and enjoy it.
    
    
31. Use post it notes
    If you have a board in your kitchen write post it notes of things to do and you as you do them transfer them to another 'done' board.
    
    
32. Clean out the freezer
    Unless you have a frost free freezer it's a good idea to clean out the freezer to make as much room as possible for food.
    
    
33. Clear the cupboards
    It's also a good idea to clean out the cupboards of all food you have used including: tinned foods, packet foods, and sauces.
    
    
34. Give the house a good cleaning before Christmas
    This way there won't be so much work to do after all the festivities are over and you can relax more.
    
    
35. Clean sheets and duvets
    If you are having guests over make sure you have enough bed linen and make sure it all cleaned befoehand.
    
    
36. Buy in bulk
    If you buy for teachers, colleagues, group members etc buy in bulk to avoid having to shop around.
    
    
37. Ignore the ones who've done it all
    When you feel particularly stressed, don't tell the super-organized person as they will make you feel worse. These are the people who have all their presents, cards, food etc in at the end of August and you feel a smack in the mouth might wipe the smug grin off their face.
    
    
38. Sing loudly
    I love singing at the best of times but at Christmas it's a must to sing loudly and more annoying, there's nothing better than annoying the family with loud singing.
    
    
39. Be unique
    Buying gifts for loved ones is often a dull affair. Try and listen throughout the year for what he or she would really like and put some thought into present buying for your spouse.
    
    
40. Have a rest day
    Once you have everything prepared, presents bought and wrapped, cards written and sent, invitations written and sent etc have a complete day of rest, you deserve it.
    
    
41. Clear the air
    If you've had a disagreement with someone and they are coming round for Christmas, try and clear the air before they come round.
    
    
42. Let everyone be themselves
    Yes it's annoying to have Uncle Bert dribbling in the corner, drunk and half asleep. Let it be and don't stress yourself, it's only for the day.
    
    
43. Invite someone who is alone
    If you are having a big Christmas dinner with family members, why not invite someone you know will be on their own.
    
    
44. Make sure you have a camera
    It's important to capture every Christmas with photos or a camcorder. You may not think it is important just now but in years to come it will bring back so many happy memories for you to enjoy.
    
    
45. Be mindful of pets
    Your pet can get very confused with all the toing and froing of Christmas planning so be mindful to pay them some more attention than usual.
    
    
46. Stock up on medication
    If you have a health condition make sure you have enough medication to last you through the holidays as your doctor may be vacationing for a prolonged period.
    
    
47. Make sure you have a good online protection software
    With many people turning to the net for Christmas shopping, it's extremely important to have online protection software installed on your computer.
    
    
48. Wear sensible shoes
    When you're visiting people at Christmas and it's bad weather,♠ wear sensible shoes in order to minimize the risk of slipping or falling.
    
    
49. Mind your back
    Christmas shopping can be a nightmare for your back. Try and shop more online or make more trips so you are not carrying a mountain full of bags in one go.
    
    
50. Check the weather when hanging lights
    If you decorate your home outside check the weather forecast for the days to avoid any dangers.
    
    
51. Never mind the Jones'
    Christmas is all about joy, fun and happiness it's not about who has the best house lights, or the biggest garden tree or best garden decorations.
    
    
52. Keep receipts
    Always keep your Christmas receipts in a special box. This will mean you can take duplicate gifts back or faulty gifts back and get them exchanged.
    
    
53. Celebrate the real meaning
    Christmas is a time for giving and celebrating and being grateful. Why not visit a hostel with the family to give some of your time before Christmas day.
    
    
54. Encourage children to get involved
    When you explain the importance of Christmas through your actions the children will want to get involved as well. Always make it a fun time if you have kids.
    
    
55. Get your pets used to your decorations
    If you have a pet who has never celebrated Christmas with you, introduce the tree a week early to let them get used to it.
    
    
56. Leave your light hooks up
    If you know you will be decorating the outside of the house every year why not leave the light hooks up so you don't have to do it year after year in the freezing cold.
    
    
57. Find out the return policies
    A lot of gifts cannot be returned after a certain number of days; find this out before purchasing if you are afraid the person might not like it or it will not fit them.
    
    
58. Use coupon sites
    This is a growth area online and there are thousands of coupon sites offering printable coupons to get discounts off from your favorite stores.
    
    
59. Turn out the lights
    Remember to turn all your Christmas lights out at night before going to bed.
    
    
60. Shop on eBay
    There are some fantastic bargains to be had from eBay. If you are stuck for an idea, have a browse and see what there is.
    
    
61. Buy cards straight after Christmas
    If you want to save some money on cards, buy them straight after Christmas as the card shops are looking to get rid of their stock. You will often get great deals for next year.
    
    
62. Tire out the pets
    To stop your pet from getting overexcited, spend a little more time playing around with them and tiring them out so they can relax more.
    
    
63. Leave the kids at home
    If you are going shopping for presents there's nothing worse for a child than having to trail round the shops. Try and organize a baby sitter for a day to let you get your shopping done.
    
    
64. Free events before Christmas
    Lots of children are off on holiday and it can be a strain to keep them entertained. Take them to free events such as the turning on of Christmas lights, the events in the local square, get the kids to write a letter to Santa, go a walk in the local big park.
    
    
65. Place your order now
    If you know what you Christmas menu will be i.e. Turkey, go to your local butcher, or food shop and place your order just now and pick it up nearer the time.
    
    
66. Get plenty of batteries in
    A lot of presents need batteries and it's something we often forget. Make sure you have lots of batteries in stock.
    
    
67. Cash in your rewards
    If you get rewards from your various stores cash them in at Christmas and use them up. It may not be much but every little helps.
    
    
68. Buy your crackers after Christmas
    Buy luxury crackers after Christmas and get a really good price, then store them away for next year.
    
    
69. Make your own gift tags
    Old Christmas cards are a great way to do this. Get your pinking shears out and make your own tags.
    
    
70. Fill the tank up
    If you are going visiting at Christmas make sure you have enough fuel as a lot of gas stations will be closed.
    
    
71. Stocking fillers
    You can stock up on these throughout the year and they soon add up to a sizeable amount of gifts.
    
    
72. Remember overseas relatives
    Remember to get all your overseas parcels sent well before Christmas for them to get there in plenty of time.
    
    
73. Post overseas cards
    Post all your overseas cards in plenty of time for them to arrive by Christmas.
    
    
74. Tiring the kids out
    We have a tradition of going for a meal and then to see a movie on Christmas Eve. This keeps them occupied and tires them out so they get a good sleep and are not too excited on Christmas Eve.
    
    
75. Watch Christmas movies
    Have a Christmas movie day to get the whole family in the spirit of Christmas.
    
    
76. Remember the table decoration
    If you are having guests over remember to get in your Christmas table decorations well in advance.
    
    
77. Buy for the less fortunate
    All year round should a time for thinking about those less fortunate but at this time of year it seems to be more important. Buy a gift for those less fortunate.
    
    
78. Cue the DJ
    Make sure you have a stock of CDs and music for Christmas so you're not hunting around on the day for them.
    
    
79. Pay all your bills before Christmas
    If you can do this it will save you the stress of worrying about the money situation.
    
    
80. Prepare your thank you cards in advance
    Write out all your thank you cards before Christmas so there's no need to worry about them after Christmas and you can relax a little more.
    
    
81. Do some more walking
    Christmas is a time for overindulging in everything including food and drink. Get a little more exercise by going out for a long walk.
    
    
82. Pack the camera
    If you're going visiting remember to take the camera; it's often easy to forget in the hustle and bustle of getting packed.
    
    
83. Time the present opening
    Kids get so many presents at Christmas that they don't know who is buying for them. Don't let them rip all the paper off every single one, let them read the label first, open them, and give them time to enjoy them.
    
    
84. Give your guest a job
    If things get a little out of control and you are having trouble with a family member give them a job to do to get them out of the way.
    
    
85. Get some oxygen
    Even if it's freezing cold, get everyone out of the house for 5 or 10 minutes. A Christmas house can become overheated and overcrowded and getting everyone out for the house for 5 minutes in the cold will wake everybody up and re-ignite the party.
    
    
86. Emergency gifts
    Wrap up a few boxes of chocolates to give as gifts for unexpected visitors.
    
    
87. Declutter the house
    Decluttering helps to de-clutter the mind and if you do it a few weeks before Christmas you will feel a lot more relaxed.
    
    
88. If you are alone
    I've spent a few Christmases alone and it's not a good feeling. However, don't allow others to feel sorry for you. Create a Christmas atmosphere, watch movies all day, and relax and treat yourself to a few goodies.
    
    
89. Use smaller plates
    If you want to cut down on the amount you eat, trick the brain and use a smaller plate.
    
    
90. Use taller glasses
    This is another trick to help fool the brain into thinking you are drinking more than you are and it helps reduce the amount of alcohol your drink.
    
    
91. Don't wrap it, bag it
    Instead of spending hours wrapping all your Christmas gifts why not bag the from the great bags you get from the dollar store.
    
    
92. Pick a party theme
    If you have a Christmas party every year pick a theme and send out invitations in that theme.
    
    
93. Don't overload extension cords
    Think about safety at Christmas and don't overload your extension cords.
    
    
94. Clean out the cooker
    Make sure you cooker it cleaned before Christmas. It will be getting used a lot and cleaning it before hand will help with the cleaning afterwards.
    
    
95. Recycle the leftovers
    You can use the leftover turkey for making sandwiches for boxing day.
    
    
96. Buy rechargeable batteries
    Although they might cost a little more it will save you money in the long run.
    
    
97. Go green and ditch the plastic
    Everyone's going green these days. You can do your bit buy buying a bag for shopping and not use the stores plastic bags.
    
    
98. Keep your pets away from the noise
    If you can help it keep your pets away from the main party as the bangers, crackers and other noises can scare them.
    
    
99. Take a step back
    I might be a little sad but I always take a step back when I see everyone enjoying themselves and remind myself of how lucky I am, and get a little tearful (yes, I'm a man but real men cry too!)
    
    
100. Enjoy yourself
     It's what it's all about.

Written on 12/08/2009 (republished in 12/2010) by Steven Aitchison. Steven is the Author of Change Your Thoughts and works as an alcohol and drugs counselor. He has a BSc in Psychology and has a passion for studying belief formation, thought processes and values and principles.

Photo Credit: Randy Son of Robert

Twenty-five years after their inception, call centres are finally getting a makeover, with awards ceremonies, consumer feedback and, above all, an emphasis on the human touch. Tom Lamont goes behind the scenes to meet the real people to whom your call is important

His exact words, reading like sweary Enigma code, were "cock up brain dead in call centre clueless", but we all understood what Alan Sugar meant.

Earlier this month the business tycoon had taken to Twitter to vent a fury, some problem with his BT internet connection, a faulty router, the details didn't matter – it was the call centre that did it, and Sugar expressed a universal frustration. After speaking too long to a leaden operator, being passed about departments like an insensate parcel, hearing several loops of "Greensleeves" and "Mambo No 5", who hasn't thought of smashing down the phone and screaming "cock up brain dead in call centre clueless" at the ceiling?

Uniquely irritating, call centres are unavoidable in modern life: the gateway to household-bill or working-boiler or hard-shoulder rescue, even (from this month) an appointment with the local doctor – at least in places like Manchester and Milton Keynes where bookings at 50 general practices are to be grouped under a remote call-centre booking system.

How much do we really know about them? "More people have worked in call centres than ever worked in the mining industry," says the writer Matt Thorne, a former operator who wrote a novel, Eight Minutes Idle, about his experiences, "yet it's an occupation that has a relatively low public profile."

Keen to find out more about this industry that employs more than a million Britons, so often a source of anguish for the remainder, I am at the Call Centre Expo in Birmingham's NEC Arena. Thousands of insiders gather here every year to tour the hangar-like space, sharing advice and innovations, selling each other products and worrying about an industry that has gone through some juddering changes in its short lifespan.

It is a frenetic event. Men on podiums have imaginary conversations into futuristic headsets. A consultancy firm has erected a "wall of honesty", asking visitors to confess to past sins like hazy option menus, or neglect. Later in the evening, I have seen advertised, the European Call Centre of the Year awards will be staged in a neighbouring hotel. For now, guests are invited to sit in on talks in the hall's various lecture spaces: "My Call Centre Doesn't Understand Me", "Press One To Get Lost", "Hello Mr Bond We've Been Expecting You (The True Value of Voice)", "Tenacity! Selecting The Right People To Work In A Call Centre".

I stop in at "Press One To Get Lost", a 45-minute oration by a consultant called Don Peppers who rails at the culture of pass-the-potato phonecalls and the fact that two-thirds of UK customers think service levels have plummeted in the past three years. Peppers bemoans rudeness, inattention, ending with a stark warning to his audience of call-centre bods: "Remember that customers have memories. They have brains."

It is a rousing address, and seems to sum up a prevailing theme at the Expo, with its wall of honesty, its self-flagellating seminars: that it's time for the industry to rediscover its humanity. Lord Sugar, after his Twitter rant, got an apology call from BT chairman Ian Livingston. Unusual circumstances, but the personal touch did the trick and Sugar's tropical fury was assuaged. Customers have brains, said Don Peppers. When did the idea ever get lost?

Call centres as we know them – banks of agents, "press 21 if your surname contains a double consonant" – first appeared in Britain in 1985, when the businessman Peter Wood founded the telephone-based insurance company Direct Line. His 63-man centre in Croydon was followed, in 1988, by a First Direct centre in Leeds, a location chosen because of the pleasant lilt of the local workforce. By the mid-1990s this cost-reducing method of managing inbound and outbound calls was a business standard, the industry, by the mid-2000s, one of the fastest-growing in the UK.

Somewhere in its 25-year lifespan, admits Peter Wood, now the head of esure insurance, "the phrase 'call centre' came to have all sorts of associations for people, often bad". A survey by the Citizens Advice Bureau in 2004 revealed that 97% of call-centre customers had had cause to complain. "Lack of human contact" was a major woe – actually a calculated move by industry innovators looking to slim call times (and staff costs) through automation. At the Birmingham Expo I'd listened to Nicola Millard, a call-centre wiz from BT, speak about the era of self service that everybody expected would be in place around 2008. "We were all supposed to be redundant!" Millard reminded her audience: robots were meant to be answering the phones, customers plinking in their complaints and queries via a telephone keypad.

Number pressing, of course, came to be seen as special torture. "Like everyone, I hate push-button options," says Wood. "You don't know you've taken the wrong path until it's too late." Customers rebelled, hammering zero to speak to a real person. An entrepreneur even set up a website, gethuman.com, revealing which keys to press to bypass option menus. Self service was scaled back.

Another cost-cutting measure, the export of call-centre jobs from the UK to Asia from 2001, further damaged the industry's image. Migration peaked around 2005, institutions like the AA and National Rail Enquiries shifting tens of millions of calls east. But callers hated it; something felt wrong about an agent in Bangalore reading out the trans-Pennine train timetable, and the whiff of bad PR grew so that companies began hauling call-centre work back to the UK. BT, said Millard, has reduced its offshore centres to three. Yorkshire-based internet company Plusnet, meanwhile, is one of many to boast in adverts of its UK-based centres – "Just down t'road", as a chummy voice puts it.

All this flip-flopping has left the reputation of call centres in limbo, everyone with a favourite complaint. Peter Wood hates button bashing. Thorne, being on hold with terrible music playing. Peppers expresses contempt for centres that try to flog things even when being called with a complaint (it is not uncommon, apparently, for incoming calls to be routed through a sales team). For me, it's the dead voice of the operators I always seem to get – the ones that sound, at best, like they're playing Minesweeper at the other end of the line; at worst, waving two fingers at the receiver while I speak.

Is this what it's really like? Wanting to know, I visit a call centre run by Britvic soft drinks, just down t'road from the Birmingham NEC in an industrial park off the A34. It is a small outfit, about 100 employees spread over four rooms painted a company-correct racing green. The manager, Michelle Smith, shows me around, past a wall-sized Pepsi fridge and a screen showing old Tango adverts. A storeroom has been made up to look like the counter in a pub, complete with a mural of grinning customers, so that agents can know what it's like to stare down the barrel of a faulty R Whites dispenser, and be sympathetic.

She guides me to a desk that takes incoming customer calls. "We get all kinds," says Krista, an agent in her 20s. "People suggesting flavours. Asking, can vegetarians drink Juicy Drench? We're not medically trained – we tell them to speak to their GPs." What's the most common complaint, I ask. Money lost in vending machines, says Krista, or flat Pepsi. "Though yesterday we had a gentleman who was upset that his Pepsi had too many bubbles. We had a chat and I explained it was the nature of the product. He calmed down."

A call comes through: a man in Eastbourne troubled by ring pulls. "I've thrown away two cans from the multipack already. When I couldn't open a third…" Krista tells him he was right to call. A bad batch, she thinks, letting him vent for 10 minutes before sending out vouchers. No script reading, no holding music – just Krista doing a good impression of somebody interested in ring pulls.

I ask the team about the popular call centre grumbles: the number pressing, the zombie voices. There are just a lot of bad centres out there, they agree. "I hate having to ring Carphone Warehouse," says one. "Personally I'd rather throw my phone in the bin than call Vodafone," chips in a colleague. "And I'd rather slit my throat," concludes another, "than speak to BT."

Smith leads me to the office's award shelf. There, on proud display, is a European Call Centre of the Year award, won by Britvic in 2009 for being the year's best small centre. They were chosen, thinks Smith, because of the little things: tone of voice; a deep love for Britvic products ("I like a gin and tonic, but if it isn't Britvic tonic – mine's a wine"); because they never play "Greensleeves"; because the people who answer her phones do a good job of caring, or seeming to care, about the calls they receive, however silly.

"We were put on this earth to make relationships," says Smith. "Why should call centres be any different?"

Having the reputation they do, the notion of a black-tie bash honouring call centres sits a little strangely. In which hotel ballroom, you want to ask, is the ceremony for 2010's loudest car alarm? But the European Call Centre Awards exist, are 15 years established, and are taken very seriously by people in the industry. This I discover while sitting among 500 of them in formal dress in the ballroom of a Midlands Hilton. Loosened by free fizz, the assembled blare like a sports crowd whenever a champion is called to the stage: a woman from Orange winning manager of the year, LV insurance victorious in the "most improved" bracket and earning a brief football chant in recognition.

Next to me on my table are members of the Britvic team. This year they are just interested spectators, but they know what it is to climb that podium, and they whoop with particular gusto whenever a winner is announced. British Gas gets an award for large call centre of the year, and then another for best centre to work for. "So constant," says Smith, shaking her head appreciatively. "British Gas are one of the best."

There's a strange moment when the NHS are booed, around the hall, for reasons unclear. "They help people with cancer, you dicks!" says comedian-for-hire Rufus Hound, uneasily hosting the ceremony. Hound is on a tight leash: beyond an opening tease about being unavailable to take the stage due to high demand ("but please be assured your awards are very important to me") he's kept the call-centre gags to a minimum. But as the ceremony wears on, the strain shows and Hound gives a pantomime yawn while presenting a Lifetime Achievement award. "Let's put these motherf***ers out of their misery," he says before the final winner is announced – the big one, the European call centre of the year. It is British Gas, the team climbing to the stage to collect a third trophy of the night. Smith nods her approval.

"If you're already looking forward to the 2011 Awards," says Hound, closing proceedings, "they'll be in Mumbai." There's some uneasy laughter; most of the crowd have already started to drift away to an adjoining disco room. On the British Gas table, celebrations are under way.

Three years ago a failing call centre, routinely listed among the worst in the country, British Gas has somehow transformed itself into the best in the game. Intrigued to know how, I arrange a visit, touring the prizewinning centre in Cardiff a week after the awards night. "Customers used to go through three minutes of recorded voice before they spoke to anybody," says John Connolly, the company's head of innovation. No longer: they now get 12 seconds before hitting an agent who's been schooled in psychometrics – taught to make judgments based on the decades old Myers-Briggs system and adapt their manner accordingly.

Myers-Briggs dictates there are four personality types: the brisk "controller", the sensitive "feeler", the intelligent "thinker", and the joke-telling "entertainer". Customers reveal these traits, says Connolly, through their tone or their choice of words, and agents modify their conversation to fit. "If a thinker wants to chat about taking a trip to Legoland you chat about Legoland. You wouldn't ask a controller what they're doing at the weekend."

As we move on, past a beanbag-filled space where agents are being taught to replace phrases like "no problem" with "my pleasure", Connolly tells me there used to be a room made up to look a lounge. Staff would take scripted calls, read in person by costumed actors, so they could see what it might look at the other end of the line as a customer complained about a dodgy boiler. "Callers weren't just a voice any more."

To see how it works in practice I sit down next to an agent called Rebecca, a cheery 30-year-old. We're assaulted by calls from the moment I pull on a headset, Rebecca talking and clicking and typing without pause, multitasking like a submarine commander. In a matter of minutes she has seen through three calls: a Sutton-based "controller", ringing off happy with a debt enquiry answered; a Coventry "feeler", promised to be called back when she's had a chance to "have a nice cup of tea"; and a Cheshire "thinker-stroke-feeler", looking to take his wife's name off the bill and, after a chat about life and love, getting his wish. Over the three calls, Rebecca had been a firm-but-fair policewoman, a mate, and a marriage counsellor. I'm impressed.

She attributes her sensitivity to an unfortunate incident, a year ago, when her own house was struck by lightning. "I had to phone everybody – repairs, insurance – and some of the call centres couldn't care less. No personal touch." British Gas sees this as key to its reinvigoration: a return to empathy. Strange to think something so essential was ever mislaid.

I tell Rebecca I'm particularly impressed with the man who called up angry and rang off happy. "Fingers crossed he rated me well," she says, and we watch a little box on her screen that will reveal, through a post-conversation survey he's agreed to conduct, what he thought of his call to Rebecca. We stare for a while. "He might not have completed it," she says, a little despondent.

Back in Connolly's office, I learn of some innovations the company plans to roll out: software that will recognise and bar-chart "customer agitation levels"; a bid to remove the last 12 seconds of recorded voice, wiping out any trace of self service. They've also got their eye on the World Call Centre of the Year awards, staged in Las Vegas next year. Even I shiver a little at the thought.

"Back in 1985, we simply decided to use the phone instead of people behind counters," says the grandfather of call centres, Peter Wood. "It was pretty revolutionary, and it cut so much time and money, that's why it took off." It just went too far, thinks Matt Thorne, "the desire to maximise profit continually pushing towards a poorer service."

Restoring the reputation of call centres, Thorne thinks – reversing Alan Sugar's "brain dead" characterisation – is up to the individuals answering the phones, British Gas's Rebecca and Britvic's Krista. "Dedicated, knowledgable employees are the only way to go. That – and maybe letting you choose your own music. Press one for dubstep, two for witch house, etc…"

I am about to leave British Gas when somebody screams my name across the office. It is Rebecca, running over. "He filled in the survey after all," she says, breathless. Who? "The customer. The thinker-feeler from Cheshire. He liked me. Nine out of ten!"

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, iDevice Apps, iDevice Accessories

iPhone, iPod and iPad product updates and announcements for December 9, 2010:

• Apps
• Accessories

Apps

• Anyone and everyone enjoys a good puzzle game, and Jigsaw Mansion for the Apple iPad brings this classic game to the Apple iPad in an incredible digital version with a plethora of cool features. Utilizing intuitive multi-touch controls and 360 degrees piece rotation, Jigsaw Mansion brings the complete jigsaw experience to your fingertips. With an incredible 9 original pieces of artwork, and multiple jigsaw cutting techniques including Trick Edge, Spiral and Rose cuts, this game will stimulate and challenge your brain to keep it healthy and alert.
• James Slaughter has announced New Year Countdown and Resolutions 1.0 for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch devices. New Year Countdown and Resolutions provides an elegant countdown timer that displays a festive animation when the clock strikes twelve. The application also provides a simple and intuitive interface to keep track of your resolutions. In addition to a brief history of the origins of New Year, you also have access to a list of New Years Facts.
• VitVot has announced a 50% price reduction on iMadeThis, their popular app for busy parents. Developed for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch, iMadeThis enables parents to celebrate their children’s artistic achievements without cluttering their houses with the messy evidence of their endeavours. To encourage Christmas craft projects with the kids, iMadeThis will be on sale throughout the holiday period.
• Mirai Language Systems has released iStart Chinese! (Absolute Beginner Mandarin Course) for the iPhone and iPod touch. Learn the most widely-spoken language in the world with this great app, which we are launching at only $2.99 or equivalent. Mandarin Chinese is spoken by over a billion people, making it the language with the most native speakers in the world. The number of foreigners learning Chinese is growing at a very fast rate. It is a fascinating language with a long and rich history.
• Hunter Research and Technology has released Theodolite 2.2 on the iTunes App Store. This novel multi-function AR viewfinder app serves as a compass, GPS, map, zoom camera, rangefinder, and two-axis inclinometer. Version 2.2 of Theodolite adds enhanced image geo-tagging features, writing geographical metadata into the EXIF header of photos and screenshots taken by the app.
• Occipital has announced the launch of its 360 Panorama Gets Around Contest. 360 Panorama completely reinvents the way panoramas are captured and shared on iPhone and iPod touch. Users simply pan their camera and see the application “paint” the panoramic scene in front of them from live video. Occipital will be giving away an iPod touch 4th Generation to one lucky winner every single day between now and New Year’s Eve.
• Pan Vision has announced that its debut title for iPhone & iPod Touch, Pirates vs Ninjas vs Zombies vs Pandas (PvNvZvP for short), is now available to download from the App Store priced $0.99. Developed in partnership with Tactile Entertainment, PvNvZvP is a classically addictive physics-based demolition puzzler based around the epic conflict between these four armies as they fight for dominance across four campaigns. Each campaign sees the player take control of three factions and, by forging an uneasy alliance, use their unique abilities to eliminate the fourth faction as they shelter from your onslaught in a variety of ingeniously constructed fortifications.
• Hashsoft has announced myPill 1.2, an update to their birth control pill reminder application for iOS devices. Featuring a friendly intuitive UI and high quality graphics, myPill is an app that helps women who are taking birth control pills to track their pills pack, remember to take daily pill and plan future events, track history and more. Version 1.2 offers many exciting new features, including themes, snooze reminders, customization of app badge alert, two new daily events and more.
• Blackleaf Software LLC has released Water Sports 1.0 for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Players are able to create custom characters to use as they ski across a lake on their choice of wakeboard, kneeboard or double ski, and try to collect valuable rings for points. There are fifteen different levels of difficulty. Some of the items, as well as the slalom course must be unlocked with points. The game offers players a host of cool toys, tips, tricks and of course, the rewards for a high score.
• MobileFlow LLC has announced Fieldforce 1.0.1, their popular networking tool for iOS. Fieldforce allows mobile workers to coordinate their customer facing activities faster and more efficiently than ever before. It has never been so easy to keep in touch with a team in real time. Based on the modern cellular and cloud-based technologies, Fieldforce provides users with scalable productivity solutions that go beyond two-way messaging to integrate more deeply into day-to-day activities.
• UK-based Herp Games has announced Fling Cube: Cubecore 1.0, a finger flicking action packed puzzle game made exclusively for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Fling Cube: Cubecore features more than 100 evolving levels each with a unique twist. To clear a level the player has to flick his Fling Cube and hit all other cubes in the right order. Numerous cubes with special abilities such as hiding ghost cubes, fast color changing cubes and black hole cubes challenge the player.
• Daniel Amitay has announced Big Brother Camera Security 1.3, an international update to his photo security app for the iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4G. Big Brother allows iDevice owners to receive email notifications whenever someone uses their device without permission. Each notification includes the date and time, GPS location, and two pictures of the perpetrator. The update translates the app into six major international languages.
• Independent developer Daniel Wetzel has released News Wall 2. 0 for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch devices. Keeping track of news and reports is getting more and more difficult. To filter news sites, blogs and social media services takes a lot of time. This never-ending travel now has come to an end with News Wall 2.0. The RSS feed reader for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad subscribes to sources easily and creates a “virtual wall of news” to go.
• Creativegenius announces You-Wish 1.0 for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. You-Wish provides users with a custom-made interface optimized for the iPhone 4’s retina display. Users can add wishes and attach a photo to each of them. It is possible to synchronize the wish list on your iPhone with the wish list online at You Wish. Once wishes are synced with your online list they are ready to be shared with your friends and family. Giving them access to a list that they can print.
• Kobo, a global eReading service where users can read on any device anywhere in the world, has announced the launch of Reading Life, an industry first social eReading experience.  Readers can now track their personal reading history, check-in with characters and places inside books and earn achievements and awards for simply reading.  Readers can also choose to share books, favorite passages, awards and more with their friends on Facebook. Kobo Reading Life is initially available on iPad, as a part of the latest iPad update in the iTunes store now.
• Miriel’s Enchanted Mystery is a time management game spiced up with some hidden object mini games. It’s suitable for everyone and we think that it works especially well as a family game on the iPad. The production values are high and the game includes loads of hand drawn art, an interesting game design, and an extensive soundtrack. It could be one of the best time management games for the iPad and a worthy successor to the first installment of the series.
• 2 For Life Media Inc. has announced Party Tricks 1.0 for the iPad. From a holiday open house and five-course feast to a brunch deluxe and bridal tea, Party Tricks: The Ultimate Entertaining Guide covers every party theme. The app includes a special party primer with wine-pairing and bartending basics. This app by 2 for Couples is the ultimate home entertaining guide for young couples looking for a fresh and fun approach to popular topics, such as home entertaining and more.
• ComboApp has announced the release of Personal Development Bundle, a collection of eight development minded learning applications powered by the developers recently launched Combobook educational system. The Personal Development Bundle is geared to help users discover how to master the nuances of important skill-sets such as personal assertiveness, effective communications, and thinking skills among many others.
• Independent developer Paul Gee and Medifusion Ltd have announced the release of four free price comparison apps for UK shoppers. Based on the hugely popular Find price comparison websites, each site now has a complementing iPhone app that can now be downloaded for free. find-DVD, find-GAMES, find-BOOK and find-CD compares dozens of UK retailers to find the best price on internet for DVDs, games, books and music saving UK shoppers pounds.
• Tunaverse Media has unveiled its revolutionary Cinq Free app for iPhone and iPod touch. Available for free on the iTunes App Store, Cinq enables iPhone and iPod touch users to snap pictures and have their full resolution images automatically saved onto their Mac or PC. Cinq also includes retina display support with 4x higher resolution to deliver sharp, clear, bright images, with zoom-in capability when viewing home photos.
• Mindwarm Incorporated has released AddTo San Diego 1.0 for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. AddTo San Diego lets you create your own travel guide from your photos and notes. Easily create your own map with the highlights you want, photo album and travel diary. At any time you can add a note or photo to your album. If you have allowed location, then your current location will be added to that note and photo. Send your notes, photos and maps to your friends.
• Concrete Software, Inc., has announced the release of Aces Cribbage on the App Store. The best-selling Aces line brings the popular card game, cribbage to iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Aces Cribbage is the first Concrete Software title to offer Apple’s Games Center on available devices.
• INOV8, LLC has announced SportSync 1.1, their new sports tracking app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Easy and convenient to use, Sportsync makes it possible to browse college and professional team schedules and sync them directly to the iPhone calendar. The first of its kind in the App Store, SportSync eliminates the need for scouring the internet for team information and ensures sports fans they will never miss an important game again.
• LeadMyGoals, a powerful yet easy to use iPhone App developed by Khader Shaik, allows anyone to better record and track their busy career and personal life. While LeadMyGoals is uniquely designed to track any New Year’s Resolution, this wonderful tool can really make losing weight an exciting, enjoyable and confidence building task. LeadMyGoals can be configured by individual users based on their lifestyles and personal demands to set up goals, tasks and milestones.
• Paul Gee has announced that from Thursday December 9 to Thursday December 23 all profits from the Doctor Who iPhone news app WhoNews with be donated to the Cure Leukaemia, which supports the work of the Haematology Centre at the University Hospital Birmingham. WhoNews is an iPhone app that keeps Doctor Who fans all over the world up to date with the latest news, gossip and spoilers on the worlds longest running science fiction series.
• With the online toolkit myAppKit by Haase & Martin, anyone can build and publish own iPhone apps, without any knowledge of programming or coding. Small and medium-sized businesses companies, professionals, freelancers and marketing agencies can use myAppKit to create iPhone applications for different usage and different business sectors. Users may embed RSS feeds, image galleries, logos, texts, map views and contact information such as e-mail, web links and call functions individually.
• Electronic Arts Inc. has announced that Pogo, its popular online gaming destination, is bringing the fun to iPhone and iPod touch with five of its most popular games in one free Pogo Games App on the App Store. Today’s announcement extends games from the world’s most engaging casual gaming site to new audiences, which is known to millions of monthly active users for its popular puzzle, word, card, casino and board games.
• Infoteria Corporation has announced its latest version of SnapCal, an iPhone and iPod touch calendar app that lets users create, edit and share events through Twitter. Simplifying social events management, Google Calendar users can also integrate their existing calendars into SnapCal. Most recently SnapCal has added Evernote support, allowing users to quickly extract notes and merge them into SnapCal in the form of an event. Event details, including images, can now be gathered and shared amongst iPhone and iPod touch users in a single interface calendar. SnapCal has seen tremendous growth in the productivity apps market since its launch in October 2010. Over 100,000 users in 25 countries have downloaded the SnapCal app.
• NaturalMotion Games has announced that Jenga, the first and only authentic version of the wildly popular game of skill, is now available for the iPhone/iPod touch in the App Store for US$ 2.99, and iPad for US$4.99.  In consultation with Jenga creator Leslie Scott, the inventor of the original Jenga, and Jenga licensor Pokonobe Associates, Jenga for the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad features easy multi-touch controls, real tower physics, and all the family fun of the much-loved game of physical and mental skill. Players take turns removing a block from a tower to balance it on top, creating a taller and increasingly unstable structure as the game progresses.
• Silverware Software has announced TravelTracker Pro 5.0, a major update to their award winning travel itinerary and flight status app for iPhone and iPad. This all-inclusive personal travel assistant has the capability to manage all aspects of your travel. Track flight status along with all of the other items of a trip including hotel reservations, car rentals, cruises and dinner reservations to name a few. New enhancements continue the tradition of this essential tool.
• Nhuma has announced Crazy Weather 2.0 for iPhone and iPad, Written in rhymes and with hilarious interactivity options, this children’s application teaches them about a highly important and difficult subject: climate change. Each page holds secrets to discover. Children can display all their natural curiosity, investigating and wondering at each page. Every element and event has to do with the content of the story and aims to give a positive and hopeful view to the problems we are experiencing.

Accessories

• Griffin Technology Inc., and Chilewich | Sultan LLC have announced an expansion of the Griffin + Chilewich Co-Op Initiative with the release of Elan Form Chilewich for iPod touch (4th generation). The Co-Op partners are offering the new case in three colors: Teal, Pink, and Nickel, now available at the Apple Store.
• Speakal just added a new version of the iPig to their stable of docking stations: the Cool iPig. This newest addition to Speakal’s stable of novelty docking stations delivers barn boosting bass and motion sensing technology with swinish style. It features an industry-first, user-friendly, advanced motion detection technology that allows you to control volume, skip tracks, play/pause your music simply by waving your hand in front of sensors around the ears, sides and nose. It also comes with a remote for added convenience.
• iKit has unleashed the AutoCon. The AutoCon features a 3.5mm Aux Cable and rapid auto scan technology to play music from your MP3 player through your car radio with crisp sound and no interference. The AutoCon allows you to have full control of the play/pause, volume, track, and skip features of your MP3 player. This unique control also displays the current song and library selection, guaranteeing clear and simple use. The AutoCon also integrates a handsfree wireless option to answer incoming calls on your iPhone while driving.

Full Story » | Written by Kirk Hiner for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Welcome to the very first How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide, where we’ve put together a list of our absolute favorites to help you weed through all of the junk out there to pick the perfect gift for anybody. Though really, it’s just a list of the geeky stuff we want.

We’ve got a whole range of items on the list, from cheaper gifts that most anybody can afford, to the really expensive stuff that we’re pretty sure nobody is giving us.

Stocking Stuffers

Here’s a couple of ideas for items that won’t break the bank.

LED Keychain Micro-Light		Magcraft 1/8-Inch Rare Earth Cube Magnets
Best little LED keychain light around. If they don’t need the penknife of the above item this is the perfect gift. I give them out by the handfuls and nobody ever says anything but good things about them. I’ve got ones that are years old and still running on the same battery.  Price: $8		Geeks cannot resist magnets. Jason bought this pack for his fridge because he was sick of big clunky magnets… these things are amazing. One tiny magnet, smaller than an Altoid mint, can practically hold a clipboard right to the fridge. Amazing. I spend more time playing with them on the counter than I do actually hanging stuff.  Price: $10
Lots of Geeky Mugs		Astronomy Powerful Green Laser Pointer
There’s loads of fun, geeky mugs you can find on Amazon or anywhere else—and they are great choices for the geek who loves their coffee. You can get the Caffeine mug pictured here, or go with an Atari one, Canon Lens, or the Aperture mug based on Portal. Your choice. Price: $7		No, it’s not a light saber, but it’s nearly bright enough to be one—you can illuminate low flying clouds at night or just blind some aliens on your day off. All that for an extremely low price. Loads of fun. Price: $15

Geeky TV Shows and Books

Sometimes you just want to relax and enjoy a some TV or a good book. Here’s a few choices.

The IT Crowd Fourth Season		Doctor Who, Complete Fifth Series
Ridiculous, funny show about nerds in the IT department, loved by almost all the geeks here at HTG. Justin even makes this required watching for new hires in his office so they’ll get his jokes. You can pre-order the fourth season, or pick up seasons one, two, or three for even cheaper. Price: $13		It doesn’t get any more nerdy than Eric’s pick, the fifth all-new series of Doctor Who, where the Daleks are hatching a new master plan from the heart of war-torn London. There’s also alien vampires, humanoid reptiles, and a lot more. Price: $52
Battlestar Galactica Complete Series		MAKE: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery
Watch the epic fight to save the human race by finding the fabled planet Earth while being hunted by the robotic Cylons. You can grab the entire series on DVD or Blu-ray, or get the seasons individually. This isn’t your average sci-fi TV show. Price: $150 for Blu-ray.		Want to learn the fundamentals of electronics in a fun, hands-on way? The Make:Electronics book helps you build the circuits and learn how it all works—as if you had any more time between all that registry hacking and loading software on your new PC. Price: $21

Geeky Gadgets for the Gadget-Loving Geek

Here’s a few of the items on our gadget list, though lets be honest: geeks are going to love almost any gadget, especially shiny new ones.

Klipsch Image S4i Premium Noise-Isolating Headset with 3-Button Apple Control		GP2X Caanoo MAME/Console Emulator
If you’re a real music geek looking for some serious quality in the headset for your iPhone or iPod, this is the pair that Alex recommends. They aren’t terribly cheap, but you can get the less expensive S3 earphones instead if you prefer. Price: $50-100		Eric says: “As an owner of an older version, I can say the GP2X is one of my favorite gadgets ever. Touted a “Retro Emulation Juggernaut,” GP2X runs Linux and may be the only open source software console available. Sounds too good to be true, but isn’t.” Price: $150
Roku XDS Streaming Player 1080p		Western Digital WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player
If you do a lot of streaming over Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon’s Video on Demand, Pandora, and others, the Roku box is a great choice to get your content on your TV without paying a lot of money.  It’s also got Wireless-N built in, and it supports full 1080P HD. Price: $99		If you’ve got a home media collection sitting on a hard drive or a network server, the Western Digital box is probably the cheapest way to get that content on your TV, and it even supports Netflix streaming too. It’ll play loads of formats in full HD quality. Price: $99
Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 Color Mobile Scanner		Doxie, the amazing scanner for documents
Trevor said: “This wonderful little scanner has become absolutely essential to me. My desk used to just be a gigantic pile of papers that I didn’t need at the moment, but couldn’t throw away ‘just in case.’ Now, every few weeks, I’ll run that paper pile through this and then happily shred the originals!” Price: $300		If you don’t scan quite as often and are looking for a budget scanner you can throw into your bag, or toss into a drawer in your desk, the Doxie scanner is a great alternative that I’ve been using for a while. It’s half the price, and while it’s not as full-featured as the Fujitsu, it might be a better choice for the very casual user. Price: $150

(Expensive) Gadgets Almost Anybody Will Love

If you’re not sure that one of the more geeky presents is gonna work, here’s some gadgets that just about anybody is going to love, especially if they don’t have one already. Of course, some of these are a bit on the expensive side—but it’s a wish list, right?

Amazon Kindle
		The Kindle weighs less than a paperback book, the screen is amazing and easy on the eyes, and get ready for the kicker: the battery lasts at least a month. We aren’t kidding, either—it really lasts that long. If you don’t feel like spending money for books, you can use it to read PDFs, and if you want to get really geeky, you can hack it for custom screensavers. Price: $139
iPod Touch or iPad
		You can’t go wrong with either of these presents—the iPod Touch can do almost everything the iPhone can do, including games, apps, and music, and it has the same Retina display as the iPhone, HD video recording, and a front-facing camera so you can use FaceTime. Price: $229+, depending on model. The iPad is a great tablet for playing games, browsing the web, or just using on your coffee table for guests. It’s well worth buying one—but if you’re buying for yourself, keep in mind that the iPad 2 is probably coming out in 3 months. Price: $500+

MacBook Air 

The MacBook Air comes in 11” or 13” versions, and it’s an amazing little machine. It’s lightweight, the battery lasts nearly forever, and it resumes from sleep almost instantly. Since it uses an SSD drive instead of a hard drive, you’re barely going to notice any speed problems for general use. So if you’ve got a lot of money to blow, this is a killer gift. Price: $999 and up.

Stuck with No Idea for a Present? Gift Cards!

Yeah, you’re not going to win any “thoughtful present” awards with these, but you might just give somebody what they really want—the new Angry Birds HD for their iPad, Cut the Rope, or anything else they want.

ITunes Gift Card		Amazon.com Gift Card
Somebody in your circle getting a new iPod, iPhone, or iPad? You can get them an iTunes gift card, which they can use to buy music, games or apps. Yep, this way you can gift them a copy of Angry Birds if they don’t already have it. Or even Cut the Rope.		No clue what to get somebody on your list? Amazon gift cards let them buy pretty much anything they want, from organic weirdberries to big screen TVs. Yeah, it’s not as thoughtful as getting them a nice present, but look at the bright side: maybe they’ll get you an Amazon gift card and it’ll balance out.

That’s the highlights from our lists—got anything else to add? Share your geeky gift ideas in the comments.

Are you searching for that perfect holiday gift for the gamer in your life or perhaps yourself? Then look no further, because The Feed has the info on a half-off discount code to the top video game soundtrack retail site, along with a link to some free game tunes and a look at some new releases announced this week from the video game music world.

If you’ve been following The Feed’s reviews of game soundtracks, then you already know that Sumthing Else Music Works is the leader in OST’s for North American game music aficionados.  Their download store at Sumthing Digital has released a discount code for the holidays, which is good now through January 2nd for not 10, not 20, but a whopping 50% off your purchase!  Use the code: gift50 and all of your download purchases will be half off!  So, all those excuses you’ve been making about not starting your game soundtrack collection are no longer valid.

And the savings doesn’t end there.  If you’ve never added a piece of game audio to your MP3 library, now you can for free and completely legitimately to boot.  Sumthing Else has partnered with Shock Hound to bring you an 11-track collection of some truly kick-ass game sounds from an all-star roster of composers.  Petri Alanko’s “Welcome to Bright Falls” from Alan Wake, Bear McCreary’s theme from Dark Void, Martin O'Donnell & Michael Salvatori’s “Finish the Fight” from Halo 3 and Danny Elfman’s Fable theme are among the fantastic and completely free tracks on this sampler.  Download it and consider your digital music player’s cool stat to be increased by +11, at least.

Watch Larger Version of this Video

Square Enix announced this week the release of a 3-in-1 set of Kingdom Hearts music, from Re:coded, Birth By Sleep, and 358/2 Days.  It is scheduled to release in February and is available for pre-order from Square Enix’ Japanese storefront.  No word yet if this will see a stateside release.  (Please Square Enix, pretty please?) (via Destructoid)

We’ve also got a pair of new releases out now from the chiptunes scene.  Doctor Octoroc has just released After These Messages, a collection of over 30 tracks from the world of Saturday morning cartoons and beyond.  If the preview below is anything to go by, this will be a must-listen for fans of both tunes and toons.  Also out now is a new EP entitled Telstar Arcade from LA chiptunist, Wizwars.  After seeing Wizwars (aka Kevin Hagge) perform live recently, this writer will definitely be downloading his latest set of bleepy bloopy goodness.

And congratulations go out to composer Christopher Tin, who received a Grammy nomination this week for his piece called “Baba Yetu” in the category of "Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists".  Why should this interest you? This performance was originally written for and is better known to gamers as the opening theme to Civilization IV.  Something tells us this category likely won’t get a featured slot during the actual awards though.  (via Gamasutra)

They don't buy into the rock'n'roll lifestyle, their songs deal with big ideas, and their live shows – which now take place inside huge arenas – favour exuberance over irony and aloofness. And yet Arcade Fire, who emerged from Montreal's indie scene in 2004, are somehow the hottest band on the planet. Sean O'Hagan meets them on their world tour and asks whether they can keep evolving as they get bigger

In a concrete room backstage at the Palau Sant Jordi arena in Barcelona, I am midway though a post-show interview with Arcade Fire's unfeasibly tall, quietly charismatic lead singer, Win Butler, when the door opens and his bandmate, Richard Reed Parry, enters. He roots around in a cupboard for a few moments, then exits again, having found what he was looking for – a yoga mat.

It strikes me later that this may be a small, but revealing, indication of a bigger pop-cultural shift that Arcade Fire exemplify: an illustration of just how far rock music has travelled from its rebellious roots, how much it has shed the emotional baggage – the angst, the self-destructive habits, the dissolute lifestyle – that once defined it. Suffice to say that there was a time, not that long ago, when yoga would not have been the preferred means of post-gig relaxation for a hip young rock star, but, my, how times have changed.

"The cliched rock life never seemed that cool to me," says Butler, who, as we chat, is eating brown rice salad from a small plastic container and sipping on a throat-soothing brandy. "We're not a band that's out to party until we die every night. We did a lot of shows with a lot of bands that were living that dream, but it's a dream I never bought into. It never seemed that fun. In fact, it was always kind of embarrassing to me. That isn't what I think is cool about rock."

In case you have not noticed, Arcade Fire – a multi-instrumental, mixed gender, seven-piece indie-rock group from the very un-rock'n'roll city of Montreal, Canada – are what is most cool about rock right now. The group's debut album, Funeral, was released in 2004 on the small independent label Merge Records. Initially championed by influential American music websites such as Pitchfork, it became one of the most critically lauded albums of the year, selling more than half a million copies globally.

Back then, Arcade Fire were famous for playing intimate venues – they often chose churches to suit the sombre subject matter of Funeral, a record whose underlying theme was death and grief. (Both Butler and his wife, Régine Chassagne, who writes, sings, drums and plays an array of arcane instruments, including the hurdy-gurdy, lost relatives in the year preceding the album's release.) Their live shows, which often began with the group marching though the audience while playing their instruments, or culminated with them leaving the stage to play among the crowd, attracted a growing legion of obsessive fans. Arcade Fire gigs became communal celebrations, uplifting to the point of congregational in tone.

"Even when we started out playing little art galleries in Montreal, we'd pick up on a certain level of cool stand-offishness in the crowd and just try and break though it," says Butler. "We wanted to connect with the audience in a way that other groups we played with didn't seem to really care about. I guess, in one way, every band ends up doing what they feel other bands should do for them as fans."

Now, though, Arcade Fire are being hailed as the biggest indie band in the world. The venues they play are no longer intimate but festival sites and huge concrete indoor arenas. (They arrive in Britain this week for a tour that includes two shows at the 02 in London.) The group are negotiating that dangerous hinterland where bigness often means a diminution of character, where nuance and intimacy are often sacrificed to the demands of the thousands that fill the stands.

"If it stops feeling organic," says Chassagne, "we'll stop doing it. I have no ambition to be the biggest or the bestselling. That kind of thing is not why I, or any of us, play music. There was a time when selling even 10,000 records would have seemed like the greatest most unimaginable thing in the world but now we're here at this mad point. We're just going with it to see where it leads."

If the 10,000-strong Catalan audience is anything to go by, though, the group's once ramshackle but now more streamlined live sound has not only survived the rapid transition from small venues to massive indoor arenas but connects on a deeper level with its ever growing fanbase. Win Butler explains the change in tone this way: "When we first played 'Wake Up'" – their most anthemic song – "we were the first band of three in a shitty club somewhere and it was like a 'fuck you!' song. It was like, 'Hey, asshole, we're playing – pay attention!' Now, it's less abrasive because it functions differently. It's like the big goodbye at the end of a set."

In Barcelona, there is the definite sense that this is the kind of noise – inclusive, uplifting, communal – that this hip, young audience have been waiting a long time to hear, at least since U2 toured in support of The Joshua Tree album way back in 1987. The crowd sing along to every single song and 10,000 voices carry the wordless chorus of the closing "Wake Up" long after the group have departed the stage following their final encore. "That was fucking wild," says a relieved, sweat-drenched Butler afterwards. His exhausted bandmates grin and nod their heads. You can feel the collective sense of relief.

Arcade Fire's trajectory is interesting for many reasons, not the least being that there is something refreshingly uncool about the band – their unflagging onstage exuberance, their typically Canadian politeness, their penchant for pre-show group hugs. What really sets them apart is how different they are to what went before. Almost single handedly, they have ruptured the tyranny of almost terminal hipness that has been the common indie-rock currency of late. As one of their champions, Bono, recently put it in the New York Times, their music "contains all the big themes and ideas that make all around them seem so vapid".

New album The Suburbs, like its predecessors, Funeral and Neon Bible (2007), comprises a series of songs linked by a single underlying conceptual theme, in this instance the global suburbanisation of youth culture. On a song called "Rococo", Butler sings of "the modern kids" who "build it up just to burn it back down" and who "seem wild but they are so tame". The album is not just a kind of bittersweet look back at his youth in the corporate suburbs of Houston, Texas, but a critique of cooler-than-thou neighbourhoods such as Williamsburg in New York or Hoxton in London, where everyone parades their hipster credentials by dressing the same and listening to the same music, while simultaneously priding themselves on being different.

"I think it goes way further than that," he says, "if you think of the sociological impact of the internet, which has led to this uniformity of taste, this homogenisation of a certain kind of coolness. It's scary because it spreads like a virus and it's hard to define yourself against. I think the very notion of the suburbs in the old-fashioned sense – that homogenised sprawl of corporate housing and malls – is like a metaphor for something much bigger."

Butler, as you have probably guessed, is not your regular rock songwriter. It is not often you come across an indie-rock songwriter who cites Orwell as his prime influence.

"I had a teacher at high school who gave me Orwell's short essay on how to write, and the thing I took from it is that you always have to find a specific person doing and thinking specific things in a specific place to illustrate something bigger," says the 30-year-old. "That kind of stayed with me: the notion that good writing is like a window pane on the world. Our music may sound big emotionally but that's more to do with the playing, the level of musicianship and the full-on energy. Often, the lyrics are often quite small and focused."

If Butler is Arcade Fire's cerebral anchor – he diplomatically describes his role in the group as "directorial" – then his wife, Régine Chassagne, a Haitian-Canadian who studied medieval classical music for 10 years, is its heart and soul. Whereas he is quietly intense, reflective and utterly focused, she comes across, initially at least, as someone who exists entirely in a parallel world of her own. She skips about a lot, offstage and on, and is given to thinking aloud in short, often cryptic, musings. (When I ask her if, pre-Arcade Fire, medieval music might once have become her chosen path, she looks at me in a slightly startled way, that says, "Is there such a path?" This was not untypical.)

Whether this otherness is natural, which I suspect it is, or a way of keeping the world at arm's length, or indeed both, she is certainly the most intriguing member of Arcade Fire. Interestingly, when the conversation turns to Haiti, she comes alive and her thoughts shift into focus. "I was literally packing my suitcase to go there when I heard about the earthquake," she says of events last January. "I went there in August. It's an epic catastrophe. The people are so resilient and optimistic and they will have to be because it is going to be really bad for a long time."

Chassagne, whose parents fled the Papa Doc regime in the 1960s, has been trying to raise public awareness about Haitian poverty for years, but, since the earthquake, both she and Butler have been tirelessly involved in raising funds for the beleaguered country. In January this year, Chassagne wrote an impassioned article on the Haitian crisis for this newspaper, in which she described her initial reaction to the bad news from her parents' homeland. It began and ended with words that could have been lifted from an Arcade Fire song – "Somewhere in my heart, it's the end of the world" – and included a plea for "compassion and respect" as well as financial aid.

Since then, the couple have been have working alongside the organisation Partners in Health, founded by Harvard doctor Paul Farmer, and Arcade Fire have instigated a "one dollar, one euro, one pound" ticket policy, which means that one unit of currency is donated to the charity for every ticket sold on their tours. By the close of last year, they had raised $800,000 for the organisation. This year, they aim to hit the $1m mark.

Chassagne has also helped launch an organisation called Kanpe (Haitian creole for "to stand up") to co-ordinate NGO responses to the ongoing crisis. "It's emergency after emergency in Haiti because the country's infrastructure is so weak, but one of the things we are working on is long-term aid and co-ordinated organisation. It's less immediately rewarding, but so important."

Together, Butler and Chassagne encapsulate the strange, almost contradictory charm of Arcade Fire. The couple met in Montreal, where Butler had drifted after college and where Chassagne grew up after her parents settled there. When I ask what her childhood was like, she says: "What should I say? It was regular to me. I grew up in the suburbs, playing in the backyard, going to the park, staying out a lot because the house was too small."

Music seems to have been her great escape, and, according to her husband, she has "an extraordinary innate talent for composition and arrangement that is crazy-wild and still pretty much untapped". She banged out pop songs on the piano at four, and later studied medieval and baroque music at college. "It was my own little thing that I wanted to do," she says, shrugging. "It was different, for sure, because none of the other kids were doing it. I didn't feel good or bad about it because I didn't ever get any feedback. My parents were focused on paying the rent, the bills, I was just off in the corner doing my stuff."

Win Butler's childhood could hardly have been more different. Born Edwin Farnham Butler III in north California, his father was a geologist and his mother a classical musician who played piano and harp. (Her father, Alvino Rey, was a famous big-band musician in the 1930s as well as the inventor of the pedal steel guitar.) Butler went to the best schools, including the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where he played varsity basketball. He later studied creative writing and religious studies: "It was scriptural interpretation, mainly, reading the Bible in different translations. It was interesting but I couldn't cut it in Aramaic." His mother was a Mormon, and Butler was raised in the faith.

"I had a somewhat religious upbringing," he says. "Not strict, but it was there and I'm kind of thankful for that. If you grow up just watching MTV, that's its own form of religion and it's not even based on happiness or communal responsibility. I mean, try to construct a worldview out of that."

Butler's childhood, though, was defined to a degree by the family's move from Truckee in northern California – "a community of creative potheads" – to Houston, which he describes as "a pretty big culture shock". His father's new job meant the family lived in a suburb called the Woodlands, which seems to provide the fictional setting for the linked songs on the new album. "It was the sprawl, you know, but there was still a sense of community. I remember once, when floods hit Houston, the church community rallied and helped everybody move their stuff or relocate."

It sounds, I say, both from his conversation and his recent songs, like he still misses that faith-based sense of community. "Yes. I guess I do," he says, after some thought. "I'm not practising, I don't go to church, but what I got from it was a sense of belonging to something bigger. What I really miss is being forced to be in a community with people that aren't the same as you. Then, you really have to work through the ways that you're different. I think that's important and it's missing in youth culture. I guess some of the songs are a reaction against the tyranny of youth culture, where you only hang around with people who dress like you, think like you and listen to the same music as you. Even though we are seen as the quintessential indie band, I feel very far from that culture a lot of the time."

Butler's offstage presence is a strange mixture of the looming and the gentle. He looks like a younger, cooler, more towering – he is six and a half feet tall – version of the actor Christopher Walken. Chassagne has said before that what initially attracted her to Butler was his deep seriousness, his sense of focus and ambition. That certainly remains intact. On their first date, they wrote a song called "Headlights Look Like Diamonds", which duly appeared on the first Arcade Fire EP. Until then, she had played and sang in jazz bands, while pursuing a degree in communications. "It was the closest I could get to the arts that was a real job," she says now, laughing. "We had rent to pay so I couldn't imagine telling my mum I was going to try to make a living from music. That would have been like the end of the world to her."

Instead, it was the beginning of one of the unlikeliest partnerships and the greatest adventures in contemporary pop. To spend any time around Arcade Fire and their extended circle is to witness a genuine camaraderie of spirit while sometimes wondering if you have wandered into a kind of better-living-through-happiness-style cult, so determinedly good mannered and optimistic everyone appears to be.

"When I look at a lot of other bands, it does seem that we're the strange minority," says drummer, Jeremy Gara, who, with his standy-up hair and dishevelled clothes, seems the most old-school indie musician of them all. "We're a disparate bunch but we're similiar, too, and we are all friends who respect each other enough not to start jostling for position. It's all very healthy."

Inevitably, the group that Arcade Fire have been most compared to is U2. What's more, the veteran rockers have embraced the younger group as their spiritual heirs, inviting them on tour, joining them on stage and even using "Wake Up" as their pre-show fanfare. One senses, though, that not everyone in Arcade Fire is altogether happy with the comparison. When I speak to Win Butler's younger brother, Will, keyboardist, synth player and drum banger, he says: "Every so often someone will say we're the new U2, but we really make some pretty weird music a lot of the time. Sure, we have some straight-up rockers, but there's a strangeness there too and a musical diversity that a lot of bands don't have. We're not straightforward."

This is true. The group's music merges indie artiness with the optimism of early Springsteen, but it also nods to other, older musical forms: folk, jazz, the ambient swirl of fairground music and the chanson tradition of Quebec. On The Suburbs, you can hear definable traces of various disparate sources: the controlled power of Joy Division, the electro-disco of Giorgio Moroder, the keening voice of the younger Neil Young, the quirkiness of Kate Bush, but they are traces that never come close to homage or pastiche. Arcade Fire's sound is all their own, and it has become – even with its moments of ramshackle amateurishness, and its merging of the raw and the refined – one of the key rock signatures of recent times.

The U2 comparison, though, holds in an altogether more interesting way, and one that says a lot about the circularity of rock culture. Back in the early 1980s, when U2 began to hone their widescreen sound, the quasi-religious undertow of their big music defied the tenor of the downbeat post-punk times. Arcade Fire are the first rock group in a long time that have dared to be so unashamedly uplifting, to shun irony, and, in doing so, to run so contrary to the drift of contemporary indie-rock culture in all its self-defeating hipness and endless pastiching of older forms. The question is whether they can they keep evolving as they grow bigger.

"I think we'll have to keep changing in order to keep going," says Win Butler when I ask him how long his band can sustain the energy and commitment that currently defines Arcade Fire. "When it stops being meaningful, we'll have to change. I'm in it for the long haul, though, and so is Régine. This is our life now. It's what we've done since we met. And, it's a good life, a great life."

Arcade Fire tour the UK from 1-12 December

Mid-2006 and I was in an electronics store in downtown Los Angeles.

It’s not like I think Sliding Doors was a very good movie – after all, it had Gwyneth Paltrow in it - but standing at that counter, I was convinced it was a life-changing-on-a-dime moment. Credit card in one hand, boxed iPod in the other and a sudden gut grab dictated cease and desist.

I wish I could divulge a tale of consumer guilt. Weave some story about being suddenly so affected by a for-only-one-dollar-a-day TV ad, thoughts of orphan slaves in slack-lawed lands or the sight of a poverty-stricken Angeleno with a shopping trolley. Nup. Think less bleeding-heart and more neurosis.

I don’t convey great calm, bestow great wisdom, have great legs or fabulous breasts. I don’t ooze compassion. I’m a story teller, that’s my thing. To the proverbial table - to relationships - I bring anecdotes. And in that electronics store I had an epiphany: an iPod would ruin everything.

When it comes to social interaction, I’ve got a bit of a Mohammed-to-the-mountain mentality. Not arrogance, I’m just a little like those manic depressive comedians: comfortable fronting a crowd, significantly less so in one. Boxed iPod in hand and I was convinced that the crazies would stop talking to me. That I’d no longer hear bizarre stories in bank queues. That strangers would stop seeking my counsel about their sexual hijinks. That my raconteur days were over.

Truth be told, I’m not all that interested in “community” in the sketchy street party, barbeque-y, shared-raising-of-children, knowing-each-others’-business kind of way. I live in a poky city apartment and quite like that no-one uninvited knocks on my door for sugar. I have however, wondered whether a penchant for privacy explains the princely proportion of people wearing earphones.

Ample academic chit-chat circulates about the impact of social media. Much claims that our lives apparently no longer feel real to us unless we constantly document it on Facebook. Personally I consider the enormity of social media as overstated, but quite obviously we have - voluntarily - made our lives more public. And I wonder whether earphones are our way to reclaim a little privacy when in public.

I’m making observations here rather lamentations, of course. I actually have great faith that humans can organise to reach out and touch someone if they want to. But I’m intrigued nonetheless.

While my fears were about the iPod sullying my shtick, the scientists have documented real MP3 player maladies. Obviously - naively - I assumed the true harms involved accidently/deliberately playing the Eels’ ‘Flower’, Bruce’s ‘Thunder Road’ or anything by Mazzy Star and rolling weepily into the foetal position. But that’s just me, apparently. Listen to the white coats and iPod’s really are a ticking time bomb.

iPod finger. Years ago when I started teaching, one of my students - a kid in his late teens - wanted an extension. Came in with his right wrist wrapped and claimed carpal tunnel syndrome. Overuse, he’d said. His face was straight, mine a slight tilt and smirk. iPod finger sounds equally dodgy. But then I’m the cynic.

According to one doctor there’s danger in using “the same finger in a repetitive motion”. Evidently, much like its sister syndromes of Blackberry Thumb, Nintendinitis or the terrifically titled Teen Texting Tendonitis, apparently if you use any one digit too much it might cause pain. Who would have thought?

iPod deafness. One of the great loves of my life claimed that the Hoodoo Gurus ruined his hearing. I’d put it down to histrionics and hypochondria, alas, the scientists think he might have been right. Loud music - particularly when pumped directly into our ear drums - might end in tears. Much like that relationship really.

While I assume “deafness” describes a more permanent ailment, iPod’s in fact also aid in “selective deafness” of the kind my grandmothers dabble in to justify ignoring us. Turning the music up to eleven and you get the sweet illusion of deafness. Cue iPod oblivion.

Describing the “zombie-like” state entered into when using an MP3 player, iPod oblivion documents a tragic affliction plaguing motorists, joggers and the cheesily named “podestrians”. I’m actually quite convinced.

I don’t drive. Never have. Back in year 10 we did an L-Plate test in class. A guy I was too fond of spent the time singing the theme from the Golden Girls in my ear. I failed. My attention span is embarrassing; add lyrics and it’s dire.

In April, Hole’s “Pacific Coast Highway” put me into numerous trances that on one occasion involved me tapping out a beat on the satchel resting on my hip. Tapping the handbag, tapping my phone’s address book and evidently calling one person who really shouldn’t have been party to any Courtney Love episode. iPod oblivion.

I did end up buying an iPod, of course. Maybe six months after my perfectly characteristic LA wig out. My epiphanies are only ever fleeting, after all. 8,072 songs later and the kooks still touch my hair and still tell me their sins, earphones or no earphones.

Dr Lauren Rosewarne is a Lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne.

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These spooky sounds sampled from 70s TV shows on a PlayStation 2 should delight and disturb younger listeners

"One thing I've always wanted for my music is for it to appeal to children," says Ian Hodgson of Moon Wiring Club. "An ideal listening situation would be a family car journey. I think children would like all the voices and oddness. If you present kids with fun, spooky electronic music, then they might grow up wanting to make it themselves, like I did with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop." Hodgson's friend and collaborator Jon Brooks, aka the Advisory Circle, goes one better with the debut release for his label Café Kaput, which consists of spooky electronic music made by schoolchildren in the 70s.

Brooks and Hodgson originally met through MySpace. They rapidly discovered that they were "probably variations of the same person", according to Hodgson, with a shared passion for vintage 70s and 80s TV (not just the programmes but their incidental music and theme tunes). The friendship soon became an alliance. Brooks has done the mastering for all four Moon Wiring Club albums, including the brand new and brilliant A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding. Hodgson, in turn, has done the artwork for Café Kaput. A full-blown collaboration between Moon Wiring Club and the Advisory Circle is in the pipeline.

The pair are chalk and cheese, though, when it comes to the way they operate musically. A skilled multi-instrumentalist whose music is "98% hand-played", Brooks makes little use of sampling or computer software. The Advisory Circle's 2006 debut EP Mind How You Go (reissued this year by Ghost Box in expanded, vinyl-only form) and 2008's much-acclaimed Other Channels reveals Brooks to be one of the contemporary scene's great melodists, with a gift for plush, intricate arrangements. Hodgson's approach, in contrast, is much more hip-hop raw. Entirely sample-based, Moon Wiring Club is assembled using astonishingly rudimentary technology: a PlayStation 2 and "a second-hand copy of MTV Music Generator 2 from 2001".

Hodgson turned to this crude set-up after struggling with software typically used to make electronic dance music. Because he's a longtime gamer, Hodgson found using a joypad to make music "much faster and more enjoyable" than clicking a mouse. But it still took him a while to work out how to get good results out of a PlayStation 2. "After months of tinkering, I discovered that it's good at sequencing short repeated phrases." Instead of looping breakbeats, Hodgson builds up rhythm patterns from single drum hits. Then he'll weave in sinuous and sinister basslines that are often coated in a dank layer of echo and delay. "I'll place the bass melody around the rhythm in a very 'stereo' way. I tend to see it all in my head as a 'cat's cradle'. Then if you add delay to the bass and time it right you get extra little melodies inside this structure. They sort of bounce and react with each other. Add melody and atmosphere to it and you get another interlocking structure – slightly organic, soggy, bouncy and knackered."

Moon Wiring Club often resembles trip-hop if its "vibe" was sourced not in obscure funk and jazz-fusion records but from the incidental music to The Prisoner, Doctor Who and The Flumps. Vocal samples are a huge part of Moon Wiring Club. Always spoken not sung, and always British in origin, they're derived largely from videos and DVDs of bygone UK television series such as Casting the Runes, Raffles and Ace of Wands. A scholar of "vintage telly", Hodgson can discourse at persuasive length about the superiority of British theatrical-turned-TV thesps such as Julian Glover and Jan Francis over American actors like Harrison Ford. He recently dedicated a podcast mix to 70s voiceover deity and Quiller star Michael Jayston.

Moon Wiring Club originally evolved out of what was intended to be "a peculiar children's book", Strange Reports from a Northern Village." That project got stalled but it did spawn the Blank Workshop website, based on an imaginary town called Clinksell, which has its own brand of confectionery, Scrumptyton Sweets, and a line of fantasy fiction, Moontime Books. The children's book project lives on also in the distinctive graphic look that Hodgson, a former fine art student, wraps around the Moon Wiring releases, drawing on influences including Biba's 20s-into-70s glamour, the strange exquisiteness of Arthur Rackham's illustrations, and Victorian fairy painters such as Richard Dadd. Blank Workshop and Moon Wiring Club is where all of Hodgson's enthusiasms and obsessions converge: "Electronic music, Art Deco, and the England of teashops, stately homes, ruined buildings and weird magic." Not forgetting computer-games music, a massive influence. "There is something about the forced repetition that makes you remember the tunes in a unique way," Hodgson says, adding that in some ways "Moon Wiring Club is meant to be Edwardian computer-game music."

"Still a kid in a lot of ways," is how Jon Brooks describes himself. His journey through music began "at pre-school age", thanks to his jazz session-player father. "Fellow jazzers would come round to record demos or share ideas. There were always instruments and tape recorders lying about." Brooks was proficient on a half-size drum kit his dad bought him before he even went to school. Soon the child prodigy was grappling with guitar, glockenspiel and keyboards, as well as messing with tape recorders and learning from his father about microphone placement. Although his dad died when Brooks was only nine, the son continued to pursue music, avoiding any formal training but studying music technology while helping to teach an A-level class in music technology.

Perhaps his early start with music, along with his later involvement in musical pedagogy, accounts for why Brooks was so intrigued by Electronic Music in the Classroom, an ultra-rare recording that was the byproduct of a course implemented at several home counties schools in 75-76 and which he has reissued through his just-launched downloads-only label Café Kaput. Originally released in a miniscule edition of reel-to-reel tapes and cassettes for the parents of the children involved, this remarkable record is credited to DD Denham, the peripatetic teacher who devised and implemented the course. But the contents are actually the creme de la creme of the work created by participating children. Now retired, Denham stresses that "the concepts were always those of the child. I would help quite a bit with technical realisation, in terms of connecting that concept to a sound. But I always explained to them the steps taken in order to achieve the sound. The children soon picked up various techniques and developed them on their own. So, a little bit of collaboration, but it was more guidance than anything."

Many of the pieces on Electronic Music in the Classroom are disorienting and disquieting, reflecting children's under-acknowledged appetite for the sinister. "Some children would get spooked by each other's compositions or sounds," Denham recalls. "Sometimes an oscillator would emit a loud wailing and lots of other children would gather round the instrument like a magnet, rather than run away. Kids actually love being scared and sound, although harmless in this case, can be scary and thrilling." The reissue comes with the original liner notes, in which Denham recounts some of the quirky inspirations that the children drew on, from a nightmare about nuns, to the unsettling smell of the air expelled from a church organ, to the ghostly flitting figures of poachers seen from afar after dusk.

Then there's The Way the Vicar Smiles, a delirium of drastically warped, vaguely ecclesiastical sounds (what could be church bells, a choir singing psalms). In the liner notes Vicar Smiles is accurately described by its young creators Robert and Luke as "a bit creepy". "The local education authority thought we were probably skating a little too close to the middle with that one," recalls Denham. "You couldn't get away with it now. However, the vicar in question disappeared from his work a couple of years later, without so much as a whisper. Make of that what you will."

Moon Wiring Club's A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding is out now on Gecophonic in CD and vinyl formats (the latter with radically altered sequencing and some different tracks). DD Denham's Electronic Music in the Classroom is out now on Café Kaput and available via Bandcamp

Delia Derbyshire remembered

The BBC will next week air a previously unbroadcast interview with the late Delia Derbyshire, the synthesised music whiz who first realised composer Ron Grainer's famous Doctor Who score.…

A few days after Jon Stewart's and Stephen Colbert's event in Washington, D.C. concluded, I'm back in New York rallying to regain my own sanity, after my fifth annual crazy week at Fantasy Fest.

My costumes this year were:

Sunday: General pirate outfit for Capt. Tony's theme party. Not my favorite theme, because a lot of the costumes have that seen-one-seen-'em-all feel, and mine was no exception. Poor creativity by me. Bad, Paul! I was the drunkest of 11 house members my first night, and we pretty much traded the baton the rest of the week.

Monday: Something, um, small, for Kelly's Kinky Karnival. Typically the most popular party of the week, Kelly's enforces a "go fetish or go home" admission policy. I went fetish, pale and fat ... every woman's delight. Capt. Tony's introduced a similarly themed Rubber Ball party to accommodate people who didn't want to deal with the lines and crowds at Kelly's.

Tuesday: Nerd costume again for Capt. Tony's plaid party. People think I fit seamlessly into this role, but it's hard work to PRETEND to be an awkward, poorly dressed, pathetic geek.

Wednesday: Where's Waldo, another '09 repeat, for red night. I find character-based costumes make for a more interactive night. Look how many people pose for pictures with celebrity wax figures at Madame Tussauds. You might take a picture of an awesomely ghoulish costume, but people are probably more apt to take a picture with a character they recognize. That allows me to meet new people and have some laughs, which is my main objective.

Thursday: I was so psyched to be Rowdy Roddy Piper that I delayed wearing it on plaid night, so as not to mix in with the general Scottish kilt-wearers. Unfortunately, it went off like last year's Cobra Kai costume, completely missing almost everyone but loved by those who got it. I still love the Hot Rod costume and can't wait to wear it another time in another envoironment.

Friday: Kenny Fuckin' Powers from HBO's Eastbound and Down, another one I was really looking forward to. At a private party of 100 people, FOUR FUCKIN' PEOPLE knew Kenny Fuckin' Powers. Among them, three were working the bar! What a lack of respect for "The Shelby Sensation," "The Man With the Golden Dick," and "Doctor Cock and Balls." (And I'd still do this one again back home. What a funny character.)

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

• Anyone familiar with my past reviews (2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006) knows I encourage participation and being social. Dress goofy like me, dress sexy like others, whatever. I'm on record about the guys who never dress, make no effort to be social, take 5,000 shitty pics with and never contribute to the party. Space-wasters. No need to go into any more than that.

• Dante's Thursday afternoon pool party was awesome. Huge pool, perfect temperature, $4 beers, but man did it get packed. The main draw was a 4:30 p.m. wet t-shirt contest, and I saw two already topless women sign up for it. For those with a cotton fetish, I suppose. Didn't stay around for the contest, as it was getting too crowded, but several topless women treated the crowd to a pre-show, working the makeshift pole to dance music. My favorite sight: the guy in the I Pee in Pools t-shirt.

• When young women carry their heels and walking barefoot late-night through Las Vegas and A.C. casinos, I wonder if they ever learned of bacteria in science class. But the woman I saw doing that on a decimated Duval Street around 2:30 a.m. Friday night? Good Lord, DO NOT EVER DO THAT.

• My Hero of the Week went to this guy in a tutu, who responded to the man with the "God Hates Fags" sign by prancing around him to laughs from the crowd. Is there any doubt the guy with the sign hordes a huge collection of gay porn?

• Ate for the first time at Cuban restaurant El Siboney on Catherine Street. The chicken soup, roast pork and garlic bread were awesome, and everything else smelled and looked great. No wonder it's No. 14 on TripAdvisor's ranking of over 200 Key West restaurants. (Menu)

• It's always nice to meet new people who come across this site. If you see me on Duval Street, please stop me and say hello.

OTHER 2010 FANTASY FEST PHOTO GALLERIES

As I do every year, I'm going to keep a running log of the 2010 FF-related photo essays that I find online. If I missed yours and you'd like it included, e-mail me at paul@paulkatcher.com. Come back every so often for updates.

• Flikr: Most Recent Photos Tagged "Fantasy Fest" — This gallery will obviously be added to often, as people recover from their hangovers. I've also contributed to the 2010 Fantasy Fest Flickr group.

• John Chow — John's stuff isn't up yet, but I ran into him on Duval Street and I know they're coming. His work stands far out among the crowd.

• Bill Klipp — Lots of close-ups. His personal style comes through.

• Ken Bradley — Another annual contributor on Pbase.

• David Epstein — An annual regular. He certainly will have more than what's up on Pbase now.

• Most Recent Fantasy Fest Photos on Picasaweb — I'll pull out individual galleries if I find something I like

• Voyeurweb — Every year, daily galleries show up here. (Someone will have to explain to me what voyeurism has to do with a party of photo-willing peacocks.) Some comments can be downright mean, but that's our world.

The Monsters Are Coming may be more pantomime than die-hard Doctor fans can stomach, but it's gloriously naff – in the best Doctor Who traditions

There is a long-fought ideological battle over Doctor Who's soul: is it a grown-up show for children or a childish show for adults? Friday night saw the premiere of a brave new incarnation of Who, a live stage tour that will bring fans face-to-face with its monsters, dubbed The Monsters Are Coming. And the first thing to say is that it's unashamedly for the children. The sort of people who moan on the internet about the lack of "hard sci-fi" (and they are legion) need not bother turning up. It will be their loss. For children, and those in touch with their inner child, it's tremendous fun.

That said, this is far more than a glorified museum set-piece. There is a story, and it is most definitely intended as canon. The premise is this: a mad-scientist-cum-travelling showman has captured a range of Doctor Who monsters in a machine called a Minimiser, and the audience has come to see his show, dubbed The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. Older fans will chuckle at the nod to the camp old Sylvester McCoy story of the same name. But in fact the show is intended as a sequel to a much older story, Carnival of Monsters from 1973. Then, Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor became trapped in a deadly peep show hosted by Vorg (Vorgenson being Son of Vorg, of course).

As Vorgenson, Young Ones actor Nigel Planer hams it up in a way that, while fairly teethgrinding, at least fits the whole grand pantomime feel of the production. And that's not a criticism. The whole thing erupts in a series lavish set-pieces, Vorg gleefully entertaining his audience as he brings out monster after monster, unconvincingly assuring them that they "won't be killed". For a child of the right age, it must be terrifying. Through a convoluted sci-fi set-up, Vorgenson captures Winston Churchill (yes really) who calls on his old mate The Doctor (yes, really) for help. Through a series of ingeniously woven pre-filmed segments, The Doctor lands up trapped in the Minimiser and, for fear of spoilers, let's just say that all hell breaks loose.

As much as this attention to story is admirable, it's really just an excuse to show off the best of the craftsmanship that's been part of Doctor Who since its 2005 revival. Even up close, the monster costumes are no less impressive than on screen; the lizard-like Silurians, the Regency-era Clockwork Robots, the lurching rhino-headed Judoon, the creepily animated Scarecrows. Praise should also go to the mime artists in the costumes, parading eerily around Wembley. The new Daleks, multi-coloured re-designed bruisers dubbed "iDaleks" on the web are a formidable presence when they inevitably appear at the climax.

The music, too, is beautiful, conducted with animated gusto by Ben Foster. A world away from the often overblown orchestras of the TV series, this is a subtle score. And the deliciously camp glam-rock reinvention of the Who theme music that opens the show practically begs to be adopted by the series, too.

The Monsters Are Coming will inevitably beg questions of whether it's the best use of one of Britain's best-loved franchises. Think too hard and you're going to land on the side of "well, probably not". But it's gloriously naff in Doctor Who's grandest traditions. And as far as the fear factor goes, in Wembley Arena, there are no sofas to hide behind.

Trying to play Monaco at PAX, let alone talk to the developer at length, was a practical impossibility if you didn't have a lot of time on your hands. The small booth housing Andy Schatz's IGF-winning title and Chris Hecker's Spy Party was overrun for the entire show. Gamers flooded the area in droves to get in on some of the four-player crime caper gameplay.

Thankfully, at the smaller and more intimate Fantastic Arcade event in Austin, TX, I was able to spend plenty of quality hands-on time with the game that had so many people buzzing. After getting a stronger sense of what Monaco was all about, I set out to track Andy down in a more relaxed setting and talk to him at length. And boy, did he oblige.

What follows is excerpts from our hour-long conversation where we touch on the fecal implications of mispronunciation, Monaco, game design, the secret fraternal order of indie developers, the way to build a great console RTS, and how my #1 favorite dinosaur never actually existed.

No ghosts? No dream sequences? What kind of episode of One Tree Hill was this?  Overall, "We All Fall Down" was a step in the right direction.  Boring at times, but at least I didn't want to hit myself over the head with a frying pan while watching.

There was no Jamie this week, so I can't continue to praise my favorite character dynamic (Jamie and Julian).  I wish I could say that two of my favorite characters, Alex and Chase, slid easily into that spot of most entertaining story... but they were just annoying.

Sure, Alex being cute and cheesy one minute, and then flipping the switch to her sweet and serious side was nice, but the whole golfing expedition was a bit too heavy on the cheese.  Then again, the outfit she was wearing more than made up for any problems I had with the two of them this week.

I said before that I was a fan of Brooke losing her company so that she could start from ground zero, but the way it came about here seemed forced.  The random guy that came into the store to complain about losing his money because of her?  It seemed way too phony.  Blame bad acting, or bad writing, but it wasn't interesting.

And, seriously, you're going to give up all of your money to pay back complete strangers?  We're not talking about losing the company here, this is everything you have!  For something you didn't do?  Victoria is paying the price behind bars, why do you have to be such a masochist about this, Brooke?

I know that everybody on this show has their own set of issues, but I need some more relationship problems, or at least some single people.  In my soaps, I don't just want a bunch of couples that are happy together.  Everyone is paired off and no one is exploring.  In an eight person cast, it's ideal is to have four of them in two couples, two more kind of dating, but maybe cheating on each other on the side, and the two others getting with many different people throughout the season.  Everyone pairing up just doesn't create enough action.

So our boy Nathan has made the decision to quit playing professional basketball.  We all saw this coming when he was at the doctor a few weeks ago, but boy is that a young age to retire.  His back must be a lot worse than it looked while he was playing out at the River Court because he ripping it up out there.

I know Haley said that cash and things don't matter, but what are you all going to do for money?  Haley hasn't sang in a long while, and what can Nathan do now? Go back to the pretzel cart at the mall?  It doesn't seem like Dan Scott Motors is hiring anytime soon.  He said he's thought about this a lot, but it seems a bit too rash for me.

We were left with Julian looking over some footage he took of Nathan shooting at the River Court.  Is he turning that into his next movie?  About Nathan quitting basketball?  What will happen with the caller Haley is helping at the Crisis Intervention center?  How are Quinn and Clay going to handle going back to the beach house with all those bad memories?

Other thoughts:

• I'm glad Nathan is the one that turned out to be the basketball player, and it wasn't Lucas. James Lafferty can really play, and Chad Michael Murray's skills left quite a few things left to desire.
• I loved the opening theme this week. It was performed by Susie Suh, who has had five other songs on One Tree Hill. Check out all the show's music HERE.
• We began with Dear Lucas again.  Love it.
• Funniest moment of the episode had to be Julian being all in touch with his flower arranging skills.
• Browse through the latest One Tree Hill quotes now!

• Oracle Open World 2010
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• JavaOne 2010
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• Kirsty Doherty, Amy Ehmann for Java Posse artwork
• Theme Music:
  • Opening - "Java" the parody song Copyright 1997 Broken Records and Marjorie Music Publ. (BMI),
    • written and performed by Loose Bruce Kerr of the Dr. Demento Show and Sun Microsystems attorney.
    • Based on the WWI popular song, "Ja-da." Ukelele style on the recording taught to Bruce by his dad.
    • Re-produced with kind permission from "Loose" Bruce Kerr - http://loosebrucekerr.libsyn.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAX0gJt-aZg
  • Closing - Juan Carlos Jimenez - In the House (Intro No. 1)
    

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The Java Posse consists of Tor Norbye, Carl Quinn, Joe Nuxoll and Dick Wall

Composer of television and film scores for Brideshead Revisited and Monty Python, as well as many concert and stage works

The composer Geoffrey Burgon, who has died aged 69 after a short illness, wrote some of the most memorable music for television drama of recent decades. He was also versatile and prolific, producing a wealth of refined, compelling music in many other genres.

Though an old friend, Geoff, born in Hampshire, wasn't my friend to begin with. He was my elder brother Nigel's best mate at Pewley school, Guildford, in Surrey. It was there that my brother persuaded Geoff to buy a trumpet so that he could play alongside Nigel's clarinet in the school jazz band. But his ambitions to be a jazz trumpeter were thwarted by his yearning to write music. He taught himself notation while he was still at school, played the trumpet in a local youth orchestra, and was soon writing music for them.

He applied for a place at the Guildhall School of Music in London as a trumpeter, but they were more interested in his composing skills. Under the guidance of Peter Wishart, he found that writing music began to become more important than playing it. He later said, "I'd realised I wasn't going to be the next Miles Davis," so he asked Wishart if he thought he could make it as a composer. "You don't seem to be able to stop," was the reply. From that moment he bowed to the inevitable.

After leaving the Guildhall, he scraped together a living as a professional trumpeter, largely with chamber orchestras such as the London Mozart Players and the Northern Sinfonia, but at the age of 30 he sold all his instruments bar one, and devoted himself to composition.

At first it was hard going, and he lived through 10 years of poverty, but he kept at it and eventually started getting the odd bit of television work. As he said, "One thing just led to another."

He composed music for Doctor Who in 1975 and 1976, and in 1979 scored a direct hit with his music for the BBC's television dramatisation of John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with Alec Guinness as George Smiley. The closing Nunc Dimittis theme entered the UK charts, and he won his first Ivor Novello award.

That same year I was directing Monty Python's Life of Brian, and my brother suggested I should ask Geoff to write the music for the film. So – not knowing any other composers – I did.

I remember going to his house, and Geoff apologising for being a poor pianist, but he picked out the theme tunes and I liked what I heard, although I had no idea how wonderful the final score would turn out to be. The music he wrote now seems to be inseparable from the film. He gave it a simple but biblical-epic sound – so important in making the audience believe in the world, so the comedy could play against it.

In the next decade his TV work included Brideshead Revisited (1981) for Granada and The Chronicles of Narnia (1988) for the BBC. Brideshead went gold, selling more than 100,000 copies, and brought him another Ivor Novello award. With characteristic modesty, Geoff later claimed one of the highlights of his career was when he was standing in the checkout line in Tesco, "and a little girl about 10 years old started singing the theme from Narnia and I thought, 'Wow, that is really nice.' " He went on to win Bafta awards for best television music for Longitude (2000) and The Forsyte Saga (2002).

Though he never looked down on creating music for film and TV, he always, I suspect, regarded it as subsidising his classical work. He produced a vast body of classical music, including works for full orchestra and for soloists, dance scores for the Royal Ballet, London Contemporary Dance Theatre and Ballet Rambert, and an opera based on Charles Dickens's Hard Times.

His first great success was his Requiem, premiered when the Three Choirs Festival was at Hereford in 1976, and described by the Times as "this year's most important new work". This was followed a year later by a piece based on a medieval Chester miracle play called The Fall of Lucifer.

In 1994 he wrote a concerto for the percussionist Evelyn Glennie, and three years later a piano concerto for Joanna MacGregor. But he was always passionate about the human voice, and integrated it into much of his output. The song cycle Merciless Beauty of 1997 was followed, three years later, by Heavenly Things. In 2003 came Three Mysteries, for soloists, choir and chamber orchestra. It is not surprising that so much of his choral work has become standard for cathedral choirs.

After working together on Life of Brian, Geoff and I became close friends. When my brother died, he gave a funeral oration in which he told the story of how my brother had got him into music, something I would otherwise never have known. He was a modest, calm, reassuring man – a good listener and a good talker – someone you longed to be with. Someone to love.

In 1963 he married Janice Elizabeth Garwood, with whom he had one son, Matthew, and a daughter, Hannah. The marriage was later dissolved. In 1992 he married the pianist and singer Jacqueline Kroft, with whom he had a son, Daniel. He is survived by Jacqueline and his three children.

Martin Buckley writes: Geoffrey appeared on my doorstep about 10 years ago, shortly after I moved to Stroud, in Gloucestershire. He was hoping to sell me an old Mercedes. I didn't buy the car, but I did become good friends with Geoffrey, who would regularly consult me about what he was thinking of buying. He was the only person I can think of who was more promiscuous in terms of the number of old cars he bought and sold than I am; in the space of a year (fully encouraged by me) he went through every variant of Lancia Flavia, trying to find the perfect specification. Over the last few years his cottage became a rest home for distressed Lancias and the occasional classic Mercedes. However, he remained faithful to the Bristol marque, and in particular to his 405 convertible, which he owned for at least 20 years. It was the one car I don't think Geoffrey would ever have sold, but he was far from precious about it and lent it to me more than once for photo shoots in Classic and Sports Car magazine.

He bought his first Bristol in the early 1970s, quite a while before he became famous for his music. He learned to drive when he was 30 and had earlier shown little interest in motoring. By the time I met him he'd already owned 14 other Bristols plus a Ferrari and a Porsche.

His latest enthusiasm was for a 1960s Maserati which, as usual, he managed to buy just before the prices went crazy. Money was not one of Geoffrey's driving motivations, but he always did OK out of his cars without intending to. He had one of those faces you could trust. He was a handsome, tall man who was effortlessly stylish in a very English way. In my mind's eye he was always wearing a corduroy jacket. When he wasn't writing music he'd taken to writing detective novels featuring a Lancia-driving musician lead character, of course.

Geoffrey was a fast but safe driver, possibly not such a good passenger. He had a gentle way about him, and he and Jacqueline always made me feel welcome with a cup of tea and a slice of cake, or a beer at his favourite pub, the Bear at Bisley. I will miss him a lot.

• Geoffrey Burgon, composer, born 15 July 1941; died 21 September 2010

It was very surprising for me last night, after a long day of endless writeups, to suddenly be thinking about Space: 1999 for no reason at all. Even more surprising was to Google up a clip and notice the date of the explosion:

Pretty cool coincidence, right? Too bad it was 11:30pm when I figured it out. But after the jump, you can enjoy a brief but meaningful tribute to Space: 1999, the only sci-fi show brave enough to nuke the moon in the pilot.

For those of you that missed it, Space: 1999 was the story of what happened after a nuclear explosion pushed our moon into deep space. It was clearly designed with one eye on 2001, and was also created by Gerry Anderson, the mind behind The Thunderbirds tv show, which would later inspire the live action Thunderbirds movie, which would so upset Matt Stone and Trey Parker that they'd reply with Team America: World Police. So that sort of makes Space: 1999 and South Park distant cousins. Seems much more relevant now, doesn't it?

Like all Gerry Anderson shows, Space: 1999 remembered that people really like to see cool miniature vehicles. The Eagles have the added bonus of looking like they could maybe even be real. The never-retracting landing gear, those diagonal cross beams in the center, the pleather in the cockpits. You instantly get the impression that a bunch of nerds broke out the graph paper and then went to the lowest bidder. Sleek design? Come on, it's NASA!

That's the season two intro, after they went from "hard science" to the more popular "space magic" and added a shapeshifter. Savvy fans also know that the idea of a pre-cap at the start of each episode was later used by the Battlestar Galactica remake. Lots of people think the second season theme is pretty cool, but as far as I'm concerned, nothing beats that fuzzy guitar of the original. Either way, take note, Enterprise. Here are two different options showing that you can have a good non-orchestral theme.

Season Two is also famous to MST3K fans because of the "movie" Cosmic Princess, a casserole of two different Space: 1999 episodes packed together into something that was never meant to be. I wanted to link you the original episode, The Metamorph, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Instead here's a fan version that works as a recap. Just maybe put on your own music before you watch.

See who's stalking about in the background? That's the one and only Brian Blessed! Instant validation for any sci-fi series. The man climbed Mount Everest, you know. Who are you to question him?

As you can see from that monster and those inexpensive shiny lights, Space: 1999 is a lot like classic Doctor Who or the original Star Trek, in that it makes the most of what it has while trying to tell a grand story of the unknown through cheap and basic special effects. There are times when it falls short, and the occasional episode that just plain doesn't work at all, but man, what a great premise, right? Who doesn't get interested when you talk about blowing up the Moon?

Happy eleven year and a day anniversary, Moonbase Alpha explosion. Sure wish you were on Hulu.

Super Mario Bros is 25 today, so here's a selection of facts and figures on the world's greatest platform hero…

It's the biggest game series of all time, and Super Mario is 25 years-old today. To celebrate, we've jammed together 25 snippets of Mario trivia. Don a pair of red dungarees and adopt an inaccurate Italian accent, it's Mario time!

1. Mario was created by Shigeru Miyamoto and appeared in the game designer's first ever title, the 1981 arcade platformer, Donkey Kong. Miyamoto was hired as a graphic artist by Nintendo in 1977, and was given the task of designing a game after several of the company's early coin-ops had failed to make an impression on the lucrative arcade market. Donkey Kong was created using the hardware behind an older arcade title named Radar Scope, which sunk without a trace in the US. Miyamoto ditched the shooting theme and added an ape and rolling barrels. Success naturally followed.

2. Mario was originally known as Jumpman. However, when Nintendo's US office were trying to think of a better name in time for the American release of the game, they were interrupted by their landlord Mario Segale, after whom they christened the character.

3. Mario was originally a carpenter, not a plumber. He's also appeared as a doctor in the 1990 puzzle title Dr Mario and its sequels.

4. The look of Mario is all about the graphical limitations of the hardware at the time. He has a hat, because realistic hair was difficult to portray, a moustache to accentuate his nose, and dungarees to make his arm movements more noticeable. In Super Mario Bros, he wears a brown shirt below his overalls – a look that was swiftly abandoned.

5. Donkey Kong Jr, the 1982 sequel to Donkey Kong, is the only game in which Mario officially stars as the antagonist. He has trapped poor Donkey Kong in a cage and he ape's son must rescue him. In the game's promotional material, Mario even gets a specially twirled moustache, highlighting his evil nature.

6. In contrast, Bowser, the key antagonist of the Super Mario Bros series, has also appeared as a good guy. He helps Mario in the 1996 title Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.

7. Super Mario Bros was preceded by the 1983 arcade platformer, Mario Bros. Designed by Miyamoto and Game Boy-creator Gunpei Yokoi, it's set in the New York sewer system and introduces Mario's brother Luigi.

8. Bowser was originally sketched as an ox by Miyamoto, but his drawings were misinterpreted by animator Yoichi Kotabe as a turtle. The duo worked together on the latter idea and the Bowser we know today was born. He's definitely a turtle, though, and not a dragon as some assume. (More here.)

9. The naughty version of Mario – Wario – first appeared as a nemesis in the Game Boy title, Super Mario Land 2. He was designed by Hiroji Kiyotake, who also created Samus Aran, the heroine of the Metroid series. Wario's name blends Mario with the Japanese adjective 'warui' meaning evil.

10. Super Mario Bros has sold 40.24 million copies, although that figure is skewed by the fact that the game was bundled with the Nintendo Entertainment System console. It was until recently, however, considered the best-selling game of all time. It has been pushed into second place by Wii Sports on 41.65 million units.

11. Super Mario Bros was the first game to be set in Mushroom World, Miyamoto's long-running and ever-evolving fantasy kingdom. When Mario 'eats' a super mushroom he grows in size and ability. Miyamoto denies that he was influenced by Alice in Wonderland, and instead claims the idea came from enchanted foodstuffs in myths and folklore.

12. In the 1984 Nintendo Entertainment System game Golf, Mario made his first appearance in a sports sim. Kind of. The original character merely resembled Mario, while the later NES Open Tournament Golf specifically featured Mario as a golfer. He appears on the cover in red and white striped overalls, with a blue starry shirt. An awesome outfit.

13. Nintendo composer Koji Kondo provided the iconic soundtrack to Super Mario Bros. The main theme, known as 'Ground Theme', is one of the most recognisable pieces of game music ever recorded. The tune remained in the Billboard ringtone charts for 125 weeks and has been performed in concert by live orchestras. (More here.)

14. The original Super Mario Bros 2 was designed as a tougher version of the first game and released to support the Famicom Disk System, a new add-on for the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was considered too difficult for Western release, though, so the US and Europe got a tweaked version of the 1987 title Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic instead. The game was hastily refitted with Mario characters in a sort of digital cut-and-shut job. In 1993, the genuine SMB2 was finally released in the West as Super Mario Bros: the Lost Levels, part of the Super Mario All-Stars collection.

15. A Q Score survey in the early nineties revealed that Mario was more recognisable to American children than Mickey Mouse.

16. Footage from Super Mario Bros 3 appears in the climatic scene of appalling 1989 movie, The Wizard, about an emotional withdrawn gaming champion. As this was the first chance that US Nintendo fanatics would get to see the game, the movie effectively acted as an advert for the release.

17. The new Chain Chomp enemies in Super Mario Bros 3 look like steel black balls with razor sharp teeth. They were inspired by an incident in Miyamoto's childhood when a neighbour's dog chased the terrified genius, before it was yanked back by its chain.

18. Elsewhere, the Whomp characters from Super Mario 64 were inspired by a mythological being known as the nurikabe, a 'wall ghost' that misdirects or impedes travellers at night.

19. ...and the versions of the ghostly Boo enemies found in Super Mario 64, are based on the wife of the game's co-designer Takashi Tezuka. As Miyamoto explained in an interview with Nintendo Power magazine: "Mr. Tezuka got an idea about putting his wife in the game. His wife is very quiet normally, but one day she exploded, maddened by all the time he spent at work. In the game, there is now a character who shrinks when Mario looks at it, but when Mario turns away, it will grow large and menacing."

20. Released in 1989, the Game Boy title Super Mario Land was the first major Mario game to be developed without Miyamoto. Producer Gunpei Yokoi didn't do too badly however: the game shifted over 18 million copies. The game also introduces a new female character, Princess Daisy, replacing Mario's usual love interest, Princess Peach.

21. The 1993 movie, Super Mario Bros, was Hollywood's first attempt to create a video game tie-in. Starring Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper it was a critical and commercial failure, which attempted to give the game a darker, more adult veneer. Apparently, Dustin Hoffman was interested in the role of Mario as his children were fans of the game.

22. Since 1995, the voice of Mario has been provided by American voice actor Charles Martinet. He also voices Wario and Luigi.

23. The Wii hit Super Mario Galaxy was inspired by a tech demo known as Super Mario 128 shown at the Nintendo Space World event in 2000. The demo showed dozens of teeny Marios walking around on a slightly curved surface. Back in the Gamecube era, Galaxy designer Yoshiaki Koizumi, thought that entirely spherical levels would make an interesting environment for Mario, but Miyamoto was apparently unconvinced at first. Finally, Koizumi showed off several test levels and the project was greenlit for Wii.

24. The Super Mario bros series is in the Guinness Book of Records as the most successful gaming franchise of all time. It now boasts global sales of over 40 million units.

25. Mario has appeared in over 200 video games.

As we get closer and closer to Night Of Champions, we get a double dose of Smackdown for this week, as the Smackdown roster was in attendance during RAW.

What more will Kane do to The Undertaker?

Will we finally have it confirmed that Kane will defend the World championship against Undertaker at Night of Champions?

Will Nexus show up on Smackdown in full force, since they did attack Undertaker on RAW?  Is there some sort of official alliance between Kane and Nexus; did they take part in putting him into a vegetive state? 

Is Kane part of the larger master plan that Nexus has been talking about?

Are we going to get yet another Kofi Kingston vs. Dolph Ziggler match for the 142nd straight week, or are they going to break the streak of moderately lazy booking by the creative team?

If the booking streak continues and we get another Ziggler vs. Kingston match, what new / fresh way will the Smackdown's booking team use for the ending of the match to continue this feud? 

They have done a decent job with finding a way to keep things fresh, even with the wrestling equivalent of left-overs.

Who will Alberto Del Rio be involved with this week if Rey Mysterio is on the shelf with an injury?

Alberto Del Rio starts the evening with an in-ring celebration.  Who's going to be there to crash the party?  Is there any chance that the Smackdown creative team can let someone else be involved for a little bit and actually SELL the injury?

When Alberto Del Rio destroyed the pinata (which Del Rio referred to solely as a "burro" (donkey) and the head of the pinata was swinging from the ceiling, wearing Rey Mysterio's mask, did anyone else find that a little morbid?

How great is it to see Christian Cage actually involved in something seemingly important on Smackdown by involving himself with Alberto Del Rio while Rey Mysterio is out?  The fans certainly haven't forgotten him.

Did anyone else laugh when Christian called Alberto Del Rio "JBL - Juan Bradshaw Layfield"?  Is it the car?  Is it the hatred of Rey Mysterio?

Which makes you hate the person more: Alberto Del Rio because he backed out of a fight with Christian like a coward, or Drew McIntyre for attacking Christian from behind?

The announcers wonder how long Drew McIntyre had been planning on attacking Christian...but honestly how long could he reasonably had to have planned things out?

Christian wasn't out there all that long, and Drew McIntyre ran in from the crowd, it's not like he just ran down the ramp to make the attack, so he had to go to a different part of the arena than if he was just planning on showing up for a match. 

As my favorite radio show (LaVar Arrington Show w/ Chad Dukes on 106.7 The FAN FM in DC) might say, there's the crushing grip of logic.

By the way, LaVar Arrington & Chad Dukes hosted R-Truth and the Bella Twins in studio for a great interview on Friday. 

The podcast can be found online on the official 1067 The Fan FM website.  Certainly an interesting listen, as Chad Dukes is a huge fan of wrestling.  But I digress...

Nice Dean Malenko reference as Drew McIntyre hits the gutbuster.

How ironic is it that Christian wins the match with a crazy roll-up?  If you don't know Dean Malenko's work, you might not understand...so you'll want to look up Malenko on YouTube or Dailymotion. 

His work in WCW and Japan is far more representational, so you'll want to look for that.

Is anyone expecting much of anything to be said during this Michelle McCool vs Kelly Kelly match?  

I'd be totally cool with Kelly Kelly trying to go for a hurricanrana on me.

If you haven't seen anyone else do that finish move that Michelle McCool uses, you should really go to YouTube and look for "Styles Clash" by AJ Styles.  He does it so much better.

Why is it that the fans popped when they brought out the "See And Say" during the Hornswoggle segment?

What part of shocking a midget is part of TV-PG?  What about a midget shocking a doctor and responsible parties running away to let it happen?

How many people have decided that Hornswoggle is more reason why they don't want to watch Smackdown?

Does anyone else think it feels weird to see Dolph Ziggler in the ring against someone other than Kofi Kingston?  I know it's just Chris Masters, but I'm just happy to get a change.

Was anyone else surprised that Kofi Kingston didn't interfere during the Ziggler vs Masters match?  It is nice to see him get some credibility by winning the match cleanly.  I would've thought he would show up at least in the match aftermath.

Does anyone else throw up in their mouth a little bit when they see Dolph Ziggler lick his lips while Vickie is caressing him?  

If Punk, Gallows and Mercury can't beat Big Show in a three-on-one handicap fight at SummerSlam, why should we think that Punk & Gallows in a two-on-one would stand any closer?

When the Smackdown announcers pretended not to understand that Big Show was partially impersonating Hulk Hogan from RAW, doesn't it just make them seem out of touch? 

I realize Hulk Hogan is now in TNA Wrestling and he hasn't been in WWE for a while, but they probably should've just left out the comment.  The timeliness factor in the reference isn't a problem.  Matt Stryker made a "Bushwhackers" comment a minute later.

If Big Show signalled for a chokeslam, why did he end up doing a powerbomb toss over his head? 

If Big Show is trying to establish dominance like the announcers were predicting, why wouldn't Big Show try to let the match continue and try to go after Punk and beat both opponents?

After the match, Luke Gallows gets attacked and hit with the Go2Sleep by CM Punk... why not get a brief promo from Punk to give us a little glimpse into his mindset... at least giving us a reason for why Serena was nowhere to be found? 

People who saw the brief announcement on WWE.com last weekend know that she's no longer with WWE, but they could easily give us an in-character reason.

What's the difference between Jack Swagger hosting the VIP Louge and Jack Swagger hosting a different segment where he has furniture and memorabilia in the ring like he has done before (famously destroyed by Big Show)?

With a leather couch in the ring, why couldn't Jack Swagger Sr. sit there instead of in a wheelchair?  It's not as if he was wheeled directly into the ring.  He had to somehow get up onto the apron and then somehow moved into whatever seat he would be using.  

How many push-ups was WWE going to let Jack Swagger do before having MVP interrupt him?  Swagger started to get a little slow around 43 push-ups.

MVP says that the VIP Lounge was lacking since it didn't have music blasting, ladies dancing, bottles poppin'...does anyone actually know of a time when MVP's version of the VIP Lounge had any of those things?  I certainly don't.

Why are we supposed to cheer for MVP attacking a helpless old man like Jack Swagger Sr.?

Shouldn't Matt Hardy take some time off to let his ankle heal instead of taking a match booking?  We've all seen guys duck out of matches for lesser reasons.

Does anyone else think it's about time that Cody Rhodes finally started making fun of people for not doing enough grooming?

Isn't the mirror on the back of Cody's jacket the best accessory in WWE?

For the full version of this article including the remaining questions and comments I had on the rest of the show, more images, and the aftermath / remaining questions and trends, please visit my site, www.GuysNation.com (or by clicking the logo below).

Also, you're likely to enjoy reading my review of WWE RAW 900 here on BleacherReport!

Other GuysNation.com articles you might enjoy:

Wrestling Review Theme For September:  http://www.guysnation.com/wrestling-review-theme-for-september

Smackdown Questions & Comments (8/27):  http://www.guysnation.com/wwe-smackdown-from-august-27th-questions-and-comments

Fun Facts About Monday Night RAW:  http://www.guysnation.com/road-to-raw-900-fun-facts

What I Want To See on RAW 900:  http://www.guysnation.com/wwe-raws-900th-episode-what-i-want-to-see

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Music to watch monsters go by

Love Doctor Who, love the theme music - this is hardwired into the DNA of most Brits.…

Beck’s opening theme, calling the assembled to embrace God and remember the traditional, foundational values of the country, was carried on by the ensuing speakers. Calls for unity and inspiration were ubiquitous, interspersed with history lessons, personal testimonials, sermons, and a bit of country music - John Rich and others performed.

“For too long, this country has wandered in darkness,” Beck said, gazing out toward the reflecting pool. “This country has spent far too long worrying about scars and thinking about scars and concentrating on scars. Today, we are going to concentrate on the good things in America, the things that we have accomplished, and the things that we can do tomorrow.”

Beck’s healing message also included numerous citations of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the site 47 years ago to the day. Dr. Alveda King, the niece of the civil-rights activist, was a featured speaker. Palin, the former governor of Alaska, also addressed King’s legacy. “You have the same steel spine and moral courage as Washington and Lincoln and Martin Luther King,” she told the crowd. “It will sustain you, as it sustained them.”

[…]

Ultimately, however, it was Beck’s call for a religious rebirth that dominated. He urged the throngs to “recognize your place to the Creator” and to “realize that He is our king.”

“He is the one who guides and directs our life and protects us,” Beck said, his voice rising. “I ask, not only if you would pray on your knees, but pray on your knees with your door open for your children to see.”

The Great Awakening was a religious revival in American religious history. There were three--some say four--such periods of fervor, each characterized by widespread revivals led by evangelical Protestant ministers, a sharp increase of interest in religion, a profound sense of conviction and redemption on the part of those affected, a jump in evangelical church membership, and the formation of new religious movements and denominations. After a generation or so, the fervor calmed and faded away.

• The First Great Awakening originated in England and spread here. You can see the parallels in the opening explanation. Here’s a snip (without the links which appear in the original:
  
  

  The First Great Awakening (or The Great Awakening) was a religious revitalization movement that swept the Atlantic world, and especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion. It resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of personal guilt and of their need of salvation by Christ. Pulling away from ritual and ceremony, the Great Awakening made religion intensely personal to the average person by fostering a deep sense of spiritual guilt and redemption, and by encouraging introspection and a commitment to a new standard of personal morality. It brought Christianity to African-American slaves and was an apocalyptic event in New England that challenged established authority. It incited rancor and division between old traditionalists who insisted on the continuing importance of ritual and doctrine, and the new revivalists, who encouraged emotional involvement and personal commitment.

  Most of the experts in ecclesiology and in American religious history say that these “enthusiasms” must, of necessity, be short-lived. This is inherent in the nature of any fervor, religious, political, or personal. Eventually, things return to a routine (unless you’re Italian, of course).
  
  
• The Second Great Awakening…
  
  

  …was a religious revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States, which expressed Arminian theology by which every person could be saved through revivals. It enrolled millions of new members, and led to the formation of new denominations. Many converts believed that the Awakening heralded a new millennial age. The Second Great Awakening stimulated the establishment of many reform movements designed to remedy the evils of society before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ…

  Ah, those millennial hopes and fears came early. When our turn came, it was about Y2K. For them it was about reviving something lost. Notice the theme of Glenn Beck's "Restoring"?
  
  That page is worth perusing just to see the many new American Protestant denominations that resulted from the Second Awakening. Scroll down the page past the colorful illustration of a Methodist revival meeting.
  
  
• The Third Great Awakening
  
  

  …was a period of religious activism in American history from the late 1850s to the 1900s. It affected pietistic Protestant denominations and had a strong sense of social activism. It gathered strength from the postmillennial theology that the Second Coming of Christ would come after mankind had reformed the entire earth. The Social Gospel Movement gained its force from the Awakening, as did the worldwide missionary movement. New groupings emerged, such as the Holiness movement and Nazarene movements, and Christian Science.

Screenplay, Britain's most northerly film festival, is a world away from the glitz and hype of Cannes

A couple of years ago, as I was dragging my sorry bones around another overcrowded, overheated, overhyped film festival in the broiling south of France, somebody asked me "How come you always look so miserable in Cannes?" I thought about this for a while before answering, "All things considered, I'd rather be in Shetland."

This was no idle threat. For the past four years, my partner Linda Ruth Williams and I have been proudly co-curating Shetland Arts' annual ScreenPlay festival, a celebration of everything we love about cinema that's about as far away from the exclusive ghastliness of the Croisette as it's possible to get in terms of both climate and culture. Last year we held a screening in a bus shelter in Unst, the most northerly in the UK (if you don't get off here, your next stop's Norway); the special guest at this gala event was my mum. This year, we're holding a screening in Lerwick livestock market of Irish film-maker Ken Wardrop's popular short Useless Dog, to which audience members are encouraged to bring their animals. Plans are afoot to organise future screenings on ferries; in Shetland, nowhere is off limits.

The reasons for these unusual screening venues are twofold. First, the festival (under Shetland Arts' irrepressible Kathy Hubbard) has a commitment to take its wares into the wider community, via schools, village, halls, care centres and (if necessary) bus shelters. Last year, film-makers Simon Miller and Joanne Cockwell hosted school screenings of their Gaelic feature Seachd, which went down a storm despite the fact that Shetland has no indigenous Gaelic tradition (the local dialect is more inflected by Old Norse). This year we're showing the children's Eurovision documentary Sounds Like Teen Spirit at Shetland schools, and Chicago on the island of Fetlar.

The other reason for these ad-hoc venues is that, shocking as it may sound to the metropolitan ear, there are no cinemas in Shetland. There are art galleries, restaurants, museums, and swimming pools – loads of swimming pools. Everywhere you go, there's an outstandingly outfitted pool, a strange quirk born out of the fact that the most dangerous thing in Shetland is water (which is everywhere) and for years Shetland fishermen refused to learn to swim so that if their boat went down they'd drown quickly. Nowadays, the kids can swim almost before they can walk. As for lack of cinemas, that's finally about to be rectified by the opening of Mareel, Shetland's first bespoke film and music venue, which will be up and running in time for next year's ScreenPlay. In the meantime, we've simply set up shop in the Garrison Theatre, a castle-like structure with velveteen wooden seats, perhaps the world's shortest red carpet (between 6ft and 7ft depending on rainfall), and old-fashioned atmosphere to spare.

It was here that we ran a Ken Russell retrospective replete with a Quintophonic screening of Tommy and the director's personal copy of his definitive cut of The Devils. I was worried about walk-outs, this being a particularly controversial offering, but the weather was somewhat rough that night and the sight of a mass exorcism clearly proved less troubling than the climate. Recent Garrison guests have included Terence Davies (director of The Long Day Closes and Of Time and the City, my favourite film of 2008) who "doesn't fly" but who we somehow managed to cajole onto a bone-shaking twin-propeller plane from Edinburgh to Sumburgh. (Terence fell in love with Shetland and vowed to return, albeit by ferry). I remember seal spotting with our 2008 co-curator Christopher Frayling and realising that the previous night's screening of Local Hero had erroneously included a shot of Californian sealions. And I have vivid memories of Douglas Mackinnon (whose mother hails from Yell) arriving to screen his feature The Flying Scotsman armed with an alien ray gun borrowed from the set of the Doctor Who episodes he'd been filming.

This year's guests include Jason Isaacs, best known to some as the fiendish Lucius Malfoy from the Harry Potter movies, but known to me as the person I would most like to be played by in the movie of my life. It's my ambition to get residents of all the various Shetland islands to say "Hello to Jason Isaacs" en masse at the same time. I haven't yet quite figured out how to do this…

The central theme of this year's festival is music in movies (we're calling it "Making a Song and Dance"), so we've also enlisted director Julien Temple whose brilliant Dr Feelgood documentary Oil City Confidential has been one of my highlights of this year. By coincidence, Shetland Arts' WordPlay festival (which has long attracted the glitterati of the written word) is welcoming Will Kaufman to perform his "live documentary" about Woody Guthrie, Hard Times and Hard Travelling, alongside prominent author talks about Bob Dylan and Blind Willie McTell. My own skiffle band the Dodge Brothers will play a live musical accompaniment to the 1921 William Hart western White Oak (forget 3D; black and white silent movies are the future!) and doubtless all the musical elements will eventually gravitate toward the festival's after-hours club, where last year discussions of Will Self's love of all things Shetland could barely be heard over the sound of duelling harmonicas, banjos, and guitars. This year we're hoping to add a washboard.

But as ever, the highlight of the festival is sure to be the showcase of local films, including the work of youth group Maddrim Media, whose extraordinary shorts range from the hauntingly elegiac drug drama Masks (33,000 hits on YouTube and counting) to the frankly bonkers Stallion Head and God of Tennis. To say that Maddrim are an unusual bunch is to understate how singular their artistic talents really are. Somehow the bizarre combination of Shetland's remote location and oil-funded social arts investment have generated a creative bubble in which a strange stream of blackly comic weirdness has flourished. Believe me, in 10 years' time, you're going to read the phrase "raised in Shetland" on a surprising number of successful film-makers' CVs.

As for me, I'm just looking forward to going back to one of the most bewildering landscapes in the British isles – a maze of interconnected islands almost wholly untroubled by trees, where the weather can turn from winter to summer in an instant, where killer whales can be seen merrily cavorting among the vast oil tankers, and where you can drive for hours along tiny, winding roads only to be greeted at the end of it all by a gleaming swimming pool and unusually well appointed bus shelter.

ScreenPlay 2010 runs from this weekend until next Sunday

They have also updated the official website with "Behind the Screams" pictures as well as the 'Legendary Truth: The Collective' investigation website.

* * *

Busch Gardens Tampa has released new details about the 11th season of its Howl-O-Scream event and there are some interesting ideas on the map.

This year's event revolves around a dead beat band named My X and its lead singer, Sylvie. The new icon is wrapped up in a few controversies regarding her human finger necklace, the murder of a California nightclub visitor who had his finger cut off, along with the disappearance of her boyfriend who had previously been the lead singer of the band y X (now My X). The set up to this years event is tingling those Halloween senses.

Now on to the groundbreaking, revolutionary, new idea that Busch Gardens is putting on the haunting table. This year will feature an all-new way for guests to experience a haunted attraction. This house is called 'Alone'. As the name might have already hinted, you are going to be 'Alone' walking through this house (or are you?) and must find your way out on your own. The story has it that the deranged Master Alexander Daedalus has stored his collection of "cultural" remains in the Minotaur Storage. But now his obsession with collecting such "remains" has turned into more than the ordinary hobby as he is rumored to now be stockpiling people. This unique, new haunting experience will come at a separate up-charge in addition to the Howl-O-Scream admission and will cost $24.95 if purchased in advance online, or $34.95 if purchased at the park.

Question to all Theme Park Insider readers. What do you think of the concept behind 'Alone' and are you willing to pay extra to experience this unique haunted attraction?

Also new this year to the list of houses is 'My X: Revenge Rocks' where you will take a sneak backstage where you are to be met with the disturbing truth behind the bands lyrics and will by dying to get out.

Several of the favorites are returning this year to the house list with new terrorizing twists. These include:

- Nightshade Toy Factor: Son of Nightshade - An abandoned toy factory that comes to life by nightfall and houses the ungrateful Son of Nightshade.

- Delta Epsilon Delta: Extreme Rush (DEDer) - A sorority house where they are looking for new souls to torture during Rush Week 2010.

- Deconstruction: The Doctor Is Out Of Control - In his madness, Dr. Edger VonAngst is reconstructing people with mechanical pieces creating the most hideous creatures of bone and steel.

- Death Row Vengeance: No Escape - Inmates at Grey Echo Penitentiary make their promises come to reality after they blame you for not helping them get off Death Row.

- Taste of Blood: A Different Vein - Vampires who by day dine on rats in the subways and sewers take to the streets to feed on fresh blood by night.

The houses aren't the only thing that isn't safe at Busch Gardens by night. In the paths of guests are five new scare zones and bands of roaming hordes that will keep you watching your back. The new scare zones include:

- Xtreme Fanatics - A group of My X's most devoted fans will stop at nothing to prove they are the ultimate fans.

- Road Trip - A group of college students on the way to see My X get deserted, and stranded in a forest filled with human blood devouring half-man, half-beast creatures.

- Crazed Love - Heartbroken souls will stop at nothing to un-break their heart and get revenge for having been left at the altar or having been cheated on one too many times.

- Spiders and Snakes - A meteor crash leaves behind a glowing beacon that attracts anything creepy and crawly.

- Light of Doom - A maze of light and fog that will challenge your senses to know what is of this world and what is trying to trick you "into the light".

In addition to the Houses and Scare Zones three shows will be there to entertain you and your guests at this years Howl-O-Scream.

- My X Live - The killer band will rock all 18 nights with performances at 10:30pm and at midnight on the Gwazi Plaza stage.

- Blood Relations - This humorous sinister musical surrounding the reading of the recently deceased Lady Betty Blood will be performed nightly at the Desert Grill.

- Fiends - This dance party with Dr. Freakenstein's naughty nurses will perform nightly at the Stanleyville Theater.

If that entertainment wasn't enough there will also be 'Club X', a 21+ dance club at the Marrakesh Theater for those guests wanting to party the night away with non-stop music, premium signature cocktails, drink specials, and exclusive appearances by Howl-O-Scream's most terrifying stars. Busch Gardens Tampa is really showing off its abilities to keep up with attention to detail and ability to create an intriguing, twisted new icon like its Orlando competition at Universal Halloween Horror Nights is known for.

Here is the commercial set to hype you up for this years Howl-O-Scream event:

This years event will run for 18 select nights in September and October. For more behind the scenes footage and a music video check out the Howl-O-Scream Tampa's website at www.myxrocks.com.

Also keep up to date on the latest developments regarding the Central Florida Halloween events by following my special Twitter @CFL_Halloween and of course checking back here on Theme Park Insider.

SARATOGA, Calif. -- A man jumped at least 20 feet to his death onto the stage of a Northern California concert in front of hundreds of horrified music fans, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office said Friday.

The Swell Season was playing an outdoor show at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga in front of a crowd of about 1,900 when the jump happened Thursday night.

Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Rick Sung says authorities are treating the death as a suicide. Sung said the man's identity will not be released.

Sung says the man left a friend in the audience around 10 p.m. and soon appeared on a roof that covers the stage. Witnesses say he jumped off the roof and landed on stage near the band's lead singer, Glen Hansard.

Witnesses said Hansard removed his guitar and walked over to the man's body.

The jumper was pronounced dead by a doctor in attendance who spent an hour trying to revive him.

The band extended its sympathies in a MySpace post Friday.

"Our hearts go out to the victim who decided to take his own life at last night's gig ... and to his friends and family," the statement said.

Hansard and singer-songwriter Marketa Irglova are known in part for the alt-rock band's role in the 2006 movie "Once." The group wrote and performed the movie's theme song, "Falling Slowly," which won the Academy Award for best original song.

Promoter Live Nation said it would not change its concert schedule.

"We have ample security in place and trained safety staff at every concert and we are committed to ensuring the safety of all who come to Mountain Winery," the group said in a statement. "At the same time, we are working with the local authorities in investigating this tragic incident."

If writing a TV theme is good enough for Johnny Marr, its good enough for everyone. So which artists would you like to see following suit?

Johnny Marr has been a busy chap. Not only has he just collaborated with Hans Zimmer on the score for Inception, but there's also his commitment to the Cribs – and now a new TV theme. Marr has composed the music for the new Channel 4 sitcom The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, a new song called Life Is Sweet. (Hopefully this pairing will work better than when Kylie did the song for the failed ITV soap Night And Day). So, inspired by Marr's extracurricular commitment, which other turns would you like to see providing new theme tunes to bolster existing TV shows?

Foals: Countdown

Let's face it, the post-Vorderman attempt to revamp the show for a younger crowd has hardly set the public imagination on fire. So who better than Foals, UK indie's most intellectual math-rockers to give the old tick-tock theme tune a revamp, expanding their own demographic while they're at it.

Courtney Love: What Not to Wear

Love has been causing internet consternation with the is-it-her-or-isn't-it-her? mystery of the whatcourtneyworetoday.com blog.What we'd really like, of course, to see is her hosting the rebooted show – but we'd settle for her donating one of her tunes.

Manic Street Preachers: Match of the Day

The Welsh firebrands' period of strings and success in the 90s saw their songs become such regular fixtures on Goal of the Month montages that it probably keeps them in feather boas to this day. Their new album, Postcards From A Young Man, marks a return to those days, so why not just go the whole hog?

Kelis: Celebrity MasterChef

As well as making a mean Milkshake, the R&B; heroine recently qualified as a cordon bleu chef, so she'd obviously be disqualified from actually entering. But maybe she'd enjoy revamping the theme music.

Katy Perry: Mistresses

The once flighty rioja'n'rutting drama seems to have experienced a serious buzzkill with its latest – and apparently final – series. What better way to make the BBC rethink its decison than a Skins-style clearout with a new cast, unburned by previous infidelities, soundtracked by a new track from everyone's favourite overexposed, pretend-lesbian good time girl? Or in the spirit of third-and-final installments, perhaps LCD Soundsystem could take over this series

MIA: This Week

Andrew Neil's politics show is so bent on connecting with hipster youth that they've drafted in Dappy from N-Dubz and, er, the guy from Scouting for Girls as guests. The truffle-chip-loving agit-popper might be prone to saying rash things (so an instrumental might be best advised) but at least they'd know her heart was in the right place.

N-Dubz: Eastenders E20

'Stenders likes to think its online spin-off depicts the cool, grimy underground of east London youth, perhaps with an on-the-brink rapper like Giggs on the soundtrack. But judging by the antics of flouro-irritant Fatboy, No 1 urban clowns Dappy & co seem much better suited

Jarvis Cocker: Grandma's House

Simon Amstell's new autobiographically inspired sitcom provoked a rather mixed reaction. But who observes the minutiae of English suburbia with warmer humour than Cocker? How could that not be a treat? (Alternatively, of course, Cocker could just take over Never Mind the Buzzcocks)

Orbital: Doctor Who

Rather a cheat this one, as it's already happened. But the ageing techno duo's longstanding re-rub of Ron Grainer's original theme got the official rubberstamp at Glastonbury when Matt Smith appeared on stage during their set. What better way to further update a time-travel drama for the 21st century than giving it a theme song straight from the 90s?

The two characters are similar enough to suggest that either Dark Ages (McFarlane) Spawn
is derivative of Medieval (Gaiman) Spawn or it is the same character to which plaintiff owns
the copyright.

Much as defendant tries to distinguish the two knight Hellspawn, he never explains
why, of all the universe of possible Hellspawn incarnations, he introduced two knights from
the same century. Not only does this break the Hellspawn “rule” that Malebolgia never
returns a Hellspawns to Earth more than once every 400 years (or possibly every 100 years,
as suggested in Spawn, No. 9, exh. #1, at 4), it suggests that what defendant really wanted to
do was exploit the possibilities of the knight introduced in issue no. 9. (This possibility is
supported by the odd timing of defendant’s letter to plaintiff on February 14, 1999, just
before publication of the first issue of Spawn The Dark Ages, to the effect that defendant was
rescinding their previous agreements and retaining all rights to Medieval (Gaiman) Spawn.)

If defendant really wanted to differentiate the new Hellspawn, why not make him a
Portuguese explorer in the 16th century; an officer of the Royal Navy in the 18th century, an
idealistic recruit of Simon Bolivar in the 19th century, a companion of Odysseus on his
voyages, a Roman gladiator, a younger brother of Emperor Nakamikado in the early 18th
century, a Spanish conquistador, an aristocrat in the Qing dynasty, an American Indian
warrior or a member of the court of Queen Elizabeth I? It seems far more than coincidence
that Dark Ages (McFarlane) Spawn is a knight from the same century as Medieval (Gaiman)
Spawn.

I wish I took some kind of joy in this, but I don't.

At this point all I hope is that Todd can do an accounting for all the comics I wrote for which he paid no royalties, and the rest of it; and that he'll settle up and I will make some comics charities very happy; that his comics company will finally come out of bankruptcy; and that I can forget this forever.

For the curious, there is an account of this round at Maggie Thompson's excellent blog, starting with http://www.maggiethompson.com/2010/06/june-15-in-madison-with-neil-gaiman.html and going on from there, an entry at a time.

This is a photo from Maggie's blog of Todd McFarlane (right) and his witness Brian Holguin (left) after they'd testified.

...

Tomorrow Maddy and I go to Australia for the Graphic Festival at Sydney Opera House. (The overall link to the Festival is here: http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/about/program_graphic.aspx).

I'm going to read my novelette "The Truth is a Cave In The Black Mountains" for the first -- and possibly only -- time in public there, next Saturday night. There will be accompanying music by the FourPlay String Quartet, something I find exciting and scary at the time, as I've never attempted an accompanied reading, and Eddie Campbell has painted about 40 illustrations, which will be projected while I read.

There will probably be some other stuff -- I'd love to do a Q&A there, for example, but need to check with the organisers if it's permitted.

There will be a signing afterwards.

If you don't yet have a ticket, they are at: http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/whatson/neil_gaiman.aspx

Eddie Campbell used to blog. This is the blog, frozen in time: http://eddiecampbell.blogspot.com/

FourPlay can be found and heard at http://www.fourplay.com.au/ & http://www.myspace.com/fourplaystringquartet

And just to bring things all the way around to the beginning of this blog, http://shop.fourplay.com.au/Catgut.php is a link to FourPlay's online shop. And the first track (which you can hear a smattering of on the site) is the FourPlay version of the theme from Doctor Who.

Filed under: Art / Design, Exclusives

Axe Cop. Dr. McNinja. They're two of the toughest - and funniest - characters in the world of webcomics, and now they're on a team! Axe Cop creators Malachai Nicolle (age 6) and his brother Ethan (age 29) are in the midst of a crossover storyline with Dr. McNinja's Chris Hastings (age 27).

We got in touch with these creators to find out how one of the coolest crossovers in webcomics history came to be -- and who would win in a fight between the ninja who is also a doctor and the cop who also has an enormous axe.

After you check out our interview, go read the first part of the story on the Axe Cop site. The conclusion will run next week on Dr. McNinja's site.

If they weren't On A Team, who would win in a fight?

Ethan Nicolle: I think that Axe Cop and Dr. McNinja are both throwbacks to the 80's and 90's... and unfortunately during that time ninjas were pretty easy to kill, especially if you had a sweet mustache. Not to mention the ability to become Axe Cop Fire. Sorry McNinja, I think Axey wins this one.

Christopher Hastings: Ethan is of course referring to the Inverse Ninja Law, which Dr. McNinja was actually a victim of in a recent story. So he raises a good point. But yeah, Axe Cop would win, because I'm pretty sure he's omnipotent.


How are the writing and drawing duties being split up?

Ethan: Chris sent me a treatment for a basic story and I went over it with Malachai. I wrote a ton of notes down and he expanded the story into all sorts of crazy random directions. I sent Chris the notes and he wrote up a script. We both followed the script very loosely and basically each of us is drawing 5 pages, and each of us is doing our translation of Malachai's rehashing of Chris's original idea. So... it's like a big awesome train wreck.

Chris: Except that nobody died or was injured.


What are the strengths and weaknesses of Axe Cop and Dr. McNinja? What stats and ratings would you guys assign to them?

Ethan: I have to admit I have not caught up on Dr. McNinja. I just finished reading the first volume today and loved it. Chris is a little more willing to let his character fail then Malachai is. Malachai doesn't ever like to allow Axe Cop to take a punch in the face or have any good guys get killed, so he's made him pretty bullet proof. When all else fails, Axe Cop has friends with unicorn horns who can solve any problem, so that's hard to compete with.

Chris: If I were to make Dr. McNinja an RPG character, I'd probably give him all 20s. It seems the difference between Doc and Axe Cop there is that Doc just doesn't get the magical items in the inventory.


What other comics would you most want to do a crossover with?

Ethan: I would love to see Axe Cop cross over with Batman just because Axe Cop is sort of a wonky version of Batman. We wrote Axe Cop's origin story the same day we watched Mask of the Phantasm on my laptop, so we had the "crime killed my parents" origin fresh in our heads. I would also love to see Axe Cop team up with the Ninja Turtles and maybe do a crossover with Twilight... or more of an Axe Cop VS. Twilight. Oh yeah... and The Goon!

Chris: I would also enjoy teaming up with Batman or the Ninja Turtles as the top of the list. Or Robocop. Please, somebody let me write Robocop and Dr. McNinja.


How dangerous would you say this mission is, compared to previous 'Axe Cop' and 'Dr. McNinja' storylines?

Ethan: I don't think anything surprises Axe Cop or Dr. McNinja. They are pretty hardened crime fighters. I think it's just another day in the office.

Chris: Oh yeah, this mission's a piece of cake. They didn't even go into space or anything!


How much of each other's series have you each read?

Ethan: Like I said, I just finished volume one of the 3 available Dr. McNinja books today. I had read the first two stories available online before I got the books, but though I make web comics I do tend to prefer to read them on paper. I got all 3 books at Comic-Con and plan on reading them all soon. It's one of the few comics that causes me to laugh out loud.

Chris: Thank you, Ethan! I have read all of Axe Cop, and routinely get envious about everything about it.


For Malachai: do you want to be a full-time comics writer when you grow up? What other jobs would you like to have?

Ethan: Malachai has said that when he grows up he would like to be a wizard soldier, though he has also said he wants to write a jillion Axe Cop comics too. When we went to Dark Horse Comics for a meeting, after we left he said he wants to write comics when he grows up. I guess that he will probably have to be a wizard soldier who writes comics in his spare time.


Who would you pick to play Axe Cop and Dr. McNinja in a movie?

Ethan: Hmmm... I have always liked the idea of Daniel Day Lewis playing Axe Cop. Dr. McNinja... I have no idea. Maybe Michael Dudikoff with an Irish accent?

Chris: Oh, Lewis is a good one for Axe Cop! Personally, I saw Jon Hamm. I've always liked Sam Rockwell for Dr. McNinja. Doc's Irish American though, so no need for an accent.

What kind of music is playing when they take off together in the truck?

Ethan: Maybe 'The Final Countdown.' Or... if you ever heard that album the Ninja Turtles released via Pizza Hut in the early 90's, the song 'No Treaties'... or the Axe Cop theme song by Step Dad is pretty flawless.

Chris: I've had the Axe Cop theme stuck in my head the entire time I've been working on this, so definitely that.

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Spent last weekend in a town called Noboribetsu in Hokkaido - home to hot springs and Edo Wonderland - an authentic reproduction of an Edo period village based on historical research.

The sunny blue skies was a welcome relief after two days of rain in Hokkaido.

Arrival at Noboribetsu station which has a traditional station sign.

Then catching a bus to the Edo Wonderland which is also known as Jidai Mura.
Some buses have you pay when you get on - some when you get off. For the ones where you pay when you get off, you need to take a ticket first and when you get off, you put the ticket and fare into the little box by the driver.

Arrival at Jidai Mura 10 mins later. Entrance fee was about 2500 yen-ish.

Entrance to Jidai Mura.

Shops over to the right.

Some Ninja swords for the kids.

Many games to be played where you can win coins that can be spent at the village.

You can win some shuriken Ninja stars to throw at your neighbors. Or if you don't win any then you can buy them - failing that, you can go home and make some from paper. If you hate your neighbors then you can make some from used toilet paper but make sure to clean the poo from underneath your fingers when you are done.

They also have some blow pipe darts for you to try out.

Dont inhale too deeply or it will probably be your last breath ^^;
And here I demonstrate how not to pose while using the blow pipe as your enemies will die from laughter but ideally you want them to die from a dart between the eyes...

A Samurai shows us how to pose.

Get as many of the light plastic balls to rest in the grooved circles and win some moolah.

You can buy some Ninja and Samurai swords.
So whats the difference between a Samurai and a Ninja?

A Samurai was one of noble military rank whereas a Ninja was usually a covert warrior who trained in espionage, sabotage, infiltration and assassination.

We arrived at about 10:00 and stayed until about 14:30. Its really nice just walking around looking at the scenery.

The historical and traditional element of Jidai Mura made the visit much more interesting than any previous trips to Disney land.

Looking for some grub.

Cute cookies.

More food stuff to pick up on the way out.

Was the first time in ages to get some relaxing time off.

For those who read Japanese - description of a Ninja.

In the Ninja house now which displayed the tools, methods and activities of a Ninja. Wikipedia has more nitty gritty about what they got up to.

What I loved about the Ninja house is that they played Ninja Gaiden type music and realized that there must be a whole genre of Ninja music out n about there somewhere. If you have any recommendations then let us know!

Some Ninja hand signs which you may have seen in a few games. Speaking of games, very much looking forward to Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 out next month.

Tools and weapons of a Ninja. They dont show the roller skates here for some reason.

Some Chimaki with Rin. Rice cooked with meats in some sort of leaf.

Filling up with some Oden.

Dango and tea.

And then topping off with some Katsu.

This happens to me a lot!

Time to explore the rest of the villiage.

During the Edo period, fires frequently sprung up so they decided to built these towers to spot them before the fire became wild spread.

Folks in Tokyo who cant make a trip up to Hokkaido can try the Edo Wonderland in Nikko or alternatively try visiting Kawagoe - not a theme park though.

The village also has a reproduction of dwellings lived in at the time.

The Edo period runs from 1603 to 1868 but not sure which years these dwellings are from.

The dwellings showed that Japanese dwellings had a step up to the inside of the house. Modern houses also have this small step - this is the reason why when entering a Japanese house, the owner will say "Agatte kudasai" or "please come up."

This would be your doctor if you lived in the Edo period.

A Geisha and some bloke.

Empty house.

Cant quite remember from my Japanese studies at university but I beleive there was a period where the Samurai were not as noble as they should have been and ended up being like average salary men. Saigo Takamori wanted to invade Korea to raise the spirits of the Samurai and restore their noble image - or something like that.
Here we see a Samurai making umbrellas.

Some bloke getting himself tatooed.

The person concerned as well as keep off

Th Edo period was perfect for balding folks like me where being bald was the in thing.

Then its time to shoot some arrows - missed everything!

Before I forget - added a load of these photos to the Wallpaper Pool.

The entrance to the Ninja Maze - like a house of horrors but Ninja style and the most interesting experience I've had in one of these!

There is one particular room where the floor is slanted but the walls upright with mirrors. This Ninja is actually standing upright. Once inside the room, you start to feel incredibly dizzy and fall back to the bottom of the slope as if somebody is pushing you. There are no mechanics under the floor either and the illusion was created by just the slanting floor and mirrors - do give it a whirl if you go!

The Ninja show starts at 13:30. Going to explore more and come back.

The village is just gorgeous and on a sunny day even more so.

There are Samurai, Ninja's and Geisha walking around the village and some of them are visitors to the park who can get changed into traditional gear for the day.

All of these photos taken on the Lumix LX3. Speaking of which - new Lumix LX3 looks set to be announced on the 9th of September?

At a shrine full of cats.

Not a lot of people about at all.

A building at the top of the stairs beckons us.

A view from the stairs of the village.

The building is full of documentation about making swords.

Spirit of Samurai.

I really need to travel more of Japan.

Cute Kunoichi spotted.

Ninja Show time. Pretty interesting. Folks who dont understand Japanese can just enjoy the fighting and rope action.

A snap with the cats after the show.

Unfortunately they didnt sell decent Ninja outfits - only for kids. Have always wanted to be a Ninja since I was a kid. Time to make an original character costume? Tokyo Dance Ninja?

Some kids trying to Ninja stab each other.

Forgot what this is called - a rope is coiled around a wooden spinning top and spun from the rope onto the square thing on the floor.

Some Samurai at the gates to welcome and send off visitors.

The kids enjoyed themselves much. I love how the Japanese have managed to keep their culture rich with tradition.

And at the bus stop waiting to head off to the hot springs.

Leaving you with some more photos of the village and a video. Thanks to JR Hokkaido for looking after us.

Section: Features, Collecting, Columns, Lists, Nostalgia, Consoles, PS3, Handhelds, PSP & PSPgo, Gear, Comics-and-Graphic-Novels, Displays, Gear-Other, Ads & Media, Web, Advertisements, Other Media, Updates, Playstation-Store

This week’s downloadable PlayStation 3 game is Family Feud for $9.99. This game based on the popular family game show that first aired on July 12, 1976, and still around today. Players create a fully customizable 3D avatar and their family and challenge their knowledge in three different game modes - Solo, Local Multiplayer and Online Multiplayer - through the PSN Network. With all the sound effects, music and stage appearance the game attempts to give players a true-to-show experience with unlockable bonus items as the game progresses.

Check out Family Feud:

This week’s PlayStation Portable Download is Despicable Me for $29.99. Based on the animated film of the same title players can choose to play the game as Gru, a super villain with plans to steal the moon, or his nemesis Vector who tries to foil Gru’s plans. The game allows players to assemble an army of minions, use gadgets and weapons, build a rocket ship and engage other characters in multi-player air combat. Check out Despicable Me:

Price Updates

*Unless specified all prices are temporary and can return to its full original price at any time.

• Breakquest (PSP/Original Price $3.99/Now $2.99)
• Normaltanks(PS3/PSP/Original Price $4.99/Now $2.99)
• Hamsterball (PS3/Original Price $9.99/Now $4.99)
• Hamster Ball Unleashed (PS3/Original Price $9.99/Now $4.99)
• Worms (PS3/Original Price $12.99/Now $7.99)
• Death Track: Resurrection (PS3/Original Price $14.99/Now $7.99)

PlayStation Plus Sale

*The following offers are reduced or made free to PlayStation Plus Members only, items may be listed for a limited time and can return to its full original price at any time.

• Qore Episode 26 (PS3/Free)
• Field Runners (PSP/Free)
• MAG Raven Character Avatar (PS3/Free)
• MAG SVER Character Avatar (PS3/Free)
• MAG Valor Character Avatar (PS3/Free)
• King Zumo Theme (PS3/Free)
• Super Stardust HD Team add-on Pack (PS3/Original Price $4.99/PlayStation Plus price $2.50)
• Super Stardust HD Solo add-on Pack (PS3/Original Price $4.99/PlayStation Plus price $2.50)
• Hamsterball (PS3/Originral Price $9.99/PlayStation Plus price $3.99)
• Super Stardust HD (PS3/Original Price $9.99/PlayStation Plus price $5)

Qore Subscription

• Qore Episode 26: July 2010 (PS3/$2.99)*
• Qore Annual Subscription: July 2010 (PS3/$24.99)*
• *Qore issues are available free to PlayStation Plus members.

Here’s what else is new

• Widget’s Odyssey – Minis (PS3/PSP/$1.99)
• 5-in-1 Arcade Hits – Minis (PSP/$3.99)
• The Mystery Of The Crystal Portal – Minis (PSP/$4.99)
• Chameleon Legacy (PSP/$4.99)
• 4X4 Jam Minis (PSP/$6.99)
• Monkey Island Special Edition 2: Lechuck’s Revenge (PS3/$9.99)
• Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable (PSP/$39.99)

Free Demos

• Patapon 3 – Multiplayer Demo (PSP/Free)
• Death Track: Resurrection Demo (PS3/Free)
• Monkey Island Special Edition 2: LeChuck’s Revenge Demo (PS3/Free)

Avatars

• Dark Stalkers Felicia Avatar (PS3/49 Cents)
• Dark Stalkers Morrigan Avatar (PS3/49 Cents)
• Flower Blue Flower 2 Avatar (PS3/49 Cents)
• Flower Picture Frame Avatar (PS3/49 Cents)
• Flower Purple Flower Avatar (PS3/49 Cents)
• Flower Dark Blue Flower Avatar (PS3/49 Cents)
• Flower Yellow Flower Avatar (PS3/49 Cents)
• Flower Avatar Bundle (PS3/$1.49)*
• *Includes Blue Flower 2, Picture Frame, Purple Flower, Dark Blue Flower and Yellow Flower avatars.

Bonus Content

*Note: Players downloading any bundle should own a copy of the game or the system required for the item to work or function properly. Always make sure you have the game the add-on was intended for before downloading as there are no refunds for anything mistakenly purchased from the PlayStation Network Store.

• LittleBigPlanet PSP – Heroes in Uniform Police Officer Costume (PSP/Free)
• MotoGP 09/10: GP Class Season 2010 Update (PS3/Free)
• Trinity Universe – Low Income Prinny Pack (PS3/Free)
• Trinity Universe – Miyu’s Managraphic Pack (PS3/Free)
• Trinity Universe – Phantom Dungeon Rumors Pack (PS3/Free)
• Trinity Universe – Gift for Everyone Pack (PS3/99 Cents)
• Trinity Universe – My Secret Savings Pack (PS3/99 Cents)
• Trinity Universe – Middle Ability Pack (PS3/$1.99)
• Trinity Universe – Mid-Level armor Pack ($1.99)
• Trinity Universe – Technician’s Pack (PS3/$1.99)
• LittleBigPlanet: Marvel – Iron Man (PS3/$1.99)*
• LittleBigPlanet: Marvel – Thing (PS3/$1.99)*
• LittleBigPlanet: Marvel – Dare Devil (PS3/$1.99)*
• LittleBigPlanet: Marvel – Doctor Octopus (PS3/$1.99)*
• LittleBigPlanet: Marvel – Mystique (PS3/$1.99)*
• ModNation Racers: Sweet Tooth Mod and Kart Bundle (PS3/$1.99)*
• LittleBigPlanet PSP – Heroes in Uniform Pack (PSP/$2.99)*
• LittleBigPlanet: Marvel Level Kit (PS3/$4.99)*
• LittleBigPlanet: Marvel Costume Pack (PS3/$5.99)*
• Dragon Age: Origins – Leliana’s Song (PS3/$6.99)
• Skate 3 – Danny Way’s Hawaiian Dream (PS3/$6.99)
• Aliens Vs. Predator Bughunt Map Pack (PS3/$6.99)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Resurgence Package (PS3/$14.99)*

*The LittleBigPlanet PSP Uniform pack includes police officer, firefighter and paramedic uniforms as well as stickers. PSP owners must own a copy of LittleBigPlanet PSP to download as this item requires manual updating to work properly with the game. The Marvel Level Kit contains 4 new levels, 1 background, three music files, 24 CREATE objects and stickers to use when creating new customizable levels and worlds. The LittleBigPlanet Costume Pack includes Iron Man, Thing, Dare Devil, Doctor Octopus and Mystique costumes. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Resurgence Package is also available in French and includes five new multiplayer maps.

Guitar Hero

*Warning: When purchasing a track pack always review your play list carefully before purchasing as most songs are also included in other track packs or sold individually. Always check first to avoid paying extra for a song you may already own as there are no refunds for purchasing the same song twice. If the song is available in a previously purchased track pack consider purchasing the remaining songs individually.

• Queen 2 Track Pack (PS3/$5.49)*
• Individual Tracks Include:
• “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” by Queen (PS3/$1.99)
• “Killer Queen” by Queen (PS3/$1.99)
• “Somebody To Love” by Queen (PS3/$1.99)

Rock Band

*Warning: When purchasing a track pack always review your play list carefully before purchasing as most songs are also included in other track packs or sold individually. Always check first to avoid paying extra for a song you may already own as there are no refunds for purchasing the same song twice. If the song is available in a previously purchased track pack consider purchasing the remaining songs individually.

• Creedence Clearwater Revival Pack 01 (PS3/$19.99)
• Individual Tracks Include:
• “Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence Clearwater Revival (PS3/$1.99)
• “Born On The Bayou” by Creedence Clearwater Revival (PS3/$1.99)
• “Down On The Corner” by Creedence Clearwater Revival (PS3/$1.99)
• “Fortunate Son (Original Version)” by Creedence Clearwater Revival (PS3/$1.99)
• “Green River” by Creedence Clearwater Revival (PS3/$1.99)
• “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” by Creedence Clearwater Revival (PS3/$1.99)
• “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” by Creedence Clearwater Revival (PS3/$1.99)
• “Proud Mary” by Creedence Clearwater Revival (PS3/$1.99)
• “Run Through The Jungle” by Creedence Clearwater Revival (PS3/$1.99)
• “Travelin’ Band” by Creedence Clearwater Revival (PS3/$1.99)
• “Up Around The Bend” by Creedence Clearwater Revival (PS3/$1.99)
• “Who’ll Stop The Rain” by Creedence Clearwater Revival (PS3/$1.99)

Rock Band Network

• “1348″ by Umphrey’s McGee (PS3/$1.99)
• “Battles And Brotherhood” by 3 Inches of Blood (PS3/$1.99)
• “Henchmen Ride” by Testament (PS3/$1.99)
• “So Says I” by The Shins (PS3/$1.99)
• “The Funeral” by Band of Horses (PS3/$1.99)

Game Videos

• Pulse 7/6 Edition (PS3/PSP/Free)
• Naughty Bear Trailer (PS3/Free)
• Transformers: War For Cybertron Multiplayer Trailer (PS3/Free)
• Dragon Age: Origins Leliana’s Song Trailer (PS3/Free)
• Shank E3: Animatic Trailer (PS3/Free)
• Skate 3 Maloof Money Cup Trailer (PS3/Free)
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II E3 Trailer (PS3/Free)
• PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap Trailer (PS3/Free)
• PixelJunk Shooter 2 Trailer (PS3/Free)

Digital Comics

(Warning: To view comics PSP owners must download the latest firmware featuring the reader and update their PSP systems first before downloading comics. Also note that some comics may contain suggestive themes, partial nudity, violence or gore. Always read the description before downloading or visit the PSN Comic site for detailed information about a comic series if you are easily offended.)

• Night Owls # 1 (PSP/Free)
• 
• Cancertown: An Inconvenient Tooth: Chapter 6 of 6 (PSP/99 Cents)
• Scrooge McDuck and the High Sea Trap (PSP/99 Cents)
• Project Eon # 2 (PSP/99 Cents)
• Wizards of Mickey #9 : The Return of the Phantom Blot (PSP/99 Cents)
• Free Realms #5 (PSP/99 Cents)
• Free Realms #6 (PSP/99 Cents)
• Eleventh Hour # 3 (PSP/99 Cents)
• The Lexian Chronicles # 8 (PSP/99 Cents)
• High Moon: Chapter 1 # 2 (PSP/99 Cents)
• Donald Duck and the Secret of the 313 (PSP/99 Cents)
• Mickey Mouse in: “The Haunted City” (PSP/99 Cents)
• 2000AD Prog # 1687 (PSP/$1.99)
• Astonishing Tales (2009) # 4 (PSP/$1.99)
• Batman: Year One # 3 (PSP/$1.99)
• Black Panther (2005) #6 (PSP/$1.99)
• Black Panther (2005) #7 (PSP/$1.99)
• Black Panther (2005) #8 (PSP/$1.99)
• Black Panther (2005) #9 (PSP/$1.99)
• Criminal: The Sinners (2008) #1 (PSP/$1.99)
• 
• Criminal: The Sinners (2008) #2 (PSP/$1.99)
• Devi # 7 (PSP/$1.99)
• DMZ #6 : Body Of a Journalist #1 (PSP/$1.99)
• DMZ #7 : Body Of a Journalist #2 (PSP/$1.99)
• DMZ #8 : Body Of a Journalist #3 (PSP/$1.99)
• DMZ #9 : Body Of a Journalist #4 (PSP/$1.99)
• DMZ #10 : Body Of a Journalist #5 (PSP/$1.99)
• DMZ #11 (PSP/$1.99)
• DMZ #12 (PSP/$1.99)
• Fables #11 (PSP/$1.99)
• Fables #12 (PSP/$1.99)
• Fables #13 (PSP/$1.99)
• Fables #14 (PSP/$1.99)
• Finding Nemo # 0 (PSP/$1.99)
• Ghostbusters: Holiday Special : CON-volution! #1 (PSP/$1.99)
• G.I. Joe: Cobra #10 : Cobra II: Cold-Blooded #5 (PSP/$1.99)
• Green Lantern: Secret Origin – Part 3 # 31 (PSP/$1.99)
• Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War – Part 4 of 12 # 4 (PSP/$1.99)
• Jonah Hex #13 (PSP/$1.99)
• Jonah Hex #14 (PSP/$1.99)
• Marvel Zombies 2 (2007) # 1 (PSP/$1.99)
• Planetary-Authority: Ruling the World (PSP/$1.99)
• Planetary-JLA: Terra Occulta #1 (PSP/$1.99)
• Ramayan 3392 AD # 7 (PSP/$1.99)
• Resistance #5 (PSP/$1.99)
• Resistance #6 (PSP/$1.99)
• The Sadhu # 7 (PSP/$1.99)
• Snakewoman # 7 (PSP/$1.99)
• Star Trek: McCoy # 3 (PSP/$1.99)
• Superduck #13 : Creatures of the Abyss (PSP/$1.99)
• Transformers # 8 (PSP/$1.99)
• Victorian Undead # 3 (PSP/$1.99)
• Walk-In # 6 (PSP/$1.99)
• Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper # 1 (PSP/$1.99)
• Justice League: Generation Lost # 5 (PSP/$2.99)

Themes and Wallpapers

• Blue Toad Murder Files Wallpaper (PS3/Free)
• Azmodeus Dark Angels PSP Theme 13 (PSP/$1.49)
• Azmodeus Dark Angels Premium Theme 4 (PS3/$1.49)
• Trinity Universe Custom Theme 09:Flonne (PS3/$1.99)
• Trinity Universe Custom Theme 10: Etna (PS3/$1.99)
• Trinity Universe Custom Theme 11: Prinny (PS3/$1.99)
• Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Premium Theme (PS3/$2.49)

Read [PlayStation Store Blog] Read [PlayStation Comics Blog] Site [PlayStation Comics] Site [Official Marvel Comics Site] Site [Official DC Comics Site]

Image Source:PlayStation Comics Site

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