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Latest News

25 / 07 / 2010
Fantasy F1:
The results from the eleventh race in Germany are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next race is Hungary next weekend on 1st August.

11 / 07 / 2010
Fantasy Rally:
The results from Rally Bulgaria are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next rally is Finland on THURSDAY 29th July (a day earlier than usual!).

11 / 07 / 2010
Fantasy F1:
The results from the tenth race in Silverstone are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next race is Hockenheim on 25th July.

27 / 06 / 2010
Fantasy F1:
The results from the ninth race in Valencia are in, including the penalties for the naughty boys driving too fast. Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next race is Silverstone on 11th July.

13 / 06 / 2010
Fantasy F1:
The results from the eighth race in Canada are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next race is Valencia on 27th June.

30 / 05 / 2010
Fantasy Rally:
The results from Rally Portugal are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next rally is Bulgaria on 9th July.

30 / 05 / 2010
Fantasy F1:
The results from the exciting seventh race in Turkey are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next race is Canada on 13th June.

16 / 05 / 2010
Fantasy F1:
The Monaco scores have been updated to reflect Michael Schumacher's ridiculous penalty for daring to overtake a Ferrari. Check the updated results, see how your team did or enter a new team.

16 / 05 / 2010
Fantasy F1:
The results from the sixth race in Monaco are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next race is Turkey on 30th May.

10 / 05 / 2010
Fantasy F1:
The results from the fifth race in Barcelona are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next race is Monaco on 16th May.

10 / 05 / 2010
Fantasy Rally:
The results from Rally New Zealand are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next rally is Portugal on 28th May.

19 / 04 / 2010
Fantasy Rally:
The results from Rally Turkey are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next rally is New Zealand on 7th May.

18 / 04 / 2010
Fantasy F1:
The results from the fourth race in China are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next race is Barcelona on 9th May.

06 / 04 / 2010
Fantasy Rally:
The JWRC driver lineup has been released, so you can make your selection before teams are frozen for Turkey on the night of 15th April. If you don't pick anyone, you'll get Aaron Burkart by default.

05 / 04 / 2010
Fantasy F1:
The results from the third race in Malaysia are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next race is China on 18th April.

03 / 04 / 2010
Fantasy Rally:
The results from Rally Jordan are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next race is Turkey on 14th April.

29 / 03 / 2010
Fantasy F1:
The results from the second race in Melbourne are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next race is Malaysia THIS WEEKEND on 4th April.

14 / 03 / 2010
Fantasy F1:
The results from the first race in Bahrain are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next race is Australia on 28th March.

09 / 03 / 2010
Fantasy F1!
Yes, there's a brand new Fantasy Formula One game! Check the rules or enter your team by Friday night to qualify for the first race in Bahrain!

08 / 03 / 2010
Fantasy Rally:
The results from Rally Mexico are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team. Next race is Jordan on 1st April.

17 / 02 / 2010
Fantasy Rally:
The points awarded for a win have changed in the real WRC, so we've reflected the changes in our scoring too. Check the rules to see the details. Next rally is Mexico on 5th March, teams will be frozen at midnight on the night of Thursday 4th March.

16 / 02 / 2010
Fantasy Rally:
The results from Rally Sweden are in! Check the results, see how your team did or enter a new team.

31 / 01 / 2010
Fantasy Rally:
The new rally season is upon us - 2010 Fantasy Rally is now open! Check the rules or pick a team ready for the start on 12th Feb.

25 / 10 / 2009
Fantasy Rally:
All previous years' Fantasy Rally results are online - Check the 2009 season.

02 / 08 / 2009
Reviews:
Sorry, there won't be any more movie reviews for the foreseeable future. Events have overtaken me. Catch up on reviews you may have missed.

18 / 08 / 2005
Sudoku!
Have a go at the online Sudoku game.

 

Sin City

Sin City

Cast: Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Elijah Wood, Benicio del Toro, Jessica Alba, Carla Gugino, Nick Stahl, Rosario Dawson, Jaime King, Michael Madsen, Rutger Hauer, Brittany Murphy, Devon Aoki, Alexis Bledel, Powers Boothe, Michael Clarke Duncan, Josh Hartnett.

Directed by Robert Rodriguez, adapted from Frank Miller's comic books - sorry - "Graphic Novels".

Story: Tales of crime and retribution in Basin City.

Running Time: 2hrs 4 minutes.

Certificate 18.

 

Sin City is a first. Other movies have tried to look like comic books, but they've all been laughably poxy, e.g. Dick Tracy. Sin City succeeds by evoking its comic roots and working well as a story-telling style too. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but Sin City is a masterpiece.

Rosario Dawson and Clive Owen in maximum cornball mode. Sin City contains several short stories that lightly cross, but are independent tales themselves. With almost everything bar the actors computer-generated, all the scenes can be created exactly as the director envisaged and thus Sin City has a look and feel all of its own. Shot in moody black and white with occasional touches of colour to highlight particular details, the style of the visuals is critical to the atmosphere. The movie is total comic-book, the script is corny, everyone overacts, the cars hop about like rabbits and the violence is exaggerated to cartoon proportions. People are shot twenty times and survive, limbs are dismembered and corpses are mutilated. Accuracy is completely sacrificed for the overall effect, so if realism is at all important to you, stay well away. Sin City is a love-it-or-hate-it movie, and I'm sure plenty of people will hate it because of its you-doity-rat gangster cheesiness. Far more people will lap it up though, because it's so darned cool.

The X is so you can tell which one is Mickey Rourke.  Easily confused with Jaime King (!) It's hard to judge the performances - everyone hams it up so much that Eastenders looks real by comparison - but it's finely judged to match the environment. Take a look at the cast list at the top of this review - they must have cost a fortune, and they must all have had complete trust in director Robert Rodriguez, as the actors would have been delivering their ludicrous lines in front of a blue screen with no vision of how the finished product would look. Without expert direction, Sin City could have been terrible. Quite a risk, but one that has paid off in spades. A rasping Mickey Rourke, heavily made up, is entertaining as big ape-man Marv, Bruce Willis's angina-suffering cop passes muster and everyone else fits the bill, however it's Rutger Hauer's short performance that I enjoyed most.

Sin City is an extremely violent, dark, fantasy comic-book thriller. If any film ever deserved an award for Best Director, it's this one - Frank Miller surely couldn't have imagined his comic books converting to celluloid as well as this. Rodriguez has created a new movie world, which must surely host more stories in the future. Sin City is a piece of cinematic history.

I enjoyed this film: 5/5

I think the average moviegoer will enjoy it: 4/5

Testosterone Satisfaction Rating: 5/5 Extreme violence, cars, oozing coolness and the breasts of Carla Gugino and Jaime King. That's all the boxes checked!

To enjoy this film you should: tolerate exaggerated violence for the sake of style.

 

Sin City is released in the UK on June 3rd.