Ok, this is going to be a long one. Earlier on this year, I interviewed Joe Cornish for SFX magazine, about his debut feature, Attack The Block (loved it by the way Joe!). Seeing as the article has been and gone, I thought it might be fun to stick the transcript for the interview up here. There’s a lot of material I didn’t manage to squeeze into the article, so give it a read. You might want to save it for a long train journey, or an epic poo though, cos it’s really really long. We chatted for around 40 minutes, and Joe was kind, courteous and very funny. Hope you enjoy it! (more…)

Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish - appearing soon in a dark alleyway near you.

Recently I interviewed Joe Cornish for SFX magazine, about his upcoming movie directing debut Attack the Block. It was a lovely interview, and Joe was very generous with his time chatting for over 40 minutes. Which meant there was a lot of good stuff I couldn’t quite squeeze into the article. Some of that material included a large digression we had about his friendship with fellow director Edgar Wright. So I thought I’d stick it on my blog as a sort of accompaniment to the SFX article (Which is in the shops now, issue 207!).  Click through to read about how Joe and Edgar became friends, how the Ant Man and Tintin projects came about, and how their friendship ultimately led to to the creation of Attack the Block… (more…)

Over the years I’ve interviewed quite a few interesting people, but often the chats are heavily edited for the finished article. So I thought I’d put up a few of the transcripts here. They’re pretty long, but if you want something to get stuck into over lunch, they’re perfect.

This interview was a chat with David Braben, the man who, with Ian Bell, created the space trading game Elite – kicking off the sandbox gaming genre that would eventually spawn your Grand Theft Autos and such. This chat was done in 2007, for an article on sandbox gaming in Official Xbox 360 magazine, and he talked, I think for the first time, about the physical, rather than just spiritual, links between his game and Rockstar’s crime sims. (more…)

If you’ve ever met me, you’ll probably know I’m not very good with money. In fact, I’m so bad with money, when I put my Visa card in an ATM, the display doesn’t even ask for me PIN number, it just prints “Seriously?” on the screen. But last week, a post in the off-topic section of Rllmuk alerted me to a fun new social media game that was floating around, Empire Avenue, and I thought I’d give it a bash. Surprisingly, I quickly found myself addicted. Essentially, you create an account, complete with a NASDAQ-style share offering name (my shares are listed as JONCYBERNET), plug in all your social media connections, and then watch your share price rise as you go about your day doing the sort of things you enjoy doing – facebooking, adding pictures to flickr, and stalking late 90’s popstars on Twitter.

You can try it yourself – just plug in your Twitter ID here (scroll down to where it says: ‘What’s your price on the Twiter index?’) and see what your account would be worth on Empire Avenue. More info and 10 great starter tips from the leader of one of the top Community groups after the jump! (more…)

Over the last decade, I’ve written many, many words about videogames. Some of them were good, most of them were a bit wonky. In those 10 years, I’ve been flown all around the world, met celebrities, been wined and dined and have had various incidents with actual real guns. But this morning, I was chatting with fellow writers @GriddleOctopus, @richardcobbett and @SimonParkin about videogame journalism and it’s ethics. And we decided – it’s time to make a stand… (more…)

You can't really tell, but the shelves are full of pies.

Ok, so I’ve been rubbish. More than a bit rubbish in fact – I haven’t blogged for 5 months. So what have I been doing? Basically, eating pies. (more…)

Ghostbusters' star Ernie Hudson signs some stuff. I didn't take this picture, but he was wearing the same t-shirt when I met him.

As a geeky sci-fi journalist, I get to do quite a few interviews with geek celebrities. But occasionally, for whatever reason, the interviews get spiked, and they never appear in the mags they’re intended for. So I thought it might be fun to post up a few of these lost interviews for your reading ‘pleasure’. First up is this interview with Ghostbusters star Ernie Hudson, better known as Winston Zeddmore. Stargate fans might want to pay attention… (more…)

Why the grumpy face Tony? Is it because you're a PLAGIARIST?

So the other week, I went to see Iron Man 2. I mostly loved the first one (great opening 2/3rds, rubbish final act, redeemed by awesome ending), so I was massively psyched for the sequel. In fact, I *might* have gone into the cinema whispering ‘robots, robots’ over and over in a slightly disturbing manner. Little did I know, I was about to witness a Grand Theft Robo.

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We’ve had a great response to our Witness The Fitness iPad competition – so great in fact that we’ve decided to extend the competition for another month. The new deadline is May 30th, so you now have some extra time to get your entries in. Over the next week, we’ll be showcasing some of the entries we’ve had so far. Here’s today’s entry from Eoin Clarke: (more…)

Some guy with way too much access to sweeties edited together this compilation of people using the phrase “we’ve got company“. Because none of us were aware what a cliche that was. He sort of ruins it at the end with the plug for his cheesy TV show, and to be honest, if it didn’t feature a 3-second clip of Tron, my all time favourite film, I wouldn’t have even featured it. (more…)