Shopping List December 2012 - Five gifts you want for Xmas

Christmas is right around the corner and children everywhere are ready to burst with excitement at the thought of unwrapping an iPhone 5, Wii U or 3D TV on the big day. Sucks, doesn't it, how the magic has been torn from the festive season. Since when did all a child care about become the latest electrical gadgets, Furbys and Doctor Who? What happened to teddy bears, board games and wearing silly hats? Never mind. What follows is a list of five fab gift ideas the child inside all us geeky adults really wishes for come the 25th (if we survive that long)!

Review: Kids seeing Frankenweenie need Parental Guidance

 Warning: Spoilers - in black & white. 

Frankenweenie is supposed to be a spooky black and white cartoon caper for kids that'd probably have looked a lot nicer in colour and would be better suited shoved into the schedules on Nickleodeon. There's very little here that's cinema worthy - it's short on laughs, lacking a nifty story arc and it's all very one-dimensional (which is ironic considering it's been released in 3D). Victor's parents are the most neglectful to have ever been animated, but as a member of the audience you'll feel just as neglected as their morbid son.

Review: Ruby Sparks is magical but mostly human

  Warning: The following spoilers are not fiction. 

Ruby Sparks does cinematic magic the way it's done best - it puts us in the same confusion-filled boat as our lead character, once famous but now struggling writer Calvin Weir-Field. He has no idea how the ginger-haired and quite fanciable lady-character he's been writing about has suddenly become real, walking around in his flat, making eggs and claiming to be his girlfriend - and neither do we! He's fallen desperately in love with her while dreaming her up and writing her down, but can he love her now she's turned up in his reality? The answer is yes. At least, for a while anyway. Even as the tale begins to take on a sinister turn of events it always remembers that something magical on screen tends to have more of a hold on its audience when true, believable emotions get tied up in the chaos.

More Misfits

The new soggy Misfits teasers from E4 show that there's still a lot of life left in the British superhero comedy/drama. After the previous batch of, let's be honest, hit and miss episodes we've been left hanging - Alisha & Simon's timey wimey tale finally came to a close in epic style which saw the two of them bow out. Who will fill their shoes? That'll be Jess and Finn. The two newcomers will be introduced to the gang along with what seems to be a brand new storm, which will no doubt bring about a fresh collection of powers and yet more whacky adventures.

Review: Hope Springs gets harder than it looks...

Hope Springs is a bit like The Five Year Engagement, yet completely different. They're both about couples facing serious problems with their relationships. One couple wants to get married and the other one has been married for over thirty years. With both, you sit in the cinema expecting more of a comedy than you get, because it slowly reveals itself as more of an emotionally heavy, tear-inducing, armrest-clenching drama than a quirky little romcom. One, however, delves even deeper than the other...

Misfits is the new Sugababes

Misfits was fairly groundbreaking back in the day, long before it turned into the TV show equivilent of The Sugababes. A brilliantly casted bunch of loud-mouthed teenagers end up with super powers after a freaky storm - great idea. What's more, their story is set on a scummy council estate, which means there's loads of what we're all big fans of here - sex, drugs and violence. Most of the time it's far more of a comedy than it is a drama, with Nathan providing the majority of laughs... But then, he buggered off.

Malcolm In The Middle, in the end...

What's so great about shows like Malcolm In The Middle is that they don't shy away from being completely bonkers. They proper go for it, diving in head first and leaving the audience confused - stunned, even. It's the broader minded folks who don't let that get in the way of ploughing through the initial stage of overwhelming weirdness to go on and discover what's undeniably one of the funniest and most inventive sitcoms to have ever been shown on our teleboxes. While it had a few rough patches where it seemed to lose its footing momentarily, for the most part it stayed true to its characters and, most importantly, kept on being funny.

The Inbetweeners, americanised...

It is thought by many that if an american were to watch the UK's original version of a comedy they've stolen, they would burst into flames and burn to dust before the end of the opening credits. It simply cannot be done. This, Misfits, Skins and Spaced have all been morphed into completely naff shows by the americans. Even Only Fools & fucking Horses is going to be getting one of their makeovers! The question is, why don't we make our own versions of Friends, Will & Grace, 30 Rock, Malcolm in the Middle or How I Met Your Mother? And the answer? Because we appreciate that what makes these shows funny is their context, and that they are indeed american. They are american characters in an american world. It's the way it was meant to be shown - the way the artist intended. You try and fuck that shit up and it just won't work - you'll lose track of the 'punchline'.