Tuesday, November 30, 2010

"We shot a lot of people together" RIP Leslie Nielsen

Canadian actor Leslie Nielsen best known as Sergeant Frank Drebin, Detective Lieutenant Police Squad has died aged 84 near his home in Florida.

At 17 Nielsen trained as an aerial gunner with the Royal Canadian Air Force but was too young to be sent in to WWII. After a stint as a DJ, he attended the Lorne Greene Academy of Radio Arts in Toronto and The Actor's Studio in New York before being cast in The Vagabond King in 1956. His second movie released in the same year is one of the most beloved science fiction movies of all time, Fred M. Wilcox's Forbidden Planet. In Forbidden Planet [a movie that lent quite a few ideas to Star Trek] Nielsen portrayed Commander John J. Adams of the United Planets Cruiser C-57D and made his name as a serious actor here and dozens of movies like The Poseidon Adventure and TV roles including Hawaii 5-0.

The world of comedy was forever changed by Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker in 1980 when they created Airplane! to spoof Zero Hour and Airport. The visionary directors chose Neilsen as Dr. Rumack who delivered cold dead-pan hilarious dialogue like the iconic answer to "Surely you can't be serious?", which is "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley." [Now #79 in The American Film Institute's "100 Years... 100 Quotes"] . When Abrahams and the Zuckers brought their new brand of comedy to Television in the form of Police Squad! to spoof cop shows like those of Quinn Martin, it was a no-brainer to cast Nielsen as the hapless Frank Drebin. Neilsen reprised his role in the extremely successful The Naked Gun trilogy of movies between 1988 and 1994.

"...and where the hell was I?"

Neilsen never really returned to serious acting, seeming to relish instead in the world of comedy. He appeared in a number of spoof comedies including Spy Hard, Wrongfully Accused and the Scary Movie series none of which were as well received as his previous efforts. He did many commercials in his later years as well as voices for children's shows,. He appeared on celebrity game shows and performed Darrow a one-man theatre show. He was working right up until his death and was due to lend his voice to the animated The Waterman Movie in 2011. His final movie appears to be Bill Corcoran's Stonerville which wrapped recently.

Nielsen appeared in over 100 films and 1,500 television programs over the span of his career, portraying over 220 characters.

Mayor: Now Drebin, I don’t want any trouble like you had on the South Side last year, that’s my policy.
Frank: Well, when I see five weirdos, dressed in togas, stabbing a man in the middle of the park in full view of a hundred people, I shoot the bastards, that’s *my* policy!
Mayor: That was a Shakespeare-In-The-Park production of ‘Julius Caesar,’ you moron! You killed five actors! Good ones!

Monday, November 29, 2010

Irvin Kershner becomes one with the force

The director of what is regarded by sane people as the greatest movie of all time has passed, he was 87. Irvin Kershner was chosen by God himself to take the reins of his Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back which celebrates it's 30th Anniversary this year. Lucas wanted "Kersh" to bring a unique vision that Lucas had observed in his work on The Eyes Of Laura Mars to instill a sense of deep gravitas that God himself believed he could not accomplish.

A WWII veteran, Kershner's film career began as a teacher of film at USC, progressing to a stills photographer and a director of Television before making his mark on the silver screen with the Roger Corman-produced Stakeout on Dope Street in 1958. Kershner is also noted as the director of Never Say Never Again, the unofficial Bond movie which would be Sean Connery's final appearance on screen as the secret agent. He also directed Robocop 2, which I never, ever want to talk about, as well as episodes of seaQuest DSV.

The next time you watch The Empire Strikes Back, note how much more close up Kershner fills the frame with actors faces, "There's nothing more interesting than the landscape of the human face," he once said. Remember Lucas may have created the characters, envisioned the designs of craft, sets and costumes costumes, and wrote the story - but Empire, it's shots, pacing, drama, tension and revelation is the vision of one Irvin Kershner and we must never forget him.

May the force be with him.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

U.N.E.T.I.D.A denies existence of Mongo

In a press conference Friday afternoon Master Warrant Officer “Chatterbox” Hendrickx, UNETIDA Public Affairs Office, Belgium, assured those present that the exoplanet HIP 13044 b discovered by astronomers recently as being not from our galaxy, was not in fact the planet of Mongo as some had warned.

From popular accounts, it was understood that the activity of a planet appearing in our galaxy from elsewhere was similar activity to that reported of the Planet Mongo popularised in Flash Gordon lore and led to fears that the planet's ruler Emperor Ming The Merciless was on his way to destroy the Earth.

Handrickx stated that mainly the sheer size of the planetary body [1.25x the mass of Jupiter] excluded it from possibly being Mongo as by all known accounts, Mongo is in fact just half the diameter of Earth.

Hendrickx also quipped that the only people who should be fearful of Ming The Merciless were the people of Ireland [in reference to the self-styled Luke "Ming" Flanagan, a Roscommon County Councillor who seeks the legalisation of Cannabis].

Monday, November 15, 2010

The Colonel's Bullets - November 15th 2010

Paramount Pictures

Star Trek 2 has no villain announced yet. Klingons? Khan? but we know it will be characters or a character we already know, now in a "reboot" form. J.J. Still not assigned to direct but movie on track for 29/06/12.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the final part of Bay's Transformers trilogy will bookend the tale in a spectacular fashion blowing $250m in gigantic robots and associated explosions. In this new movie, the Autobots and Decepticons become involved in a perilous space race between the U.S. and Russia.

G.I. Joe 2 is in progress, Stephen Sommers will return to direct while Zombieland writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, were hired to write the script.

Paramount will not be releasing The Avengers [May 2012] or Iron Man 3 [May, 2013] as Disney, new owners of Marvel have stepped in and said "We want them now, but we'll still let you release Captain America and Thor". Disney/Marvel have also asked writers to pitch scripts for a potential War Machine movie!

The Dark Knight Rises

is the official title for Nolan's finale to his Batman trilogy and there are currently in excess of a dozen rumours about some 10 different actresses in line for Catwoman or another female villain. While we know there will be no 3D as Nolan hates it, Collider reported it will most likely be shot entirely in IMAX's epic 70mm format.

Roland Emmerich,

who usually tries to destroy the world with ID4, 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow wanted to step away from his over-use of CGI and multi-million dollar insanity to do a "found video" format movie, involving aliens all for about $5m. It's probably not going to happen as Apollo 18, from Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov will also be a "found video" format.

Conan Triumphant

Treacherous rat Jay Leno’s current The Tonight Show hasn't been getting Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show numbers in the 18-49 demographic much to the upset of NBC, and on Monday night Leno was further kicked in the ratings crotch by the premiere of Conan, O' Brien's new TBS show which garnered more than 300% of big-jaw's share of that important range as that's the one advertisers target.

Well done Coco!

Source AICN/ IGN

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Skyline is absolute excrement

I've been involved in a couple of pitches for films now, low budget shorts, purely in a behind the scenes capacity. I've readied storyboards location photographs, financial assessment expenditure reports and I have printed final drafts of scripts on extremely expensive paper and arranged them in a professionally presentable manner for a filmmaker to take in to his first meeting with potential producers/financiers and charm them with his ideas and my hard work.

I can only assume that that is also done, on a much bigger scale obviously, in Hollywood. For the movie I've just seen, I imagine that directors The Brothers Strause [AvP: Requiem] brought in an impressive special effects reel to the executive in Relativity Media who gave the green light to Skyline. The problem is that there is a moment after receiving a perfectly administered blowjob that a man will agree to anything... literally ANYTHING! It was at this moment, [probably because his secretary was still under his desk] that the executive gave the nod to The Brothers Strauss to make their alien invasion movie because no matter how good the effects are, if NOTHING else about this film has been thought of, then you have a lemon, and there has to be an excuse why the executive didn't read the script.

The special effects in this movie are some of the finest I've seen in cinema. No one can say that The Brothers Strause can't do effects work because the stuff on screen here was flawlessly executed and if they hadn't blatantly ripped off every other alien invader design from far better alien invader movies, they might have had something. Speilberg's War of the Worlds, The Matrix Reloaded, Independence Day, District 9 and even the video game Crysis had their designs plundered by the brothers which is very sad considering their talent for CGI. They seem to be excellent at realising the ideas of others, but lack any imagination whatsoever to create something themselves and sadly this exceptional character flaw infected their movie like Ebola.

Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, Donald Faison and David Zayas are the big C-list names that The Brothers Strauss conned into starring in this movie. I'll forgive anyone for not knowing who the fuck they are because I actually had to look up their names. Balfour was Milo the tech with the big nose in 24 in '07. Thompson was Tony's sexy-eyed love interest in NCIS season 4. Faison was Turk on Scrubs and Zayas was last seen as General Garza in The Expendables. I've seen these actors perform their roles admirably before, so I'm going to blame first-time screenwriters Liam O'Donnell and Joshua Cordes [who are both VFX supervisors in The Brothers Strause' company Hydralux] for the most abysmal script and dialog of the year, and the brothers themselves for not learning anything from criticism of AvP:R and continuing to apply their complete ineptitude to directing human beings. They can't do it, they'll never do it because they are so utterly, utterly shit at it.

Balfour and Thompson play a New York couple who visit their extraordinarily shallow friends in a Los Angeles apartment block. After a night of partying and boozing aliens attack and begin sucking up the citizens of L.A. into their ships. Our thoroughly loathsome protagonists are thrust into a situation with which the audience can only meet with apathy because we just don't give a fuck about these unlikable self-centered wankers. They do a lot of talk about an escape on a yacht [naturally they have a yacht] and when they finally do get mobile they're stopped before leaving the car park because The Bothers Strauss want to keep their costs down by only shooting in their own apartment [I'm not joking, the entire movie is set in one of the director's apartments and on his roof]. So then they retreat back inside and barricade themselves in waiting for a rescue because after all, they're not really the kind of people who would go and fight for their lives if they can help it.

If you want to see good alien invasion movie you won't find it here so I suggest your best bet it to wait until next March when Battle: Los Angles comes out. That's a big budget production from Sony pictures with Aaron The Dark Knight Eckhart and Michelle Avatar Rodriguez and will follow a platoon of U.S. Marines and Black Hawk Down style action as opposed to a group of exhaustingly boring assholes running around an apartment complex. But Battle: L.A. has something else going for it: It has special effects done by a couple of the best special effects people in the business, The Brothers Strause!!!! That's right, the brothers have pissed off Sony by releasing Skyline months before Battle: L.A. and not telling Sony that they were working on their own Los Angeles alien invasion movie beforehand. If they weren't VFX geniuses, I'm guessing they'd never find work again.

Final Verdict: Magnificent, flawless and sublime visual effects. But a boring, derivative, stupid and generally unentertaining piece of shit otherwise.

Colonel Creedon Rating: *

Saturday, November 13, 2010

You won't see red in Red

RED: Retired - Extremely Dangerous, a designation used by the Central Intelligence Agency to brand some of their former operatives now receiving their pension. As Meet The Parents thought us, no one really retires 100% from the CIA. Retired operatives more often than not, stockpile weapons, specialist equipment and hoard files to use in “off the books” missions or as “insurance” should their past catch up with them, just like what happens to our protagonists in this fun action-comedy. Bruce Willis plays one such CIA retiree Frank Moses. Yeah, probably a bit too young to play a retiree but as he was a formidable black ops field agent and probably shunned the notion of a desk at Langley or there were probably a few extenuating circumstances which warranted his early retirement. Frank spends his days reading spy novels as they are enjoyed by his pension account representative Sarah [Mary-Louise Parker] whom he likes to talk to on the phone [albeit not about his accounts]. When a South African hit squad destroys his home and fails to kill him, Frank flees to Kansas City to protect Sarah by kidnapping her as their phone activity has put her life at risk as well.

Frank’s fun filled journey brings him into conflict with CIA “problem solver” Agent Cooper [the excellent as always Karl Urban] and also comes into contact with fellow CIA retirees, Joe [Morgan Freeman], Marvin [John Malkovich] and Victoria [Helen Mirren], a cast that would probably draw anyone to a movie. But add to those - Richard Dreyfuss, Julian McMahon and even Brian Cox as a former KGB officer with a cameo from 93 year old Ernest Borgnine and you know you have something special. As the whole thing is fairly loose with plot, it’s really up to this suitably impressive cast to make the movie entertaining, and they were well up to the task. Their interaction is flawless especially compared with say The A-Team and The Losers, two movies which have shared a somewhat similar theme this year [elite team betrayed and on the run from government for something they didn’t do] and I think the star studded cast makes this ever so slightly superior to both of them.

German director Robert Schwentke took on a far more ambitious project with Red than the crap he's previously directed such as The Time Traveller's Wife and Flightplan. It's not as violent as it's Warren Ellis comic-book source materiel and has been humoured-up for Hollywood, something that probably doesn't sit well with the fanboys but the movie isn't just for them and it works for me and at the end of the day, it's really only my opinion that matters. Ellis himself remarked that while it was "not the book, but not bad. Funny. Especially when you know the casting. Very tight piece of work."

Final Verdict: A hilarious at times, good natured spy-genre action movie. While not to visceral, action fans won't be disappointed by the amount of automatic weapons fire and seeing Helen Mirren with a heavy machine gun and a sniper rifle, sublime.

Colonel Creedon Rating: *****

Friday, November 12, 2010

Could Y: The Last Man be a TV Show?

I one listened to a young lady explain the premise of Brian K. Vaughan's post-apocalyptic sci-fi tale Y: The Last Man. It started out great, a bloke called Yorik [poor chap] is apparently the sole male survivor of a deadly plague which has wiped out all the other men on the planet leaving the world populated only by females, "I don't see the problem there" I grinned.

After getting slapped, it was explained in greater detail that it wasn't just every man, but every single solitary shred of DNA with a Y chromosome, including those borne by all male mammals on the planet, embryos, fertilized eggs and even sperm [except for Yorick and his pet monkey, also a male] and that this would actually be quite disastrous for mankind as the inability to procreate would plunge society into chaos as humanity would be doomed to extinction. OK, - bummer!

In order to save humanity, Yorick must find a scientist who would need his DNA to begin human cloning, but his journey is somewhat perilous as every woman in the word wants him... ...and not necessarily for the obvious.

A movie of this interesting tale has been mulled over for some time and even progressed as far as director D. J. Caruso and actor Shia LeBeouf to be loosely attached to the project but The Transporter director Louis Leterrier seemingly has it now. Rather then wanting it to be turned into a movie however, Leterrier hopes to make a TV series using the success of The Walking Dead and various Showtime and HBO shows as an example. Considering how much better his Incredible Hulk adaptation was over his Clash of the Titans remake, I'd say he should forget his Greek legends and concentrate on comic books. Then I can forgive him for being french.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Honour those who've served.

Dino De Laurentiis R.I.P.

The great Italian producer of almost 150 movies, Dino De Laurentiis has died aged 91.

De Laurentiis left home in Campania, Italy at age 17 for film school and had produced his first movie before his 20th birthday. After the failure of his Italian movie studio in the 1960's, he moved the the U.S. where he spent the remainder of his life producing movies in Hollywood.

De Laurentiis was often lampooned as he was a tiny man with a loud and husky voice presiding over some of the greatest flops and failures in cinema history while yielding only enough commercial successes to fund even more failures.

He was known for producing some outstanding and memorable movies like Death Wish [1974], Flash Gordon [1980], Conan The Barbarian [1982], Dune [1984], Army of Darkness [1993], Assassins [1995] and U-571 [2000]. However he will be also just as fondly remembered for some monumental failures like the 1976 remake of King Kong, Orca [1977], Raw Deal [1985], Red Sonja [1985] (yes I actually like this movie, but I can objectively acknowledge it as shit), Manhunter [1986], Body Of Evidence [1993], Breakdown [1997], Hannibal [2001] and The Last Legion [2006].

De Laurentiis won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film [La strada] in 1954 and was awarded with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2001 [from Sir Anthony Hopkins whom he addressed as "Tony Baby"]. He is survived by his wife Martha, 5 children and grandchildren.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Happy 235th Birthday U.S.M.C.

Today's post as always, goes to the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps.

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Hey! Who fired that?

A Los Angeles helicopter news crew captured stunning images of a dramatic missile launch off the Californian coast last evening. What has many worried however is that the launch has been classified as "unexplained" by the Pentagon through whom spokespersons for The Missile Defence Agency, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force have denied making any launches.

Earlier, NORAD stated that there was "no threat to the homeland" but The Pentagon's Colonel Dave Lapan has responded that nor he or his superiors are able to concur with that statement at the present time as the military still do not know who launched it and are in fact studying the TV footage in an effort to identify where it came from.

Footage of the projectile was captured in motion approximately 35 miles [56 km] out to sea, west of L.A. and north of Catalina Island. Test missiles or misfirings could come from Vandenberg AFB or Naval Air Station Point Mugu in the region. Another option is that it may have been launched from a ship or submarine.

One theory given by Robert Ellsworth, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, and former deputy SECDEF, was that this was a submarine launch designed to show Asia that the U.S. can flex it's muscles too, but urges people to wait for a definitive answer from the military.

The FAA didn't issue a license for a commercial launch and NASA also denied any involvement. While U.N.E.T.I.D.A. itself also denied involvement, the French Navy forwarded a communique from the Captain of one of their Triomphant class of ballistic missile submarines signalling that that it had been commandeered by Colonel "Whopper" Creedon and a team of specialists for a "special mission". There has been no contact with the vessel since 23:00 Zulu November 7th.

More at Fox. Watch the CBS video.

Source: FOX, CBS

Saturday, November 06, 2010

Shock-Jock Bugger in Shock Cock Tugger!

Wednesday was one of the greatest days of my life because this story broke:

Prominent Cork-based radio presenter Neil Prendeville was on a flight from London to Cork on the evening of 19 October when he was reported to have exposed himself and started to masturbate. He was sitting with a male passenger on one side and a female on the other. Because he was in a front row seat, the 49-year-old was also facing a pair of air hostesses.

That's right, one of the most worthless bastards on the face of the planet, Neil Prendeville fell of his famous high horse and landed in shit! He has now fallen beneath the level of all the people whom that horse has trampled and shat on during his career, surely a career now that thankfully lies in flaming ruins. This reprehensible, feeble excuse for a human being, a wannabe shock-jock, the scourge of Cork's airwaves for far to long will now be bowing his head in shame for what I hope will be the remainder of his miserable gutless life and can be known now literally as a wanker in the truest sence of the word.

Prenders outside his pulpit on Wellington Rd., from where he used to preach his prattle, talking down to the people of Cork.

The glorious news came to my attention early Wednesday morning that a scandal had emerged involving a drunken "Prenders" allegedly performing a "lewd act" on board an aircraft. I was convinced he had urinated into a sick bag or something but what he allegedly did was music to my ears, because for so long that self-righteous dumbass has been the first person in line to throw stones at people who'd put a foot wrong, no matter what the circumstances, even before he heard their side of the story [assuming he'd even bother listening to it]. Traditionally if he didn't take a side himself, he'd use his show to pit one side against the other, something that backfired on him back in '04 when a member of a feuding family threatened to behead a member of another family on air. When the heat is on, Prenders hid behind the idea that he can't be held responsible for what someone says live on air, but more often than not, he didn't condemn what people say which makes him seem like he accepted and agreed with some of the ignorant scumbags, racists and uneducated morons he entertains on the airwaves.

Allegedly on the night in question, Prenders had been enjoying a day in London as a guest of the Cork Convention Bureau. Cork Lord Mayor Michael O’Connell, Cork county mayor Jim Daly and CCB chairman Seamus Heaney led a delegation to a conference to promote tourism in Cork. Prior to the flight, the boys ate and were entertained at celebrity chef Richard Corrigan’s Bentley’s Restaurant. Prenders apparently gave a speech, hopefully with less of his moaning, patronising and pontificating he spews out on his 96fm radio show. While there, he imbibed alcohol and due to a recurring neck injury also popped some Neurofen Plus painkillers.

Now, according to the man himself, he has no memory of getting to the airport, boarding the plane, whipping it out and pleasuring himself or getting home afterwards and so has conveniently blamed the combination of the alcohol and painkillers for anything he "may have" done. His utterly feeble apology could only be described as flaccid [*chuckle*] as he didn't accept all the blame himself. His words included "any offence that I might have" caused and even tried to turn it into a PSA about the danger of mixing painkillers and alcohol [yeah, most of us read the label, you stupid tit]. Prenders apology was considered by some people to be contrite with his pathetic blubbering and whinging and all, but people seemed to forget that in 2007 he appeared as a doctor in Strength and Honour so maybe those acting classes were brought to the fore? Nevertheless, I doubt it has convinced any but his misguided hard-core listeners.

It's obvious too that the dirty scut did his best to have this kept secret and attempted a cowardly cover up by unleashing his lawyers on the Irish Examiner who politly and fairly asked him to comment before publishing the story. Lawyer Gerald Kean tried to get a court injunction to prevent the newspaper story from seeing print. I'd like to think that the injunction was not granted because the judge involved is one of the many judges Prenders has pissed off during his years-long anti Gardaí and anti-civil service "crusade". This would be irony so delicious, you'd never see it on the menu of that hole "The Boardwalk." Neil's bizarre "apology" also laid claim to the fact that his alleged public indecency was totally out of character and while that much may be true, his attempt at concealing the truth from the public has spoken volumes about his true character.

There are a few questions that I'm confident are on peoples minds at this time:

Who was paying for this gobshite to go on a conference with his local politician friends? If the people of Cork were paying, might I suggest that we'd prefer our money would be spent doing something more constructive - literally, like repairing the quay wall by the Mercy Hospital which remains unrepaired from the devastating weather last year.

Prenders allegedly appears to have had enough manual dexterity to unzip his trousers, remove his langer and begin satisfying himself, but prior to that he was presumably able to walk through security at Heathrow airport unchallenged by the uber-diligent security there [I'm always patted down in Heathrow, but rarely Stanstead], how did this happen? How did this happen!!!!??? It's not like trying to convince a bouncer he wasn't drunk to gain admittance to Gorby's nightclub! He was boarding an international flight! He needed to present identification and remove metal from his person etc. surely the Brits noticed something out of the ordinary if he was drugged up enough to do what he allegedly did later.

My biggest question however was eloquently alluded to by Ralph Riegel in the Independant yesterday "Aer Lingus has refused to comment on why neither Gardaí nor Airport Police were called" to arrest Prenders after he touched down [*snigger*] in Cork and "why?" is a very serious and far-reaching question in this context. In light of the fact that people are arrested nowadays for being mildly boisterous and/or inebriated on aircraft flights, one can only describe the fact that Prenders was not arrested for his sexual misconduct and public indecency upon disembarking as extremely sinister indeed. Answers as to why are something I'm sure there will be quite a few demands for.

Right: Only Sam Jackson will ever get away with handling a snake on a plane.

At the time of allegedly jerking off, the plane was taking off and Prenders was facing two air hostesses who were facing his front row seat. Alas they were powerless to intervene as they too had to be belted in until the aircraft had reached cruising altitude. Prenders was flanked at either side by the aforementioned Seamus Heaney. "I personally saw nothing, so I cannot comment" he said later, apparently a man bereft of peripheral vision. Poor Niamh Hennessy, business reporter for the Irish Examiner was on his opposite side but the poor girl allegedly got to see far more than even her window seat allowed. Were it not for this girl being a reporter the general public my still be in the dark about Neil's alleged vile actions.

Had this been anyone else, actor, rock-star even politician, we'd have all thought it was a great joke and chances are they'd be able to eventually continue with their careers albeit with the occasional joke about it, shit happens. But it's different with Prenders because he has always assumed the moral high ground and spoken down to people from it, that's his thing. He would be the one who would call the person a filthy animal and show no sympathy whatsoever and would do everything in his power to see that what would be an insignificant molehill be turned into Mount Everest itself. Therefore he has lost the one thing that made him who he is. How can he return to a job where he preaches his opinion knowing that he has lost all credibility? His many arguments could now be deflated as easily as a child's balloon with the words "..you're just a tosser Neil!" and everyone would know it's true now.

This tale is far from over. Prenders has been hiding out in the Wicklow home of Gerald Kean and spent Friday in The Castleknock Hotel giving tightly controlled interviews to the downmarket Sunday tabloid press. No guesses needed as to what he's doing for stress relief.

Sources: The Irish Examiner / The Irish Independant / 96fm / The Journal / The Belfast Telegraph / The Herald