17 Things We Adore About Zac Efron!

17 THINGS WE ADORE ABOUT ZAC EFFRON, COURTESY OF ANOTHER PSYCHOTIC FANSITE!

1. He wants to be Marlon Brando when he grows up; and so do we. Him, Marlon Brando, us – reinterpret any way you like.

2. He gets acting tips from Leonardo di Caprio when he’s courtside at Lakers’ games (probably),which can only be a good thing.

3. He still roots for the San Francisco Giants in Major League Baseball, and that’s despite the fact that Barry Bonds has effectively fallen off the face of the earth.

4. He’s working on his basketball skills, which is reportedly the best most Caucasian pairs of hands can do with a basketball.

5. His favorite meal’s sushi! – a fact that has no place whatsoever on this chart!

6. He’s starring in the upcoming Me & Orson Welles; Chola, who’s multitheistic, lists Orson Welles among his 82 gods.

7. He’s roughly our height – which means we only feel half as insecure about Zac Effron as we do about other hot-looking actors.

8. Chipo has seen Hairspray 11 times – a fact that has no place whatsoever on this chart, but what the hell.

9. He’s scared witless of the press, which means in some sense we wield unquestionable power over one more Hollywood starlet.

10. Spider-Man is his favorite super-hero. We hope to commence a campaign to usurp Tobey Maguire as everybody’s friendly neighbourhood radioactive photographer.

11. His new favorite band is Vampire Weekend. Vampire Weekend? Kofi Olomide plus Bloc Party plus Herbie Hancock, with a final twist – they’re Jewish and from New York! Voted the BBC’s breakout band of 2008, you have to hear ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa’ to believe bongo drums, base guitars and college angst can live in harmony together.

12. He’s set to co-star in HairSpray2 – which Chipo will see 11 times.

13. His hair – it’s so perfect you could halt an alien invasion with his head, and spontaneously help us atone for a couple billion years of sin and stupidity.

14.Him starring in 17 Again has breathed a little more life into Matthew Perry’s rather ordinary career. To be or not to be is not the question – it’s do you still need to make movies when you made filthy millions as Chandler on Friends?

15. He recently tore the roof off an episode of Saturday Night Live. The last person to do so was Will Ferrell, who left the show four years ago.

16. He employs the use of curse-words every now and then – assuring, ‘cause that makes it perfectly legal to buy him a drink, should we ever accost him on a red carpet in Cannes. (Yes, he’s in his twenties, but not every bartender knows that.)

17. He makes it perfectly logical for us to have favorite scenes in the original High School Musical. Sadly, we’re yet to bother with the other two.

Google Zac Effron and a whole raft of fansites await, particularly if you’re the sort of person that appreciates boy-bands; 17 Again is in theatres now, including Ster Kinekor’s.

ELECTORAL UPDATE!

KING KONG LABELS PHWOAR POLL A SHAM! - GODZILLA DEMANDS RETRIAL! - FOR NO DISCERNIBLE REASON! - READ ALL ABOUT IT!

In the wake of Barack Obama’s recent visit to Africa, the editors of your new favourite movie-blog declared the digital voting booth open for a poll to decide who your favourite movie-monster actually is. It’s been just over a week now since the contest was first announced, but emerging revelations suggest foul play may obstruct a fair result – both candidates, for varying reasons, are uncomfortable with Phwoar’s positioning in such an historic election.

On Wednesday, Chola Chisengalumbwe, head of Phwoar’s indie department, quite openly said the publication was considering giving movie-goers two votes – a verbal one at premiere screenings, and a point-and-click on the official web-page – in order to “inflate the numbers, and induce an ambiguity that would allow people to not only change their minds…but also blow this thing wide open.” The two-vote system was never implemented, and in a statement released by his campaign team on Thursday, King Kong claimed this was because early indicators suggested most people would readily vote for him twice, and enable him to carry the day by a landslide – a victory not entirely on the Phwoar team’s agenda.

“What nonsense,” refuted Chipo Phiri, fashion guru. “We talked it over Cokes and some chips and everybody agreed it was a daft idea.”

Later that day, Phiri and Chisengalumbwe made an appearance on Hot FM’s Ster Kinekor radio-show, and made comments that team Kong found downright defamatory. Cindy Thompson, a Kong staffer, elaborated.

“It’s one thing to endorse somebody, but they went on air and practically trashed the entire species. Their comments were disrespectful, discriminatory, and deliberately harmful to our candidate.”

(Chisengalumbwe’s exact words were he “would never vote for a monkey in any election,” and Phiri said he thought Godzilla had better fashion sense, “which in all fairness I’m paid to do.”)

“How is any of that relevant to just saying, Personally we prefer Godzilla?” Thompson emphasized. Godzilla operatives, at the time, could not be reached for comment.

24 hours later, Phwoar the journal, and not Phwoar the editors, officially endorsed Godzilla for Ster Kinekor’s honorary presidency, even though Michael Phiri, no relation, had yet to publicly back a candidate. Shortly after this, an apology was issued for any difficulties ‘movie-goers may have experienced in casting their votes’, which King Kong himself said was proof enough of an attempt to derail his campaign’s momentum. Phwoar editors could not be reached for comment, despite hanging out at the cinema halls all weekend.

Needing to grab a headline, Godzilla said he was up for a rerun, though observers suspect he had one eye on getting to eat a few more supporters. In campaign-stops made early Monday, King Kong kissed a few babies, and assured Japanese banks he would do whatever he could to restore them to global prominence; Godzilla ate a few babies, and promised Japanese banks he would put mustard on them first. If it should serve any purpose whatsoever, King Kong looked stately in a suit stitched up for him by a private Italian tailor; Godzilla, naked, said Tom Ford designed his tie.

Polls on Phwoar’s web-page were re-opened first thing Monday morning.

Ice Age 3: Round Table Review

We've just exited a Sunday screening of Ice Age 3, and are having a bit of a chin-wag.

MICHAEL: That was surprisingly good.

CHOLA: It wasn’t half bad.

CHIPO: I still can’t believe it. I mean, it’s Ice Age3 at the end of the day, but whoa!

CHOLA: And you thought animated movies weren’t real movies.

CHIPO: No, you did.

CHOLA: Simon Pegg killed it.That was Simon Pegg, huh?

MICHAEL: Who was Simon Pegg?

CHIPO: Come on, anyone could’ve killed it.

CHOLA: Xenophobe! – or nationalist!- or something! What’s that supposed to mean? Anybody British could’ve killed it?

MICHAEL: Guys, who did Simon Pegg play?

CHIPO: Simon Pegg can fry my chips! Like it takes skill to toss my cockney accent on a squirrel…

CHOLA: A weasel!

CHIPO: Whatever.

MICHAEL: Guys!

CHOLA: Pegg was the weasel with the eye situation.

CHIPO: ‘Buckwild’.

MICHAEL: For real, huh? I’m with Chola, the weasel killed it!

CHIPO: Yeah, the weasel, but not Simon Pegg.

CHOLA: Hey! I admit Pegg’s unremarkable, but that’s the point with Simon Pegg, isn’t it?

CHIPO: Anyway – point is, it actually went down!

CHOLA: It did – and it was a bit depressing at first.

MICHAEL: ‘Depressing’?

CHIPO: Are you serious?! Why?

CHOLA: Just the whole thing with Sid – Sid, right? – adopting the dinosaur eggs. The plot was going to go somewhere, like, one day they grow up to be predators and try to eat him or something. In a weird way it reminded me of Madonna.

CHIPO: That’s…deep?

MICHAEL: Unlike you, I don’t produce oestrogen, so I was just laughing the whole time. Jesus, that crap was funny.

CHOLA: -ish.

MICHAEL: Was it just me, or was Queen Latifah married to Ray Romano in that thing?

CHIPO: Fool – look who’s xenophobic or nationalist or something now.

MICHAEL: I’m just wondering…When you stop and put it in context – that’s Ray Romano and Queen Latifah. Together.

CHIPO: You just can’t wrap your head around a pixellated woolly mammoth that happens to be black on the inside. Racist. Or something.

MICHAEL: Chola, back me up here.

CHOLA: You’re jade, Michael.

CHIPO: Was that even Queen Latifah?

CHOLA: Search me.

CHIPO: Maybe later.

CHOLA: Did anyone catch the American Psycho reference? Oh my GOD!

MICHAEL: Seriously?

CHOLA: When the Ice Agers cross over to the other side, there’s a sign that says ‘Abandon All Hope – All Ye Who Enter Here…’First damn sentence of American Psycho.

CHIPO: Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (in mock-advertiser’s voice): not just for the kids after all!

MICHAEL: The scene that did me was when the gas in that chasm got everybody looney, then Buck inhaled some too…

CHIPO: ‘I’m so lonely…’

MICHAEL: Talk about taking a psychological dump.

CHOLA: Remember the bit where he’s breaking down all the likely causes of Sid’s likely death…and all his theories culminate in Sid ending up… a vegetable!

CHIPO: That was crazy, the trumpet they kept sounding – like it’s heroic to enter the afterlife as a roll of broccoli.

CHOLA: I feel curiously childish.

MICHAEL: We’re all just depressed. There’s no way that was supposed to go down.

CHIPO: Hell, if I had a clue, I’d have paid money to see that. Money!

CHOLA: No, you wouldn’t. Have.

CHIPO: You got me, I guess.

CHOLA: Usually I’m not interested if Pixar isn’t on the cards for an animation arrangement, but Dreamworks actually made a movie with this one. That scene with the pterodactyls or whatever –

CHIPO: Wow, right?

CHOLA: Wow!

CHIPO: Bastards looked like B-52s soaring over Baghdad. Jesus, I want one for Christmas – and I’m twenty-three.

MICHAEL: And they’re all extinct.

CHOLA: Let’s be honest here – it did what it was supposed to, and then some. But when you sit down for a Pixar project, those pictures aren’t only graphically superior, they make a ton of sense too. Pixar would never allow carnivores and omnivores to roll in the same G-Unit the way Dreamworks do.

CHIPO: Ah. But they would enable a talking rat to teach a qualified chef how to bring the flavor out in French cuisine.

CHOLA: Nobody can teach anybody how to bring the flavour out in French cuisine. It’s French cuisine.

MICHAEL: What the man’s trying to say is when Pixar aren’t making sense, they’re being…brilliantly ironic. Am I right?

CHOLA: In every frame. I can’t give you the details now ‘cause it’s been a while, but in Incredibles, for instance, almost every stretch or pull looked like it’d been tested with physics.

CHIPO: Pixar, Pixar, Pixar, you guys – we went to watch Ice Age 3, not Citizen Kane.

MICHAEL: At least that’s a fact.

CHOLA: All I’m saying is Up!’s a movie about an old guy and a boy scout who float into a rainforest on a house hoisted by balloons.

MICHAEL: Your point being?

CHOLA: My point’s clear enough. And I don’t give a rat’s a**, Simon Pegg KILLED!

POPCORN: Our boxes were indecisively half-full.

Ice Age 3 is in cinemas now.

Comment Scenario!

Sorry about that guys, you'll find you can post your comments (and your votes) with zero-fuss now - just post as 'Anonymous' and retype the letters that follow;don't forget to drop your name at the end! We apologise for the inconvenience caused by our host's technology and look forward to seeing you at the movies!So without further ado, here's your first issue of Phwoar, and your democratic forum...somehow.

This is the Invasion!

THE ORIGIN OF PHWOAR!!!

This, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, werewolves and vampires, is the beginning of the invasion. There will be no valiant resistance! You will not take us to your leader! You will lose teeth, drool waterfalls and suffer epic embarrassment ‘til you eventually learn to pronounce the word, ‘phwoar’.
We’re still working our tongue around it ourselves. But once you get a feel for the energy of the term, your lips will elasticize less, and you’ll be phwoaring like a phlion. ‘Phwoar!’ is that wild movement your mouth wants to make, when a giant monster eats a skyscraper whole without saying ‘grace’ first. ‘Phwoar!’ is when a super-massive black hole sucks your entire planet into its depths and you actually enjoy it. ‘Phwoar!’ is when angry men turn green and rip the shirts off their backs, and you feel the blood boiling in their veins. ‘Phwoar!’ is that tingling feeling the movies give you, when for one perfect moment you’re connected to everybody, absolutely everybody in the great voyage that is a theatre’s darkness.
For the forseeable future, the team manning the shiny new UFO in front of you have the best jobs in the world. I’m not going to lie to you: we get to watch movies for free. We get to meet chicks. We get paid to watch movies for free and meet chicks. Fundamentally, though, while Obama saves the free world and Real Madrid destroy football, we get to talk about movies, and so do you. If you stick with the ship and luck’s on your side, you get to watch the occasional movie for free. You get to meet chicks, or boys, or us. You get to talk about movies and ultimately decide which ones you actually watch, because we’re a democracy somehow, and we’ll be listening the whole time. Yes, this is the invasion – but with cupcakes for everybody.
July’s going to be huge, and you’re thinking it’s halfway over already – exactly. This week we’re hooking you up with one of four free tickets to a movie screening of your choice - for the 25th/26th of July. Just take part in our poll by posting a comment and your name, then e-mail your contact details to phwoarbox@gmail.com. Our current topic: which world-famous movie monster, between King Kong and Godzilla, would you like to elect as honorary President of Ster Kinekor? Speaking of democracy somehow.
Have a blast, everybody, and don’t forget to phwoarrr! – with emotion this time.

The Editor.

This Week’s Poll:

Elect A Movie Monster For Honorary President!

King Kong!

- Believes in unity of species between apes and mankind.
- Believes in a banana-driven healthcare system; plans on imposing bananas as an international staple meal.
-Claims he can cut your taxes in half while respecting the value of free markets.
- Says he can take Godzilla in a fist-fight with his eyes closed.

Godzilla!

- Wants to trash every town, city, state, and nation on the planet. Then start all over again.
- Says he can cut crime by 100%.- Campaigning as a man of action and change you can count on. Rumour has it he has Barack Obama’s endorsement.

Simply post a comment and your name to cast your vote, then send your contacts to phwoarbox@gmail.com

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Ten Everyday Situations It’s A-Okay To Use Magic In.

10 - When puberty first begins to wage war on your facial smoothness.

09 - The next time the lights go out.

08 - In a queue at the passport office; but how about going by broom next time?

07 - In the club, when you spill an unbelievably large man’s drink.

06 - In a queue in London or someplace, of people trying to cop shiny new copies of the new JK Rowling novel.

05 - In a heated discussion with holier-than-thou, stuck-up, unintelligible Lord of the Rings fans.

04 - In a queue, any sort, type, or brand of queue.

03 - When your stomach gets upset at your girlfriend’s place.

02 - When negotiating late-night taxi fare.

01 - When you’re officially past curfew.

Harry Potter drops on the on Friday the 17th of july, at Ster Kinekor Arcades. Two fee tickets up for grabs. follow this blog on how to win.

Terminator: Salvation

Review!

About three months ago, Australian actor Sam Worthington adorned the fashion-pages of American GQ in clothing I don’t expect to afford for another five years. The big story then, even beyond the perimeters of the Terminator Salvation set, was of how easily you could provoke Christian Bale into breaking your nose. You’ll recall Bale was caught on tape swearing masterfully at an incompetent stage-hand, and perhaps like me you hoped that would carry over into his role as John Connor, erstwhile hero of the Terminator series. There was an aura about Worthington, in the pages of that magazine, that rather implied he was up to something, that he in fact planned on stealing the show.
The newest of the big bad Aussies plays a mercenary who’s given up on the prospects for a human resistance growing overwhelmed by robot technology that has effectively laid siege to the human race, and is now intent on saving his own bacon. John Connor, Bale, is now first-in-command of a globalised army whose recruitment system looks much more informal than drafting, thanks to some time-warp mechanism that enables Salvation’s producers to pretty much turn the clock on whatever events they feel like – the Terminator fanatic I sat next to said something about Connor having to be dead already, or something of that nature. In any case, our brooding mercenary, Worthington, makes the existential discovery that he’s actually metallic inside, and ‘destined’ to end the charge of John Connor because he was programmed that way. He is captured by the resistance, and gets to meet Connor in a captor-hostage ceremony that has all the pomp and lavish of Stanley meeting Livingstone in the middle of nowhere.
Perhaps like this reviewer, it only dawned upon you recently how much of a hoot the previous films in the series were. The first Terminator was lip-smackingly violent, and helped make cyborgs as disturbing as clowns for a while; the second was filled with the liquidity and grace that eventually won director James Cameron an Oscar, though for a completely different effort – fans barely noticed that ol’ Schwarzenegger had become a bit of a mommy’s boy by going good. It would be enough to say Rise of the Machines, the third, co-starred the gorgeous Kristanna Lokken, but that would mean not mentioning the almost complete absence of a soundtrack, in favour of two wonderful hours of bullet absorption and tin-can symphony. Sci- fi fans are known for their standards, and the whole point of the Terminator franchise, in all its leather and gasoline, was that it didn’t have any.
Fast-forward to a year in recession. A man whose name is McG is directing, and I’m cringing because he’s the fellow responsible for Stealth, Chuck and one of those XXX turkeys – Chuck I quite enjoy, but that’s not the engine I’d like powering a brand new Terminator flick. The design-team behind previous instalments hasn’t been dismantled, thankfully, their touch evident in a bleak, sooty landscape that suggests machines can’t craft a holiday destination; excellent.
But it doesn’t take long to realize something is amiss: glorious opportunities for tension-packed gun-fights are squandered for the sake of meaningless explosions, and you can’t help but wonder what writing underpins it all, if any. An actor of Christian Bale’s caliber is reduced to the likes of a talking action-figure, such that he barely has a scene in which to genuinely kick some ass. There’s just too much talking, too much dread at what ‘the machines will do’, and this culminates in a disappointing finale whose much anticipated cameo appeareance leaves you wondering why they ever bothered.
What I found most shameful was the film’s blatant gesturing towards the advent of one more sequel; it’s as if McG’s whole-heartedly admitting to you, ‘Well, this one’s pretty crap, but you’ve got no idea what’s coming up next...’
The film has its merits – that landscape, those special effects, that bit where Worthington’s half-borg flees captivity on a motorbike cast against the moonlight; it’s an honour, one might add, to just place eyes on the radiance of Bryce Dallas Howard. But compliments like these could be made of any modern picture, and that’s not good enough.

POPCORN: Phwoar! scores are based on how little we ate, and I cleaned out the bloody box. We await a likely fourth Terminator patiently.

Top Ten Movies That Make Us Feel Like Men. And Women. At the Exact Same Time.

Top Ten Movies That Make Us Feel Like Men. And Women. At the Exact Same Time.

10- ZOOLANDER; Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson duke it out as two rival, male fashionistas hell-bent on cat-walk supremacy. I seriously considered having more tights in my wardrobe, and pursed my lips to intimidate enemies.

9- KILL-BILL vol.1; Director Quentin Tarantino once said his ideal cinema-audience would be two rival groups of gangsters, so he could make a movie experience out of a movie experience. At times idiotically gory, Kill Bill took us where no kung-fu flick or action-comedy ever will; Uma Thurman in Bruce Lee’s Big Boss outfit is Girl Power embodied.

8- BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN; We know exactly what you’re thinking, and shame on you. Learn some tolerance, take a deep breath and wonder they way we did whether those two cowboys were making love or fist-fighting. Strange, poetic, necessary.

7- VENUS; The legendary Peter O’ Toole dazzles as an old man who’s dead smitten for a friend’s granddaughter. He’s pitiful, vulnerable, and he likes to try on scarves in front of his mirror – but he’s still the perfect definition of a gentleman.

6- MEAN GIRLS; I’m ogling happy-go-lucky Lindsey Lohan! – I’m ogling sexy-librarian-archetype Tina Fey! – I’m ogling a blonde Rachel McAdams! – this is as effeminate as a chick-flick gets, but I FEEL LIKE A MAN!

5- TRANSAMERICA; Felicity Huffman of Desperate Housewives fame plays a transsexual set to undergo an emotionally complex change of genders… Geddit?

4- MAMMA MIA! It’s a musical loosely connected to Swedish band ABBA, but it’s got Colin Firth in it and it’s okay to shake your booty. Like Hilary in the elections, Meryl Streep goes toe-to-toe with a bunch of men and shines!

3- GREASE; The sing-along monster that spawned High School Musical, Hairspray and number 4. This is the movie that disproved the existence of cooties and gave birth to leather, with enough punch and zest to fly a hot-air balloon. PURCHASE SPECIAL EDITION DVD NOW!

2- FOREST GUMP; Tom Hanks was loveable in Toy Story, The Terminal, Charlie Wilson’s War, and even in those Dan Brown things it was hard to hate the guy; but this turn as a sweet, Southern American with a bum leg who eventually runs for President will define him when he sits among the stars someday, because it taught men how to feel, to cry.

1- ED WOOD; Johnny Depp triumphs in women’s underwear and the director’s chair of failed film auteur Ed Wood, who took reels of horror-film all over Hollywood with the stubborn declaration, “I was meant to make pictures, toots.” Heart-wrenchingly fruity, but that just makes it more amazing.