Spurious Awards Of The Year

SPOILER WARNING:

The final page of this feature is TV Moment Of The Year, and it’s from the episode of Fringe that airs in the UK this week! Don’t say we didn’t warn you. You’ll get a reminder before that last page!

Hoofer Of The Year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-spJwnubx20

Kirby in Being Human shows why he should win Let’s Dance For Sports Relief with this spectacular routine, audaciously combing such disparate influences as Saturday Night Fever , Bugsy Malone , the dancing baby from Ally McBeal and a man who’s just released a ferret into his undergarments.

Most Disappointing Lack Of Blood Of The Year

The Hunger Games . There was barely any blood in it to start with (which considering the theme of the film was a bit bizarre) but by the time it reached the UK the censors managed to edit out seven seconds more!

Budget Remake Of The Year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XcnyzY48t3k

The generally crap The Secret Circle seemed to be attempting a bargain basement re-enactment of the destruction of Krypton from Superman The Movie in one episode.

Most Overlooked Show Of The Year

The Almighty Johnsons . Everyone who watches it loves it. All six of them

One-Upmanship Of The Year

Lincoln: “I lost a partner.” Peter: “I lost a universe.” Game set and match to Fringe ’s Mr Bishop.

Avant-Garde Musician Of The Year

Man tries to get a tune out of somebody’s leg (“Footloose”, perhaps?) on Being Human USA .

More Spurious Awards on the next page…

SFX Interview Of The Year

“Oh f**k I’ve fallen down a ditch!” announced Misfits ’ Joe Gilgun when we interviewed him about his role in Lockout this year. The ever-quotable Gilgun added a new dimension to this interview , phoning us from the middle of a forest where he was roughing it for a week. “It sounds worse than it is. I’ve got electricity but I’ve got no hot water and, as you can imagine, all the things that you usually do… in the bathroom… you do that behind a tree or bush and you end up with quite a chapped arse. But it’s been ace. I’m just living in the woods, f**king hell, you shouldn’t need a reason. I think it just clears me head to come out here.” He then carries on in a wonderfully rambling interview to talk about everything from the etymological origin of “pot calling the kettle black”, watching Lockout stoned, Luc Besson’s office, Scottish accents and Calamity Jane , all the while packing up his gear and falling down ditches.

Most Improved Show Of The Year

Usually shows improve gradually. You suddenly realise that this season is better than last season, but it’s kind of crept up on you. Haven , though, suddenly improved in one great leap. One week it was a bit crap, the next it was great. That could have been a fluke. But then, the next episode was great. Those two unusually great episodes were a two-parter, though. Surely it would be business as usual with the next episode? Nope. Three great episodes in a row… and they kept on coming. A hearty congratulations to Haven , then, for going from being the show that you mainly watched because the three lead characters were so charismatic you wished they’d find a better show to be in, to a show that three such great leads deserved to be in.

Minimalist Cosplayer Of The Year

Zak in Eternal Law does his best Bane impression.

Rainbow-Farting Unicorn Of The Year

Supernatural also had a rainbow-farting unicorn. You need to ask why that’s getting a Spurious Award? It’s a rainbow-frigging-farting unicorn. How much more spurious do you want? Supernatural season eight also gets the Return To Form Of The Year award too… (not that it ever went rubbish; it just seems so re-enthused.)

Fight Of The Year (Films)

The final, brutal battle in Chronicle , with honourable mentions to the first Batman/Bane fight in The Dark Knight Rises (for being so wincingly old-school and physical) and the final battle in The Avengers (for proving that CGI can be your friend).

Fight Of The Year (TV)

No contest here (though Arrow does win an award for most consistently good fight scenes). Peter vs Windmark’s teleporting slugfest in Fringe ’s “The Human Kind”.

More Spurious Awards on the next page…

Best Film For Which There Will Be No Sequel Of The Year

Dredd . Sob.

Show We Should Have Been Covering Of The Year

Person Of Interest. Look, it didn’t sound very sci-fi when it started, okay? We admit our mistake. Expect coverage next year… (which’ll be our pleasure, ’cos it’s great)

Best Kept Secret Of The Year

Jenna-Louise Coleman’s appearance in “Asylum Of The Daleks”. Twitter went into meltdown…

New Superpower Of The Year

Is it just us or has Steve Rogers been taking on some of Hank Pym’s Giant-Man potion?

Best Insult Of The Year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gouq9_TbSe0

“Puny God.” Although you have to love the cheekiness of, “Mewling quim!” – an insult designed to make only Oxbridge classics professors smirk like naughty boys.

Pedant Of The Year

More Spurious Awards on the next page…

Manicure Of The Year

Via Blame It On The Voices .

Guideline Of The Year

Being Human ’s Michael Socha took part in an online Q&A on the show’s official BBC site , and the Spurious committee was very amused by point number one in the Rules and Guidelines.

Sudden Reversal Of The Year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0u-SvfENjgY#!

A superb, “I didn’t see that coming” moment from Lost Girl . And no, we’re not just giving out this award because we’re a bunch of pervy blokes… watch it all the way through. You’ll see why…

Graffiti Of The Year

[via Blastr ]

Unrealistic Aspiration Of The Year

Forget steroids. They’re condoning the use of gamma radiation now!

Most Embarrassing Box Art Of The Year

You sure that "10 out of 10" is definitely a better title than Batman: Arkham City ? Okay then.

More Spurious Awards on the next page…

Hissyfit Of The Year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQqUjR7paJI

In The Vampire Diaries , Klaus found an ingenious way of getting round that “not being invited in” nonsense that plagues bloodsuckers.

Damon Salvatore Impression Of The Year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=x1Z5JknmN-o

That woman from Lost who turned up in the Fringe season four finale had mastered the Ian Somerhalder eye-rolling shtick, for sure.

Proverb Of The Year

"What's the best way to get a friend to quit drinking? Tear his arms off." Sage advice from a pair of gnarly old Blutbads in Grimm .

Tourist Information Of The Year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=t5RVeQFK0LM#!

William Shatner presenting Have I Got News For You was always going to be good, but who knew it was going to be awesome ? Who cares that he couldn’t read the autocue? It wouldn’t have been half as much fun if he could. Or if he had ever heard of “Ian Hilsop” and “Paul Morton”. Stand out moments included his typically unique rendition of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save The Queen” and his summation of the seaside town of “Ifracoooooooooombe” (above). Whoever booked him for the show deserves a knighthood.

False Alarm Of The Year

Eagle-eyed Xbox-playing viewers may have thought interstellar war with the Covenant was imminent when the BBC flashed up the emblem of Halo 's United Nations Space Command during a recent news report. Turns out News At One host Sophie Raworth was actually talking about the current conflict in Syria, and someone backstage had confused the fictional UN Space Command with the real-life UN Security Council. Oops. Looks like the Master Chief can go back into cold storage, and that someone will be taking a little more care with Google in future.

Literal Superhero Of The Year

[Via Google , via Blastr ]

More Spurious Awards on the next page…

Sports Stars Of The Year

The Transylvanian synchronised swimming team practice for the Olympics in Bedlam .

Hilarious Apology Of The Year

Proof, if we needed it, that the return of Red Dwarf has been a success.

Cringey Apology Of The Year

Got the DVD or Blu-ray box-set of Game Of Thrones season one? Then keep hold of it. It may become a collector’s item.

HBO may be the channel that’s not scared to broadcast tits’n’gore but it showed a considerable lack of balls when it discovered that the makers of Game Of Thrones had stuck a prosthetic head of George W Bush on a pole during season one of the show. The network issued a cringingly embarrassing apology: “We were deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste. We made this clear to the executive producers of the series who apologised immediately for this inadvertent careless mistake.” The network then promised to remove the scene from any future DVD productions.

Ironically, nobody would probably have noticed, except that the DVD commentary actually brought attention to the fact: “George Bush's head appears in a couple of beheading scenes,” goes the commentary. “It's not a choice, it's not a political statement. We just had to use whatever head we had around.” Apparently the show’s bosses only became aware of the prop's likeness to Bush after the scene was shot and a crew member pointed out the resemblance to him. That didn’t stop incensed Republicans from demanding the heads of showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss.

George W Bush has yet to comment.

Contortionist Of The Year

“Mee-ooooww… ooowww… ooouch! I’ve done me back in…” as the cover caption should read.

Party Trick Of The Year

Eric inflates his own hand in True Blood .

Jingle Of The Year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sovBke8GP0A

Sorry, but every time they used this bit of music in Sinbad we thought of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire .

More Spurious Awards on the next page…

Record Breaker Of The Year

The Doctor is either the record breaker of the year, or the biggest fibber of the year. Five million keepy-uppies – that's what he finished counting at in “The Power Of Three”. Which is a bit of a feat in itself. But when he launches himself back onto the Ponds’ sofa, Amy says he’s only been away for an hour. That means he would have had to have been averaging one keepy-uppy every 0.00072 seconds. And that’s not even taking into account he creosoted the fence and did the Hoovering in that time as well. We won’t even calculate how many pinches of salt we need to believe that.

Translation Of The Year

We don’t know how long this has been on IMDb, but we only discovered it this year, and it tickled us, so we thought we’d share. In a piece of trivia about Grimm ’s wayward attitude towards the German language, this little gem leapt out: “The queen of the mellifer is referred to as ‘Mellischwuler’, which, translated, means ‘Melli-gay-man’. A possible explanation for this might be that the word ‘queen’ was mistyped ‘queer’ when the word was looked up in a dictionary.”

Rewritten History Of The Year

After 150 years, the truth is revealed. [via cheezburger.com ]

Recycling Of The Year

Girliest Knight Of The Year

Aw, diddums. Has Merlin ’s Sir Percival got a nasty blister? The big girly wuss. He’s a knight, for heaven’s sake. You'd think all that chafing from the chain mail would have toughened him up a bit.

Animal Cruelty Of The Year

Bonnie’s new mentor in The Vampire Diaries , Dr Atticus Shane, appears to have captured and enslaved The Cat In The Hat.

More Spurious Awards on the next page…

Confession Of The Year

Ang Lee on his version of Hulk : “My problem is that I took the whole thing too seriously. I should have had more fun with it, instead of all the psychodrama!” [via Vulture ]

Exam Question Of The Year

Australian history students were baffled to find what appeared to be a giant Mecha in revolutionary Russia when they opened their exam papers. The image was supposed to be Storming The Winter Palace On 25th October 1917 by Nikolai Kochergin, though it had a high-tech addition not normally seen in the original painting. TheAge.com.au appears to have solved the mystery. When you do a Google search for "Storming the Winter Palace On 25th October 1917" guess what picture pops up on the first line of results…?

Poster Of The Year

Now, this is an X-Men sequel we want to see… A real Days Of Future Past . Sid James is Wolverine and the idea of Charles Hawtrey as a camp Nightcrawler has us chuckling all the way to the Danger Room. And we bet Rogue doesn’t call Bernard Bresslaw Colossus for nothing, fnarr, fnarr. A work of warped art from Chris Weston .

Tearjerker Of The Year

The Walking Dead on TV is famous for its shock moments, but where Telltale’s episodic Walking Dead game trumped the comics and the TV show is that it made us blub more than Paul Gascoigne cutting onions. If you didn’t shed a tear over the final moments between Lee Everett and lovable little Clementine, you have no soul. (“The Angels Take Manhattan” would have won this award if we could have understood exactly why we were crying…)

Wolverine Impressions Of The Year

Joint winners here, for Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight Rises and Elizabeth Shaw in Prometheus for their amazing mutant healing abilities following a broken back and an emergency abortion… At least it should silence all those people who claim Batman isn’t really a superhero because he has no superpowers.

TV Moment Of The Year

Is on the next page… it’s from the episode of Fringe only aired in the UK this week, so if you haven’t seen “Black Blotter” yet, and you don’t want to be spoiled, then only proceed when you’ve seen the episode…

TV Moment Of The Year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-GZoNef8_c

Honestly, can Fringe get any more awesome?

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