Luxury Lane Soap have recreated the iconic moment from Empire Strikes Back where Han Solo is placed in suspended animation via carbon freezing.

The pure and natural ingredient toting soap bars are hand crafted and currently have a 2-3 weeks turnaround due to the high demand, but if you can wait that long then you can order yours here.

There’s also Fight Club replica soap available, though they did wimp out and opt not to make it out of human fat.

The “Silent Hill” franchise is a series that I hold close to my heart. Back in 1999, when there was little competition for Capcom’s survival horror powerhouse “Resident Evil”, Konami came out with their bizarre, Japanese take on the Western horror story – “Silent Hill”.

With it’s frenetic switching of realities, mind-bending (albeit convoluted) plot and grizzly content, it presented gamers with a product like no other.  It was a landmark in horror video games.

“Resident Evil” had its campy, B-movie inspired infection narrative.  It had its jumps and its scares, but from fairly early on, we were pretty certain as to what was going on.  Evil, Nazi-esque corporation + Chemical Weapon + Accident= “Oh Bugger” and it all goes tits-up.

“Silent Hill”, on the other hand, took the approach of telling us as little as it could get away with.  I equate the bafflement I felt playing “Silent Hill” to the first time I saw “2001: A Space Odyssey” and until this day, I still don’t completely “get” what the hell was going on in that fucked up town.

It allowed the gamer to speculate, theorize and fill in the gaps, like no other game I’ve ever played.  I can’t recall a game that has inspired nerds around the globe to babble on foums, collaborating to  piece together and make sense of the story elements of the game they’ve just played in the same way as Silent Hill.

Of course the franchise, after the releae of the equally excellent sequel, has waned.  The third barely passed as being “alright”, let down by an overly “spunky” female lead and the fourth installment was all over the place – over-adventurous and frustrating gameplay choices.

The original team behind the game have moved onto other ventures, handing over the rights to American company “Double Helix” and the games that came after this just didn’t feel the same.

And of course, with the success of the franchise came the spinoff movie, which has done nothing but damage the franchise, with later games such as “Origins” and “Homecoming” choosing to follow it’s flaccid take on the game’s original plot by helpfully telling the audience EVERYTHING they need to know.

The possibilty of the “Silent Hill” franchise being reinvented on the grand and successful scale that its main competitor “Resident Evil” saw with the excellent “Resident Evil 4″ seems unlikely. The series has grown stale and become a “paint by numbers” checklist of cliches. Where there was once intrigue, now ennui.

Whilst it’s not going to happen, I believe its time to put the series to bed. Let us rejoice in the good times when the series was  new, interesting and frightening! “Silent Hill” was definitely alright!

Tim Ingham, editor of computerandvideogames.com valiantly defends the video game industry on ITV’s The Alan Titchmarsh Show.

Highlights of this candidate for Most Not Alright Video of the Year include ill-informed sexpert Julie Peasgood claiming that games are addictive and promote hatred and racism, backed by a soundtrack of whooping grannies in the pantomime audience.  And all this despite her having lent her vocal talents to horror video game Martian Gothic in 2000.

Quoted from CVG, Tim said “I found myself in the bizarre position of debating the merits of a libertarian society with TV’s most famous gardener”.

Mysterious stuff

Word on the street says there’s a bunch of exciting, new content coming soon to Bobby’s Tips. Little is known as to what this new content actually is but, needless to say, we’re very excited. This mysterious teaser has recently shown up in our inbox and it’s got the rumor mill working overtime. See what you make of it. It’s alright!

Commentary team of Boris Becker and Victoria Coren are quickly silenced amidst the chaos and when later asked to comment Becker responded “Es ist nicht gut!”

We don't know art, but we know what's alright!

The It’s Alright! punditry team are back for Episode 3 of the podcast!

This week, the gang put some Marmite-based snacks through their paces, and dissect what’s happening on the Facebook page. They also mull over what might be the worst BBC comedy ever made, talk about YOUR most alright foods and drinks, plus all the usual nonsense.

PLUS…music from Dylan Rhymes & The Rogue Element, Phil Collins, Beethoven, Leutzenkirchen, and Rammstein.

It’s alright!