- guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 August 2005 00.00 BST
The Silent Treatment
As late August dribbles away, alternating dog days and drizzle, you'll be needing some light relief from the Herculean task of scraping the summer festival mud off your popup tent. Take the weight off your wellies with this sophisticated comedy of errors from British director Peter Lydon, in which hungover husband Bill wakes to find that wife Sarah isn't speaking to him as the result of a mysterious incident at last night's dinner party. Did Eddie give him that black eye? Was Lucy drunkenly spilling the beans about their amorous night in Andalucia? Is Sarah ever going to utter a word again? Hustle's blond wideboy Marc Warren flails gloriously in the lead, driving the desperate succession of comic revelations round like a hamster on a wheel.
Floating
Another hungover husband, another anxious wife, another marriage sending up distress flares. This time it's Mark Walker's shame-and-shadow-soaked drama, a succession of moody, melancholy snapshots in which a chance drink with another woman shows uptight publisher Jonathan that 'you can't stay in love with someone just by wanting to.' Jack Deam (the pyromaniac Marty in Shameless) gets to do all the emoting, but Nicola Stephenson steals the show in a few fraught glances as his baffled, suddenly beleaguered wife. Anyone who's ever made a lying phone call from the back of a cab, or bought relationship-saving lingerie, will shiver with uncomfortable recognition.
Call Register
Now that we've covered the whole breakup thing exhaustively, let's rewind to the insanely neurotic process of getting a first date, with Ed Roe's perky, perceptive Brit-com. Kevin phones Amanda, using flatmate Julian's mobile, to avoid that 'two calls means I'm a stalker' dilemma. Except that her number is already in Julian's phone, and he's suspiciously nonchalant about it. No one plays slacker stoicism like Martin 'The Office' Freeman, or world-weary Lothario like James 'Teachers' Lance, and they sink their teeth into director Roe's hilariously panicky dialogue with relish, as the phone calls and the paranoia mount up.
Weapons of Mass Destruction
As the world goes ever faster to hell in a handbasket, we're going to need a whole new vocabulary to cope with it all. Animator and wit Lee Lanier's New Millennium Dictionary comes to the rescue, with each definition topped off by a surreal, scuttling Technicolor skit performed by, um, giant fluorescent worms. How else would you know that 'grey and grey' is photography employing moral relativism, or that 'replayed gratification' describes what adults get when investing heavily in Star Wars collectibles. Our very favourite novel phrase is 'in-bedded' - 'to actively support despots, dictators, murderers or thieves, in return for perks, presents or smug self-righteousness'. You know who you are.
I Can't Afford My Gasoline
Paying £4 a gallon as we do currently, the British are inured to the fact that petrol is priced at a point where it's probably cheaper to run your car on Armagnac. Dominic A Tocci's redneck lament for America's outraged gas-guzzlers employs his blunt, instruction-leaflet style animation, and even blunter humour to predict a time when streetcorner touts hiss 'Psst, I got premium!' and trainers and flipflops retail as 'hotrods and convertibles'. Under the good ol' boy band singalong he's pointing some fingers though: 'Why are we hurtin'?... Go ask Halliburton'.
Strongbad Email: Lady... ing
We cruise the internet waterfront like a sailor on shore leave, so we can't believe that we've only just caught up with the fabulous Strongbad, Mexican wrestler and supreme badass, who answers users' real-life email questions with unspeakably strange cartoons. This month, his hot tips on 'lady..ing' include the command to 'Take off your shirt, sand off your nipples, and wear tight pants that accentuate your subtleties', and 'Douse yourself in the finest Mongolian aftershave'. Does anyone else smell petrol?
Peekaboom
A game so utterly, innocently addictive, that you may never finish another essay, brand management report, or email. Like any religion, its appeal is hard to put across to non-believers, who will guffaw at the idea of playing an offbeat, online version of photo Pictionary with complete strangers. But turn up, sign in, get sucked into a high-score battle to identify a lightning series of random images faster than your partner, and you can kiss goodbye to those unwholesome hours spent with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Created by the boffins at Carnegie Mellon University, Peekaboom has a higher purpose - as you locate objects with your mouse, the programme teaches computers to 'see' internet images. See, you're not cyber-slacking at all - you're aiding research into artificial intelligence.
