Friday, 24 May 2013, 6:48 am

Kelly O'Brien has written 254 article(s) on the An Focal website.

Rock of Ages is for two kinds of people, people who don’t like Glee and people who do like Glee. If you like Glee then you’re going to love Rock of Ages and if you don’t you’re not going to like it very much. The story follows two aspiring young rock stars that land a job waiting tables in Hollywood’s most rocking club The Bourbon Room which is in financial difficulty. The leads are played by relative nobody’s Sherrie (Julianne Hough) and Drew (Diego Boneta). The club is going to go under unless the performance by the rock and roll rebel Stacee Jaxx who recently got kicked o...

Red Lights is a poorly constructed movie that fails to entice the viewer beyond the opening scene. Although advertised as a psychological thriller, the plot fails to define itself as such and regularly alternates between a mystery, a thriller and a love story, blundering all three. The movie frequently tries to engage the viewer with some eloquent speeches about mankind’s desire for belief in the supernatural but not only fails to expand on the questions it raises but avoids them entirely. Sadly, the only questions I found myself asking were things like - was the script writer drunk w...

  The Smashing Pumpkins heyday in the 1990's found them universal acclaim, multi-platinum album sales and a legion of dedicated followers. Rock music in general has suffered considerably in the past decade and the decline of The Smashing Pumpkins has coincided with this decline with a long chronicled tale of infighting which led to their eventual split in 2000. Now reformed with frontman Billy Corgan as the only original member in the line-up and with 2008's ugly and disappointing return Zeitgeist behind them as well as the partly finished 44-track experiment hit-and-miss fest Tear...

Danish researchers have found that pain killers such as Ibuprofen, aspirin, naproxen and other 'non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs' (NSAIDs) can lower the risk of skin cancer. It was found that the patients who had taken strong doses of NSAIDs for seven years or more were at a 15 percent lower risk of squamous cell carcinoma and a 13 percent decreased risk for developing malignant melanoma, than those who were prescribed lower doses. The findings were based on medical records of almost 20,000 people who were diagnosed with skin cancer in northern Denmark between 1991 and 2009, and were co...

News of the Greek elections dominated Sky News’ Monday morning broadcast. Not only has the Greek state to consider the status of their membership to the Euro, but added pressure will be on the nation as the rest of Europe and the world will be focusing their attention on the anticipated outcome, which will have profound implications on current and future European and worldly affairs. The possibility of leaving the Eurozone is a daunting prospect for Greek citizens. The Greek people all live together in fear with knowledge that their nation is very close to an exit, despite almost 75% of t...

"What are we doing here?", Com gasped as we stood on the banks of the Thames amongst over a million screaming Britons (including our friends Ciaran and Andrew) as their monarch her Majesty Elizabeth the Second waved from the royal barge. We were out of place, out of touch and certainly overdressed as we had made the rookie tourist mistake of donning the local garb, which consisted of a plastic union jack bowler hat, a jubilee scarf and flags with the Queen’s visage emblazoned upon them. We had awoken early in the hopes of nabbing a front row seat in order for Ciaran to view his beloved Q...

  STAFF and students of The University of Limerick came together last Thursday May 31 to enjoy a day of celebration on campus. Dubbed ‘Party on the Plaza’, the annual event saw acts such as The Bentley Boys and Indie Rocks take to a temporary stage in the UL Plaza, a cobblestone area between the Library, the Foundation Building and the Main Building. Open to anyone working or studying in the University, the festivities began at 1:30pm on the ever expanding North Campus where Cruinniu played some traditional music. An hour later, drumming act Samba Cuisle led a procession...

News that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is moving to restrict the sale of supersized fizzy drinks is hardly surprising. In 2003, Bloomberg signed legislation banning smoking in the city’s bars and restaurants, a ban that was extended to cover parks and beaches just last year. In 2006, the diminutive billionaire turned his attention to fatty foods as New York became the first city in America to outlaw artificial trans-fats in restaurants. Two years after that, legislation was passed requiring calorie-counts to be posted on restaurant menus. Now it looks as if soft drink containers ove...

Director: Ridley Scott Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba and Guy Pearce Running Time: 124 minutes Genre: Science-fiction While not up to the level of his Alien and Blade Runner efforts, Ridley Scott's big return to the science fiction genre is still a highly effective and creative thrill-ride that takes a well known mythology (of the Alien film series) and not only reinvigorates it, but turns the series in another and more ambitious direction. But while not being a proper prequel to Alien, it contains many odes and obvious references to th...

The Eurovision has come and gone for another year without Ireland making much of an impact. Ireland yet again lost the competition with Jedward belting their little hyper-active hearts out. They gave an energetic performance as always but ironically the twins were out of sync for the majority of the song. The question remains, is Ireland still proud of them? They are the ‘artists’ that people love to hate but this doesn’t stop them earning millions and grabbing our attention on a daily basis. Of course we were the ones who sent them to the song contest for the second t...