HollywoodNews.com: I get the joke. Really, I do. I get that Tom Six has made an ‘up yours’ movie that is basically an attack against everyone who had anything to say about the first Human Centipede (review). It sticks its tongue out at those who thought the film was grotesque and morally offensive. It reams those who were upset at how much of the violence was suggested or off screen. It mocks those who called it a grand piece of art, finding hidden meanings and symbolic complexities that arguably were never there in the first place. It is a meta-film, an overt post-modernist commentary on the series, the nature of sequels, and the horror genre itself, as well as those who make and watch them. That’s nice, but The Human Centipede II is a genuinely boring and ultimately obnoxious motion picture. Despite some genuine attempts of some kind of social commentary unto itself, the film remains only worth seeing purely for the sake of saying that you’ve seen it.

A token amount of plot: In our world, where The Human Centipede was indeed a fictional film, one obsessed fan of the first picture (Laurence R. Harvey) decides to recreate the original experiment. One-by-one, he kidnaps his victims and eventually does his dirty work to create a twelve-person centipede. And that’s about it, folks. The Human Centipede II is barely a film. It is technically a 85-minute motion picture that promises to offend and shock on an here-fore-unheard of level, a promise that guarantees disappointment by virtue of its very offering.

Yes, there are several moments of grizzly onscreen violence, and since they represent arguably the film’s lone ‘entertainment value’ I won’t spoil them here. But the movie itself is a overly presumptuous bore, working in ironically an opposite fashion from the first film. The first picture had an unnerving and tension-filled initial half which led up to the primary ‘operation’. But after the deed had been done, the remaining forty-five minutes was merely endless nearly-silent scenes of the main victims existing in unbearable agony. To the extent that it worked at all, it was chiefly effective for its mere suggestion of horrifying cruelty and Dieter Laser’s classically villainous lead performance. The sequel works in reverse, with a boring first half followed by a grotesque second half.

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HollywoodNews.com: Nicole Richie and Joel Madden finally got engaged in February after being together as a couple for nearly three years. Together they have two children, and since then rumors have spread as to when their wedding will officially take place.

However, Madden told People, that they are “absolutely not” getting married in July, as some speculated. He added, “We haven’t even started planning,” and that they are just focusing on raising their family at the moment.

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LS

BY SEAN O’CONNELL

Get ready, “Bioshock” addicts. Rapture is about to get a whole lot larger.

2K Games unveiled plans for what the company is describing as an “aggressive” post-launch downloadable content plan for the immersive first-person-shooter sequel, which hit shelves on Feb. 9.

Starting next month, “BioShock 2” players will be able to extend and enhance the game’s single and multiplayer experiences by adding additional levels in the underwater city of Rapture, expanding the scope of the already massive game environment.

The first DLC bundle, the Sinclair Solutions Test Pack, will be available in the Xbox LIVE Marketplace and the PlayStation Network. Sinclair promises a number of customization features that will allow players to further their character’s development in multiplayer modes, thereby providing a deeper multiplayer experience. The pack includes a rank increase to level 50, with Rank Rewards; new playable characters Louie McGraff and Oscar Calraca; 20 new trials; a third weapon upgrade for each weapon; and 5 additional masks.

Future expansions into the world of “BioShock 2” are scheduled to arrive over the coming months. Each will expand on the stories of the denizens of Rapture.

“The fans who waited in the snow, rain and cold for the midnight launch of ‘BioShock 2’ have spoken and their message is that Rapture still has many fascinating stories to tell,” said Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. “Downloadable content is a key part of our efforts to continue to entice the fans that have made 2K a household name. We intend to deliver single and multiplayer content that respects and expands upon one of the greatest fictional worlds ever created.”

BY SEAN O’CONNELL

Bethesda Game Studio’s post-apocalyptic role-playing shooter “Fallout 3” is the gift that keeps on giving.

The video game designer announced recently that a new chapter in the award-winning “Fallout” series – set in Las Vegas and titled “New Vegas” – will be released by the end of the year. A teaser for the added-on adventure was posted to Bethesda’s official Web site, http://fallout.bethsoft.com.

This is not the first “sequel” to the original “Fallout 3,” which won Game of the Year honors upon its release in 2008. The adventure, which has players tracking their missing father through a nuclear-devastated Washington, D.C., spawned five downloadable levels that continued the game’s action. The most popular, “Broken Steel,” actually changed the ending of the original game by resurrecting the main hero, thereby allowing players to continue the adventure beyond the initial stopping point.

Stay tuned to HollywoodNews.com for more on “Fallout: New Vegas” as the game develops.