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Archive for August, 2007

ObscureInternet Beta 2.1, Brain Training and even more Transformers.

Hello all,

Since our return from Holidays, It’s been a quiet couple of week , I’ve been mostly working on the day job and the new beta version of ObscureInternet.com (which is now at version 2.1), It also looks like I’m going to be updating BrokenInglish too, as we have a web designer creating a design for the site, which is looking good.

I’m playing Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training on the DS again (Brain age of 30 at the minute), I’m going to start playing a number of the Brain Training programs on the DS to see if it keeps me mental fit. I’ll update the blog with my progress.

Oh, it wouldn’t be a blog update with picture of some new transformers, so here goes.

Firstly we have Energon Starscream (original colours), which is one I’ve been after for a while a finally picked it up from ebay for just over a tenner (a good price).

Secondly we have Titanium G1 Ultra Magnus which the wife found on sale at Wilkinsons. Normally I’m not keen on the Titanium figures but I like this one.

See you soon.

Creative People Required

As you probably know I help run ObscureInternet.com, and we at ObscureInternet.com are looking for talented people with the following skills; Comedy Writers, Web Designers, Musicians, Video Directors, Podcasters or PHP programmers.

If you are interested please drop us a message at staff@obscureinternet.com or come and join the ObscureInternet community and leave a message.

You could see your work published on the front page of ObscureInternet just like Ask the Professor, BrokenInglish, Austin's tips or even the HansIsland Podcast.

Birthdays, Legoland and Transformers

Good day all, and what a good day it is. The sun is shining and most importantly I am holiday, no work for me for two weeks. Never was a holiday more deserved (by me) it has been quite a while long since the last one and work has been very stressful in the last couple of weeks.

LegoLandIt was Conor’s and my birthday at weekend, so we went off to Legoland again. We love Legoland, it is great theme park, better than Disneyland Paris. So good in fact we bought an Annual Pass so we can return some time in the next twelve months. We had a go on all the big rides – The Dragon Coaster, Pirate Falls and the Jungle Coaster. Conor got his Driving licence at the Driving School, we also learnt how to put out fires at the Fire Academy (we were the fastest), Conor got to go to his favourite areas the Waterworks and the Rat Trap, and we also watched the Johnny Thunder Show and the Spell Breaker 4D movie.

Jabba's Sail BargeConor got to choose how to spend his birthday money at the Lego shop, and unsurprisingly he decided to buy some Lego Star Wars, LEGO Star Wars 6210: Jabba’s Sail Barge to be precise. It wasn’t cheap but it’s a lovely lego set, with some great detail.

I decided it was time to update me Lego key rings , as the old ones had lost legs, hands and arms. So I bought new Sponge Bob Square Pants, Harry Potter and Batman key rings.

Probably my highlight of the weekend was the wife asking ‘Was Shergar the horse with big teeth’ when passing a sign for “Dubai Duty Free Shergar Cup at Ascot” on the way to the park.

New TransformersOf course it would be a proper birthday without new Transformers, so here are the new addition to the family. The movie Starscream is mine, the other two – Cybertron Primus and Skywarp are Conor’s.

I’ve got an some news for you regarding the car, as regular readers will know someone reversed into it while the wife was driving a couple of months back, but the insurance was playing silly buggers. Well we got a call from a Garage in Stockton a couple of weeks ago to tell us we were booked in, unsurprisingly the insurance company had forgot to tell us everything had been sorted. So the car has no got a new driver’s side door all taken care of by the third parties insurances company. I think the car is pretty much on its last legs now anyway, it’s due for its next MOT in January which I don’t think it has a hope of passing without paying for repairs that would cost more than the car is worth. So I’m preparing to have to pay for a new car in the New Year.

Another bit of good news, is Conor passed is second grading at Karate, so he is now a Yellow belt. He is doing well but he will next to practice and train hard to keep getting his belts.

Thanks for the Birthday messages!

The Transformers Movie was rubbish and you are an idiot for thinking otherwise.

As a big Transformers fan, I’ve been awaiting the new Michael Bay movie with great Interest. I always suspected that the film would be a good action film, not a good Transformers story, but enjoyable nonetheless. Unfortunately I was so correct for the first two parts that it rendered the film not enjoyable for me, in fact I hated it. Here is my review of the film where I will point out just some many things wrong with this film.

The film starts with a decent action sequence. It’s worthy of not because unlike the other action sequence in the film it uses wide shots so you actually see what’s going on, and therefore we are rewarded by seeing Blackout causing a large amount of Destruction. The only problem with this is that the films shots its bolt far too early getting straight into the action, and showing the Transformers rather than building up to it. We are introduced to some twats from the US Army (Cliché – Good Bless America) who defeat Scorponok (who at the end of the scene is pretty much just sitting there while being attacked). This is scene is thrown in so Bay can do his patriotic shite. Speaking of which his some Transformers quotes I took from an American Forces Press Service website.

“That was without a doubt the best movie I have ever seen,” Army Staff Sgt. Mario Youngblood, dressed in his combat uniform, said as he emerged wide-eyed from the theatre.
“Obviously, the military has never fought giant robots, and hopefully we never will. But the way this film is structured, if we ever had to do it, this is probably how we would do it,” said Army Lt. Col Paul Sinor, a public affairs officer with that service’s Office of the Chief of Public Affairs.
“Go, Air Force!” an audience member yelled when an AC-130 began firing on enemies with its side-mounted artillery guns. “Yeah, Navy!” belts out a sailor upon seeing a team of destroyers cutting across the shining sea.

Here’s the link to prove I didn’t make this shit up.

The following scenes with Spike and Bumblebee I like because have the best attempts at characterisation during the whole film, and despite really wanting to hate Shia in the rile I really couldn’t.
The main problems with the film start here, it keeps introducing new human characters. Sector 7 (cliché – oh an evil secret government thing). The Sector 7 Bloke (cliché – the bloke in evil secret government thing who has gone mad with power), the code breaker bird, the hacker, etc.

Then comes a awful part of the film. Sam and the Bird (Cliché – She has a dark secret) meet the Autobots. Prime, is comes off ok (minus his lips), Cullen has changed the voice from a poor man’s John Wayne (which I was never a fan of) to the prefect voice for Prime. But the rest of the Autobots come across has dicks. They come of his aggressive rather than friendly, Ironhide ‘do you feel lucky punk’ (cliché – 30 year old pop culture references) is great example, Jazz calls them bitches (cliché – He’s a black man) and Bumblebee is a mime. Why not give Bumblebee his voice back at this point, the comedy with the radio has ran its course now. Oh, and Prime says ‘EBay’ this would have been funny had the not made dozens of eBay and eBay account relates jokes beforehand.

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, we have the ‘comedy’ scene when Sam tries to find the Glass while the Autobots ‘hide’ in the back garden. I wanted to hurt someone while watching this, the Autobots act like complete retards in this scene, they suddenly seem to not be able to understand English, and become very clumsy. The ‘My Bad’ line for Prime is unforgivable (however it’s still better than the same line in the Fantastic Four sequel). The scene then turns into something from America Pie and then Sector 7 turn up to mercifully end it.

Prime saves Sam and Tits McGee from Sector 7 using uncharacteristic aggression, allowing Tits to get her revenge of evil sector 7 (cliché – Removes clothes and hand cuffs to a lamp post – was its stag night?) and then seconds later Prime hides under a bridge (if only he could Transformer to disguise himself) while Bumblebee gets captured. The Autobot don’t interfere as they don’t want to attack the humans (that they attacked seconds earlier) or stop what little progress the plot is making.

Anyway, we go on to Hover dam to find that Megatron and the Allspark are there. Ah, the Allspark – The Allspark is an extremely stupid and lazy concept (taken from Beast Wars rather than Transformers, the writers of Beast Wars also had little understand of Transformers), it turn electric stuff into evil Transformers? What’s the point of that then, also if that is the case how do you make good Transformers (which the Autobots where playing to do to repopulate Cybertron)? We gets a demonstration the Allspark’s power on Nokia phone, and later on an Xbox (wow, its makes the boot up noise that should make the MS fan boys happy) and a Mountain Dew drinks machine. Seriously this automatic creation of Transformers is weak and frankly insulting concept.

The Autobots then have a scene together! However it’s goes something along these lines.

Ironhide: Why don’t we kill all the humans?
Prime: Because we are the good guys.

Did you get that audience? We’re three quarters through the film, and we are still trying to define who the good guys are.

Frenzy reports the location of Megatron (Oh, Did I miss out the bits with comedy Decepticion Frenzy in them? Good, stupid film) and Starscream calls in the other Deceptions. (Why was Brawl called Devastator in the film) by speaking Decepticoneese or something stupid, which is given subtitles in Decepticoneese (for the speakers in the cinema audience) and English. The Deceptions are treated worse in this film than the Autobots, and that is saying a great deal. Only three of them have lines (Megatron, Starscream and Barricade – I’m not counting what Bonecrusher says during his Transformer because I couldn’t understand it), worst of Megaton just comes over a brainless monster, you could replace his character for Godzilla and no one would notice.

Anyway Starscream turns up, frees Megatron and is richly rewarded by have a bit of dialogue along these lines.

Starscream: I have rescued you Megatron, you’ve been stuck on earth for ages and I’ve saved you but I still think you are great.
Megatron: Where is the Allspark?
Starscream: That thing? The humans are using to promote various brands.
Megatron: You’ve failed me again.

Yes, way to go Don Murphy, you’ve capture the Spirit of Megatron and Starscream exactly like you promised, you horrible cunt.

Now we are approaching the end of the film action sequence, so natural the army jerks decide the safest place to hide the Allspark in the nearest populated city. On the way there Prime grows a sword out of his hands and cuts off Bonecrusher with it head in a annoying shakily cut fight scene, the highlight of which is a stupidly slow motion shot of Prime punching Bonecrusher so hard, his eye fly’s out (cliché – Tom and Jerryesque fight)

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you there is a scene with all a characters I did not care about (Hacker, Sector 7, blah, blah) dealing with a ridiculous plot development (A Decepticion virus has disabled all no AM Radio communication) while fighting the stupid robot (Frenzy). In short the stupid robot shoots its self in the head (sadly this is completely true)

There is then a big fight in the city, and during the annoying quickly cut shots I think the following happens (although I can’t be sure). The deceptions turn up, Brawl (the tank) fires his cannon, and it does do much damage, Starscream blows Bumblebees legs off. Megatron turns up, rips Jazz in half for having stupid dialogue. The Army decides to give Sam the Allspark cube and call in helicopters to pick him (despite the Air being clearly under the control of the Deceptions) with Ironhide and Ratchett running alongside him.

Tits McGee (cliché – using her dark secret to her advantage) helps legless bumblebee to kill Brawl. The army kills Blackout (bah, humans could never defeat a Transformer). Starscream defeats Ironhide and Ratchett (but doesn’t kill them) and he also takes out two black hawk helicopters and a number of F-22 in a rather cool mid air battle – Starscream doesn’t do badly out of this movie in battle terms, despite looking like a Gorilla.

Anyways, Prime v Megatron, Starts with some weak dialogue mostly copied from the Cartoon but completely out of context. Megatron kicks Prime arse despite being hit be numerous missiles, so Sam kills him by pushing the Allspark cube into him, in a rather pathetic Anticlimax. To add insult to injury Prime calls Megatron brother, and then when is told of Jazz death says ‘aww poor jazz, oh well never mind’ while holding his dead body (cliché – Black character dies and no one cares).

Prime gives us a bit of narration at the end to say, oh well Cybertron is dead lets live on earth now, and invites some more transformers for the squeal.

Oh, All the deceptions are dead except Starscream (DreamWorks probably knew I would have murder them in their sleep if they had killed Starscream)

The End.

Fuck you.