This World Is Boldly Going Nowhere

El Gordo made some speeches.

Not unusal in itself, but in these he has outlined his plans to Build Britain’s Demise Future. Yet again he has been confusing England with Britain, and even the Beeb have picked up on it: thanks to devolution, most of El Gordo’s proposals only apply to the country which didn’t elect him. The arrogant monocular cunt.

Among pledges he told MPs investment in housing would be trebled to £2.1bn

Indeed. Except that around £600M of this money has come from DCLG’s own housing budgets, so investment in housing hasn’t trebled. But not withstanding that, there is quite a bit of money to be found if these proposals are to actually come to fruition, and as Call Me Dave quite rightly asks: when is someone going to tell him he’s run out of money?

Except that its not him that has run out of money - its us. You and I: Her Majesty’s loyal taxpaying public that have run out of money. Over the past 12 years this clueless one-eyed turd has squandered this nations wealth in a fit of mad schemes and ill-thought-out PFI/privatisation deals, and now he proposes to squander more money that we don’t have!

Grrrr… But it makes me mad.

Not quite as mad as the idea for a totally elected House of Lords however.

El Gordo plans to ensure that Liebour keep their filthy paws in government no matter the cost it seems. Previously, the political aliegence of the upper house was purely accidental, relying on the beliefs of the particular Lords in question. However, since reforms, the aliegance has shifted - the government appointed Lords tend to share the same beliefs, meaning that one political party could control both houses through what amount to unfair means. This gives the incumbent politcal party an unprecidented level of control over the machinery of state if it controls both houses…

I just can’t wait for a general election, and we can throw this pile of defective, second-hand electric donkey fuckers that dares call itself our government out into the street.

Grrr.

Another minute, another review. I’m squeezing these things out like turds! (You said it!-Ed.)

Based on the Milton shorts by Mike Judge - he of Beavis & Butthead fame - this movies stars Ron Livingston as Peter Gibbons, a malcontent software engineer working for computer giant Initech, a parody of the IBMs and EDS’s of this world, bogged with excessive management.

In much the same way that The Office was hauntingly familiar to anyone who has ever had any kind of office job, Office Space will have the same effect on anyone who has ever worked in corporate IT - my good self included.

Peter and his two close friends - Samir and Michael - are relentlessly bullied by their micromanaging bosses, and hate their jobs. Peter himself hates his job so much that it strains his relationship with girlfriend Anne, to the point that he agrees to visit an occupational hypnotherapist with her.

Dr Swanson - the therapist in question - puts Peter in a trance to not care about his job, and then promply dies before he can bring him out of it. From here on, much hilarity ensues as the friends discover the truth about their jobs, and that they make better software engineers than fraudsters!

Not very big on plot, the film relies on its clever script and occasional slapstick humour to keep the laughs coming.

I first saw this film when it was bought for me on DVD several years ago, but as it was on TV a few nights ago, I figured I’d watch it again, and share my thoughts with you: my ever loving readers.

Those of us with more than a passing familiarity with IT will notice that the technology in the film has a distinct 1990s feel to it, but that doesn’t matter: it is the hilarious japes the team get themselves into with the technology - everything from smashing a printer to planting a virus in a credit mainframe - and their constant battle to get the better of their overbearing boss Bill Lumbergh, which give the film its pace.

The backing track and songs chosen to accompany the film are brilliant: they fit well with the scenes and the characters, even if this is done ironically, such is the case with Michael who listens to heavy gangster rap, but turns his car stereo down and locks his doors whenever a black guy walks past the queue of traffic he happens to be in! Classic!

This is definately a film you can enjoy several times over too; not because you’ll have missed anything a previous time - the plot certainly isn’t deep enough for that - but because of the sheer comic value. I have seen the film several times over now, and would gladly sit and watch it again.

The Bottom Line: A light-weight comedy that just keeps rolling. Some of the characters will be familiar (perhaps even nausiatingly so) to those of us who have worked in IT, but everyone will find something that they can relate to, even if it is only an overbearing boss! Easily one of the best comedy movies I have seen since Monty Python’s Holy Grail you don’t have to be an IT nut to get the humour, and it comes on all levels. 92%

I seem to have been watching quite a few movies lately. The fact that I have to return the DVDs to their respective owners not withstanding, it does give me the chance to write some more of my rambling reviews!

Wall-E is yet another one of those Pixar films that I never bothered watching when it came out. I seem to do this with a lot of Pixar stuff - I have yet to see any of the Ice Age movies, or even Monsters Inc!

And so, in much the same way as I came into posession of the Cars DVD, I also came to hold this particular title, and I watched it the other night.

Set several hundred years in the future, Earth has become an inhospitable garbage dump thanks to mankind’s excessive consumerism, fuelled by the ubiquitous Buy n Large Corporation. Eventually, humans are forced to leave the planet on massive star ships, to roam the galaxy until such time as the waste recycling robots (Wall-E’s) have tidied the place up a bit.

Well, after nearly a thousand years, there is only one robot left, and he survives by carrying on with his job and scavenging bits from his dead comrades.

This nice little routine is shattered by the arrival of EVE, a futuristic robot sent to Earth to see if it has become a habitable planet again.

A simple premise for a plot, but one that allows the movie to take our characters from Earth to the furthest reaches of the galaxy in a quest, not just to find each other, but to return humanity to its home.

The animation is, as we have come to expect from Pixar, simply stunning. The plot serves as a vehicle for some critical sniping at our consumerist lifestyles, and the amount of rubbish we generate as a society on a daily basis, but sadly this really is where the good stuff finishes.

There is little to be found in the way of comedy, since only the occasional human character and the ship’s autopilot has any lines in the script, sacrificing one vital method of communicating the film to the viewing audience. This is sadly true of the main characters (Wall-E and EVE), as all they seem to say are their own names, like little robotic Pokemon over and over.

There seemed to be little in the way of music throughout the film, which again seems to leave out a dimension.

Without wishing to give too much away, the predicted future of the human race is quite amusing, and nowhere near as noble as a lot of sci-fi series and novels might have us believe, but somehow the film seemed oddly two-dimensional and despite me wishing it to be as good as Shrek or Cars, it just didn’t seem to come alive.

The Bottom Line: An oddly flat and lack-lustre presentation among Pixar’s other offerings: a lump of coal in a mound of diamonds. 60%

Courtesy of the copy of Private Eye which I picked up the other day:

£500,000

• Amount of cash paid back to the public purse by MPs who admit to over-claiming on their expenses
• Annual salaries of 15 junior doctors
• Annual salaries of 17 child protection social workers
• Annual salaries of 22 police constables
• Annual salaries of 24 newly-qualified teachers

It’s all in the maths…

I have seen several reviews of this film - most recently the one in the Metro on Friday - which don’t rate this film very highly. Citing plot holes and an overuse of action, they only give the film a couple of stars out of five.

Now that I’ve mentioned this, I feel I should get my criticisms out in the open.

Firstly, the plot does have a couple of holes in it. The major one concerns the start of the film, which reveals that the Transformers and the humans have met before: 17,000 BC the plan was to use a machine to detonate the sun in order to harvest energon. The Primes refused to allow a planet with life on to be destroyed, and sacrificed themselves to seal the machine away. This ended the destructive bent of the defecting Prime - the Fallen - and saved Earth, however several of the original Decepticons remained on Earth. With no technology to hide them, it is never revealed quite how they managed to hide away.

Secondly, some of the fight sequences are somewhat contrived: the Autobots spend longer fighting regular Decepticons than they do fighting the Fallen, which makes him seem somewhat irrelivent as an end of film bad guy.

Thirdly, while the Autobots are all quite distinctive, the same is not true of the Decepticons: they all look alike on screen, and it can be quite hard to follow who is fighting who in the faster paced sequences. Some extra decoration on them wouldn’t be a bad thing…

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, lets start giving the film some plus-points.

To counter those negative points above, I would remind people that if you’re going to see a film like Transformers, you’re not going because you want to see some of the world’s greatest writing - you’re going because you want to see giant fighting robots kicking seven shades of shit out of each other. Watching Transformers isn’t about appreciating a finely sculpted script, its about massive CGI set-pieces, and with these the film is not lacking.

The CGI is among some of the most impressive I’ve seen. A fight featuring four Transformers in a forest is so finely excecuted that shadows move realistically, trees bend and snap correctly and the sounds are correctly positioned to make you feel as though you’re part of the scene, frantically trying to avoid the crushing feet of the machines.

In a similar sequence at the climax of the film, a Constructocon is destroying the Great Pyramid in Egypt: obviously a CGI set piece, the structure is torn apart brick by brick, all with excellently placed shadows, all interacting with each other as they might if something like this happened in reality. All in all, the special effects are something special, and the teams responsible should feel very proud.

There are a few returning characters: Bumblebee and Prime return, as do Ironhide and a few other Autobots with smaller parts. New characters are introduced on both sides: Soundwave has a much more integral part, and a couple of unnamed Decepticons are introduced. Countering those, the Autobots have a couple of new additions as well: the Twins, who are delightfully gangster (”It’s supposed to hurt! It’s an ass kicking!”) and an ageing T72 Blackbird who switched sides to the Autobots (”Ah, bollocks!”) - and as I may have given away, they have some of the best lines in the movie. You can expect a few snappy comebacks and one-liners on both sides of the battle this time, which weren’t present in the first movie.

Additionally, some of the humans from the first movie make get to reprise their roles. The marines are on show, complete with attitude and sharp lines (”Not while you’re in the plane dumbass!”) but stealing the show has to be Agent Simmons of Sector 7, the secret government department dealing with aliens. Cropping up half way through the movie, he is responsible for some moments of genuine hilarity (”What you are about to see is top secret. Do not tell my mother!”) but also manages to help save the day in spectacular style, but even that has a comic element (”I am directly below the enemy’s scrotum…”). What happens to him after the film ends is never shown, so one hopes that he might come back for Transformers 3.

The quality of the acting is pretty decent, LaBeouf is quite convincing as a scared nerdy college lad, though doesn’t seem to come across to well when the action hots up. Fox is amazing as usual, and is pretty convincing in her role, and could quite easily eclipse LaBeouf if she was given a larger role in the film. The parents are just as irritating in this film as the first, though some over-the-top chattering from the mother after eating a hash cake does make for some hilarity.

The sound effects and music, as I mentioned earlier, are excellent, and the placing is excellent - sound moves around the cinema in a dynamic fashion and really makes you feel as though you’re part of the action, and gives the robots some really heavy screen presence. It is something which I hope is replicated on the remastered soundtrack for the DVD release.

The Bottom Line: An excellent movie, that plays out much like a longer version of the first film. The plot isn’t too credible, and there are some holes in the story, but as I mentioned, you don’t go to see a film like this if you’re after a deep and involving plot which has been lovingly crafted by the finest story masters. Giant, stompy fighting robots is what this movie is about, and that’s what it delivers. 90%

The train was quite crowded, and a U.S. marine walked the entire length looking for a seat, but the only seat left was taken by a well dressed, middle-aged, French woman’s poodle.

The war-weary Marine asked, “Ma’am, may I have that seat?”

The French woman just sniffed and said to no one in particular “Americans are so rude. My little Fifi is using that seat.”

The Marine walked the entire train again, but the only seat left was under that dog.

“Please, ma’am. May I sit down? I’m very tired…”

She snorted, “Not only are you Americans rude, you are also arrogant!”

This time the Marine didn’t say a word; he just picked up the little dog, tossed it out the train window, and sat down. The woman shrieked, “Someone must defend my honour! This American should be put in his place!”

An English gentleman sitting nearby spoke up, “Sir, you Americans seem to have a penchant for doing the wrong thing. You hold the fork in the wrong hand. You drive your cars on the wrong side of the road. And now, sir, you seem to have thrown the wrong bitch out the window.”

H/T: Tony Chan, via email.

Just seen this advert on the TV - one of the funniest things I’ve seen for a long time:

Well, the Euro election results are in. So how did Liebour do?

Piss-poor, as you might expect. With a voting turnout of 33.5% the share of votes in the UK was as follows:

• Conservatives: 25 (+1)
• UKIP: 13 (+1)
• Labour: 13 (-5)
• Lib Dems: 11 (+1)
• Green: 2 (No change)
• BNP: 2 (+2)
• SNP: 2 (No change)
• Plaid Cymru: 1 (No change)

So, Liebour slip into third place, behind UKIP. Hahahahaha!

And in the English elections? Well, things aren’t really any better here either…

So McBroon has led Liebour to their worst election defeat in nearly 100 years. And another minister has resigned, bringing the total number of rats leaving the sinking ship shit to eight.

And on a final note, while I do think there are now too many of these Downfall rip-off videos, this one is rather topical and amusing - H/T to Theo Spark for finding it.

So the curse of Jonah McBroon starts to get into full swing. With five ministerial resignations within the past three days, McBroon is having a cabinet reshuffle.

Except he isn’t.

All he seems to be doing is putting people in the positions left vacant as the other rats flee the sinking ship.

Oh, and he’s not standing down or calling for an election, despite the fact that every living thing on the planet wants him to do that.

And he won’t do that for two reasons:

1. He wants to keep his grubby little paws on the top job. He knows that when an election is called, he will lose and he will never see a position of power or influence again.
2. Liebour can’t afford an election. Running nearly £20M in debt, and with major donors deserting like… well, like Cabinet Ministers, El Gordo’s party can’t finance a proper campaign. Not that a proper campaign would do them any good if the English council elections are anything to go by…

There were rumours that in the “reshuffle” Darling and Miliband would be moved out of their positions in the Treasury and Foreign Office, and replaced with Ed Balls and Darth Mandlesnake respectively. This hasn’t happened, and I’m sure that’s in no small part to both of them saying that they didn’t want to be moved and would quit if they were… Its been a bad enough few