The Monty Blog

Wow, Harrison Ford is old! and this film he does kinda look it. Although they have tried to cover it up with some computer shading you can still see it. Nevermind though its time to coil up the whip and go hunting for some lost treasure with some bad guys again.

Now i’m not sure if anyone else has seen the previous films with Indy and co but they are good fun. If anything you can laugh at just how silly they are but this time i think they may have gone a bit too far. There are two types of people you can see this film with; your friends, and your girl/boy friend. I would suggest the first …. becuase then you can act like an idiot, however for some unknown reason i thought the second one would be a better plan. Now right from the off you can tell that its going to be a illy film after an incident with a nuke and a fridge (i’ll leave it there) it tends to go down hill. By the end of the film with aliens and waterfalls and soooo many russians it does tend to get a bit silly.

However it still has comedy value in the class Jones way, contradiction, that look on his face you know he just screwed it up, and that special way he always seems to land himself in the worst place possible at the worst time and get out using nothing but his whip.

So if you havent seen it go WITH YOUR FRIENDS (trust me on this one) and dont take it too seriously …. or do and then moan, whichever you prefer!

You can take a look at that pete said about it here and i can agree with him.

I dont know about you lot but i saw the trailers for this film a while ago … and have been waiting like a real geek for it too come out and so finally went to see it after hearing it get lots of crap thrown its way about it not being a good film.

I’m not a good film critic, thats why i moan on a blog here and not in a newspaper, i like films that i like becuase …. well there isnt a good reason i just like the way they ‘feel’, and i have to say that i like Ironman.

Yes i know its just another comic book film, yes i know it hasnt got the best story line, yes i know its this that and the other for realism but i dont care. I like the fact that its a smart suit made from somthing or other which can fly and fight without putting on a ounce of weight … good stuff! and i want two of them!

I liked the way Downey Jr. played the part every inch how it should be and that he kept the sarcastic tone up all the way, i think Gwyneth Paltrow also played her part really well. But most of all i like the atmoshphere of the film, the fact that Stark interacts with his workshop like their his friends and accepts that machines are stupid until you make them smart arsed then you have to put them down. Without any spoliers in this bit its a feel good film with a fun plot, good storyline (for fun) and thank god for a film in todays world that doesnt take its self seriously enough to try and get bogged down in borning stuff too many times.

So i liked it, you might not, but who cares. Best line: “Lets be honest this is not the worst thing you’ve caught me doing”

… well its pretty much over now. Blu-Ray have now won the battle between the Hi-Def formats.

For a while it looked like HD-DVD (For all you XBOX idiots out there) would over take the market as it was much cheaper and still was Hi-Def, however unlike the Betamax and VHS wars which saw the cheaper and lower quality VHS overtake the more expensive but better Betamax format, the Blu-Ray format from Sony which has a 50GB disc size and Hi-Def picture but is more expensive has come out on top.

Now i know that there are a lot of people who will argue that HD-DVD is better …. and they probably own an XBOX and so are a bit peeved. Along with all the people who bought HD-DVD players the support will continue to happen from Toshiba for the next while but they will now have to buy Blu-Ray players to keep up.

… i won’t, i had one of the first PS3s to enter the country. I have been gunning for Blu-Ray the whole way through and have been watching an avalanche happen in slow motion; first a few studios went to BRD, then some more small ones, then WallMart said it would only stock BRDs in its stores, Blockbuster announced Blu-Ray as the format of choice and then the final blow … Toshiba shut the project down.

And there it ends, Sony have won the format war, and as it currently stands the PS3 is now outselling the XBOX 360  3 to 1 worldwide, this could just be because people are finally warming to the PS3 the games are coming out and it all looks good …. but more likely: people have seen who has won and the PS3 is by the best Blu-Ray player out there, and for the first time in a long time we have seen something that is future proof for the time being … Blu-Ray is king.

In case you haven’t guessed this is going to be one of my sarcy film reviews: this times its of “I am Legend” the newest blockbuster to hit our shores.

First off i do like the story, i like the action and i do like the way that Will Smith plays the character which he does very well. I’ not about to break any spoliers so all i’m going to do is fade the storyline a bit:

Will Smith plays a scientist called ‘Robert Neville’ a soldier and scientist in the US Army. When a virus which is meant to cure cancer breaks out with side effects he is one of the few people on the planet with immunity to the virus. This means that he is one of the few on the planet who can save the population most of which has been wiped out. He is the only person who has not succumbed to the virus in New York City, all he does all day is keep fit, search for food, search for survivors, and try and find a cure. He manages to find people who have been overcome by the virus and captures one for his experiments. However after nothing works and his closest companion dies he essentially losses it.

There is some great camera work, some excellent shots of a deserted New York and one brilliant shot of him playing golf on the back of an SR-71 Blackbird. Now i like suspense but i don’t like horror films, unlike my girlfriend who is the other way round … so for some reason i had some person buried in my arm throughout most of the film. But apart from that i liked it.

Now I’m not a pro film critic, and i don’t pretend to be, but think this film is good, obviously zombie movies have been done a thousand times and they will always be compared to the mother of all zombie movies ‘Resident Evil’ but it isnt like that type of film. This is not a film that is about kicking ass, firing guns, or evil corporations. Its about one man and his journey … and that sounds REALLY clichéd!

So see it, get some sweets, dig in and enjoy. If you like suspense this is good. Zombies your thing? also good to go. A bit of humour in between? even better. This is a good film.

… okay first things first, I know its not the game … I also know what other people have said about it as well but just listen.

I liked it…. simple really. It’s a good fun(ish) film, with guns, action sequences, no silly history or dialogue, quick one liners, a simple(ish) plot which has some twists but doesn’t make you think you stupid, and there are some little Easter eggs for those of you who have played the games.

The plots quite simple, bald guy with a tattoo of his barcode on his head, ace killer with more than enough skills to take on an army (and frequently does), and is also quite cool on the side. He kills someone and then gets a botched second target to go after but something isn’t right, he then becomes a target and he goes about finding out why.

I liked the games, I liked the fact that they gave you so much variety, you could kill the guard take his uniform, and stab the target, or you could dress up at a chef and poison the soup, or bomb the dudes car, there was so much variety and this is brought back into the film as you see how he goes about doing what he does best. I also liked the Inspector guy who plays a major part as the person trying to take him down, its quite good banter and provides some good story.

Okay, here are the bits I didn’t like: … urm …the Russians, not sure what was up with there SF Uniforms but there we go … or why they needed a Hind D helicopter Gunship but what the heck, they are Russian!

All in all I liked the film, I liked the games, I like the guy, and I like the weapons, the tactics and lots of other stuff like that. I’m not a good film critic on camera angles, I just watch films generally!

.. woop de friggin do!

The iPhone what a brilliant idea that was. Steve jobs is sitting there in his office going “hmm i wish i was as good as business as Bill Gates, and to think if i hadn’t had a strop and done my own thing i might be rolling in money now!” so he has a good idea, make a mobile phone that cashes in on the success of the iPod, but make it really different so that people will buy it for a useless interface and keyboard that quite frankly in annoying.

Now before anyone goes and says “oh you don’t know anything about it, you haven’t used one blah de blah” well i have used one and i cant stand it. I don’t like the interface, i don’t like the flashy bits, i don’t like the keyboard, i don’t like the fact that it has been set up to do without a stylus (Because those things haven’t been useful since the beginning of time have they!), and the ‘pinch’ zooms are gimmicky and only of any use on MICROSOFT table-top computers where you can use your hands properly for that purpose with real control.

I like the Touch because i like the controls, i like the feel, it feels solid and well built rather than a shiny piece of hand bag jewellery. I like the fact that you can get 3rd party apps without having to screw with the warranty and risk your new shiny piece of equipment, you get full windows support from Microsoft (and no matter what you say about them they are the best at support), i also like the fact that i can active sync all my contacts, emails, and other rubbish without a hassle (compared to someone i know who was having issues transferring kit from a blackberry to his brand new iPhone after kicking it down the stairs).

However here is a really good objective video (it is 25mins long) which weighs up all the points and perfectly round off this argument which i’m sure will rage for ages. So heres the link for that.
But if you dont like Windows or Mactard fanboys, then check out the alternatives from Sony Ericsson, Prada (Sigh), and Samsung and others.

Let me illustrate the job of the SO19 Met Unit. their job is too take people down with guns … that simple really. Whether or not those people die in the processes is up to the suspect and whether or not they had watched an Arnold Schwarzenegger film the night before.

We all know the story, 22nd of July 2005, a man leaves his house, he goes to an underground station, police ask him to stop, he gets on a train and is neutralised by officers with Glock 17 side-arms.

However everyone seems to be focusing on what the officers did wrong, where the command structure was buggered, and who made the mistake. But let me ask you something, if the day after a terrorist attack when the country is on high alert, and your are given the order to apprehend a suspect who is believed to be a possible terrorist, you’d load your weapons and prep some something that might get messy.

However you’ve been trained to only fire if you are fired on and if you have no other option. Your a police officer not a cowboy, only those who pass standards are allowed to serve in the SO19 Unit.

So when you ask a man to stop, and you draw your weapon so that he gets the point …. and then he runs! what are you going to think. Of course your superior is going to give you authorisation to use force theres a possible terrorist willing to kill himself to kill others running towards a civilian target that has already been hit once and you have to stop him. If i was there i would have done the same thing, shoot to kill before he kills everyone else.

However the media, and some politicians have decided to blow this out of proportion. Yes i can accept that it was a mistake to shoot an electrician but you have to ask why he was shot. I bet that when the officers drew their weapons and shouted “POLICE STOP WHERE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW!” everyone else in the station stopped and stood still, so why did he keep going?

Then people go on about “why did he have to be shoot so many times in the head?” …. because people who aren’t afraid of death don’t tend to die unless you make sure first, there are cases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Israel where suicide bombers have been shot in the chest and neck and have stumbled the last few feet to a target to blow themselves up in the name of their god. So i’d like to make sure the b*****d is dead first if you dont mind.

The media and others it seems are not content with just attempting to crucify the officers and the service on the whole any more, they want the person who gave the order to fire; of course she gave the order to fire, she cant see the guy, she couldn’t tell that the guy was unarmed, all she can see is a the file on a suspect running towards a target after armed police have shouted at him to stop. So i think the order to fire is justified, you don’t take chances with situations like this you risk one life for 2,000 others and a couple of billion pounds worth of commerce full stop.

Its unfortunate that Jean-Charles de Menses was shot, but i would have done the same, end of.

well i’m sure that made sense to all of you so here goes. I just got back from a barge trip with Shenfield School, and it was bloody brilliant! After all the problems (mainly caused by me!) and any issues we finally all went.

We found our barge before we even got there as we had been told that ours was called ‘Moorhen’ and what do we see on the front of the brochure, the Moorhen in all its sunny glory, well that was nice.

For those of you who have been n a barge will know that interior space wasn’t designed with 6ft Sixth Formers in mind, so shockingly there were a couple of hit heads for the first couple of days and lots of people getting close together [/me arse slaps reader] it is however great fun. Of course you have the occasional squabble which Adam, pete and i will admit too! But apart from that all went well.

I have to say that the thing that made it most bearable was our chef. Dr.A* himself, the man how got an A/* (I forget) in catering made all our food for the week and despite the fact it was all Tesco Value rubbish he managed to make brilliant meals everyday and keep them coming up till the very end of the trip.

Let me just say now that this is what my timetable looked like everyday near enough:

7:30 Wake up via adams alarm (i can still hear it!)

7:45 Actually get out of bed!

7:50 Dressed and ready to go

7:55 start the de-moor and get going

8:00 - 9:00 all the locks and rubbish all sorted along with any food i thought i might eat

9:05 back to sleep i go!!

11:00 get back up and get ready for lunch, get moaned at for sleeping again, and do what ever else!

12:00 - 17:00 Do general rubbish and sort any problems (mark down the week hatch!)

Then we’d moor up and go to the pub, carry out any pranks or whatever and then finally ..

23:00ish egt back to barge

0100 get to sleep ready for the next day!

So after doing all that, and other junk, and then not to mention see lots of of sheep (cows), Hamsters (ducks), woolly pigs (sheep), real sheep (i think these were sheep as well), and then telling lots of people to shut up and drive! we made i through the week up scathed … apart from that barge .. but then again Lizzie was driving! /me hamsters (see above lol)

If you want to see petes Flickr for all the photos click hither and that should think straight though. Also click on the blogroll for Peters actual blog (you can never fit all the events into one blog post believe me it just isn’t possible)

Well that’s all from (roger the) Cabin Boy [That’s me BTW] and you can leave my arse alone now the lot of you!

Oil … oil … oil … KGB …. and some oil and gas on the side.

Those are the main exports of the ex-Soviet Union Russia … hang on … so apart from oil and a ton load of trained assassins what do they have to offer the world? … oh yeah OIL and GAS!!!

Here we have a prime example of what modern day Russia is capable of: LINK

WHY THE HELL DO YOU NEED THAT … but come on, if you won the lottery and had enough money, you’d buy 2 wouldn’t you? … well … i would! This is truly what Russia is now capable of; forget nuclear war, forget killings. They’re taking our money, corruption and flash planes! … b*****ds!

That is all.