glastonbury 2009 round up

the first and arguably the biggest music festival of the year just ended this weekend and it looked pretty awesome as always. i didn't actually go this year (two main reasons: the lineup for the most part didn't appeal much to me and i had no way of getting there or back) but i did go last year and had a really great time. glastonbury seems to be famous for it's weather issues (i don't understand why they don't move the festival to july/august time) but it seems both this year and last year seem to have been pretty varied but mostly dry, from what i saw anyway and i saw alot.

i spent most of the weekend watching the bbc coverage which i really can't fault. 6music had full coverage all weekend just playing live music from the festival with an extra weekend dose of adam and joe - 6music ftw! they also showed a wide selection of all the good bands and the stuff i wasn't really interested in on bbc 2 and 3, but with the red button stuff too at least i could pick and choose who i wanted to see and when. the only way the bbc could have done a better job would be to replace the retarded hosts (bring back adam and joe!) or do away with the hosts altogether and just play some bands. nobody gives a fuck edith! nobody is watching this for your awkward "banter" with reggie dickhead yates! get back to the music already!

one of the particular highlights for me would have to be pendulum. i saw them live last year at the reading festival and that was a pretty incredible experience. i wouldn't even say i'm that big of a pendulum fan but live they are immense! really get the crowd going, check them out:

quick list of other bands there that i thought looked really good live: bloc party, yeah yeah yeahs, kasabian, prodigy, fleet foxes, the ting tings, maximo park, franz ferdinand, doves and friendly fires. that said some of these i'll be seeing at reading festival this year :)

one of the things that put me off going this year most was the headliners. don't get me wrong a diverse lineup is probably one of glastonbury's biggest strengths but this year's just didn't appeal much for me. except one.

blur was probably the first band i actually liked when i was young so i was looking forward to seeing what they'd do. i know alot of their songs but there's so many you forget and seeing them performed live it just looked awesome. they played 24 songs in total and ended on the universal.

probably not my favorite blur song but that's the only clip i could find :)

to see more of glastonbury be sure to check out more on the iplayer while it's online or i think it'll be on bbc 3 during the week too.

after seeing the highlights i'd say i'm pretty set on going next year regardless of the lineup (which normally isn't announced till the tickets sellout anyway). plus i think next year is the 40th glastonbury festival so they should have something special planned.

see ya there! :D

transformers poo review

where do i begin... well the bad springs to mind, so let's start with that.
it's kind of depressing that in this day and age (i'm not trying to sound old) something like this can reach the masses. when i think about the whole process that movies have to go through to actually reach cinemas worldwide - all the script writers, editors, the director, the cast, the effects guys, test audiences, everyone listed in the credits - at no point did anyone put their hand up and say 'heeeeeeeeey, wait a minute! this part sucks!'. there's so much here that i would hope anyone would have picked up on any of the crap that went into this movie. don't get me wrong i probably couldn't do better (...actually maybe i could, but another time) but c'mon studios! sort your god damn filtering process out and save yourself alot of money!

i admit i've never been a fan of transformers (bit before my time grandad) but at least the first movie managed to keep my attention. and at least in michael bays other work i remotely gave a shit about the characters (i still love con air and the rock dispite nic's acting talents). throughout this movie i couldn't care less if any or all of them got killed off - in fact through the second half i was kinda preying for some sort of t.w.m.d (yes that's transformers weapon of mass distruction aka 'the matrix key' or whatever it was called in this movie) would just go off and kill them all so i could go walk off my numb ass and forget this movie sooner.


it was also quite funny how sexist the movie seemed. there's pretty much one girl in the whole movie.

a woman? yeah a woman. and yeah megan fox is pretty hot if your into that fake looking slutty type whose hobbies include bending over bikes and jiggling away from explosions in slow motion. oh and just for something to keep the female viewers interested we'll add some lovey dovey, badly written scenes with the exact same greenday song playing and slot them randomly into the film.

the jar jar binks fans out there will enjoy the two useless autobot twins 'cause i bet no one else watching this movie found them annoying right?

"hmm i'll tell you what this script needs... dog fucking!" ... yeah whose weirdo idea was that? and more importantly how was this not vetted out (haha vetted, you see! cos they are dogs! i dun a funny! maybe neutered out would have been better, nevermind whatever).



questions that spring to my mind during the movie:
why leave these t.w.m.d's in existence, let alone on earth?
why would these advanced aliens even stay on earth just to blow our shit up?
how useless and futile anything the humans do is. why even get involed? it's not like you can stop them.
how shia's prision break style disguise (a baseball cap) is gunna fool anyone?
why not roll the credits hours ago and save the world some time?
why am i still sat here watching this?
who would win in a fight: a monkey with a stapler or an invisible pelican?

well that's the bad, now the good...
urrrmm the special effects... umm yep that's it, and i can't fault it there but there's only so much cg your eyes can take until your desensitized to it. it's kinda like when toy story first came out - really impressive at first but about 30mins in the cg is just a given and the script needs to take over (toy story: win, transformers 2 ... epic fail).

oh and doctor claw from inspector gadget doing the voice for the satellite decepticon, that was quite funny.

anyway if your gunna watch something at the cinema this week i'd recommend you invest your stock in drag me to hell, the hangover or star trek (if you still haven't seen it) and save terminator salvation and transformers 2 for a dvd, i'm sure they'd make good coasters.

it's also worth checking out this review. it's probably the best review i've seen for it online :)

curing boredom, one game at a time

well i'm back at work, bored. but i thought i'd pass on a couple of games i'm currently addicted to between my times of of back breaking labour. popcap have been making addictive casual mini games for a long time now - most popular probably being bejeweled (and everyone's played that in one form or another by now right?). i even actually bought feeding frenzy on the xbox live arcade when it came out (that reminds me, i probably should play some more of that and get my monies worth).

anyway here's the big two i'm hooked on at the mo...

first up is plants vs zombies.

this is another one of those tower defence games. when a horde of zombies comes a-knocking you do the only logical thing you can ... plant seeds in your garden that shoot them ... yeah, i dunno what the makers of this game were thinking but don't be fooled! this game is very addictive. different plants attack in different ways (as all zombie hating gardeners know). there are many different types of zombies with different strengths and weaknesses so choose your seeds carefully (the michael jackson zombie can be a bitch - if you don't put him down quick enough his dancing will bring even more zombies to your door).

you can download the trial or full game on their official site (or elsewhere if you look hard enough).

the second game is peggle.

this is another popcap game and it's freaking addictive! the concept is fairly simple. it's a peg and ball game. you got 10 balls you have to use to get rid of orange pegs by hitting them. there's also a ball catcher at the bottom of the screen that constantly moves from left to right - if it catches your ball you get to use it again. there's also loads of different power ups you can get by hitting the green pegs and bonus points are given for hitting purple ones. if it sounds boring you need to give it a try or see it in action to comprehend the addiction.

this game is currently on pc, xbox, nintendo ds, iphone and on some ipods.

again you can find it on their official site (or from other interwebs).

and just as a bonus i'll recommend one more. this one's probably a bit older so you may have already tried it. if not, try this on for size.

world of goo

this is a physics based game where the idea is to build structures from goo balls to reach a goal. sort of lemmings style but with more creativity by making your own ways out. alot of it is trial and error until you figure out what you should be doing (or just search youtube for a solution to the game your stuck on).

you can get this on pc or download it on your wii.

as before you can locate it on their official site (alternatively via other means).

and just one more to finish on 'cause i've just thought of it (after all the structure building talk)...

everyone should check out http://fantasticcontraption.com 'cause this one is just web based (so not downloading/installing) plus it's free!

the object is to build something to carry the pink ball into the goal area. again this one has alot of trial and error gameplay but every level has loads of different ways to complete so give it a try.

it's also worth checking out some of the ones the pro's have made on youtube - they are pretty crazy.

anyway check them out and lemme know what you think.

eastbound and down

i love this show and can't seem to find many people who have seen it. eastbound and down is a comedy that aired earlier this year on u.s tv. it stars danny mcbride as kenny powers a has been professional baseball pitcher trying to make a comeback. will ferrell and craig robinson also make a few guest appearances through the short first season (but a second season has been ordered).

if you like your comedies give this a go. there's only six episodes in the first season and each episode is only about half an hour long but they are very funny.

i've even found some download links so you have no excuse.

aren't you lucky!

episode 1 | episode 2 | episode 3episode 4 | episode 5 | episode 6

the hangover review

i'll try and keep this pretty short and avoid any spoilers. this is the third film i've seen from my new movies post - and it was very good! i'm a pretty big fan of todd phillips' movies anyway (old school, starsky & hutch, road trip, school for scoundrels ... umm not so much) but this didn't disappoint.

alot of these kinds of movies can have a tendency to use up all the funny parts in the trailer but the movie felt pretty funny all the way through. i wouldn't go as far as to say "funniest movie of 2009" (i'm hoping bruno with come through for that) but it's a good film. probably could wait for the dvd but if you need something to see at the cinema this week this and drag me to hell (if they're still showing it) won't disappoint - yes i'm looking at you terminator salvation...

looking on imdb it seems the studios have deemed this sequel worthy already along with old school dos which is cool.

cake fails

who doesn't like cake? what's the only thing better than a cake? a cake fail! cake wrecks is a blog dedicated to shared the failed cake love.

when someone misspells, mishears or just generally fucks up it's funny, but to take that mistake and blindly run with it straight to the bakers it escalates to a whole new level of comedy.

you can imagine the phone conversation:

"yeah we want it to say 'best wishes suyanne' and underneath that 'we will miss you', got that?".

oh yeah, bonus fail points for also misspelling underneath ... unless the baker was irish.

or "yeah it's really simple. we just want it to say 'welcome baby' ... in pink".

but some of them are just plain funny.

i mean who wouldn't want a chewbacca cake right?

hmm i need a unique mothers day cake, ooh how about this...

happy mothers day!

and just to finish, how about this guy...

i quite like him. can you image if tom hanks in castaway found this washed up instead of the football.

anyway more cake fails to be found at http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com

new kasabian album

kasabian - the west ryder pauper lunatic asylum

quick music recomendation. got this album the other week and it's pretty good (stupid album title aside). i wouldn't say i'm a hardcore kasabian fan but i do like their other two albums and they've got alota good singles in their back catalogue.

fave tracks off the album are probably underdog, where did all the love go, fast fuse, take aim, vlad the impaler and fire. that's quite a few favorites, so i guess it's a pretty good album and probably worthy of a quick blog post.

plus they've done two cool videos, check them out!

quick links info

thought i'd do a quick post just explaining what the quick links are on the right of me blog. they're basically a few site's i like and go back to every now and then so if your reading this maybe you might too. so with the help of my brain and wikipedia (both of which never lie...) here goes:

first is zero punctuation - this is a video game review series created by video game journalist ben “yahtzee” croshaw. he does awesome animated game reviews every week so if your into gaming give this site a go - it's a great afternoon killer and very funny.

cinemassacre is the creation of james rolfe (aka angry video game nerd). it was the first place to feature his old game reviews and now he uses this site to talk about and review movies.

ashens is another reviewer of shit games but his mostly centre around cheap made in china tat and generally quite funny.

adam & joe radio show is a radio show featuring adam & joe ... doesn't need much explaination really does it? anyway they are great, as is their show so either join black squadron or download the podcast but give them a listen sometime.

screenwipe is charlie brooker's tv fucking great tv series. for some reason it airs on bbc four which nobody watches. it's a tv show basically taking the piss out of tv shows. judging by how much shit is on tv i'm all for this and agree with everything this guy has to say.

charlie brooker also writes for the guardian and this is a link to his column titled screen burn. basically screenwipe in text form.

pogue's blog is written by technology writer david pogue. he covers all kinds of technology related cool stuff, so i like to check here now and then.

llewtube is robert llewellyn (kryton off of red dwarf)'s web site. he does this series called car pool where he drivers a comedian somewhere and records the chittle chattle that transpires. it's pretty good. 'nuff said.

fail blog you've probably already heard of from youtube. it's basicially an achieve of people failing with hilarious consequences... meh anyway give some videos a look sometime it's normally quite funny.

natural selection 2

back in 2002 most online gaming revolved around half life on pc in one form or another. while almost everyone will have played or at least heard of counter strike at some point, one awesome mod was released that i spent almost all of my time playing - natural selection.

nothing todo with darwin, this mod resembled more of an alien vs predator style gameplay with two teams (aliens vs marines) fighting to secure the whole of the level. but this wasn't the standard team deathmatch though - this was a first person shooter come real time strategy. i won't go into too much detail but basically one of the marine players plays as the 'commander' who instead of playing first person shooter gets a top down view of the entire level and has the power to drop upgrades and equipment for the other marines to build and use.

in the standard mode the fight between the aliens and marines could go on for hours and these games were awesome. in later updates the creators added another 'combat' mode which was more like a quick version of the game more gears towards team deathmatch. both game modes were fucking great and just thinking about them makes me wanna fire up my old pc and get back into it. problem being i have since done away with my old gaming pc and now just play console games (seems cheaper in the long run and i don't wanna have to upgrade my pc for every new game that comes out). once you get used to the controller instead of mouse and keyboard they aren't so bad. plus now with xbox live, consoles have pretty much caught up to provide a very decent alternative to pc gaming for playing online.

anyway this post has already gone on waaaay longer than i intended. in summary natural selection rocked and the creators are working on a stand alone sequel originally titled natural selection 2. they recently released a new teaser trailer and it looks awesome! with all the multiplatform releases for games these days this may be the one game that gets me back into pc gaming (unless they get this out on xbox, unlikely but you never know). either way i can't freaking wait!

new iphone announcement

yesturday apple made some new annoucements at their worldwide developer conference keynote about some of their upcoming products. you can watch the full presentation here.

they started out with some new macbook updates adding an sd card, firewire 800 (the apple fans cheer at the weirdest things, this was one of them lol), better screen, better battery and some other stuff. after that a guy with an annoying accent showed off some of the new features from their next major operating system update snow leopard. most of it looked pretty sweet and i still think mac os x leopard is the best operating system around at the moment so i'm looking forward to the update. snow leopard is due out in september and apple is only charging $29 to upgrade to it, which will make it extremely hard for microsoft to compete with windows 7 (unless it's a free upgrade from vista - which it should be anyway cos vista's just shit).

after that they moved on to show off the features of the new iphone 3.0 software which adds loads of new features for all iphone's and ipod touch's. they're finally adding copy & paste, a landscape keyboard in all text entry apps and tethering to your computer to use your iphone as a modem to get online wherever you are. one of the features i was most impressed with was the 'find my iphone' service for if you lose your iphone - check it out:

then the big annoucement that the apple fan boys were waiting for - a new iphone called the iphone 3gs (the s stands for speed). time to get my bullet points out, aww yeah! new features include:

• an upgraded camera - still only 3.2mp tho, but the pics they showed off did look pretty good.
• video recording - with ability to upload straight to youtube.
• all the insides have been upgraded to increase speed all round.
• built in compass - so the iphone can rotate maps to the direction your facing.
• voice control - allows you to give your iphone voice commands to phone people, play songs, etc.
• available in 16gb and 32gb versions.
• and it's the same size as the iphone 3g.

the iphone 3gs does seem cool but i don't think they've upgraded enough to warrent me paying for a whole new contact when alot of the features are still coming to my iphone 2g with the 3.0 firmware - but then it took me a while to come round to the iphone in the first place, but now i'll buy almost anything if it's shiney and made by apple:

terminate me to hell movie reviews

ok so out of the new movies i wanna see post i've actually seen two of them now. so i figured i'd do a quick round up of the two while they are kinda fresh in my head. i'll try to avoid spoilers for those who haven't seen them yet anyway.

the matrix + fallout 3 + i am legend = terminator salvation. overall the movie was ok and probably actually quite good for a prequel (i'm trying to think of some examples of a good prequel but none are coming to mind... no wait! ... nope that sucked too ... hmm star trek doesn't really count does it? oh well, suggestions on a postcard...). the special effects were pretty awesome but it did start to feel more like a transformers movie after a while with the bikinator things and that transformer sized terminator. just like all the other terminator movies the terminators eventually find a way to strip down to just their endoskeleton (lava ... the terminators natural enemy) which is probably the best part of the film. i was quite impressed with cg arnie's cameo aswell, he looked just like he did in the original dated terminator movie.

it just kinda sucked the film didn't feel john connor centric. christian bale did a good job which was fucking distracting but the movie seemed to follow sam worthington's character way too much. kyle reese was played really well but wtf was the need for the mute kid? i guess they were trying todo the same thing as aliens with newt but that worked (ripley lost her daughter, newt lost her family, they found eachother and then alien 3 happened ... oh dear) but the girl in this is literally THE most pointless character in a movie. i really have no idea why she was in the film. she's basically the movie equivalent of kevin from south park - except at least he helped out here and there.

for the most part it was ok though, but given the choice i'd save your money and wait for it on dvd and go see drag me to hell instead.

gotta say i. loved. this. movie. i'll admit it's not for everyone but if you liked any of the evil dead movies you should love this. it's like the classic sam raimi style none of that spiderman shit (well 2 was ok i guess). looking at the trailer it's easy to assume it's another one of those films (the ring, the grudge, maybe the saw movies, etc) but i think this kinda puts all of those in their place. i wouldn't really call the movie "scary" but more "jumpy". the film is pretty tense all the way through and you can normally feel the next jump is only a few mins away (i think i jumped twice, but one of those i blame on the girl in the cinema who screamed when she jumped, bloody surround sound). but sam certainly knows how to build his tension. most movies like this i find normally come off as kinda stupid and normally funny for the wrong reasons but this movie empraces that in the same way that the evil dead movies did and is genuinely really funny in places.

anyway check out the clip and check out the movie.

e3 round up

so e3's over for another year but overall it was a pretty good show. if you haven't checked out the major presentations from the show they are probably worth a look if you've got the time. here's the links - microsoft, sony and nintendo.

microsoft seemed to have the strongest show in my opinion. sony did a good job showing off new ps3 stuff coming out and the new psp go does look pretty good. nintendo while doing better than last year (which wasn't difficult) were still a little disappointing. they are obviously set on pleasing the casual gamer so their presentation was quite bizarre considering the only people watching are the hardcore. that said super mario galaxy 2 and the new metroid game look alright. new super mario bros wii seems a bit weird. it's cool they are bringing a classic 2d mario game to the wii with 4 player coop gameplay but i can't help but think they could and should have done this years ago on the n64 or gamecube. watching the gameplay it just looks like they've been beaten to the punch and outdone already by little big planet.

the new motion control stuff from microsoft and sony look pretty interesting. i'm still not really conviced it's the way to go for anyone other than the casual gamers (kids, parents, grandparents, etc) but nintendo seems to be printing money with the wii and ds's success so obviously microsoft and sony want in. out of the two sony's does seem the strongest and most likely to succeed even if the controllers do look like weird glow sticks.

i thought the beatles rock band animated intro was awesome and really well made. can't say i'm a beatles fan (just never really listened much to them) but i liked the songs used and i've never properly tried a rock band game but after seeing this and the game demoed i kinda wanna give both a try.

but all this is all just background noise from e3. the major stuff i am looking forward to (also mentioned in my upcoming gaming awesomeness post) is:

call of duty modern warfare 2 - this just looks awesome. i'm a pretty big fan of all of the call of duty games but the video of the new demo shown at e3 looks pretty amazing. this could be goldeneye amazing :)

aliens vs predator - like i said before i've been a fan of the games series for a long time (less said about the movies the better) but the new videos of the predator gameplay demo look really fun. i especially like the new way the predator can jump from tree to tree just like in the movies.

left 4 dead 2 - wasn't expecting this game to be shown off or released so soon after left 4 dead which only came out in october. first thing i noticed was the improved graphics and some new weapons, which isn't really hard - left 4 dead's graphics looked pretty dated even when it came out but the new trailer looks cool so check it out.

perfect dark xbox live arcade - one of my favorite n64 games coming to xbox 360 is just awesome. hopefully they'll include online play to make a great game even better. cannot wait!

well that about covers e3 2009 the only stuff that i missed was half life 2 episode 3 and a new zelda on wii to look forward to. nevermind, hopefully next year.

until then ever wonder what the bottom of an avatar shoe looks like?

microsoft fail...

mtv movie shawards

after hearing about bruno's entrance i figured i'd check out the mtv movie awards. in the past they've done a few good parodies (matrix reloaded and mission impossible 2 spring to mind) but overall it just feels like a big corporate advert and opportunity for all the 12 year old girls to scream about the dick from twilight or the twat from high school musical (this got real annoying, real fast). don't get me wrong i knew going in this wasn't gunna be the oscars but seriously your doing a (rigged) text vote (is there any other kind these days?) for best movie between the dark knight, slumdog millionare, iron man, high school musical 3 and twilight? maybe it's just my opinion but the first three are kind of in an entirely different league.

make even more annoying by the numerous stupid sponcers messages before the actual adverts. after plugging the best movie text vote it cut to a group the stereotypical dumb "sweet 16" girls voting for twilight all from the same t-mobile phone (one of the sponcers of the show of course). obviously the 12 year old girls prevailed and twilight won best movie. the whole thing just felt so staged and fake. awards shows shouldn't be like this.

that said it wasn't all bad. i thought the host adam samberg came off pretty well (so to speak - not to be confused with jizz in my pants) and i loved hot rod so he seemed a good choice for a host. i loved the idea of using keyboard cat to rap up speeches that overun - this should become a rule for all speeches everywhere in my opinion.

the "cool guys don't look at explosions" song featuring will ferrell was pretty good too and jj abrams keyboard solo was great, and should feature somewhere in the last season of lost.

ben stiller's award introduction was pretty funny with kiefer sunderland breaking down but i was a bit disappointed with triumph the insult comic dog. he just felt uber toned down and out of character really - more auto-cue fakeness i guess, which should actually be the tagline of the show.

always good to see kings of leon live, but they did seem like an odd choice for the target audience of the show which i felt pretty alienated from what with all the twilight bullshit. maybe they were just trying cover all their bases.

as for the whole eminem/bruno thing it was the highlight and probably the funniest bit of the show even if it was all staged which is pretty much guarenteed judging by the rest of the show.

so overall that was the mtv movie awards and to me the shittness pretty much outweighed the good stuff so i can't really recommend watching it unless the dick from twilight makes you moist/jizz in your pants. otherwise watch the highlights and invest the rest of you time doing something more constructive. like burn the rope.