July 28, 2007

@ngband

Mildly scary Japanese Flash animation dramatizing the familiar ASCII action. You haven't lived until you've seen a cartoon dragon morph into a green 'd'.

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July 15, 2007

Transformers review: insufficient robots, fighting

I'm allegedly watching Transformers, but for some reason, I'm not seeing any GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING. Instead there's a bunch of hu-mang interest about people's procreation and linguistics and hogwashings. Who the hell sees Transformers for the hu-mang interest? NO ONE, that's who. NOW SHOW ME GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING ALREADY.

...heh. They had to call it "teh cube" because people think of something else nowadays when you say "Matrix." I like how Frenzy seems to remain hidden simply by being so bloody weird that people discount him as if he were pink and enclosed by a Somebody Else's Problem field.

At LAST, a GIANT ROBOT. Er, just the one. And he's fighting hu-mangs, not other giant robots. What the hell?

Hu-mangs, hu-mangs, hu-mangs. A cheap stab at Indian call centers supposed to be "hilariously" juxtaposed with hu-mangs popping their pathetic guns. Half an hour of interminably boring hu-mang interest only to establish that our hu-mang "heroes" are a philistine dweeb and an airhead supposed to be a mechanical genius.

Wow, the car sort of... drives itself? In a film called Transformers? Mysteeerious. The suspense is killing me. The suspense of when we're going to stop pussyfooting and get down to the GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING, that is.

...wait, Bumblebee's supposed to be a Camaro? Ew.

After what, fifteen additional minutes of nothing significant happening, there are two GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING... unseen, because we're looking in the direction of the pathetic hu-mang interest. I hate you, misters Bay and Spielberg.

The sound work is overall pathetic, as well. The transformation sequences sound like someone operating a sewing machine while farting into a vocoder, completely failing to give heft to the, as usual, just-too-liquid-like motion of the computer animation. (Nice work on the grime, though, that looks pretty convincing.) Since this is a "block buster" film, even the rock'n'roll that they do fire up has been thoroughly filtered to ensure that it contains as little testicles as technically possible.

Who was the genius who came up with the concept that Optimus Prime needed lips? And why did you model their "mouths" and "noses" after bloomin' monkeys?

GENERIC FEDERAL SPOOK: What you're about to see is so secret... the secrecy goes to ELEVEN.

OPTIMUS PRIME: Hello. I am the only voice actor in the known universe who can say I am Optimus Prime without giggling uncontrollably.

ENORMOUS PILE OF COMPLETELY POINTLESS CHARACTERS: Human interest! Human interest! Huuuu-mannnng innnteresssst!

GODDAMN MICHAEL FUCKING BAY: Oops, all this human interest took up most of the time we had. Hey animator guys, you can speed up the robots by 40% right? That won't look pathetic at all, and I mean, it's not like people are going to watch a Transformers film for the GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING anyway, know what I mean? That's just, like, an excuse to speak of the human condition. Look, just do what I say already.

At last, a proper Godzilla-scale showdown. The GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING AT LAST actually look kinda cool, except for the demonstratively hu-mang interest crap like pulling back from the GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING so we can see the hu-mang faces reflecting in the glass. THE HU-MANGS ARE PRESENT, WE GET IT ALREADY! NOW GET WITH THE GIANT ROBOTS KICKING EACH OTHER'S ARSES!

There's a pathetic plot twist to make Megatron fall over so they can end the film and go home. Something like an actual plot is hinted at, then promptly left to wither. The enormous pile of pointless characters suddenly wink out of existence.

In conclusion, there were not enough GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING by far. Why didn't you warn me of this, Mr. Notley?

(Update: now the VGCats review was spot on.)

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July 14, 2007