The voting is still going down on the Time 100, but former mainstay Shigeru Miyamoto (first time nominee, 'father of modern video games') has dropped from the top-five. Now, at this point his showing was strong enough that there's a good chance he makes the final list anyway... but what's REALLY loathsome is that one of the current top-5 candidates "beating" him is distressingly-unfunny 'trendy' standup hack Dane Cook. This should not stand :)
So here's what ya do: First, click this link:
http://tinyurl.com/2byqfl
And give "Shiggy" a 100% on the "rating" thingee in the upper left-hand corner. Click submit. Then refresh the page and do it again. Repeat as many times as you can, get your pals to do the same, and don't slack: This guy deserves the hookup.
While you're at it, here's the page for the freakishly unfunny star of "Employee of the Month:"
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/time100walkup/article/0,28804,1611030_1610841_1609788,00.html
Cook has already been on this list once, and that's one more time than he had any reason to be. Do the right thing. Give him a zero (or the approximate amount of laughs to be found in his routine, his crappy movie or "Tourgasm") and then give him a zero a couple dozen more times.
Monday, 30 April 2007
Friday, 27 April 2007
REVIEW: The Condemned
It's with some kind of sick irony that I realized, watching the astonishingly loathsome "you've-gotta-be-shitting-me" Big Meaningful Speech moment of "The Condemned," that THIS deplorable crapfest might actually BENEFIT from the recent Virginia Tech tragedy by striking some of the more easily-led in the world as a "meaningful" peice. Y'see, what the trailers aren't telling you is that - I kid you not - "The Condemned" fancies itself a political "message" work: What we have here, believe it or not, is a ham-fisted screed against media violence, the "irresponsible" entertainment industry and the pervasive eeeevil of the Internet. From the WWE.
The only thing worse than a bad movie is a bad message-movie... And the only thing worse than THAT is a bad message movie that aims to condescendingly contradict it's own base of appeal. Even removed from that aspect of it's existance... "The Condemned" is, far and away, the worst film to have yet emerged in 2007. A complete abomination on so many levels it's hard to put into words. Best-described as "aggressively irredeemable," it's the kind of work where you run out of things to critique and start looking in vain for anything nice to say about it. Off the top of my head, the nice things you can say about the latest opus from WWE Films are: It wasn't directed by Brett Ratner, it does not involve anyone directly affiliated with "American Idol" and it does not star Chris Tucker, Dane Cook, Cedric the Entertainer or Carlos Mencia in any capacity.
In the broad strokes, the film is a combo/ripoff of "The Running Man" and "Battle Royale," framed primarily as a star-vehicle for onetime professional wrestling star "Stone-Cold" Steve Austin. He's cast as Jack Conrad, one of nine death row inmates "purchased" from Third World prisons by inscrutable millionaire Ian Breckel (Robert Mammone) and dropped onto a camera-covered desert island with orders to fight to the death for the amusement of customers via a pay-per-view internet feed; with the promise of freedom and cash going to the Last Man Standing. Given that all the other convicts are even LESS noteworthy as "names" than Mr. Austin, (save for Vinnie Jones as the nominal bad guy) and given that Jack Conrad turns out to be a betrayed U.S. Special Forces vet who just wants to get back to his farm, his bottle-bland.. er.. blonde ladyfriend and her two moppets; AND given that the eeeevil Internet Baddies sneeringly select Jack hoping to (I shit you not) exploit worldwide anti-Americanism as an audience-getter ("They're gonna looooove to hate this cowboy!!") you can kinda-sorta guess how this turns out.
Ineptly directed in irritating "shaky-cam" by Scott Wiper (is that a name or a recyclable bathroom product?) this is an "action" film that contains not one memorable or interesting action scene - just jumbled flurries of grunting and pummeling to the tune of the foley department taking out a week's worth of agression on raw meat and pleather sofas. Of the (innevitably) Baskin Robbins assortment of multicultural "players," we do get ONE Japanese martial-artist; but it becomes readily apparent that he's only there so that the old "Raiders of the Lost Ark" gag of a show-offy Eastern fighting-as-art master quickly smacked-down with Good Ol' Fashioned American quick-kill can be ripped off for the umpteenth time. Yawn. That Austin has all the personality of the tree-trunks his physique chiefly resembles isn't much of a surprise, (his initial claim to fame as a wrestler was "shunning" character gimmicks and style in favor of simply embodying a bullheaded, beer-drinkin' bar-brawler,) but it's genuinely shocking how little physical presence he has onscreen - he stomps around with all the grace of a pack-mule, and most of the time seems to be searching in vain for his mark. It's enough to make you miss Brian Bosworth.
As if just being dull and incoherent wasn't enough, the film has a truly off-putting nasty streak when it comes to the targets of it's violence. Nearly EVERYONE in here is on-hand to get stabbed, smacked, shot or blown up... but there's something inescapably "icky" about how much this supposed "bruiser-vs-bruiser" slugfest concentrates on violence against it's female characters. There are two drawn-out, protracted and explicitly-violent rape scenes - one attempted, the other a sucessful gang-rape/murder. The Internet Baddies' skeleton-crew of computer technicians is disproportionately staffed with women, all of whom are there to be gunned down in the finale by a vengeful 'player' who lectures them on the evils of their profession. When the film wants to let us know it's time to start really hating Breckel, he gives his girlfriend a slap across the face. This is lightyears beyond the kitschy homoerotic-phallicentrism of "300"... this is real-deal misogyny, plain and simple. (Incidentally, Mr. Austin has a domestic abuse arrest on his rap sheet. Charming.)
And, yet, even for all those sins, "The Condemned" would be easily dismissable as another Z-grade actioner for the pile if it didn't committ the one gravest sin in all of bad filmmaking: It's got "something to say"... and it's preachy.
Toward the end, when the shit has hit the fan and all the viewers and lackeys are starting to See The Error of They're Ways, we're treated to a gravely-serious lady reporter's televised interview with head-baddie Breckel - who, by the way, is sure to pepper his every bad-guy speech with words like "blogger" and "chat-room" so we know EXACTLY whom the film is training it's moralistic finger on. She takes him to task for what 'entertainments' like his are doing to the culture, especially the children, and the film poses Breckel as a sneering hypocrite hiding behind "it's the parent's responsibility." Incredibly, after Breckel is shown mouthing these words, the Voice of God lady reporter tells him that that's a "cop-out" and that the industry MUST take "responsibility" for what it's putting out. She then - and I swear to you, I'm not exaggerating this - turns to face "the world," he face filling the screen, and sagely intones how very, very ashamed of ourselves we should be for watching things like... well, like this movie... because (again, NOT kidding) when we do "...it is WE who are really The Condemned."
I stand before you stupefied, beholding what I have beheld. I didn't think I'd live to see another "message movie" as moralistic, inane and insulting as "The Island"... but here we have it. A heavy-handed pro-media-censorship "action" movie, brought to us by the makers of "See No Evil." I shudder at the thought that the year is young, and that I may yet see a movie that's actually worse than this.
FINAL RATING: 0/10
The only thing worse than a bad movie is a bad message-movie... And the only thing worse than THAT is a bad message movie that aims to condescendingly contradict it's own base of appeal. Even removed from that aspect of it's existance... "The Condemned" is, far and away, the worst film to have yet emerged in 2007. A complete abomination on so many levels it's hard to put into words. Best-described as "aggressively irredeemable," it's the kind of work where you run out of things to critique and start looking in vain for anything nice to say about it. Off the top of my head, the nice things you can say about the latest opus from WWE Films are: It wasn't directed by Brett Ratner, it does not involve anyone directly affiliated with "American Idol" and it does not star Chris Tucker, Dane Cook, Cedric the Entertainer or Carlos Mencia in any capacity.
In the broad strokes, the film is a combo/ripoff of "The Running Man" and "Battle Royale," framed primarily as a star-vehicle for onetime professional wrestling star "Stone-Cold" Steve Austin. He's cast as Jack Conrad, one of nine death row inmates "purchased" from Third World prisons by inscrutable millionaire Ian Breckel (Robert Mammone) and dropped onto a camera-covered desert island with orders to fight to the death for the amusement of customers via a pay-per-view internet feed; with the promise of freedom and cash going to the Last Man Standing. Given that all the other convicts are even LESS noteworthy as "names" than Mr. Austin, (save for Vinnie Jones as the nominal bad guy) and given that Jack Conrad turns out to be a betrayed U.S. Special Forces vet who just wants to get back to his farm, his bottle-bland.. er.. blonde ladyfriend and her two moppets; AND given that the eeeevil Internet Baddies sneeringly select Jack hoping to (I shit you not) exploit worldwide anti-Americanism as an audience-getter ("They're gonna looooove to hate this cowboy!!") you can kinda-sorta guess how this turns out.
Ineptly directed in irritating "shaky-cam" by Scott Wiper (is that a name or a recyclable bathroom product?) this is an "action" film that contains not one memorable or interesting action scene - just jumbled flurries of grunting and pummeling to the tune of the foley department taking out a week's worth of agression on raw meat and pleather sofas. Of the (innevitably) Baskin Robbins assortment of multicultural "players," we do get ONE Japanese martial-artist; but it becomes readily apparent that he's only there so that the old "Raiders of the Lost Ark" gag of a show-offy Eastern fighting-as-art master quickly smacked-down with Good Ol' Fashioned American quick-kill can be ripped off for the umpteenth time. Yawn. That Austin has all the personality of the tree-trunks his physique chiefly resembles isn't much of a surprise, (his initial claim to fame as a wrestler was "shunning" character gimmicks and style in favor of simply embodying a bullheaded, beer-drinkin' bar-brawler,) but it's genuinely shocking how little physical presence he has onscreen - he stomps around with all the grace of a pack-mule, and most of the time seems to be searching in vain for his mark. It's enough to make you miss Brian Bosworth.
As if just being dull and incoherent wasn't enough, the film has a truly off-putting nasty streak when it comes to the targets of it's violence. Nearly EVERYONE in here is on-hand to get stabbed, smacked, shot or blown up... but there's something inescapably "icky" about how much this supposed "bruiser-vs-bruiser" slugfest concentrates on violence against it's female characters. There are two drawn-out, protracted and explicitly-violent rape scenes - one attempted, the other a sucessful gang-rape/murder. The Internet Baddies' skeleton-crew of computer technicians is disproportionately staffed with women, all of whom are there to be gunned down in the finale by a vengeful 'player' who lectures them on the evils of their profession. When the film wants to let us know it's time to start really hating Breckel, he gives his girlfriend a slap across the face. This is lightyears beyond the kitschy homoerotic-phallicentrism of "300"... this is real-deal misogyny, plain and simple. (Incidentally, Mr. Austin has a domestic abuse arrest on his rap sheet. Charming.)
And, yet, even for all those sins, "The Condemned" would be easily dismissable as another Z-grade actioner for the pile if it didn't committ the one gravest sin in all of bad filmmaking: It's got "something to say"... and it's preachy.
Toward the end, when the shit has hit the fan and all the viewers and lackeys are starting to See The Error of They're Ways, we're treated to a gravely-serious lady reporter's televised interview with head-baddie Breckel - who, by the way, is sure to pepper his every bad-guy speech with words like "blogger" and "chat-room" so we know EXACTLY whom the film is training it's moralistic finger on. She takes him to task for what 'entertainments' like his are doing to the culture, especially the children, and the film poses Breckel as a sneering hypocrite hiding behind "it's the parent's responsibility." Incredibly, after Breckel is shown mouthing these words, the Voice of God lady reporter tells him that that's a "cop-out" and that the industry MUST take "responsibility" for what it's putting out. She then - and I swear to you, I'm not exaggerating this - turns to face "the world," he face filling the screen, and sagely intones how very, very ashamed of ourselves we should be for watching things like... well, like this movie... because (again, NOT kidding) when we do "...it is WE who are really The Condemned."
I stand before you stupefied, beholding what I have beheld. I didn't think I'd live to see another "message movie" as moralistic, inane and insulting as "The Island"... but here we have it. A heavy-handed pro-media-censorship "action" movie, brought to us by the makers of "See No Evil." I shudder at the thought that the year is young, and that I may yet see a movie that's actually worse than this.
FINAL RATING: 0/10
Miyamoto: #1!
Kick-ass.
As of 1:15pm ET today, the Time Magazine 100 Most Influential People poll has Shigeru Miyamoto ranked as the #1 most-influential person in the world! Stephen Colbert and J.K. Rowling trail at 2nd and 3rd, respectively. Awesome. Just completely, totally awesome.
(photo found on: http://www.tv.com/users/princesszelda/updates.php?filter=journal)
Now let's keep him up there until publication! Vote often, vote HIGH: http://tinyurl.com/2byqfl
As of 1:15pm ET today, the Time Magazine 100 Most Influential People poll has Shigeru Miyamoto ranked as the #1 most-influential person in the world! Stephen Colbert and J.K. Rowling trail at 2nd and 3rd, respectively. Awesome. Just completely, totally awesome.
(photo found on: http://www.tv.com/users/princesszelda/updates.php?filter=journal)
Now let's keep him up there until publication! Vote often, vote HIGH: http://tinyurl.com/2byqfl
COMING ATTRACTIONS: GODZILLA (GOJIRA)
First up, we have the trailer put out for the American release of Godzilla.
While this is the original Japanese trailer for Gojira. A slight difference in focus and tone perhaps?
While this is the original Japanese trailer for Gojira. A slight difference in focus and tone perhaps?
Wednesday, 25 April 2007
INTERMISSION
At some point, even the most rabid of movie lovers has to leave the comfort of the darkened theater and wander out into the lobby. And on those rare occasions when I can actually tear myself away from the screen, I think I'll use the time to pass along some of the interesting things I run across while preparing my movie reviews.
It looks like Father Roderick and the folks over at SQPN will soon be getting into the movie review business. Of course, while we here at The B-Movie Catechism are content to hang out at the drive-ins and bargain matinées, SQPN can afford to send Father Roderick to the megaplex to review movies with a little higher budget than the fare you'll find here. Check out their first test run at Beyond The Movies where the good Father takes a look at Harrison Ford in Firewall. (Personally, I think that movie could have been much improved by a guy in a rubber monster suit, but what do I know?)
In Eegah related news, The B-Movie Cast (Episode 8) recently scored an interview with Eegah himself, Richard Kiel. Vince talks to Mr. Kiel about his long acting career and his upcoming biographical novel on Cassius Clay (the southern abolitionist, not the boxer). It turns out he's something of a Renaissance giant, who knew? Richard Kiel also comes across as a pretty decent guy. There's an interesting testimonial on his home page where he discusses his struggle with alcohol and how he conquered it through prayer.
And finally, if you don't mind occasionally reading opposing viewpoints, I ran across a blog by Steve Gerber, the guy who wrote the memorable 1970s run of Man-Thing. Gerber is a declared agnostic who recently was given the assignment by DC Comics to write a story featuring an angel/super-hero. In his two part post, here and here, he discusses the problem of writing God and the Heavenly Hosts as comic book characters, especially when he doesn't believe in them. I bring it up for two reasons. One is that he raises some of the basic questions many people have which a Christian should be able to address. But the main reason is simply to point out to some of the Catholic Dads who might stop by just what's going on in comic books these days. A majority of today's comics are aimed squarely at the high school/college age crowd. The stories often have very adult oriented writing and graphics, and the authors freely advance their personal views on politics, sex, religion, etc. (And I think it's a fair statement to say that the majority of them are not orthodox Catholic in their beliefs. The words "openly hostile" often come to mind.) If one of your younger kids has a stack of comics lying around, and you haven't flipped through them, it might be well worth your time to make sure you think they're age appropriate.
Anyway, it's time to head back into the theater where I belong. The main focus of this blog will always be on the movie reviews, but if enough people find this interesting, I'll poke my head back out into the light every now and then. Got to go now, the lights are already dimming.
In Eegah related news, The B-Movie Cast (Episode 8) recently scored an interview with Eegah himself, Richard Kiel. Vince talks to Mr. Kiel about his long acting career and his upcoming biographical novel on Cassius Clay (the southern abolitionist, not the boxer). It turns out he's something of a Renaissance giant, who knew? Richard Kiel also comes across as a pretty decent guy. There's an interesting testimonial on his home page where he discusses his struggle with alcohol and how he conquered it through prayer.
And finally, if you don't mind occasionally reading opposing viewpoints, I ran across a blog by Steve Gerber, the guy who wrote the memorable 1970s run of Man-Thing. Gerber is a declared agnostic who recently was given the assignment by DC Comics to write a story featuring an angel/super-hero. In his two part post, here and here, he discusses the problem of writing God and the Heavenly Hosts as comic book characters, especially when he doesn't believe in them. I bring it up for two reasons. One is that he raises some of the basic questions many people have which a Christian should be able to address. But the main reason is simply to point out to some of the Catholic Dads who might stop by just what's going on in comic books these days. A majority of today's comics are aimed squarely at the high school/college age crowd. The stories often have very adult oriented writing and graphics, and the authors freely advance their personal views on politics, sex, religion, etc. (And I think it's a fair statement to say that the majority of them are not orthodox Catholic in their beliefs. The words "openly hostile" often come to mind.) If one of your younger kids has a stack of comics lying around, and you haven't flipped through them, it might be well worth your time to make sure you think they're age appropriate.
Anyway, it's time to head back into the theater where I belong. The main focus of this blog will always be on the movie reviews, but if enough people find this interesting, I'll poke my head back out into the light every now and then. Got to go now, the lights are already dimming.
Fire burns. Water flows. History repeats.
Once upon a time, there was a blockbuster movie.
It hadn't even come out yet, but everyone already knew it was going to be huge. It didn't really have any huge stars in it's lineup, and yet it didn't seem to need them. Because it was a "franchise" adaptation, a big-budget Hollywood re-imagining of older material. The material in question was of somewhat "dubious" origin, at least as far as the old-guard critical press elite were concerned: An import from Japan, made legendary in the U.S. as a fixture of Saturday Morning kiddie TV and toys. It's lead character wasn't even human, and would be created entirely using CGI... a prospect which sent eyes-rolling and tongues-clucking throughout the aforementioned critical elite. But the fans knew better. Who needs some overpriced marquee-name "human," or even a B-list tagalong? They knew who the REAL star was.
And yet, among the fans there was concern and discontent: They'd been down this road before, and they knew the danger of trusting the makers of megabudget summer popcorn films to understand the essential "soul" of the material they sought to re-configure into The Next Big Thing. Would the "specialness" of the franchise be gutted in order to appeal to a lowest-common-denominator "mass audience? Would the character(s) be changed beyond the point of recognition by studio-dictated designs with little to no respect for what had made them iconic in the first place? There was every reason to believe that such was almost... innevitable.
The key bone of symbolic contention between the fans and the filmmakers would become the design of the signature character(s), with rumors swirling in the fanbase of radical (and radically-underwhelming-looking) reworkings underway. Fanning the flames was the fact that the character(s) had yet to be fully-glimpsed, doled out in teasing images of limbs and details. For the longest time, the film's signature peice of advertising key-art was simply a closeup of the main character's EYE...
And then there was the filmmaker(s) themselves. Proven they were, yes, at the making of enjoyable genre-fluff. Films which many of the fans had greatly enjoyed, though perhaps in a somewhat ironically-detached "whee, it's just a ride-movie!" fashion. Oh, the filmmaker(s) in question had been greatly suited to those. But to THIS? For all the pyrotechnic skill previously displayed, were they REALLY the best choice to be helming something which - however quirky - had always worked best when infused with a certain degree of sincere respect and intelligence? Or was it merely an indication that those in charge had no intention or ability for sincerity here... that they saw merely the chance to crank out a generic, dumbed-down genre-entry for the summer season, hoping that the in-name-only connection to this "culty" franchise would be worth a few extra million bucks of "fanboy" lucre?
I'm talking, of course, about the 1998 American remake of "Godzilla."
BUT, as I trust most of you already gathered, I'm ALSO talking about "Transformers."
In any case... At one point in the great Godzilla debacle, a bit of "leaked" visual information appeared on the web that seemed to confirm that the G-Fans' worst character-design fears had been not only realized... but exceeded. It wasn't so much that American Godzilla (or "GINO: Godzilla In Name Only") was "different," but rather the VOLUMES that the difference implied - when coupled with all the bad news and worse rumors that had come before - about the complete lack of understanding, appreciation or even CARE held by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich in regard to the franchise they were taking the reins of. Faced with this, the filmmakers issued statements claiming that the designs were "fake," or "decoys," or several other curious-sounding explanations.
Trouble is, it turns out that wasn't true. What people had seen was a real, and the bad feeling it gave them was justified: "GINO" was a financial dissapointment, a critical disaster and remains an industry-punchline and film-geek cautionary tale to this day. As you can see, the paralells between the "Godzilla" disaster and potential "Transformers" fan-bust are somewhat hard to ignore, so much so that it already has an intentionally familiar-sounding moniker in the circles where it counts: "TINO."
It hadn't even come out yet, but everyone already knew it was going to be huge. It didn't really have any huge stars in it's lineup, and yet it didn't seem to need them. Because it was a "franchise" adaptation, a big-budget Hollywood re-imagining of older material. The material in question was of somewhat "dubious" origin, at least as far as the old-guard critical press elite were concerned: An import from Japan, made legendary in the U.S. as a fixture of Saturday Morning kiddie TV and toys. It's lead character wasn't even human, and would be created entirely using CGI... a prospect which sent eyes-rolling and tongues-clucking throughout the aforementioned critical elite. But the fans knew better. Who needs some overpriced marquee-name "human," or even a B-list tagalong? They knew who the REAL star was.
And yet, among the fans there was concern and discontent: They'd been down this road before, and they knew the danger of trusting the makers of megabudget summer popcorn films to understand the essential "soul" of the material they sought to re-configure into The Next Big Thing. Would the "specialness" of the franchise be gutted in order to appeal to a lowest-common-denominator "mass audience? Would the character(s) be changed beyond the point of recognition by studio-dictated designs with little to no respect for what had made them iconic in the first place? There was every reason to believe that such was almost... innevitable.
The key bone of symbolic contention between the fans and the filmmakers would become the design of the signature character(s), with rumors swirling in the fanbase of radical (and radically-underwhelming-looking) reworkings underway. Fanning the flames was the fact that the character(s) had yet to be fully-glimpsed, doled out in teasing images of limbs and details. For the longest time, the film's signature peice of advertising key-art was simply a closeup of the main character's EYE...
And then there was the filmmaker(s) themselves. Proven they were, yes, at the making of enjoyable genre-fluff. Films which many of the fans had greatly enjoyed, though perhaps in a somewhat ironically-detached "whee, it's just a ride-movie!" fashion. Oh, the filmmaker(s) in question had been greatly suited to those. But to THIS? For all the pyrotechnic skill previously displayed, were they REALLY the best choice to be helming something which - however quirky - had always worked best when infused with a certain degree of sincere respect and intelligence? Or was it merely an indication that those in charge had no intention or ability for sincerity here... that they saw merely the chance to crank out a generic, dumbed-down genre-entry for the summer season, hoping that the in-name-only connection to this "culty" franchise would be worth a few extra million bucks of "fanboy" lucre?
I'm talking, of course, about the 1998 American remake of "Godzilla."
BUT, as I trust most of you already gathered, I'm ALSO talking about "Transformers."
In any case... At one point in the great Godzilla debacle, a bit of "leaked" visual information appeared on the web that seemed to confirm that the G-Fans' worst character-design fears had been not only realized... but exceeded. It wasn't so much that American Godzilla (or "GINO: Godzilla In Name Only") was "different," but rather the VOLUMES that the difference implied - when coupled with all the bad news and worse rumors that had come before - about the complete lack of understanding, appreciation or even CARE held by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich in regard to the franchise they were taking the reins of. Faced with this, the filmmakers issued statements claiming that the designs were "fake," or "decoys," or several other curious-sounding explanations.
Trouble is, it turns out that wasn't true. What people had seen was a real, and the bad feeling it gave them was justified: "GINO" was a financial dissapointment, a critical disaster and remains an industry-punchline and film-geek cautionary tale to this day. As you can see, the paralells between the "Godzilla" disaster and potential "Transformers" fan-bust are somewhat hard to ignore, so much so that it already has an intentionally familiar-sounding moniker in the circles where it counts: "TINO."
Recently, the part of the web that covers this stuff had ANOTHER "leaked peak" moment on their hands. A video clip that seemed to confirm (or at least strongly-indicate) that the already much-maligned re-design of "Transformers" lead-good guy Optimus Prime was set to give trans-fans even more to be down about. Faced with this, director Michael Bay offers his denial:
http://www.michaelbay.com/blog/newsblog.html (scroll down to the 2nd 4/22 entry.) Short version: It was a test-shot. Um... or it was a marketing thing. Or it was the Europeans.
Uh-huh. Now, I'm reasonably confident that given the "fuss" over this we won't see it in the movie when it's released. But I'm almost not really buying the explanation(s). So many bad ideas in this have already been seen, evidencing nothing more complicated than lack of good design-sense or franchise respect... why should THIS one require some bizzare explanation? Can "European marketing test-shots" also explain away Prime's moronic "dude-Fast-and-The-Furious-is-da-illest-movie-E'VA!!!!" flame-decals? "Alien Jet?" Starscream looking like the bastard offspring of Donkey Kong and a fried chicken-breast?
For what it's worth, I'm not the only one. Joblo.com is skeptical as well:
http://www.joblo.com/bay-denies-lips
And, for perspective, let's keep in mind that Joblo was founded by dudes who didn't like that there wasn't a place where you could find film writers who actually liked Michael Bay's "Armageddon."
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1612687-1,00.html
P.S. To the folks who's additude on this is "yeah, but maybe we're still getting a kickass giant robot movie out of it even if it isn't a particularly great Transformers movie, so it's good for the genre, right?" I was with ya for awhile, but ask yourselves this: How many monster movies did we get as a consolation prize for "GINO?"
Miyamoto / Time100 UPDATE!
Cool, exceedingly cool.
As of this time last night and holding, doubtlessly thanks to web-based get-out-the-vote "campaigns" like the one I posted here (and were posted all over the geekscape, it'd seem) Shigeru Miyamoto has risen to the #2 most-influential spot on Time Magazine's official "100 Most Influential People of The Year" list.
Good job, now keep it up! Here's a fresh link:
http://tinyurl.com/2byqfl
He's pulled ahead of JK Rowling, who for now sits comfortably at #3. In the #1 spot? Stephen Colbert. That's right, the respective creators of Harry Potter, the Super Mario Bros. and Tek Jansen currently lead for the gold, silver and bronze of worldwide-influence... well ahead of ANY politician, figurehead or policymaker on Earth.
Welcome to Planet Nerd. Official mood: Awesomeness.
As of this time last night and holding, doubtlessly thanks to web-based get-out-the-vote "campaigns" like the one I posted here (and were posted all over the geekscape, it'd seem) Shigeru Miyamoto has risen to the #2 most-influential spot on Time Magazine's official "100 Most Influential People of The Year" list.
Good job, now keep it up! Here's a fresh link:
http://tinyurl.com/2byqfl
He's pulled ahead of JK Rowling, who for now sits comfortably at #3. In the #1 spot? Stephen Colbert. That's right, the respective creators of Harry Potter, the Super Mario Bros. and Tek Jansen currently lead for the gold, silver and bronze of worldwide-influence... well ahead of ANY politician, figurehead or policymaker on Earth.
Welcome to Planet Nerd. Official mood: Awesomeness.
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