Movie reviews: The Transformers (2007) – Part 46

Alternate Title; Michael Bay forgets to take his Ritalin.

Disclaimer; At the time of this writing, I have another article pending approval by Helium.com that I spend more than enough time complaining about Michael Bay. So don’t mistake this article for a Michael Bay rant. This is a movie review. It just so happens that he directed the film.

And I’ll try to avoid any spoilers.

When I was between the ages of 5-8 years old, I recall coming home from school and plunking down in front of the television to watch episodes of G.I.Joe, Transformers, and Thundercats back to back. The glory days of not caring about deep involving plots, acting, budget, special effects, or the fact that my homework still wasn’t done. If I was lucky it would be done in time for Macgyver anyway. No way was I going to miss those shows.

Gone are those days, and now, twenty years later, I’m of an age where those things matter to me….or they’re supposed to anyway. My homework still isn’t done.

And now that Transformers has hit the big screen, I of course, had to go see it in the theaters. I suppose that was my first mistake.

Now normally I’m the type who goes to see a film if it looks like the theater experience will make a difference in the presentation of the film. Typically special effects, explosions, mass mayhem and carnage are the type of things that draw me into the theater. I had no idea until this film that all of those things could be overdone. I had a lot of trouble tracking the fight scenes as the Autobot on Decepticon combat, for some reason, involved a lot of close ups, dust, debris, explosions, and not enough “letting me see what the heck is happening.”

And that brings me to my next point; the robot choreography. It starts of reasonable enough, but as the Autobots are introduced I couldn’t help but notice that they were all prancing and posing! There are several scenes in the film, particularly during the combat, when the Autobots strike poses and execute rolls and flips as though they were practicing for an audition on Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. To top that off, it seems that all of the Autobots took some Kung Fu lessons during their 20 year hiatus. Much of the robot-on-robot combat involves a lot of jumping around, adding to the confusion that already is the many battles. Funny, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles never looked so tall or metallic before. The human versus robot fight scenes are much easier to follow, with the exception of the climax,

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Movie reviews: The Transformers (2007) – Part 40

Personally, I feel that Transformers are really just a Big Boys kind of a film. It has all the classic elements of what hard-core action packed movies that men love should.

While there is no need for me to illustrate the plot behind Transformers, I’m sure everyone knows what it is about (males and females alike, the ladies probably heard the story many times over from their male fanatics). But maybe you’re thinking about catching this movie and you’re not sure if it’s actually worth the ticket. Well, my advice, if you like ACTION and military power, and you just can’t seem to get tired of the all-traditional good versus evil plot, then Transformers is your movie, baby!

However, you want to be prepared to get your reading glasses ready because the movie not only requires you to read subtitles of the dialogues of the Decepticon (pardon my spelling if it is wrong!)FAST, you also have to have a sharp eye to figure out which Transformer is fighting which throughout the movie.

Unfortunately, I was caught unaware, and I spent half the time trying to figure out which machine was fighting which.

Nonetheless, as I have mentioned, this is an All Boys movie. There’s two residual hot chicks (one’s a blonde and the other’s a brunette, so take your pick), there’s a lot of firearms and missles flying around, sufficient blood and gore (it is a children flick after all, so definitely no SAW sequels materials) and basically being able to relive your childhood dream of seeing the robots in disguise.

My rating: 3 out of 5 Popcorns!

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Anime reviews: D.N. Angel

“D.N.Angel” is a popular anime series that was created by a Japanese company called Dentsu with ADV Films acquiring the North American license. The series lasts for twenty-six episodes. It revolves around a young boy named Daisuke Niwa who lives in a small town and is infatuated with a fellow school girl named Risa Harada. However, Risa only thinks of Daisuke as her only best friend. But his mother and grandfather explain that there’s a secret about Daisuke. However, Daisuke himself doesn’t even know about the secret. It also seems that his family seems to be well versed in magic.

Humorously, Daisuke’s household is booby trapped as a means of training. But it’s revealed that Daisuke has a genetic trait that causes him to transform into a legendary thief known as Phantom Dark. It’s revealed that the Niwa have been thieves and the Phantom Dark genes are a trait that is passed down from Niwa male to male. It’s revealed that Daisuke has to steal an artifact to transform back to normal. With the family pet named With, Daisuke as Dark sprouts black wings that allow him to fly. But Daisuke doesn’t have control when Dark emerges as he has a mind of his own.

It’s also reviewed that the entity is passed to each male generation of the Niwa family at the fourteen. However, it wasn’t the case forty years prior as the grandfather had a daughter. There was no male offspring as females cannot transform into Phantom Dark. But the Harada sisters tend to have an interesting role to play as Riku Harada is attracted to Daisuke while Risa is attracted to Phantom Dark.

In D.N.Angel, Phantom Dark is a legend with a fan base. However, it is revealed that Phantom Dark has a rival in the form of Daisuke’s classmate Satoshi Hiwatari but is really a police commander. As a police officer, Satoshi charged with the task of capturing and arresting Phantom Dark. The family legacy is similar yet different as his real surname is Hikari. The legacy is that Satoshi transforms into Krad who is the homicidal counterpart to Phantom Dark. Krad possesses white angelic wings that contract to Daisuke’s black wings.

It’s the legacy of the Hikari family to capture Dark. While Daisuke tries to control Dark, Satoshi is trying to control Krad. Despite this, Daisuke continues to pull all sorts of heists as his family explains that these artifacts hold special powers.

Interestingly enough, Riku and Risa do not know that both Daisuke and Dark are the same person. However, when Daisuke thinks of Risa, he transforms into Dark.

D.N.Angel has an interesting mix of romance, fantasy, drama, and comedy. At first, I thought it was going to be a pretty violent series as D.N.Angel is short for “Devil ‘n’ Angel.”

The romance angle along with the game of cat and mouse are the driving forces of D.N.Angel. But the romance angel plays the biggest role in the conflict between Daisuke and Dark. In personality, the two of them contract while Dark is very perverted while Daisuke is the more decent individual.

One can possibly relate the cat and mouse game to another popular series called “Death Note”. However, the cat and mouse game revolves around stealing valuable piece of artwork versus killing people off in Death Note. But, the driving force and inspiration behind D.N.Angel is interesting enough.

It’s unknown when D.N.Angel will be aired on TV in North America. Shopping for the series is very difficult in itself as well. The series is more comedic than action packed. Just about anybody can appreciate D.N.Angel. If you’re into chick flicks and romance, you may enjoy D.N.Angel.

For those anticipating D.N.Angel to be aired in North America, keep your fingers crossed.

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Movie reviews: The Transformers (2007) – Part 10

Transformers the Movie was the first ever movie I went to see.

At 5 years old I don’t remember the whole thing but remember being marvelled at the huge war and years later remember hearing a rumour of a little swearing hidden in it’s depths.

So of course when the new film was announced I was eager to go see it and have been keeping tabs on it’s progress since the first teaser trailor.

Shortly after the movie started I realised that this film wasn’t aimed at the scores of current 5 year olds that are playing with the latest incarnation of the transformers toy line. This film was aimed at me and the other 5 year olds who sat in the cinema over 20 years ago with our mouths agape totally consumed.

So what did I make of this film. I did enjoy it but it was very hard to digest everything. Far too many characters and complete inconsistency between humour and serious political points, women with the most stuck fast make up ever, even after a huge city fight they manage to keep that lipstick right where it is supposed to be, and many plot holes. For instance it was finitely explained how and why these alien robots are disguised as everyday human machines (well almost everyday machines) but then there was no explanation as to how Megatron managed to become a state of the art jet when he had been isolated since the time that tea clippers were hi-tech. I guess a big slow floating Megatron would not have had the same effect during the tense well executed battle scenes.

The battle scenes and transforming special effects were amazing though and made the movie well worth seeing, well that and a small role for the type cast Bernie Mac that had me and gladly most others in the cinema in hysterics.

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Movie reviews: The Transformers (2007) – Part 38

The Transformers was, far and away, the best movie of 2007. In fact, The Transformers may very well be the best science fiction movie in the last decade. What is it that made Transformers so great? Simply put, it had the three elements that a science fiction movie needs to have in order to be great: high-quality special effects, a great script and amazing acting. Add to all of this the nostalgia factor, and you will wind up with a runaway blockbuster that is guaranteed to entertain for years to come.

Let’s take a look, first and foremost, at the special effects in The Transformers. The CGI in The Transformers is entirely believable. When you watch this movie, you don’t think you’re looking at an animated picture of a car that changes into a robot; you think you’re looking at the real thing. Take, for example, the scene where the Autobots are sneaking around out in the yard. You really believe that there is a three-story tall robot peeking into a window, and you really believe that the people inside aren’t going to notice him because he is being so stealthy. THAT is quality CGI at its best.

In terms of the script, The Transformers couldn’t have been any better. From the beginning, you actually care about the characters. You sympathize with them, and you want them to succeed. The plot holes in The Transformers are so small as to be insignificant. The action steadily builds until the end, when you’ve got a full-on, nonstop, in-your-face Autobot vs. Decepticon donnybrook.

Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox shine as protagonists. Fox manages to be sexy yet tasteful, and keeps the guys’ interest piqued through the film. The presence of veteran actors Jon Voight as Defense Secretary John Keller and John Turturro as Agent Simmons is a bonus to The Transformers, albeit an unnecessary one; LaBeouf and Fox (along with the voices of Peter Cullen and Hugo Weaving as Optimus Prime and Megatron respectively) carry this film along.

Topping things off are all of the references to the old Transformers cartoons. When LaBeouf says, “more than meets the eye,” the theater burst into cheers.

The Transformers earns 11 1/2 stars out of 10.

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Michael Bay: Destroying our childhoods? – Part 1

As near as I can tell, Michael Bay hates my generation and everything we stand for. I don’t know why. Did we wrong him in a previous life? Did he get beat up by the younger kids at school or something? To what do we owe this animosity, that he so suddenly desires to snap up films that he knows are going to be bringing my generation screaming into the theaters like lemmings to a cliff side, only to turn around and tell us that everything we loved in our youths is wrong and foul?

Case in point, in a recent news article in Wired Magazine (Issue 15.07, and posted on Wired.com on 06/27/07 “The Rebirth of Optimus Prime: Behind the scenes with Michael Bay” by Scott Brown) I must quote;

“I’ve heard so many people say, ‘Michael Bay, you’ve destroyed my childhood,’ ” says the man himself from the cathedra of his Santa Monica, California, editing bay. Appropriately, Bay is wearing a black Decepticons T-shirt. He’s aware of his image and, to some extent, relishes it. “I knew there were fans,” he sighs, shaking his shaggy blond power-mane. “I didn’t know there were people who’d hunt you down. I urge them to watch the 1986 animated movie, go watch the cartoon. You’ll want to shoot yourself.”

Well, now we all know what drove wrestler Chris Benoit to his tragic end; he must have been watching reruns of the Transformers cartoon! Thank goodness I haven’t had the chance to buy the DVD’s yet, as I wouldn’t want to suffer from any post-nostalgic suicidal tendencies.

Okay, yes, I’m taking what he said out of context, but obviously the sentiment is there. Clearly, Michael Bay feels that the shows that I watched when I was a child were garbage, even for their time.

Funny, I remember them being highly entertaining, fun, and if you owned the toys, even somewhat interactive. In fact, I did go back and watch my VHS copy of “Transformers: The Motion Picture” from 1986. And you know what? I STILL enjoy it, to this day. I’m not a father yet, but I can honestly say I watch in horror at some of the mindless drivel spouted out of today’s equivalent of cartoon entertainment. Frankly, I’d rather have my child watching the old Transformers cartoons than some of the more modern ones, like Spongebob Squarepants for example, which strikes me as the drug-induced rantings of a functionally-retarded insomniac poodle! It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Michael Bay watches it religiously.

At least Transformers made SENSE! It had a plot, an engaging story arc, characters that you loved

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Movie reviews: The Transformers (2007) – Part 67

Michael Bay may just be the most successful panhandler in the history of time. He will not stop sweeping his camera, not even for a moment to read or revise the script. Transformers was a simple animated series, but at least it made sense and eventually ended. This adaptation does not make sense, though it undoubtedly will make more dollars than Gone With the Wind, which is where it should go.

It makes the mistakes of many modern summer tentpoles – it panders to a marketer’s idea of every possible market: There’s a bit for the kids, a part for the dads, a gear for the hardcore fans, and even a spare cog for the mothers who bother to see it. All those parts transform into a towering wreck of metal with too many stories and not enough story. Aliens invade; Some are friendly, some are not; War begins; An innocent boy and his girl are caught in the middle; great story on paper, but the only paper it was on was the poster.

The film barely gets off the ground with the action packed B-story of Tyrese Gibson’s platoon. An A.I. zombie helicopter, reported shot-down, goes rogue in the high desert and the world goes on high alert. The opening action is an accurate harbinger of the excellent CG and mediocre choreography to slightly vault the rest of the film. I couldn’t tell a propeller from a rotor from a credit sequence. And after anything transforms, I’m completely lost in the mech-melee mix. Good thing the inept government steps in to clear things up. Someone, Jar Jar Soundwave, hacks into the Pentagon’s mainframe. So Jon Voight arrests some random hackers to help at anything but arresting the audience.

Meanwhile back in the 80s, a teen boy loves a girl and a car. Enter protagonist, finally. Shia LeBeouf shows up just in time to get his first auto, bought by his dad’s low-limit credit card, charged with a a high-level mysterious power – it’s a transformer. This A-story safely grounds the dead-spinning film, which should have started here and ended with the story of how the Transformers came to be and came to be on Earth. But Spielberg spread his thin veneer of mastery over the master copy by adding in a military B-story for the military B-story, a hacker-y C-story, and, of course, an archeological dig F-story that looks like a DVD bogus feature from National Treasure. And we’re left to transform the incompatible pieces of a film into something we want to like, which may explain why you do.

Somewhere in the mess of the movie, Shia gets the girl, Tyrese

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ALIENS WITH NO BRAINS HAVE REPLACED THE MAJORITY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!

FLASH! FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: The aliens look just like real people but they don’t act like real people. They don’t return phone calls – even if they’re in business to make money. Their leisure “activity” is watching TV and they play video games when they’re not watching TV. They can’t spell. They have major sexual problems. The best way to identify one of these aliens is by their complete failure to communicate properly.

In 1976, the movie “Network” foreshadowed the hollowness of television, the addictive nature of its effect on the human mind, and it predicted the development of a culture without culture that would pervade the United States in the 21st century. I believe there has been a massive deterioration of ethical humanness in our society and that the phenomenon of dehumanization can be attributed to the following social changes:

1. The baby boomer generation became yuppies* who abandoned their parents’ meaningful core values.
2. The yuppies are responsible for their children being egocentric and needing instant gratification.
3. The yuppie parents and their children have become addicted to television and other mindless entertainment.
4. While all this was happening, the school system was being decimated by politically conservative administrations in the name of “cost savings”.

The result of the four social processes interacting simultaneously over the last 40 years has been a transformation of our society from a vibrant and goal oriented energy dynamo to a self-centered and pleasure driven static state. During the first half of the 20th century, most people occupied their spare time with constructive and creative activities such as reading books, writing letters, socializing with other people in discussion groups, actively supporting political issues, and spending large amounts of quality time with their children – to name just a few examples. For a brief moment in time during the 1960’s, the hippies opened up human consciousness in a way that had never happened before and of course they were met with emotional resistance from the status quo. As the cost of living began to increase dramatically in the late 1970’s, people had to devote more time to their jobs and consequently reduce the amount of time they could spend with their children. In the 1980’s and 1990’s it became common for both parents to have to work in order to keep up with rising housing costs, and the yuppie disease became contagious. Economic forces eventually became stronger than other social forces and even the old hippies were compelled to focus their energy on making a living so that they could afford to live decently. As people spent more and more time working at their jobs, they experienced more and more work related stress and the easiest way to relax after a long hard day at work was to watch television.

The 20th century has included a larger number of scientific advances and significant inventions than any other century in all of human history. Television was an invention that had broad based appeal which gave it vast commercial potential. The first popular television programs were pure entertainment. Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theater (1948), The Cisco Kid (1949), Amos and Andy (1951), and I Love Lucy (1951) kept America glued to their TV sets. Television is also capable of delivering news, intelligent commentary, and educational shows. The Public Broadcasting System has done an outstanding job of elevating the medium, bringing shows like Masterpiece Theater, Bradshaw On The Family, Great Chefs of Europe, and Sesame Street to the airwaves. Commercial television has also produced high quality entertainment such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, All in the Family, MASH, and Seinfeld. But unfortunately, commercial television has found its greatest popularity in short, silly sitcoms and if I were to list them all, this article would explode any conceivable definition of the word concise.

The Internet was the last great invention of the 20th century. The Internet had its roots in a partnership between the government and the universities and it was conceived as “the information super-highway” in order to store and archive data. People use the Internet as an immediately accessible library. Of course, they also use the Internet for mindless game entertainment and pornography. However, the big difference between television and the Internet is that television does not require or allow input from the viewer, while the Internet allows users to participate in many ways. An enormous number of web sites have been created by individuals, chat rooms offer places for people to interact with each other, blogging allows almost anybody to become a published writer, and email provides virtually instantaneous, low cost, world wide communication. The Internet is not only the world’s biggest library that cannot possibly be destroyed by a fire, but it also offers the promise of connecting all human minds together in a way that has not been imagined yet. However, a sinister potential exists in the combination of high speed Internet and cable TV service that is provided by the biggest corporations (who are not necessarily altruistic). Incorporating the trend towards increased government control and censorship within an understanding of how big corporations operate in America leads a thinking person to a frightening thought.

Another frightening thought concerns one of the most significant social trends that has been increasing dramatically during the second half of the 20th century – divorce. In the 19th century and in all preceding centuries, divorce was relatively rare (except for Henry VIII, of course). Recent research indicates that divorce rates in the United States have been rising since the beginning of the 20th century, with a short-term decline during the Great Depression and a spike just after World War II. In 2005, the New York Times reported that the percentage of all marriages which end in divorce peaked in the United States at about 41 percent around 1980 and was approximately 31 percent in 2002. One definition of the word “plague” is a widespread affliction or calamity. I believe that divorce is a plague on our society because if even 1/3 of all marriages end in divorce, that is a widespread affliction and a calamity. In all previous centuries, people did not conceive of divorce as a satisfactory answer to a marriage that has problems, but that kind of thinking has changed. I believe that the change in thinking can be related to a subliminal impact of television because television has conditioned people to accept and desire instant gratification. Television provides too many choices and it makes those choices too easy for everybody. Having a wide variety of choices can be good. But when it comes to the subject of marriage, having a wide variety of choices is not good. It seems like people are thinking, “If I’m not getting what I want, I’ll just change the channels. If I don’t like the food here, I’ll go next door and eat in a different restaurant.” So they are leaping out of marriages and into divorce court.

Finally, consider the concept of capitalism as an economic system that has pervasive effects on societal forces. Capitalism is based on the production of commodities for sale and profit, and it allows private ownership of the means of production. In the United States, capitalism exists in combination with democracy but capitalism does not necessarily imply democracy. It flourished quite well in England under the monarchist system during the 19th century and not quite so well under various dictatorships in the 20th century. Capitalism encourages the strongest, the most intelligent, the most aggressive, and the most competitive people to rise to the top and succeed. I believe that the combination of capitalism and democracy has been America’s great strength, and the power inherent in this combination was the key to becoming the greatest country the world has ever seen. Our success has allowed us to dominate the world economically as well as militarily.

But if I am correct about our society having been transformed from a vibrant and goal oriented energy dynamo to a self-centered and pleasure driven static state, then we may have already reached our peak of power. The United States has purposefully tried to spread capitalism and democracy all over the world, not only in an attempt to combat communism, but also because we sincerely believe that we have the best economic and political system and we have a desire to give to others who are less fortunate than we are. It is possible that our largess may backfire on us because many countries who are trying to follow our lead are not oriented around their television sets. If their cultures are strong enough to resist the addictive drug that television really is, and if they pursue capitalism and democracy to the same end that we did in the United States, then the strongest, most intelligent, and most aggressive countries will rise to the top and succeed. The United States can be out-competed and the Japanese have already risen to the top position in more than one field. Our infrastructure is so rich and so enormous that it would take a long time to tumble from the apex of power. But it is possible for that to happen.

This article should not be misinterpreted as doom and gloom philosophy. It is intended to be a wake-up call.

*Yuppy: A bastardized version of the word hippy. The word hippy refers to a person who rejected established institutions and values and sought spontaneity, direct personal relations expressing love, and expanded consciousness. The word yuppy refers to a young urban professional who has an affluent lifestyle.

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Transformers Energon – Megatron Raid 2/3

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Movie reviews: The Transformers (2007) – Part 42

Can anything be bigger than this?

“Silence is golden.

These are the infamous words that are plastered over every theater screen in the world at the beginning of a film in many different languages. However when a film production agency finally gives fans what they have wanted for years since its conception in the 1980’s, “silence is golden” no longer exists. “Transformers” was an animated series and line of toys created in 1984 about robots that could transform into different objects such as jet planes or trucks. There has been one animated series and now the most incredible representation of this phenomenon known to man. A classic tale of good versus evil with the Autobots as the protectors and the Decepticons as, basically the evildoers. Can’t get any better than that. So how do you present an 80’s television series to a brand new generation twenty years later?

You relate to your audience (Shia LaBouf your main character and Megan Fox as the car smart, gorgeous girl that is out of his league), you have incredible special effects (utilizing a large team of experts including David J. Barker of Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End), amazing sound (Peter J. Devlin of Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, sound mixer, among others), well known producers (Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg) and an action genius at the helm of the whole crew (action director Michael Bay). The audience won’t be able to keep quiet. The story begins with a narration in a very familiar voice (the fans remember him as Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots), then quick changes to Qatar, where a military base is established. This is where the a strange, large machine starts hacking into the US computer system and scanning top secret documents. While the government is chasing their tails about what country could create such an advanced piece of metal we see a high school get his first car and the steering wheel contains that one symbol that is decipherable by admirers from back in the day: the Autobots icon. And so the story goes on: the main character freaks out because his car has a mind of its own, the girl ends up learning more about the robots with the boy, and the robots start to fight out in the open in order to take possession of the Allspark, a very complex life giving cube. A very workable storyline. Shia LaBouf creates a believable character that spouts laughable quips here and there, very realistic reactions for the kind of situation he is thrown in. And honestly you can’t stop paying attention to him. You see Josh Duhamel as a captain who, in the beginning, is just trying to get home to his wife and new born child, but that sub story is forgotten after you see Bumblebee change for the first time. When you take a concept like Transformers and try to create subplots, there’s no point because all they’re going to be is forgotten and discarded due to the grandeur of robots in disguise’.

In a nutshell the revamped rendition of this classic is unbelievable, with such visual clarity that you forget you’re watching something that was made up and start thinking that this could possibly happen. You will never walk by another car again without thinking that at any minute, it could transform into a human saving fighting machine that has understood our form of language through the “world wide web”. From the moment you finish watching the movie, everything will be “more than meets the eye”.

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