Transformers: Dark of the Moon

I just got back from seeing, as the title of this blog would indicate, Transformers: Dark of the Moon. I enjoyed it, got as much amusement from it as I did the other two, but the movie was not without its flaws. Some new, some old.

My first complaint is a niggling one, so I want to get it out of the way before I go on to anything else. There is no Dark Side of the Moon. I thought everyone knew this by now, so I was a little surprised to hear it continually referenced. What we used to call the Dark Side of the Moon is now called the Far Side, if it's called anything. The reason is simple, the Far Side of the Moon gets as much light as the rest of the Moon. It's known as the Far Side because the Moon is tidally locked with the Earth, which means the same side of the Moon always faces the Earth. But that doesn't mean that sunlight doesn't reach it. When the half of the Moon we can see is in it's New Phase, i.e. covered in shadow, the other side is completely bathed in light.

Ok, now onto things that are more technical than simply Did Not Do The Research. My main problem with the movie was pacing. The movie kinda drifts along aimlessly for the first half hour or so as we learn what's new in the life of Sam Witwicky. I have no problem with character development, in fact I'm a big proponent of it, even in Summer Blockbusters, as long as it's done well. Spending a few minutes getting us acclimated with Sam's new girlfriend is fine, even if it turns "What happened to Megan Fox" into nothing more than a few lines of Handwaving exposition. I understand that for purposes of continuity, we can't just pretend that character didn't exist, and that a brief "Where'd she go?" "Oh, she's long gone" is all your gonna get from such a movie.

But then we go on to Sam's job hunt, which is aborted almost before it begins by Sam's parents being brought back. Ok, I found them amusing in the first movie, but by the second movie their antics were a bit exasperating. By the time they showed up in this movie, I was squirming in my seat and wondering when this crap would be over with.

As I was leaving for the movie, I was asked "Why do they have to be so annoying?" I said that it was probably so the teens watching the movie could say "Oh God, why do parents have to be sooooo embarrassing?"

Then we get on to the job hunt, which was a mildly amusing montage, then on to Sam's new job. In my opinion, all this took up way too much screentime. Especially since when it started getting to the real cool stuff, like Sam puzzling out the Decepticons latest scheme, they just blew right over it. I mean, I knew what was going on, and I was still baffled by what they were saying. If you're gonna have a scene like that, it should take up at least as much time as the character background you were doing before. If you're not willing to give such a detail the attention it deserves, just have a Mr. Exposition wander into the room, explain everything, and then bump into the wall on the way out. Don't tease me with what appears to be some interesting and engaging investigation work, and then have the whole thing over with in less time than you spent on how fruity Alan Tudyk's character is.

Now back to the afore-mentioned girlfriend. I would like to say that she seemed like a stand-in for Megan Fox's character, that they just gave her all the lines they were gonna give Megan Fox, but it's hard to tell. I mean, Fox's character can be described from beginning to end as "I'm a hot chick with a great body." There, I've pretty much exhausted all there is to say about her. And that's all there is to this character, as well. She's there to look good in tight-fitting dresses, get kidnapped, and give Sam motivation to continue on. In fact, the motivation she provides just makes her character even more worthless, because Sam didn't really need more. "Giant robots are planning on conquering the world for the third time, and you're the only Human who sees the whole picture" seems like plenty of motivation to me. And you can't even say "Well, this makes it personal." How is planning to either exterminate or enslave you not personal?

The screenwriter seemed to realize how two-dimensional this chick was, so he decided to shoehorn in one scene near the end where she actually does something plot-relevant. I'm not going to say what it is to avoid spoilers, but I will say that if she had not been in the movie at all, they could have had any other member of the cast (even one of the annoying parents) do the exact same thing without altering anything else in the movie. Ah, but if she wasn't in the movie, then the Boobies Quotient would have been dangerously low.

Another quick one: parts of the opening of the film take place during the Space Race of the 1960s, and to facilitate this, they make copious use of CG and voice acting to do things like have JFK in the movie (aside from actual stock footage in some places). The problem I had with that, it all looked terrible! The CG JFK in Forrest Gump looked better, and that movie came out 17 years before this one.

I've got some other problems with the movie, but a lot of those mostly involve the film's casual disregard for the laws of physics. And by this point, if you're surprised by such things in a Michael Bay movie, then this is probably the first Michael Bay movie you've ever seen.

On the positive side, the action scenes were as spectacular as ever. If you go to the movie expecting to see vehicles turn into robots, and then beat the everliving snot out of each other, you will not be disappointed.

Overall, the acting was a notch or two above the earlier films. Shia LaBeouf seems more mature and confident in this film than he did before. I guess saving the world twice will do that to a guy. I can't say I recall seeing any of his infamous stuttering rants in this film. So there's some actual character development there. John Turturro is as hammy as ever, and it is glorious. John Malkovic has a cameo, which he plays in his normal manner of appearing to be medicated to the gills. Turturro and Malkovic share one scene together, and I have to say I'm amazed there was any scenery left, at the rate they were chewing it. I commented to the friend I was watching it with that I was surprised the camera was able to handle that much ham all at once.

So, yeah. If you haven't seen it yet, and you liked the earlier installments, go check it out. It's a fun ride. Just keep in mind that it's a flawed movie, and in many ways, feels a bit like an unfinished project.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

How not to bum a ride.

Two in the morning is not a time I expect to get text messages. Not on weekdays, at least. And not from numbers I don't recognize. And especially when they read like this:

U want to make 7 bucks wen between 3 and 4. Need a ride from Harlem green line to sayre and diversy

That's a word for word, misspelling by misspelling copy of the text I got about 20 minutes ago.

For about a minute after I got it, I just stared at that first sentence. It took me that long to even get to the rest of the message. At first, I wondered why 7 bucks. Seems like a weird number to offer someone. The lack of a question mark threw me off too. Then I started wondering if I'd suddenly found myself in some kind of movie, cuz that's the only place I could think of where bizarre things like this actually happen.

At first I thought about ignoring it. Then I decided to respond, just in case it was a wrong number and it was some guy trying to get a ride from a friend. So I said "Who is this?" I get a reply that it's this new guy at work. So I realize that the message was indeed meant for me.

I gave him a polite brush-off, without saying what I was actually thinking: "Yeah, that's just what I wanna do. Pick up someone who's essentially a stranger from the train, and drive him to some strange neighborhood." Especially since this guy doesn't seem like an upright citizen. I could be wrong, but I don't want to find out the hard way.

Also, Harlem Ave. is a real hassle that time of day.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

The paragon of animals, or something

Sometimes people do things without even thinking about it. I don't mean like how you don't think about all the actions involved in picking up a cup of water and drinking from it. I mean things like running into a burning building to pull people out of it, things that run counter to instinct. If you think about it, selflessness is a pretty amazing thing, considering it goes against the simple preservation of self.

Years ago, there was this bar I went to for karaoke. I don't remember what it was called, only that it was a total dive. There was no shelf for booze, just a small fridge and some other stuff to stack drinks on. They didn't even have a credit card machine. It was, if you will pardon my language, a shithole.

One night, when I was there with some friends, a fight broke out. I was sitting at the bar, and about 10-15 feet away, I heard a crash, and turned to see that some guy had shoved some other guy into a table, knocking it and several chairs over. I was about five sheets to the wind at that point, not wasted, but pretty drunk. This wasn't the first or the last time I've seen a barroom brawl break out, but for some reason I reacted differently to this one. Maybe it was that the bar was relatively empty and there was no one between me and the fight. Maybe it was because the guy who had been knocked over was not fighting back, and it reminded me of the few times I've been involved in an altercation.

The guy who had been shoved was just lying there, and the other guy had jumped on him and was swinging away with impunity. I can't say what made me do it, because I don't remember having any conscious thoughts about it, but the next thing I knew I was standing over both of them. I grabbed the guy on top and yanked him off the other guy with one hand. I'm a pretty big guy, but so was he. I think the only reason I pulled him away with such ease was due to the element of surprise. And he'd probably had much more to drink than I had.

I held the guy behind me at arm's length while I helped the other guy up with my free hand. In hindsight, it was probably a pretty stupid thing to do, turning my back on an aggressive drunk, but as I said, I wasn't really thinking about anything I was doing, just reacting almost by instinct. Fortunately, the guy's friends had sufficiently recovered from their shock at the attack by that point to grab their friend and take him out of the equation. The man who had been attacked got up with my help and dusted himself off. By this point his own friends had gathered around him, and I asked if he was alright. I think he muttered a curt "Yeah," which was the only thing anyone said to me during the entire incident. I went back to my friends while the two guys were led out of the bar by their friends.

Now what made me do that? Both people involved in the fight were total strangers, I had no reason to get involved. It happened far enough away from me that I had been in no danger of being swept up into the melee. And as I mentioned before, wading into fights and breaking them up is not the sort of thing I normally do. So why did I do it that time? I don't know. I'd like to say something like "Somebody had to do something," or "I did what I thought was right," but I never gave any of it any thought at the time. It wasn't until after I'd gotten back to the bar that I started thinking about the whole thing, and wondering what had possessed me to get involved. I didn't have any answers then, and I still have none now. I'd like to think of myself as the kind of person who does such selfless things. Maybe if I find myself in similar circumstances again, and I react the same way, I'll be able to put it in more perspective. For the time being, it just makes me think about the vagaries of human nature, whatever that is.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Moar!

I was looking over an earlier blog on Alignment Chart Demotivators and noticed that I didn't post the Stargate SG-1 demotivator I made. So here it is. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!

I made a recent discovery. I was aware that Conan the Barbarian had been a modest success, as a cult movie if nothing else. What I hadn't realized was how some producers went nuts over the idea and scrambled to make their own cheap low budget versions.

Among the stack of cheesy movies I got recently, was a movie I'd seen bits of before called Beastmaster. Watching it yesterday, I had to wonder how much of this movie influenced He Man. The main character even looked the same. It came out the same year as Conan, and it certainly has a rushed quality about it. Oh, and it's got Rip Torn in it.

The movie looked like it was filmed on the same stock Sergio Leone used for his Spaghetti Westerns, and the sound quality wasn't a whole lot better. On the bright side, the acting was just as bad. How that movie got made into two sequels and a TV show is beyond me.

Right now, I'm watching Ator, the Fighting Eagle. To my utter lack of surprise, it's the same as Beastmaster, except with maybe a slightly higher budget. In fact, if you ignored the visual elements and focused on the plot, the first 10 minutes of the movie are indistinguishable from Beastmaster. It also came out in 1982, which must have been a banner year for Sword and Sandal films.

For the last time, I will not sign your copy of Stay Hungry!

The hero of this movie, the eponymous Ator, made me laugh out loud when I first saw him. He looks like he should be singing in a Hair Metal band. Long flowing hair, high cheekbones, ridiculous clothes, he kinda looks like what Michael Bolton thinks he looks like.

Fun fact: Michael Bolton at one time was a Glam Rocker. It's true. He even toured with Ozzy Osbourne once. Google it up.

I have to wonder how many more of these movies I haven't watched yet will turn out to be Conan clones. Personally, I'd like to see more Sword and Sandal fantasy movies. I think the Tolkien Medieval Era movies are getting played out. If anyone in Hollywood is reading this (yeah right) and is looking for an idea, might I point you in the direction of Jack Vance's The Dying Earth? Sure, it's set in the far distant future instead of the misty past, but except for that, it's virtually identical to movies like Conan. It was also a major influence on the magic system found in Dungeons and Dragons, so that should bring in the nerd crowd.

Well, I see that the long-awaited remake of Conan is due to come out this year, with Jason Momoa of Stargate Atlantis and Game of Thrones fame, and Ron Perlman of Ron Perlman fame. If it does well, maybe it'll create a new influx of Sword and Sandal movies. Maybe even good ones this time.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

It's not what it sounds like

I've had an actor following me around the last couple weeks. As I have mentioned in the past, I enjoy watching bad/cheesy movies. I hit Demonoid (I wonder if they'll pay me for the advertising?) looking up anything I could think of, and doing some cross-referencing to find more. One of those was the Starship Troopers triology. I've only seen the first one as of yet, and I was a bit distracted by the sounds of Robert A. Heinlein turning over in his grave.

Along the way, I decided to look for some Rifftrax (I wonder if they'll pay me for the advertising?). For those of you who don't know, Rifftrax is a project being run by Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame. As with MST3K, Rifftrax is all about poking fun at movies while you watch them. Only in this case, the movies are recent big budget films, and the Rifftrax themselves are MP3s you listen to while the movie plays.

But I digress. One of the Rifftrax I grabbed this time was for Highlander. So I'm watching the movie, and chuckling at the comments being made by Mr. Nelson and his fellow MST3K alumni Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, when I'm suddenly knocked for a loop. The bad guy, the Kurgen, shows up, and my first thought is "My God. It's Sergeant Zim from Starship Troopers. I totally forgot about that." I went onto IMDb (I wonder if they'll pay me for the advertising?) to verify, and it was indeed the same actor, Clancy Brown.

So, having had that amusing moment, I went on with my life. Then, two nights ago, I'm watching Gargoyles, and I suddenly realize that this one voice actor sounds real familiar. So, I look it up on IMDb. For some reason, the site doesn't have that particular character listed, so I poke around elsewhere, and find a listing which says that the character Wolf is voiced by...Clancy Brown. I figure it's just one of those things where you never notice something until it's pointed out to you, and then suddenly it's everywhere. Like how I never noticed the Pontiac Grand Prix until I bought one, and then every other car on the road is a Grand Prix (granted, it was a very popular model).

I forgot about it soon afterward, as people usually do. Then, just a few minutes ago, I popped in a copy of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension, a movie I've been meaning to see since like High School. I was surprised while watching the credits to see that there's a stack of actors in it that I know. Though I think I already knew John Lithgow was in it. Then, tucked in there at a point calculated to be burned into my memory, I see...Clancy Brown.

I'm getting the feeling that when I go to work tomorrow, Clancy Brown is gonna be sitting on the hood of my car, cleaning his nails with a pocketknife and giving me a knowing grin.

-Long Days And Pleasant Nights

Oh, hai, Blogosphere!

There are times when you hear about a movie or a TV Show, and everyone goes on about how terrible it is. People continually make jokes about one scene, or one line of dialogue, and you feel like the only one on Earth who hasn't tasted the bitter dregs. So, you finally check it out, and it's not what you expected. Sure, it's bad, but you've seen plenty worse. Or it got so hyped that by the time you do see it, the actual product is a let-down.

I wish I could say this was the case with The Room, which I just checked out an hour ago. I was told it's a terrible film, and it is. And the line I kept hearing about, "You're tearing me apart, Lisa!" is just as ridiculously over-the-top as people claim. Hell, Wiseau even milks the giant cow as he shouts it.

Lemme back track a bit for people who haven't heard of this film. It's a low-budget ($8 million, which is actually a bit impressive when you consider Wiseau funded it himself) movie directed by, produced by, and starring Tommy Wiseau, a name that is destined to go down in history next to  Ed Wood, Jr. It's a movie about a love triangle between a man, his finance, and his best friend. There's also numerous sub-plots, but there's no point going into them because none of them are ever resolved, and are often completely forgotten the scene after they're introduced.

Walking in, I knew very little about the movie, except that it was terrible, and someone named Lisa was tearing someone else apart (fun fact: as I suspected, the line is a Shout Out to Rebel Without A Cause). From the title, I had assumed the movie took place entirely in one room, perhaps during a party, or a group of people who found themselves trapped in a room together, something like that. Nope. I can't say why the movie is called The Room, except that most of the scenes do take place in one room (though I blame that on the budget more than anything else).

The only other thing I knew about the movie before watching it was that it was a melodrama black comedy. The strikeout is due to a bit of Soviet Revisionism that took place regarding the movie's genre. Wiseau made the movie as a serious, albeit dark, film, exploring concepts like lust, betrayal, and softcore porn. After a few viewings, it became pretty clear that the movie was so bad as to be downright hilarious, so Wiseau suddenly pulled a 180 and claimed that the movie was a black comedy. Take a look around, you won't be able to find anything official written about the movie without the words "black comedy" chucked in every sentence or so.

It's one of those films that's so bad, it's tough to pin down one thing that was exceptionally bad about it. It's more like "What wasn't exceptionally bad about that movie?" The acting ranged from mediocre to terrible, especially in the case of Wiseau. Large portions of the movie were clearly (and poorly) dubbed over. There were a lot of shots inserted that were absolutely unnecessary. For instance, there's a part in the end where a television is picked up and thrown during an angry rampage. The "action" stops for a moment to show a gratutitous shot containing nothing but the TV hitting the ground and smashing. As if Wiseau was worried that if he didn't include that shot, the audience would spend the rest of the film wondering if the TV got broken or not. Or Lisa ordering a pizza for delivery, complete with 555 phone number.

And speaking of unnecessary shots, there were times the movie felt like a Cinemax Porn, due to a rather ridiculous amount of sex scenes. I counted six total, but since two were coitus interruptus, they probably don't count. I was surprised when I got a sex scene within the first five minutes of the movie. Then I was more surprised to get two sex scenes within the first five minutes. By the time the 3rd showed up, I was bored, and by the 4th I was annoyed. The movie was bad enough without having to see the middle-aged star's naked ass flopping around while he moaned like a (female) porn star.

The Room is just one of many bad movies I've been watching lately. I felt I had to comment on this one though, as it was so much worse than the others. I wanted people reading this to know, it's not just hype, the movie really is as bad as everyone says it is.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights