The new trailer for The Avengers hit the web today and I must say overall I’m pleased. It captures a nice taste of the dark grit that everyone is shilling for after the success of The Dark Knight, but doesn’t let go of the tongue-in-cheek geek humor from the earlier parts of the Marvel series. Plus, how can you not have a good joke tossed in when Robert Downey Jr. is there?
There was one other nice moment, although completely tossed in at the end as if they forgot it in the original cut, which was finally seeing Mark Ruffalo as The Hulk. I’m worried that overall he won’t play a very big part, but we’ll wait and see if that fear plays out.
What do you think of the trailer? Get excited to see the full flick?
Posted 3 months, 4 weeks ago at 10:53 am. Add a comment
Yeah, I came five days early to the game. So what? I like front row seats.
Rating: 9 out of 10
As we start heading into the commonly known “Oscar season”, I just get more and more excited each weekend. There is always some movie sparking my interest just around the corner, a new film I’ve been reading about for months and trying with all my powers to not let the bar of hope get raised too high. There are always going to be disappointments, even when they are good films, because I was waiting for great, but what keeps me going are those films who look up at the bar and say, “Oh yeah, not a problem.” Welcome to one of those films…
Moneyball is based on the true story of Billy Beane, a one-time possible superstar in the MLB who turned general manager of the Oakland A’s. After missing once again on his chance for the World Series crown, Beane went rogue, adopted a new system and went after players using a statistical model instead of banking on superstars. It threatened everything the game was built on, it threatened the way things were done in sports, and worst of all…it worked.
Aaron Sorkin‘s name on the poster was the first thing to catch my eye. I sat there as the lights went down and wondered if he could keep his winning streak going (his last two, Charlie Wilson’s War and The Social Network being two of my favorite all time movies). So without wanting to, my bar was already set high into the stratosphere, but as the credits rolled, I felt the film had touched the clouds. Maybe it didn’t hit open space, but still miles above most of what we see on a week-to-week basis. You could feel his power in the dialogue; some classic Sorkin work. I could almost feel particular scenes the way they would have been played on stage. The film wasn’t loaded up with as many quick witted tit-for-tat moments as his last two films, instead it flowed with much more subtlety, using a more even keel in order to lead the audience through an entire season of baseball. I don’t want to give all the credit to Sorkin, since the writing credit is split between himself and Steven Zallian (an Oscar winner himself), but I really don’t know how the work balanced out between them. That split might also be some of the reason why Moneyball doesn’t have that normal Sorkin whip-crack pacing.
Yet, no matter how well the words are written, they still have to be delivered by someone with the skill and sincerity to make them land and Brad Pitt did not disappoint. Without knowing too much of the original story beforehand I was a little concerned with seeing Pitt in this role, which I previously only thought of as a general manager of a baseball team. What really saves him and grounds it in believability is the history of Billy Beane being a failed baseball superstar. Pitt brought the subtle sorrow, the underlying regret he always had nipping at his heels, which helps fuel his desire not only to win, but also to see the game fundamentally changed. What I found most impressive was somewhere along the way, I forgot I was watching Brad Pitt. He disappeared into a dip-spitting, hand-nosed gambler just trying his damnedest to pull off the greatest underdog victory in history. Those are rare performances and they should be recognized as such.
Jonah Hill came along for the ride, playing Peter Brand, the young economics genius who helped develop the formula Beane uses to build his new championship-hopeful team. It definitely is the most dramatic role Hill has tackled so far and put him toe-to-toe with a modern-day film legend in Pitt. Hill held his own and refused to settle for sitting in Pitt’s shadow. In terms of the performances, my only disappointment was with one of my favorite living actors, Philip Seymour Hoffman. It has nothing to do with his take on Art Howe, the coach of the team under Beane. It was more to do with him barely being a part of the story. He got a precious few scenes early on in the film and then disappeared completely almost halfway through the movie. I just wish we could have gotten more of him and Pitt dueling, as he did so brilliantly with Tom Hanks in Charlie Wilson’s War.
In the end, Moneyball did reach my bar of hope and expectation, but it didn’t blow if off the chart as his past two films have.
The End of the Page recommendation: Moneyball is a solid crack to right field. For some it will clear the back wall and make some fan in the bleachers very, very happy. For others, I think it will come in as a good film, but not quite the game winner they were hoping for.
Immediately after reading it, I mentally tried to cleanse myself of the stain from knowing someone out there would actually do such a lowdown, despicable thing. Then, immediately after that, I called my uncle, where I have my comics still stored from before moving to California. I asked him to look through my boxes and pull out the still-in-the-bag copy of Superman #75 (The Death of Superman).
My plan was to find an address, send it to him and write a post about it, hoping to draw a little more attention and get maybe some other Super-donations. Well my plan turns out to be fairly easy because thousands of people beat me to it:
Also, in amazingly great news, while waiting for my special comic to arrive, the person who stole Mike’s collection has been caught and the original collection has been returned to him.
Now you might think there is really no reason to send anything now that he has his prized possessions back, but I think there is still a statement to be made. First off, it helps to remind people that there is more good in the world than evil. Secondly, Mike has promised that whatever duplicates he receives he will donate himself to a local charity. So, someone somewhere will undoubtedly be appreciating whatever generosity comes their way.
Here is the address in case you still have an urge to send something along:
Mike Meyer c/o Bill Smith
7041 Kingsbury Blvd.
St. Louis, Mo. 63130
Thanks for reading, as always.
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago at 8:00 am. Add a comment
“Oh look, I’ve got a little piece of dignity under my nail. Must’ve scratched it off someone in a cat fight.”
Rating: 8 out of 10
There are many stories in our sordid and sorry history that deserve reverence and a delicate hand when talked about. They should all be told, absolutely, and hopefully learned from, but we must always remember that how the story is told can influence the listener almost as much as the story itself. It can be a tightrope walk along the line between pride and piety and you want to be careful which side it falls on.
The Help is set in Jackson, Mississippi during the central part of the civil rights movement. A young white woman named Skeeter wants to write something real, something special and she finds it in the socialized and institutionalized mistreatment of the African-American hired help. She ventures to gain their trust and their stories in a dangerous effort to give a voice to the silent underbelly of high Southern society.
This film has been #1 at the box office for three weeks and already is a huge success for the studios. It marches along each weekend as the little movie that could. Some will credit that to the original book already being a best-seller, but we’ve seen plenty of best-seller adaptations that fizzle sadly on the big screen. Even a well-told story needs excellent execution in order to swing a whole new audience and The Help is boiling over with just that.
Emma Stone, as the stubborn and righteous Skeeter, delivers her most dramatic turn to date and does not fail to impress. Yet the real power comes from the surrounding cast, packed with outstanding performances ranging from beautifully heart-wrenching to disgustingly evil. Starting with the two maids, shown with touching grace and power by Viola Davis (as Aibileen) and Octavia Spencer (as Minny), these wonderful actresses anchor the film in layers upon layers of honesty and courage. On the complete other side of the spectrum, Bryce Dallas Howard delivers a stunningly devious performance as Hilly Holbrook, the resident alpha Stepford wife, clinging to the old ways and old hatreds, fighting the oncoming social change with each of her pearly white teeth and perfectly french-tipped nails. Her quietly controlled rage reminded me constantly of Glenn Close as Cruella De Vil, such poise built around such poison. Jessica Chastain also did a splendid job as Celia Foote, trying desperately to get acceptance from anyone at all, even if it comes from her maid.
As director, Tate Taylor, tried to softly, but honestly, capture the time and place of 1960s Mississippi. There was tension throughout the movie, keeping the audience wondering when the violence of racism was going to strike, but Taylor always kept it just off screen, tempting the horror without needing to show it up close. He also crafted some wonderfully delicate scenes with the character of Celia, shedding light on yet another part of women’s history kept in the dark for far too long.
However, as I mentioned earlier, it is a delicate dance and this story can be seen from the angle of another “white person ends racism” story, but I feel that would be shortchanging the core of the story. Stone’s character doesn’t free the maids from servitude, she just gives them a voice, an outlet which was up to that point held far out of reach.
One of the few things I found unnecessary was Stone’s boyfriend Stuart (played by Chris Lowell). Stone feels much more natural and relatable as an gawky outcast, never fitting in with all her married high society friends. The need to show her swing back and forth in the world of troubled relationships just felt like a step too far.
The End of the Page recommendation: The Help is filled with touching moments, bound to bring smiles to faces and thoughts to minds.
Sir, this newspaper looks awfully like a book. What? You mean…Sorry, didn’t realize people still made non e-books.
Rating: 10 out of 10
Every now and again, if you’re lucky, you come across a piece of craftsmanship that lays it all out for you. For architects, it might be walking up to an old gothic cathedral and watching the lines and foundations intersect. For musicians, it might be hearing a song which stirs their hearts, feeling the melodies and meaning intertwine like strands of DNA. For people like me, the writers, it means laying your hands on a book which illustrates so clearly not only the beauty of words, but also how those words can be used to change people. That rush only gets better if those words are pouring forth from a career on a rise to not just stardom, but mythic status. This writer, this moment — this is something to be treasured.
Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead is the latest in a growing list of “must read” books by Neil Strauss. This new tome is a culmination of years of interviews and all those magical moments that fell on the cutting room floor by way of verbal economy, relevance to the time, or the most egregious of reasons, editorial choice by the publisher. These snippets are peephole windows into the real people behind the fame and fortune, showing in possibly the truest form ever that celebrities are indeed normal people too, dealing with the same insecurities and same life choices as we do. That doesn’t mean they are all good people under the glitter, some are just as vain and superficial as we imagine, but at least we can now be sure they aren’t faking that for the creation of their persona.
The cast of characters span the celebrity horizon like a multi-billion dollar rainbow. Everyone is here and no one is spared from the charm and familiarity that Strauss brings into every interview. Snoop Dogg takes him along to get diapers for his kid, Lady Gaga goes to tears by her first question and Jewel snuggles up under the covers like it’s a high school slumber party. This book is filled with astounding moments of clarity from the people who spend most of their days hidden behind a persona, whether it be one of hard-edged aggression (like Marilyn Manson and Slipknot) or unstoppable humor (like Jay Leno or Stephen Colbert). Strauss shows in interview after interview his style of getting the subjects to relax, let down their guard and basically not feel like subjects. From reading these passages you not only learn some amazing factoids about these people, but you can also glean how to interact better with others in your own lives, with a sense of honesty and compassion.
As he did before in The Game and Emergency, Strauss has immersed himself over a period of time into a whole different world and come back with a roadmap to the reality he discovered. His choice of questions and how he allows himself to become part of the moment instead of just someone observing from the outside gives him the access and ability to truly describe and detail where these people are coming from. They are not just subjects or an assignment (although you can tell some he was more personally excited about than others). He gives each interview weight, respect and a sense of purpose often missed by the supermarket tabloid phenomena. You get the distinct impression that each person at one point or another looks over at him and thinks with internal surprise and joy, “Wow, no one has ever asked me that before!” So they get to tell their story in a fresh way and not sound like a broken record on yet another press tour, while we the reader get to see a little more deeply into the lives of these people who inspire, excite and often openly confuse us.
The End of the Page recommendation: Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead is a fantastic read. A true must have for fans of all forms of entertainment and good writing.
What do you think? Fans of Neil Strauss?
Posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago at 7:52 am. Add a comment
“If all that is actually falling from some hole in an airplane’s bathroom, I’m gonna be really concerned. Aliens? Those I’m fine with.”
Rating: 10 out of 10
Attack the Block at its core is two films in one: an alien attack movie with huge ape-like creatures with no eyes and green glowing teeth, while also a redemption tale for a young gang of hoodlums who become the first and only defenders of Earth, or more importantly their housing project, known as The Block. The aliens descend from the sky without warning, but what they find in the rough and tumble part of South London is not part of their master plan.
There are certain teams in the movie industry you just look for – people who all work together, maybe grew up together, and somehow they always manage to create some really wonderful films when they’re all working as one. Judd Apatow has his gang (his wife chief among those), Adam Sandler has his gang (Rob Schneider seemingly holds top cameo in that gang) and, of course, King of the Cult Worship, Kevin Smith (nevermind box office revenues, this dude has an entire posse of creative types on speed dial). Yet, over the last decade or so, one group has knocked it out of the park on virtually every occasion, crossing nearly every genre and making it look nearly effortless (which I am sure it is not). That honor goes to Edgar Wright and the dynamic duo of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Jumping onto the scene stateside with Shaun of the Dead, then following up with Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (which was only Edgar Wright involved there), they piled up an amazing and impressive fan base, much deserved. So my hopes were high for this film with Edgar Wright listed as an Executive Producer and Joe Cornish at the helm (who also had incredibly small roles in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) and my expectations were soundly met and beaten.
So many things went right in the making of this movie, but as with every great movie ever made the success of it always begins with an amazingly written script. Coming in at a tight 88 minutes long, the story never felt rushed or over-motivated. The pace is perfect and the sequence of events moves along in balanced time, keeping the believability of the universe intact the entire way. The arrival of the aliens is handled brilliantly basically by not handling it at all. They show up and they’re killing people; deal with it. Then the ending, which I will not at all give away here, is so beautifully simple and ingenious that for once I was completely caught off-guard. I found myself turning to my friend and saying, “Holy shit, that actually makes sense! It’s an alien flick and that f’n made sense!” So my first kudos here goes to Joe Cornish who not only directed this, but wrote it as well (which IMDB quotes the inspiration coming from his own mugging by a group of young kids).
I could go on now and say all the wonderful directing choices Cornish makes throughout the film, but that would take many hours and I’m writing this late in the evening, so I’ll just mention two. Making this movie for an estimated price tag of nine million pounds, this is a low budget flick, but instead of giving into that sensibility and trying to hack bigger and badder special effects, Cornish correctly crafts the story in such a way where he doesn’t need elaborate CGI to tell the story. Most of it is set in one building and the creatures have one unique characteristic (the glowing teeth), but are otherwise dudes in suits. Honestly, not once did I ever feel they looked cheap or did they take me out of the moment. Secondly, some particularly well-shot slow motion moments in the latter stages of the film were spot on and made what could have been a rushed and hectic moment into something tension-filled and exciting.
So now you have a great script and a visionary director manning the helm, but you still need a talented cast to bring the whole thing to life and this film shoots the moon. Nick Frost has a charming and welcome side character as the front man for the main drug dealer in The Block, but he really is there to provide a safety net to the humor of the film. The lead ensemble of gang kids and the young woman they mug in the opening scene are exceptional. I honestly was fully prepared to read an article about how these kids were literally ripped right off the streets and put in front of a camera, alaEdward Furlong for Terminator 2: Judgment Day (although he was ripped from a mall arcade, but same difference). John Boyega anchors the cast as Moses, the gang leader, and he delivers such honesty and truth to the part, it’s shocking to see this listed as his debut project. While the strength and comedic moments he brings are huge in the film, it’s the heart he puts out there, hidden on his sleeve underneath the puffy coat, that’s what brings everything together into a meaningful and enjoyable experience for the viewer.
Walking out of the theater, I felt really happy not only that I had seen the movie, but also that I had paid full price for my ticket. These are the ones you want to support. These are the movies we need more of out there and the only way that will happen is by getting butts in the seats in numbers great enough to warrant greenlighting another project from this crew of people. So if it’s playing nearby you, I think you know what I’m telling you to do.
The End of the Page recommendation: Attack the Block tears it up on screen and shows all those big budget alien movies how it’s really done. Take that, bruv!
What did you think? Did Attack the Block beat your expectations?
If I just act like nothing is blowing up behind me, maybe it will all go away.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Yes, this is yet another comic book superhero movie. Yes, this is another Marvel comic big-budget franchise trying to get off the ground. You might start to wonder why you should bother seeing any of these if a new one just hits the screens one month later. First off, it definitely helps to be a comic book fan from the start, but beyond that, in terms of pure movie magic and box office trending, this newest chapter gets a little boost from being the last in a long line of films leading to a culminating epic fanboys have been frothing over for years now…The Avengers! But, I’ll dip more into that later, for now, let’s look at the throwback hero of the group who takes us back to a time when heroes were not only cheered for their strength, but also for their conduct.
Captain America: The First Avenger details the transformation of a skinny kid named Steve Rogers into the national icon (and medically-induced super-soldier) known as Captain America. Rogers is created into this new evolution of man in order to combat Hydra, the deep science/black arts division of the Nazi army, led by a ruthless tyrant named Johann Schmidt, who is more frighteningly referred to as The Red Skull (you know, cause his face fell off and such). Captain America must prove to the people who gave him his powers, and to himself, that he was the right man to do the job of saving the world from utter annihilation.
I had fairly muted expectations going into this movie, mainly because Captain America is essentially a retro-hero, a classic clean-cut good guy with no character flaws. He always does the right thing, or at least attempts to, no matter the cost to himself. It flies in the face of everything we have been seeing in terms of comic book heroes over the last decade. The grief and anger of Batman, the drunken power trips or Spider-man, the ego and pride of Thor; all these traits give the characters layers that assist in making them human, someone the audience can try to relate to. Captain America really doesn’t have any of those flaws, but here’s the surprise…they made it work anyway. The opening thirty minutes of the film we see Steve Rogers pre-magic-roid-juice, where he is a ninety-pound poster boy for the “Before” shot in workout ad campaigns. In those early scenes his struggle is how to find a way to match his frail muscles outside with his unbreakable drive inside. We find ourselves in the hopeful spot of routing for the little guy (and I mean really, really little, like me in high school) and those opening scenes help pull the crowd in, hopefully holding them there through what comes later.
Once we lose the physicality of the “before” picture and it’s replaced with superhuman “after” shot, it loses a bit of the charm. Chris Evans should take no blame for this, in fact I think he was cast perfectly. He held on nicely to the innocence of his smaller self and truthfully brought to life the heroic nature of those comics from the late 40′s and early 50′s. The real downfall was that he didn’t face any real obstacle after he got his new physical form. We never really felt he was ever in any real danger because he could basically accomplish anything that came to mind, no matter how insane.
On the topic of the shield, our iconic piece of comic book memorabilia, I was torn on it. I liked the design and the fact it could get scuffed up, dirtied and otherwise sullied, but I would have appreciated one scene where we got to see him learn to throw it. Within one scene of him picking it up for the first time, he was chucking it around like a world-class discuss champion, fully expecting it to return to him, instead of wondering how the hell that worked. The minor flaw sort of mirrors the bigger issue that the latter half of the movie was really just a long montage of Captain America jumping, swinging, shield tossing and otherwise being heroic (lots of it in slow motion). The heart fell out of it and the movie descended into flashy colors and catch phrases.
In terms of the cast, as I said before, Chris Evans did a hell of a job and I look forward to him building up the character even more, hopefully with more internal struggles in movies to come. Sadly gone after the first thirty minutes, Stanley Tucci was wonderful as Dr. Abraham Erskine , the scientist behind the super-serum, which made the man out of the molehill. Tucci worked in such charm and natural flavor into his German accent and characterizations, I really wish he could have stayed on screen much longer.
Getting back to the real buzz around this movie, the next film in line for Marvel Studios is The Avengers, the first time any studio in the recent decades has tried to tie together a handful of other movie franchises into one single film. The Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Nick Fury, Hawkeye (who Jeremy Renner cameoed as in Thor) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson in Iron Man 2) will all assemble on screen for the eagerly anticipated culmination of Marvel’s long term film plan. The genius inside is they are using all the original actors who made these roles so popular (with the exception of Hulk, who was played by Edward Norton in the franchise film and now replaced by Mark Ruffalo). For me, as a movie junkie, this is where the franchise will become something truly special. Just to see all those actors on screen playing off of each other is immediately worth the price of admission (and maybe a box of Raisinettes too).
The End of the Page recommendation: Captain America is a light-hearted throwback to the heroes of before, but the back half of the movie doesn’t hold up the charm and warmth of the opening. Matinee on the big screen could be valuable though, just for the special effects.
Thoughts? Are you looking forward to The Avengers?
Posted 6 months, 2 weeks ago at 8:12 pm. 2 comments
The guy behind me is staring at me, right? I totally feel it.
Rating: 9 out of 10
It is expected now for any member of the political beltway or those who report on it (and other daily news events) to grace the shelves of our local bookstores (or the front page of our eBook apps) with a tell-all/biography/memoir. Most are pushed on them by overzealous managers and agents trying desperately to cash in on their popularity with various demographics, but every now and again one journal will come to fruition from a much more real and meaningful purpose.
Dispatches From The Edge: A Memoir of War, Disaster, and Survival is a touching remembrance from CNN superstar Anderson Cooper. Covering portions of his childhood and the darker moments of his youth, it also details heart-wrenching details of his reporting on Hurricane Katrina and the wars in the Middle East. Filled with honest and frank recollections from not only the front lines of some of our most recent calamities, Cooper also pushes his investigations internally to find out what drives him to consistently drop himself into some of the worst places on Earth.
The first thing that grabbed me about this book was the random similarities I didn’t expect to share with Anderson Cooper. His father passed away when he was ten years old, mine when I was five. It had a dramatic effect on each of our lives. He mentions his inability to fully process the emotional impact of that event, and the later suicide of his older brother, as key reasons for his apparent addiction to placing himself in the literal and psychological cross-hairs of the worst spots in the world.
Some of the most interesting parts, including those about his personal life, are when Cooper reveals many of the things he saw that never made the news, things deemed unworthy of CNN coverage. One scene talks about when he was in the Middle East passing out over 200 gallons of water to locals with the help of our armed forces. No one died that day, no IEDs went off, so no one ever heard about it. Cooper sadly admits the old adage that still holds sway over all news coverage, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Another story mentions gruesome and horrific details about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The utter lawlessness committed not only by the locals taking advantage of the chaos, but law enforcement personnel who devolved just as much into primitive gangs of roving warlords. Some of those stories were snuffed out early on because it was deemed too dangerous in risking a possible backlash against all authority, which very well could have happened, but it doesn’t make the reality of it any easier to swallow.
Cooper also eloquently covers his tenuous balancing act between being an unbiased reporter and an opinionated celebrity. Once he made it out the other end of some incredibly dangerous job hunting tactics, landing in the spotlight of CNN forever altered his ability to reach millions of people and also his struggle to keep his sanity. He now was given access to people and events ranging from awe-inspiring to nightmare-inducing. With great skill and strain he has always come from those places knowing he had to wrap those images into a coherent story meant to inform, educate and enhance the world discussion. The Achilles heel for any reporter is to somehow deliver that information without bias and political overtones, which Cooper has managed to do time and time again, making him one of the most respected in the business.
In the last couple of years, Cooper has begun to step out of the middle ground and reposition himself as a true fact finder in a much more aggressive sense. Under the moniker, “Keeping Them Honest”, Cooper began bringing on politicians and other notable news makers when he felt something they were preaching about was demonstrably false. No longer fulfilled by calmly reporting the facts to his audience, Cooper decided to drive the falsehoods out into the light during live interviews. The only down side is if he brings on someone from the right side of the political spectrum and corrects them, Cooper becomes labeled a liberal activist, and if the guest is more left leaning, Cooper becomes labeled a political tool for the right. It seems like a no-win situation for him, but he is taking it in stride, sticking to what he believes is meaningful for people to know and that is what keeps him cemented as one of the best in the industry. Dispatches tries to ride that thin line as well, pointing out the inequities in the reporting that most of the country saw, while not coming down as an outright attack on the media as a whole.
The End of the Page recommendation: Dispatches From The Edge is a harrowing and heartfelt look in front and behind the lens of one of the most notable newsmen in the business, Anderson Cooper.
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago at 9:07 am. Add a comment
This was when they stopped asking Shia to bring his friends to Show-and-Tell at school.
Rating: 3 out of 10 (adult rating)
Rating: 8 out of 10 (12-Year Old rating)
I’m going to commit what to many will seem like film geek treason, I will now connect Michael Bay and Terrence Malick into one theory of filmmaking.
Yep, deal with it.
Malick and Bay share one important thing and that is a completely unabashed tunnelvision for the type of film they want, damn the naysayers, critics and crowds. They both make movies mainly for themselves and in truth, there is nothing wrong with that. As an audience member you need to know going in exactly what you are going to get. It is the only way to really enjoy anything that falls from the cameras of these two (and some other notables). With that said, let’s dive headlong into the metallic masterpiece of summertime popcorn, Transformers!
Transformers: Dark of the Moon continues the story of Sam Witwicky and his Autobot friends. While Sam struggles to gain a purpose in life outside of Decepticon attacks, the Autobots are off helping the government on secret missions. Then everything is torn apart by the discovery of the original Autobot escape ship, known as The Ark, and the captain of that ship, Sentinel Prime. He alone holds the key to technology that could either help reshape the Transformers home world or completely destroy ours. The Decepticons, completely aware of this discovery, make an immediate power play and the war is back, bigger than ever.
Kids buying the Transformer toys today only want one thing, huge robots in spectacular 3D slow motion destroying each other and every building in sight. From this narrow viewpoint, Bay delivers in bulk. The highway fight sequence brought back memories of other high-speed terror scenes like in Matrix Reloaded and The Island (maybe a little too reminiscent of that last one according to some eagle eyed movie nerds). Since Bay actually filmed these scenes in the latest and greatest 3D technology, it was admittedly pretty amazing to watch. In other scenes, some of the CGI was so intensely crisp that it actually started popping too far from the live footage, making it stand out, which ruins a little of the illusion.
So the special effects is where it was at. Big robots, big explosions, big buildings falling down. Those were the high points.
The low points were pretty much everything else.
Standing in the center of all the toys-on-roids insanity is Shia LaBeouf, who in my opinion is a really good actor banking inside really bad movies. I can’t fault him for taking parts in some of the biggest franchises in movie history (Transformers and Indiana Jones) because the exposure and paycheck are nearly impossible to pass up, but in terms of showing his skills as an actor, those hefty titles have done him nothing but a painful disservice. He made his big splash on the scene in the Disney TV show Even Stevens and then on the big screen in the Rear Window update, Disturbia. Many people also don’t remember one of my personal favorite performances in the Project Greenlight-sponsored film, The Battle of Shaker Heights. Shia has the chops, but gets surrounded by weak emotional performances, both from CGI and real people. In this outing, Megan Fox‘s eye candy character was replaced by Victoria Secret’s model (and current Jason Statham girlfriend), Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Whiteley was an improvement in sense of acting ability, but the part was written levels below what Fox was given. The original love interest had layers, depth and some edge, while Whiteley was given virtually no background, no emotional outlet and nothing to do but stand there and be hot. Sure, the 12-year old in the audience doesn’t want or need more, but to them I say, “Go grab a Victoria Secret’s catalog from your parent’s bathroom and stay out of my movie.”
Beyond the magical pair of leads, Bay brings back the regular tough guys, Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson, to keep on keeping on. They both do fine jobs and don’t try to make this more than it is. Coming in for the first time in the franchise is Frances McDormand, an Academy Award winner to class up the joint. While she was amusing and brought a little more skill to the screen, her part was borderline over-the-top, even in a movie with three story tall robots, because she had to balance out John Tuturro who drifts somewhere off to Hunter S. Thompson land. As if they weren’t enough, Bay decides to bring in an unusual amount of big name cameos, including John Malkovich (who does a decent job in his few scenes) and Ken Jeong (who seems to be acting in a completely different movie, possibly thinks he’s filming Hangover 3). I saved the best for last though, my personal favorite and the only person I was actually thrilled to see appear on screen, Alan Tudyk (who plays Tuturo’s assistant/bodyguard). Tudyk is a cult TV and film legend to his legions of fans spanning from the days of Firefly, Dollhouse and other projects not created by Joss Wheedon. Tudyk was the one person I actually cheered form when he magically appeared on screen.
I could go into a section now where I talk about the story, the plotlines, the connective tissue of the writing, but in reality, Bay didn’t really care and neither do the younger members of the crowd, so let’s just skip it.
The End of the Page recommendation: Transformers: Dark of the Moon starts slow, goes out with a bang and delivers surface entertainment for the middle school crowd.
People fall in and out of your lives all the time. Friends you once saw everyday somehow find years going by without any contact at all. There’s no shame or blame in that, it’s just how life changes all the time. What matters are the experiences you have during those times and how they change your life going forward.
I met Matt Lewis a long time back through a mutual friend and I was instantly impressed. He has a certain way about him that draws attention the moment he enters the room. Maybe it’s his wicked sense of humor, maybe it’s his wicked sense of intelligence, maybe he’s just wicked (in the Northeastern complimentary sense of the word). Either way, he was always cool to me and along the way he called me up and offered me an editing gig that his company was too busy to wrap up at the time. I jumped at the chance and through that gig I met a now longtime friend, Jon Cohn, who went onto create the Mutineer Theatre Company, of which I am a proud member. I would not have gotten to know any of the great people in that group or had the opportunities that stem from it without that single phone call from Matt. When those moments of serendipity happen, you sometimes wish you could pay them back and very rarely does an opportunity of such importance come about.
But that time has most certainly come.
Matt has been in the hospital for a number of weeks with a rare condition known as Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH). The treatment thus far is regular blood transfusions, but the cure only stems from a bone marrow transplant. Finding a match is not always as easy as grabbing up a family member, so making those chances stronger is critically important and here is how everyone reading this can help:
Be The Match: You can go to this website and register yourself as a donor. I know many people are still under the false impression that donating bone marrow happens like it did on TV while I was growing up (crazy needles being jabbed into spinal cords, holy crap…OW), but thankfully times and technology has very much changed and improved over the years. Here are the two current methods of donating:
PSBC Donation: This is a non-surgical procedure where they harvest blood-forming cells. Basically they give you small injections for a few days prior to donation to increase the presence of those cells in your blood stream. You can feel mild headaches and some soreness for a few days prior to donating. Then they hook your arm up to a machine which removes your blood (like normal blood donation) and filters out the blood-forming cells, putting the filtered blood right back in through the other arm. Most people are back to normal state in 1-2 days.
Marrow Donation: This is a surgical procedure. While the person is under, the doctor removes marrow from the back of the pelvic bone. Some soreness can remain for a couple days to a week after, but people are generally back to normal state in 2-7 days.
You can order free mouth swab registry kits from the Be The Match website and add yourself to a growing number of donors waiting for the chance, like this one, to really make an impact in someone’s life. I have already gotten my kit and it is going back in the mail to them tomorrow. If you are at all interested, please register as soon as you can. It can take up to two months to get a donor fully into the system, so time is of the essence.
You can also donate blood, as mentioned in this other article about Matt and his condition over at Tubefilter:
1. Head to a local blood bank (The American Red Cross has a good resource page) and ask to donate under Matt Lewis’ name. You’ll need to mention his date of birth (11/4/1979) and that he is at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Los Angeles. By donating one pint of blood in his name, it frees up one pint that can be given to him for much-needed blood transfusions.
I encourage you to do one, both or even just send a couple bucks to either of these organizations.
Thanks for reading.
Posted 7 months, 1 week ago at 7:50 pm. Add a comment
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