I Owe You All an Apology...

So I said in this blog a few months ago that I would not see Michael Bay's Transformers: Dark of the Moon when it comes out this summer. The third film in this overwrought series of excess, it is the first to star someone other than Megan Fox as the primary heroine. Due to the fact that there is not enough room in downtown Chicago for two divas as big as Bay and Fox to exist at the same time, she has been replaced by Victoria's Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.

Oh well. None of us were going to see it for the acting, anyway. Oh, and it was written by Ehren Kruger, who also wrote Revenge of the Fallen. None of this bodes well for the film, even though the early screening got rave reviews from Ain't It Cool News.

...oh my gosh! look at this trailer!

The movie was shot digitally in James Cameron's true 3D, Fusion Camera technique, so it will look insane in any case. The pure insanity of Bay's unquenchable destruction-lust will be on display.

Yes, I will probably see it. *sigh*

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Shia LaBeouf is Kind of Dumb

Most people go to Cannes to watch new films, meet celebrities, and avoid American authorities, but Shia LaBeouf goes to get attention.

I don't mind that, but the guy went and very publicly bashed his last two blockbuster films. The writers and directors weren't there to defend their works, and LaBeouf betrayed his total lack of class by insulting movies he fully promoted when he was paid to.

One of them was his second Transformers film, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. He admitted that it wasn't any good; it's a good thing Shia is here to tell us these things. "It became too big, and I think you lost the anchor of the movie," he said, referring to the first film's characters and heart. This missing, enigmatic anchor of the movie could also very well be the script.

Then he bashed in the head of a once-sacred cow. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the fourth film in that series, was an embarrassment, and LaBeouf classily put some of the blame on his performance. The rest of it, according to him, fell on director Steven Spielberg. "When you drop the ball you drop the ball," LaBeouf said of Spielberg. I hated that LaBeouf, the most overrated actor currently in Hollywood, was in the movie, but his acting had nothing to do with its failure. The film had weak special effects, laughable characters, and the tone of a Wayans brothers comedy. As I've been known to say, Nathan Drake has taken the fedora right off Indy's head as America's adventurer. If Spielberg makes Indy 5, he has to win back people's respect.

Naughty Dog 2 / Steven Spielberg 0.

LaBeouf is toast without Megan Fox to make his acting look good in the next Transformers film, anyway. Maybe Michael Bay can put Fox in the film by creating her entirely out of CG... And he can ditch all of those pesky sets and locations and just shoot it all on blue screen.

Hey Shia, you're a moron. Those films were both painful, but that's why we read scripts before we accept the $15 million to do a picture.

Transformers, Rest In Peace

As everyone who cares already knows, Transformers 3 is filming and will be released next year.

The main problem with this, other than the fact that the first two films sucked and that Michael Bay keeps wavering back and forth on the subject of 3D, is that Megan Fox won't be in it.

Fox never got along with director Bay, and now it's cost Bay the only thing going for his hyperbolic franchise. You suck, Mike.

Bay has replaced Fox with a Victoria's Secret model. I'm not paying to watch this in theaters. Her name is Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, if anybody cares.

Megan Fox has no Power Over Anyone, Ever

Megan Fox made her name with both of Michael Bay's Transformers movies, and in 2009's Jennifer's Body. If you've seen her, then you remember her.

I doubt she's got all of her stuff together, like as a person, but I can't really judge her for that because my psychiatrist says my incessant hiccuping is a result of my scarred childhood and fear of overweight toddlers.

In any case, she's doomed to a life of obscurity from now on. I don't think there is any way she'll ever even be able to get what she wants out of life...

You know what? Forget it.

Transformers 3 is due next year, boys.

Blu Recommendation: Heat

I'll be recommending home video releases once a week because you people clearly don't get enough advice on how to live and what to buy from the media already. My recommendation for the week of March 21 is the Blu-ray of Michael Mann's Heat (1995).

I know a lot of you saw Mann's Public Enemies in the summer of 2009, but what you may not believe is that he once made a crime epic that wasn't a blurry, digital, overrated mess. Heat is his best film, a Los Angeles crime saga that holds up under multiple viewings. The story focuses on cops and robbers, as Al Pacino's Detective Vincent Hanna hunts down Robert De Niro's Neil McCauley. A strong cast supported them, but the film didn't just showcase excellent procedural sequences of police work (before they got acronymed to death on network television) and shootouts; it brought the goods by focusing on the two driven lead characters and the effects their obsessions wrought on the people closest to them. The legendary cafe scene, pictured above, showcases a surprisingly moving exchange between Hanna and McCauley in which they realize that they are two sides of the same coin, one driven to hurt others through crime, the other to stop such victimization.

The Blu-ray features an excellent video transfer (for a film from 1995) and pounding Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio. Mann's commentary is also great. I recommend this one for home theater enthusiasts.

Mann up,

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