Alden Bates' Weblog

Having seen Revenge of the Fallen at long last, I can see that Michael Bay has taken on board a lot of the criticisms from the first film:

• We complained that there wasn't enough screen time for the Transformers, so the sequel has a lot more screen time for the Transformers


• We complained that there wasn't enough interaction to establish personalities in the Decepticons, so there's a lot more Decepticon interaction.


• We complained about the rampant comedy, so the sequel has a lot more comedy.

Oh wait, that last one isn't a positive. The first ten minutes of the film is a great action sequence, as Autobots and humans hunt Decepticons together in Shanghai. Then we cut to the Witwickys' house, and are hit with the sight of Mojo taking his new pal doggy-style on the Witwicky sofa.

COMEDY GOLD!

Yes, if you loved the scene in the first movie where Bumblebee pees on Sector Seven agent Simmons, you're sure to love the humour in Revenge of the Fallen. If not... well, they don't raise the bar. At all. It's sad when Transformers Animated, a cartoon aimed at children, is more mature than the live-action movie series.

So, anyway, ROTF is two and half hours of robots beating the crap out of each other while the humans have comedy antics and occasionally some plot happens. There's an even better, though spoilery, review on io9.com, but it's very spoiler. Speaking of, the plot left me with some lingering questions, which I'm putting under the cut to avoid spoilering anyone who lands on the main page.

Continue reading "Wednesday Night Movie: Revenge of the Fallen"

Hey! Which movie sequel featuring giant transforming robots smashing up cities come out later this month? That's right, it's.... TRANSMORPHERS: FALL OF MAN.

No, it doesn't have Shia LaBeouf, but it does have Bruce Boxleitner! And it's coming out on the 30th of June! What an amazing coincidence!

You can watch the trailer here (I'd embed it, but new wide-screen YouTube is too wide for my blog).

Since it's still over a week until Revenge of the Fallen, I decided to go and see Terminator: Salvation. Unlike the previous three films in the series, this one totally eshews the use of time travel in favour of depicting a post-Judgement Day America under the grip of Skynet. While it succeeds really well at showing us a post-apocalyptic US, and at being a decent action flick, that's about all it does. The characters are only barely drawn in most cases, and the movie can't seem to decide who the main protagonist is — John Connor or the other guy.

Spoilers ahoy!

Continue reading "Thursday Night Movie: Terminator: Salvation"

Every couple of months or so, Hasbro has a Question/Answer session where they take questions from Transformers websites, three questions each, and answer them. I was fortunate enough to have my question picked to be sent in by the Transformers Wiki. My question was:

Given the advances in toy design over the last twenty years, if you could go back in time and impart one piece of knowledge to the Transformers design team of the 80s, what would it be?

You can read the answer Hasbro replied with on the Wiki's May Q&A article, along with the other two questions and answers.

I've been watching the old Man from UNCLE series, and partway through The Five Daughters Affair, we get this exchange:

Geisha: You know, ah: When homesick / think of friends / loneliness flees ... is ancient haiku
Napoleon: Haiku?
Illya: It's a classic form of Japanese poetry. It has to have exactly seventeen syllables. My favourite is: The old pond / a frog jumps in / plop.

You may notice that despite the correct (if imprecise) definition of haiku, that both examples completely fail to get anywhere near 17 syllables. Tsk.